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Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American
cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and g ...
and humorist best known for the
satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or ...
comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics ter ...
''
Li'l Abner ''Li'l Abner'' is a satirical American comic strip that appeared in many newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. Written and drawn b ...
'', which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (with help from assistants) drawing until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips ''
Abbie an' Slats ''Abbie an' Slats'' is an American comic strip which ran from July 12, 1937, to January 30, 1971, initially written by Al Capp and drawn by Raeburn Van Buren. It was distributed by United Feature Syndicate. Publication history ''Abbie an' Slat ...
'' (in the years 1937–45) and ''
Long Sam ''Long Sam'' is an American comic strip created by Al Capp, writer-artist of ''Li'l Abner'', and illustrated by Bob Lubbers. It was syndicated by United Feature Syndicate from May 31, 1954, to December 29, 1962. The strip was initially written b ...
'' (1954). He won the
National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...
's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award, posthumously for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning". Capp's comic strips dealt with urban experiences in the northern states of the USA until the year he introduced "Li'l Abner". Although Capp was from
Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the ...
, he spent 43 years writing about the fictional
Southern Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...
town of Dogpatch, reaching an estimated 60 million readers in more than 900 American newspapers and 100 more papers in 28 countries internationally. M. Thomas Inge says Capp made a large personal fortune through the strip and "had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South".


Early life

Capp was born in
New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...
, of East European Jewish heritage. He was the eldest child of Otto Philip Caplin (1885–1964) and Matilda (Davidson) Caplin (1884–1948). His brothers, Elliot and Jerome, were cartoonists, and his sister, Madeline, was a publicist. Capp's parents were both natives of
Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
whose families had migrated to New Haven in the 1880s. "My mother and father had been brought to this country from Russia when they were infants", wrote Capp in 1978. "Their fathers had found that the great promise of America was true – it was no crime to be a Jew." The Caplins were dirt-poor, and Capp later recalled stories of his mother going out in the night to sift through ash barrels for reusable bits of coal. In August 1919, at the age of nine, Capp was run down by a trolley car and had his left leg amputated above the knee. According to his father Otto's unpublished autobiography, young Capp was not prepared for the amputation beforehand; having been in a coma for days, he suddenly awoke to discover that his leg had been removed. He was eventually given a prosthetic leg, but only learned to use it by adopting a slow way of walking which became increasingly painful as he grew older. The childhood tragedy of losing a leg likely helped shape Capp's cynical worldview, which was darker and more sardonic than that of the average newspaper cartoonist. "I was indignant as hell about that leg", he revealed in a November 1950 interview in ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' magazine. "The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else", Capp philosophically wrote (in ''
Life magazine ''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...
'' on May 23, 1960), "was to be indifferent to that difference." The prevailing opinion among his friends was that Capp's Swiftian satire was, to some degree, a creatively channeled, compensatory response to his disability. Capp's father, a failed businessman and an amateur cartoonist, introduced him to drawing as a form of therapy. He became quite proficient, advancing mostly on his own. Among his earliest influences were ''
Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pu ...
'' cartoonist–illustrator Phil May and American comic strip cartoonists Tad Dorgan, Cliff Sterrett, Rube Goldberg, Rudolph Dirks, Fred Opper, Billy DeBeck, George McManus, and Milt Gross. At about this same time, Capp became a voracious reader. According to Capp's brother Elliot, Alfred had finished all of Shakespeare and
George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
by the time he turned 13. Among his childhood favorites were Dickens, Smollett,
Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has pr ...
,
Booth Tarkington Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 – May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels '' The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1918) and '' Alice Adams'' (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulit ...
, and later,
Robert Benchley Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 – November 21, 1945) was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at '' The Harvard Lampoon'' while attending Harvard University, thr ...
and S. J. Perelman. Capp spent five years at Bridgeport High School in
Bridgeport, Connecticut Bridgeport is the most populous city and a major port in the U.S. state of Connecticut. With a population of 148,654 in 2020, it is also the fifth-most populous in New England. Located in eastern Fairfield County at the mouth of the Pequo ...
, without receiving a diploma. He liked to joke about how he failed geometry for nine straight terms. His formal training came from a series of art schools in the
New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
area. Attending three of them in rapid succession, the impoverished Capp was thrown out of each for nonpayment of tuition—the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Designers Art School in Boston—the last before launching his career. Capp already had decided to become a cartoonist. "I heard that Bud Fisher (creator of '' Mutt and Jeff'') got $3,000 a week and was constantly marrying French countesses", Capp said. "I decided that was for me." In early 1932, Capp hitchhiked to New York City. He lived in "airless rat holes" in
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
and turned out advertising strips at $2 each while scouring the city hunting for jobs. He eventually found work at the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...
when he was 23 years old. By March 1932, Capp was drawing ''Colonel Gilfeather'', a single-panel, AP-owned property created in 1930 by Dick Dorgan. Capp changed the focus and title to ''Mister Gilfeather'' but soon grew to hate the feature. He left the Associated Press in September 1932. Before leaving, he met Milton Caniff and the two became lifelong friends. Capp moved to
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and married Catherine Wingate Cameron, whom he had met earlier in art class. She died in 2006 at the age of 96. Leaving his new wife with her parents in Amesbury, Massachusetts, he subsequently returned to New York in 1933, in the midst of the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
. "I was 23, I carried a mass of drawings, and I had nearly five dollars in my pocket. People were sleeping in alleys then, willing to work at anything." There he met
Ham Fisher Hammond Edward "Ham" Fisher (September 24, 1900 (some sources indicate 1901) – December 27, 1955) was an American comic strip writer and cartoonist. He is best known for his long, popular run on ''Joe Palooka'', which was launched in 1930 and r ...
, who hired him to ghost on ''
Joe Palooka ''Joe Palooka'' was an American comic strip about a heavyweight boxing champion, created by cartoonist Ham Fisher. The strip debuted on April 19, 1930 and was carried at its peak by 900 newspapers. It was cancelled in 1984. The strip was adapt ...
''. During one of Fisher's extended vacations, Capp's ''Joe Palooka'' story arc introduced a stupid, coarse, oafish mountaineer named "Big Leviticus," a crude
prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to ...
. (Leviticus was much closer to Capp's later villains Lem and Luke Scragg than to the much more appealing and innocent
Li'l Abner ''Li'l Abner'' is a satirical American comic strip that appeared in many newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. Written and drawn b ...
.) Also during this period, Capp was working at night on samples for the strip that eventually became ''Li'l Abner''. He based his cast of characters on the authentic mountain-dwellers he met while hitchhiking through rural
West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...
and the Cumberland Valley as a teenager. (This was years before the
Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...
Act brought basic utilities such as electricity and running water to the region.) Leaving ''Joe Palooka'', Capp sold ''Li'l Abner'' to United Feature Syndicate (later known as United Media). The feature was launched on Monday, August 13, 1934, in eight North American newspapers—including the ''
New York Mirror The ''New-York Mirror'' was a weekly newspaper published in New York City from 1823 to 1842, succeeded by ''The New Mirror'' in 1843 and 1844. Its producers then launched a daily newspaper named ''The Evening Mirror'', which published from 18 ...
''—and was an immediate success. Alfred G. Caplin eventually became "Al Capp" because the syndicate felt the original would not fit in a cartoon frame. Capp had his name changed legally in 1949. His younger brother,
Elliot Caplin Elliot Caplin (December 25, 1913 - February 20, 2000) was a comic strip writer best known as the co-creator (with Stan Drake) of ''The Heart of Juliet Jones''. His name is sometimes spelled with one extra letter: Elliott A. Caplin. He was the youn ...
, also became a comic strip writer, best known for co-creating the soap opera strip '' The Heart of Juliet Jones'' with artist Stan Drake and conceiving the comic strip character ''
Broom-Hilda ''Broom-Hilda'' is an American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Russell Myers. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, it depicts the misadventures of a man-crazy, cigar-smoking, beer-guzzling, 1,500-year-old witch and her motley cr ...
'' with cartoonist
Russell Myers Russell Kommer Myers (born October 9, 1938) is an American cartoonist best known for his newspaper comic strip ''Broom-Hilda''. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, Myers was raised in Oklahoma where his father taught at the University of Tulsa. Myers wa ...
. Elliot also authored several off-Broadway plays, including ''A Nickel for Picasso'' (1981), which was based on and dedicated to his mother and his famous brother.


''Li'l Abner''

What began as a
hillbilly Hillbilly is a term (often derogatory) for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks. The term was later used to refer to people from other rural and mountainous areas we ...
burlesque A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.
soon evolved into one of the most imaginative, popular, and well-drawn strips of the twentieth century. Featuring vividly outlandish characters, bizarre situations, and equal parts suspense,
slapstick Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such ...
,
irony Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized int ...
, satire,
black humor Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discu ...
, and biting social commentary, ''Li'l Abner'' is considered a classic of the genre. The comic strip stars Li'l Abner Yokum—the simple-minded, loutish but good-natured, and eternally innocent hayseed who lives with his parents—scrawny but superhuman Mammy Yokum, and shiftless, childlike Pappy Yokum. "Yokum" was a combination of ''yokel'' and ''hokum'', although Capp established a deeper meaning for the name during a series of visits around 1965–1970 with comics historians George E. Turner and Michael H. Price:
"It's phonetic
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
—that's what it is, all right—and that's what I was getting at with the name Yokum, more so than any attempt to sound ''hickish''. That was a fortunate coincidence, of course, that the name should pack a backwoods connotation. But it's a godly conceit, really, playing off a godly name—''
Joachim Joachim (; ''Yəhōyāqīm'', "he whom Yahweh has set up"; ; ) was, according to Christian tradition, the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The story of Joachim and Anne first appears in the Biblical apocryph ...
'' means 'God's determination', something like that—that also happens to have a rustic ring to it."
The Yokums live in the backwater hamlet of Dogpatch,
Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...
. Described by its creator as "an average stone-age community", Dogpatch mostly consists of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, pine trees, "tarnip" fields, and "hawg" wallows. Whatever energy Abner had went into evading the marital goals of Daisy Mae Scragg, his sexy, well-endowed, but virtuous girlfriend, until Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to marry. This newsworthy event made the cover of ''Life'' on March 31, 1952. Capp peopled his comic strip with an assortment of memorable characters, including Marryin' Sam, Hairless Joe, Lonesome Polecat, Evil-Eye Fleegle, General Bullmoose, Lena the Hyena, Senator Jack S. Phogbound (Capp's caricature of the anti-
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...
Dixiecrats), the ''(shudder!)'' Scraggs, Available Jones, Nightmare Alice, Earthquake McGoon, and a host of others. Especially notable, certainly from a G.I. point of view, are the beautiful, full-figured women such as Daisy Mae, Wolf Gal, Stupefyin' Jones, and Moonbeam McSwine (a caricature of his wife Catherine, aside from the dirt), all of whom found their way onto the painted noses of bomber planes during World War II and the Korean War. Perhaps Capp's most popular creations were the
Shmoo The shmoo (plural: shmoos, also shmoon) is a fictional cartoon creature created by Al Capp (1909–1979); the character first appeared in the comic strip ''Li'l Abner'' on August 31, 1948. The popular character has gone on to influence pop cultur ...
s, creatures whose incredible usefulness and generous nature made them a threat to civilization as we know it. Another famous character was
Joe Btfsplk Joe Btfsplk was a character in the satirical comic strip ''Li'l Abner'' (published 1934–1977) by cartoonist Al Capp. He is well-meaning but is "the world's worst jinx", bringing disastrous misfortune to everyone around him. A small, dark ra ...
, who wants to be a loving friend but is "the world's worst jinx", bringing bad luck to all those nearby. Btfsplk (his name is "pronounced" by simply blowing a "raspberry" or Bronx cheer) always has an iconic dark cloud over his head. Dogpatch residents regularly combat the likes of city slickers, business tycoons, government officials, and intellectuals with their homespun simplicity. Situations often take the characters to other destinations, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, tropical islands, the moon, Mars, and some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's invention, including El Passionato, Kigmyland, The Republic of Crumbumbo, Skunk Hollow, The Valley of the Shmoon, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, and a miserable frozen wasteland known as Lower Slobbovia, a pointedly political satire of backward nations and foreign diplomacy that remains a contemporary reference. According to cultural historian Anthony Harkins:
"Indeed, ''Li'l Abner'' incorporates such a panoply of characters and ideas that it defies summary. Yet though Capp's storylines often wandered far afield, his hillbilly setting remained a central touchstone, serving both as a microcosm and a distorting carnival mirror of broader American society."
The strip's popularity grew from an original eight papers to eventually more than 900. At its peak, ''Li'l Abner'' was estimated to have been read daily in the United States by 60 to 70 million people (the U.S. population at the time was only 180 million), with adult readers far outnumbering children. Many communities, high schools, and colleges staged Sadie Hawkins dances patterned after the similar annual event in the strip. Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. In response to the question "Which side does Abner part his hair on?", Capp would answer: "Both." Capp said he finally found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with Henry Fonda's character Dave Tolliver in '' The Trail of the Lonesome Pine'' (1936). In later years, Capp always claimed to have effectively created the miniskirt, when he first put one on Daisy Mae in the 1930s.


Parodies, toppers, and alternate strips

''Li'l Abner'' also features a comic strip-within-the-strip: '' Fearless Fosdick'' is a parody of
Chester Gould Chester Gould (; November 20, 1900 – May 11, 1985) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the '' Dick Tracy'' comic strip, which he wrote and drew from 1931 to 1977, incorporating numerous colorful and monstrous villains. Ea ...
's '' Dick Tracy''. It first appeared in 1942, and proved so popular that it ran intermittently during the next 35 years. Gould was parodied personally in the series as cartoonist "Lester Gooch"—the diminutive, much-harassed and occasionally deranged "creator" of Fosdick. The style of the ''Fosdick'' sequences closely mimicks ''Tracy'', including the urban setting, the outrageous villains, the galloping
mortality rate Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of d ...
, the crosshatched shadows, and even the lettering style. In 1952, Fosdick was the star of his own short-lived puppet show on NBC, featuring the Mary Chase marionettes. Besides ''Dick Tracy'', Capp parodied many other comic strips in ''Li'l Abner''—including ''
Steve Canyon ''Steve Canyon'' is an American adventure comic strip by writer-artist Milton Caniff. Launched shortly after Caniff retired from his previous strip, '' Terry and the Pirates'', ''Steve Canyon'' ran from January 13, 1947, until June 4, 1988. It e ...
'', ''
Superman Superman is a superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, and debuted in the comic book '' Action Comics'' #1 ( cover-dated June 1938 and pu ...
'' (at least twice; first as "Jack Jawbreaker" in 1947, and again in 1966 as "Chickensouperman"), '' Mary Worth'' as "Mary Worm", ''
Peanuts ''Peanuts'' is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz. The strip's original run extended from 1950 to 2000, continuing in reruns afterward. ''Peanuts'' is among the most popular and inf ...
'' , ''
Rex Morgan, M.D. ''Rex Morgan, M.D.'' is an American soap opera comic strip, created May 10, 1948 by psychiatrist Dr. Nicholas P. Dallis under the pseudonym Dal Curtis. History The name for the strip was inspired by the real life Rex S. Morgan Sr., the U.S. Ar ...
'', ''
Little Annie Rooney ''Little Annie Rooney'' is a comic strip about a young orphaned girl who traveled about with her dog, Zero. King Features Syndicate launched the strip on January 10, 1927, not long after it was apparent that the Chicago Tribune Syndicate had sc ...
'', and ''
Little Orphan Annie ''Little Orphan Annie'' is a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by the Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem " Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and it made its debut on ...
'' (in which Punjab became "Punjbag," an oleaginous slob). ''Fearless Fosdick''—and Capp's other spoofs such as "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952) and "Jack Jawbreaker"—were almost certainly an early inspiration for Harvey Kurtzman's ''
Mad Magazine Mad, mad, or MAD may refer to: Geography * Mad (village), a village in the Dunajská Streda District of Slovakia * Mád, a village in Hungary * Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, by IATA airport code * Mad River (disambiguation), several ...
'', which began in 1952 as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in the same distinctive style and subversive manner. Capp also lampooned popular recording idols of the day, such as
Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the " King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. His ener ...
("Hawg McCall", 1957),
Liberace Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) was an American pianist, singer, and actor. A child prodigy born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin, he enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordi ...
("Loverboynik", 1956),
the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
("the Beasties", 1964)—and in 1944,
Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the " Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular entertainers of the 1940s, 1950s, and ...
. "Sinatra was the first great public figure I ever wrote about," Capp once said. "I called him 'Hal Fascinatra.' I remember my news syndicate was so worried about what his reaction might be, and we were all surprised when he telephoned and told me how thrilled he was with it. He always made it a point to send me a spent condom whenever he happened to see me in a restaurant..." (from ''Frank Sinatra, My Father'' by Nancy Sinatra, 1985). On the other hand, Liberace was "cut to the quick" over Loverboynik, according to Capp, and even threatened legal action—as would
Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
later, over "Joanie Phoanie" in 1967. Capp was just as likely to parody himself; his self-caricature made frequent, tongue-in-cheek appearances in ''Li'l Abner''. The gag was often at his own expense, as in the above 1951 sequence showing Capp's interaction with "fans" (see excerpt), or in his 1955
Disneyland Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envisio ...
parody, "Hal Yappland". Just about anything could be a target for Capp's satire—in one storyline Li'l Abner is revealed to be the missing link between ape and man. In another, the search is on in Dogpatch for a pair of missing socks knitted by the first president of the United States. In addition to creating ''Li'l Abner'', Capp also co-created two other newspaper strips: ''
Abbie an' Slats ''Abbie an' Slats'' is an American comic strip which ran from July 12, 1937, to January 30, 1971, initially written by Al Capp and drawn by Raeburn Van Buren. It was distributed by United Feature Syndicate. Publication history ''Abbie an' Slat ...
'' with magazine illustrator Raeburn van Buren in 1937, and ''
Long Sam ''Long Sam'' is an American comic strip created by Al Capp, writer-artist of ''Li'l Abner'', and illustrated by Bob Lubbers. It was syndicated by United Feature Syndicate from May 31, 1954, to December 29, 1962. The strip was initially written b ...
'' with cartoonist
Bob Lubbers Robert Bartow Lubbers (January 10, 1922 – July 8, 2017) was an American comic strip and comic book artist best known for his work on such strips as ''Tarzan'', ''Li'l Abner'' and '' Long Sam''. Biography Born Robert Bartow Lubbers in 1922, he ...
in 1954, as well as the Sunday " topper" strips ''Washable Jones'', ''Small Fry'' (a.k.a. ''Small Change''), and ''Advice fo' Chillun''.


Critical recognition

According to comics historian
Coulton Waugh Frederick Coulton Waugh (; 10 March 1896 – 23 May 1973) was a cartoonist, painter, teacher and author, best known for his illustration work on the comic strip ''Dickie Dare'' and his book ''The Comics'' (1947), the first major study of the fi ...
, a 1947 poll of newspaper readers who claimed they ignored the comics page altogether revealed that many confessed to making a single exception: ''Li'l Abner''. "When ''Li'l Abner'' made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into ''Li'l Abner''. The strip was the first to regularly introduce characters and story lines having nothing to do with the nominal stars of the strip. The technique—as invigorating as it was unorthodox—was later adopted by cartoonists such as Walt Kelly Pogo''.html"_;"title="Pogo_(comics).html"_;"title="'Pogo_(comics)">Pogo''">Pogo_(comics).html"_;"title="'Pogo_(comics)">Pogo''and_Garry_Trudeau.html" ;"title="Pogo_(comics)">Pogo''.html" ;"title="Pogo_(comics).html" ;"title="'Pogo (comics)">Pogo''">Pogo_(comics).html" ;"title="'Pogo (comics)">Pogo''and Garry Trudeau">Pogo_(comics)">Pogo''.html" ;"title="Pogo_(comics).html" ;"title="'Pogo (comics)">Pogo''">Pogo_(comics).html" ;"title="'Pogo (comics)">Pogo''and Garry Trudeau [''Doonesbury'']", wrote comic strip historian Rick Marschall. According to Marschall, ''Li'l Abner'' gradually evolved into a broad satire of human nature. In his book ''America's Great Comic Strip Artists'' (1989), Marschall's analysis revealed a decidedly misanthropic subtext. Over the years, ''Li'l Abner'' has been adapted to radio,
animated cartoons Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...
, stage production, motion pictures, and television. Capp has been compared, at various times, to Mark Twain, Dostoevski,
Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Du ...
,
Lawrence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels '' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and ''A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', publish ...
, and Rabelais. Fans of the strip ranged from novelist
John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social ...
—who called Capp "possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953 and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature—to media critic and theorist
Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...
, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life". John Updike, comparing Abner to a "hillbilly
Candide ( , ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled ''Candide: or, All for the Best'' (1759); ''Candide: or, Th ...
", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean".
Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is conside ...
,
William F. Buckley William Frank Buckley Jr. (born William Francis Buckley; November 24, 1925 – February 27, 2008) was an American public intellectual, conservative author and political commentator. In 1955, he founded ''National Review'', the magazine that stim ...
,
Al Hirschfeld Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars. Personal life Al Hirschfeld was born in 1903 in a two-story duplex at 1313 Carr ...
, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes, and (reportedly) even Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of ''Li'l Abner''. ''Li'l Abner'' was also the subject of the first book-length scholarly assessment of an American comic strip ever published. ''Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire'' by Arthur Asa Berger (Twayne, 1969) contained serious analyses of Capp's narrative technique, his use of dialogue, self-caricature, and grotesquerie, the place of ''Li'l Abner'' in American satire, and the significance of social criticism and the graphic image. "One of the few strips ever taken seriously by students of American culture," wrote Professor Berger, "''Li'l Abner'' is worth studying ... because of Capp's imagination and artistry, and because of the strip's very obvious social relevance." It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994.


The 1940s and 1950s

During World War II and for many years afterward, Capp worked tirelessly going to hospitals to entertain patients, especially to cheer recent amputees and explain to them that the loss of a limb did not mean an end to a happy and productive life. Making no secret of his own disability, Capp openly joked about his prosthetic leg his whole life. In 1946, Capp created a special full-color comic book, ''Al Capp by Li'l Abner'', to be distributed by the Red Cross to encourage the thousands of amputee veterans returning from the war. Capp also was involved with the Elizabeth Kenny, Sister Kenny Foundation, which pioneered new treatments for polio in the 1940s. Serving in his capacity as honorary chairman, Capp made public appearances on its behalf for years, contributed free artwork for its annual fundraising appeals, and entertained crippled and paraplegic children in children's hospitals with inspirational pep talks, humorous stories, and sketches. In 1940, an RKO Pictures, RKO Li'l Abner (1940 film), movie adaptation starred Granville Owen (later known as Jeff York) as Li'l Abner, with Buster Keaton taking the role of Lonesome Polecat, and featuring a title song with lyrics by Milton Berle. A successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip opened on Broadway theatre, Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956, and had a long run of 693 performances, followed by a nationwide tour. The Li'l Abner (musical), stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor Li'l Abner (1959 film), motion picture at Paramount Pictures, Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with a score by Nelson Riddle. Several performers repeated their Broadway roles in the film, most memorably Julie Newmar as Stupefyin' Jones and Stubby Kaye as Marryin' Sam. Other highlights of that decade included the 1942 debut of Fearless Fosdick as Abner's "ideel" (hero); the 1946 Lena the Hyena Contest, in which a hideous Lower Slobbovian gal was ultimately revealed in the harrowing winning entry (as judged by Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff, and Salvador Dalí) drawn by noted cartoonist Basil Wolverton; and an ill-fated Sunday parody of ''Gone with the Wind (novel), Gone With the Wind'' that aroused anger and legal threats from author Margaret Mitchell, and led to a printed apology within the strip. In October 1947, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Comic Strip Syndicate. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!", was a devastating satire of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's notorious exploitation by DC Comics over ''Superman''. It was later reprinted in ''The World of Li'l Abner'' (1953). (Siegel and Shuster had earlier poked fun at Capp in a ''Superman'' story in ''Action Comics #55'', December 1942, in which a cartoonist named "Al Hatt" invents a comic strip featuring the hillbilly "Tiny Rufe".) In 1947, Capp earned a ''Newsweek'' cover story. That same year the ''New Yorker magazine, New Yorker's'' profile on him was so long that it ran in consecutive issues. In 1948, Capp reached a creative peak with the introduction of the
Shmoo The shmoo (plural: shmoos, also shmoon) is a fictional cartoon creature created by Al Capp (1909–1979); the character first appeared in the comic strip ''Li'l Abner'' on August 31, 1948. The popular character has gone on to influence pop cultur ...
s, lovable and innocent fantasy creatures who reproduced at amazing speed and brought so many benefits that, ironically, the world economy was endangered. The much-copied storyline was a parable that was metaphorically interpreted in many different ways at the outset of the Cold War. Following his close friend Milton Caniff's lead (with ''
Steve Canyon ''Steve Canyon'' is an American adventure comic strip by writer-artist Milton Caniff. Launched shortly after Caniff retired from his previous strip, '' Terry and the Pirates'', ''Steve Canyon'' ran from January 13, 1947, until June 4, 1988. It e ...
''), Capp had recently fought a successful battle with the syndicate to gain complete ownership of his feature when the Shmoos debuted. As a result, he reaped enormous financial rewards from the unexpected (and almost unprecedented) merchandising phenomenon that followed. As in the strip, Shmoos suddenly appeared to be everywhere in 1949 and 1950—including a ''Time'' cover story. A paperback collection of the original sequence, ''The Life and Times of the Shmoo'', became a bestseller for Simon & Schuster. Shmoo dolls, clocks, watches, jewelry, earmuffs, wallpaper, fishing lures, air fresheners, soap, ice cream, balloons, ashtrays, comic books, records, sheet music, toys, games, Halloween masks, salt and pepper shakers, decals, pinbacks, tumblers, coin banks, greeting cards, planters, neckties, suspenders, belts, curtains, fountain pens, and other Shmoo paraphernalia were produced. A garment factory in Baltimore turned out a whole line of Shmoo apparel, including "Shmooveralls". The original sequence and its 1959 sequel ''The Return of the Shmoo'' have been collected in print many times since, most recently in 2011, always to high sales figures. The Shmoos later had their own animated television series. Capp followed this success with other allegory, allegorical fantasy critters, including the aboriginal and Self-defeating personality disorder, masochistic "Kigmies", who craved abuse (a story that began as a veiled comment on racial and religious oppression), the dreaded "Nogoodniks" (or ''bad'' shmoos), and the irresistible "Bald Iggle", a guileless creature whose sad-eyed countenance compelled involuntary truthfulness—with predictably disastrous results. ''Li'l Abner'' was censorship, censored for the first time, but not the last, in September 1947 and was pulled from papers by Scripps-Howard. The controversy, as reported in ''Time'', centered on Capp's portrayal of the United States Senate. Edward Leech of Scripps said, "We don't think it is good editing or sound citizenship to picture the Senate as an assemblage of freaks and crooks ... boobs and undesirables." Capp criticized Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, calling him a "poet". "He uses poetic license to try to create the beautifully ordered world of good guys and bad guys that he wants," said Capp. "He seems at his best when terrifying the helpless and naïve." Capp received the
National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...
's National Cartoonists Society#Billy DeBeck Memorial Award, Billy DeBeck Memorial Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year. (When the award name was changed in 1954, Capp also retroactively received a National Cartoonists Society#Reuben Award, Reuben statuette.) He was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the NCS by admitting women cartoonists. Originally, the Society had disallowed female members. Capp briefly resigned his membership in 1949 to protest their refusal of admission to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip ''Teena''. According to Tom Roberts, author of ''Alex Raymond: His Life and Art'' (2007), Capp delivered a stirring speech that was instrumental in changing those rules. The NCS finally accepted female members the following year. In December 1952, Capp published an article in ''Real'' magazine entitled "The REAL Powers in America" that further challenged the conventional attitudes of the day: "The real powers in America are ''women''—the wives and sweethearts behind the masculine dummies...." Highlights of the 1950s included the much-heralded marriage of Abner and Daisy Mae in 1952, the birth of their son "Honest Abe" Yokum in 1953, and in 1954 the introduction of Abner's enormous, long-lost kid brother Tiny Yokum, who filled Abner's place as a bachelor in the annual Sadie Hawkins Day race. In 1952, Capp and his characters graced the covers of both ''Life'' and ''TV Guide''. The year 1956 saw the debut of Bald Iggle, considered by some ''Abner'' enthusiasts to be the creative high point of the strip, as well as Mammy's revelatory encounter with the "Square Eyes" Family—Capp's thinly-veiled appeal for racial tolerance. (This fable-like story was collected into an educational comic book called ''Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery!'' and distributed by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith later that year.) Two years later, Capp's studio issued ''Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story'', a biographical comic book distributed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.Love, David A
"Egyptians draw inspiration from Civil Rights Movement comic book."
''The Grio'' (February 2, 2011).
Often, Capp had parodied corporate greed—pork tycoon J. Roaringham Fatback had figured prominently in wiping out the Shmoos. But in 1952, when General Motors president Charles Erwin Wilson, Charles E. Wilson, nominated for a cabinet post, told United States Congress, Congress "...what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa", he inspired one of Capp's greatest satires—the introduction of General Bullmoose, the robust, ruthless, and ageless business tycoon. The blustering Bullmoose, who seemed to own and control nearly everything, justified his far-reaching and mercenary excesses by saying "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for ''the USA!''" Bullmoose's corrupt interests were often pitted against those of the pathetic Lower Slobbovians in a classic mismatch of "haves" versus "have-nots". This character, along with the Shmoos, helped cement Capp's favor with the Left-wing politics, Left, and increased their outrage a decade later when Capp, a former Franklin D. Roosevelt liberal, switched targets. Nonetheless, General Bullmoose continued to appear, undaunted and unredeemed, during the strip's final right-wing phase and into the 1970s.


Feud with Ham Fisher

After Capp quit his ghosting job on Ham Fisher's ''Joe Palooka'' in 1934 to launch his own strip, Fisher badmouthed him to colleagues and editors, claiming that Capp had "stolen" his idea. For years, Fisher brought the characters back to his strip, billing them as "The ORIGINAL Hillbilly Characters" and advising readers not to be "fooled by imitations". (In fact, Fisher's brutish hillbilly character—Big Leviticus, created by Capp in Fisher's absence—bore little resemblance to Li'l Abner.) According to a November 1950 ''Time'' article, "Capp parted from Fisher with a definite impression, (to put it mildly) that he had been underpaid and unappreciated. Fisher, a man of Roman self esteem, considered Capp an ingrate and a whippersnapper, and watched his rise to fame with unfeigned horror." "Fisher repeatedly brought Leviticus and his clan back, claiming their primacy as comics' first hillbilly family – but he was missing the point. It wasn't the setting that made Capp's strip such a huge success. It was Capp's finely tuned sense of the absurd, his ability to milk an outrageous situation for every laugh in it and then, impossibly, to squeeze even more laughs from it, that found such favor with the public," (from Don Markstein's ''Toonopedia''). The Capp-Fisher feud was well known in cartooning circles, and it grew more personal as Capp's strip eclipsed ''Joe Palooka'' in popularity. Fisher hired away Capp's top assistant, Moe Leff. After Fisher underwent plastic surgery, Capp included a racehorse in ''Li'l Abner'' named "Ham's Nose-Bob". In 1950, Capp introduced a cartoonist character named "Happy Vermin"—a caricature of Fisher—who hired Abner to draw his comic strip in a dimly lit closet (after sacking his previous "temporary" assistant of 20 years, who had been cut off from all his friends in the process). Instead of using Vermin's tired characters, Abner inventively peopled the strip with hillbillies. A bighearted Vermin told his slaving assistant: "I'm proud of having created these characters!! They'll make millions for me!! And if they do – I'll get ''you'' a new light bulb!!" Traveling in the same social circles, the two men engaged in a 20-year mutual vendetta, as described by the ''New York Daily News'' in 1998: "They crossed paths often, in the midtown watering holes and at National Cartoonists Society banquets, and the city's gossip columns were full of their snarling public donnybrooks." In 1950, Capp wrote a nasty article for ''The Atlantic'', entitled "I Remember Monster". The article recounted Capp's days working for an unnamed "benefactor" with a miserly, swinish personality, who Capp claimed was a never-ending source of inspiration when it came time to create a new unregenerate villain for his comic strip. The thinly-veiled boss was understood to be Ham Fisher. Fisher retaliated, doctoring photostats of ''Li'l Abner'' and falsely accusing Capp of sneaking obscenities into his comic strip. Fisher submitted examples of ''Li'l Abner'' to Capp's syndicate and to the New York courts, in which Fisher had identified pornographic images that were hidden in the background art. However, the X-rated material had been drawn there by Fisher. Capp was able to refute the accusation by simply showing the original artwork. In 1954, when Capp was applying for a Boston television license, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received an anonymous packet of pornographic ''Li'l Abner'' drawings. The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) convened an ethics hearing, and Fisher was expelled for the forgery from the same organization that he had helped found; Fisher's scheme had backfired in spectacular fashion. Around the same time, his mansion in Wisconsin was destroyed by a storm. On December 27, 1955, Fisher committed suicide in his studio. The feud and Fisher's suicide were used as the basis for a lurid, highly fictionalized murder mystery, ''Strip for Murder'' by Max Allan Collins. Another "feud" seemed to be looming when, in one run of Sunday strips in 1957, Capp lampooned the comic strip '' Mary Worth'' as "Mary Worm". The title character was depicted as a nosy, interfering busybody. Allen Saunders, the creator of the ''Mary Worth'' strip, returned Capp's fire with the introduction of the character "Hal Rapp", a foul-tempered, ill-mannered, and (ironically) inebriated cartoonist, (Capp was a teetotaler). Later, the "feud" was revealed to be a collaborative hoax that Capp and his longtime pal Saunders had cooked up together. The Capp-Saunders "feud" fooled both editors and readers, generated plenty of free publicity for both strips—and Capp and Saunders had a good laugh when all was revealed.


Personality

Capp, Milton Caniff (''Terry and the Pirates (comic strip), Terry and the Pirates'', ''Steve Canyon'') and Walt Kelly (''Pogo'') were close personal friends and professional associates throughout their adult lives, and occasionally, referenced each other in their strips. According to one anecdote (from ''Al Capp Remembered'', 1994), Capp and his brother Elliot ducked out of a dull party at Capp's home—leaving Walt Kelly alone to fend for himself entertaining a group of Argentine envoys who didn't speak English. Kelly retaliated by giving away Capp's baby grand piano. According to Capp, who loved to relate the story, Kelly's two perfectly logical reasons for doing so were: a. to cement diplomatic relations between Argentina and the United States, and b. "Because you can't play the piano, anyway!" (''Beetle Bailey'' creator Mort Walker confirmed the story, relating a slightly expanded version in his autobiography, ''Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook'', 2001.) Milton Caniff offered another anecdote (from ''Phi Beta Pogo'', 1989) involving Capp and Walt Kelly, "two boys from Bridgeport, Connecticut, nose to nose," onstage at a meeting of the Newspaper Comics Council in the sixties. "Walt would say to Al, 'Of course, Al, this is really how you should draw Daisy Mae, I'm only showing you this for your own good.' Then Walt would do a sketch. Capp, of course, got ticked off by this, as you can imagine! So he retaliated by doing ''his'' version of Pogo. Unfortunately, the drawings are long gone; no recording was made. What a shame! Nobody anticipated there'd be this dueling back and forth between the two of them ..." Although he was often considered a difficult person, some acquaintances of Capp have stressed that the cartoonist also had a sensitive side. In 1973, upon learning that 12-year-old Edward M. Kennedy Jr., Ted Kennedy Jr., the son of his political rival Ted Kennedy, Ted Kennedy Sr., had his right leg amputated, Capp wrote the boy an encouraging letter that gave candid advice about dealing with the loss of a limb, which Capp himself had experienced as a boy. One of Capp's grandchildren recalls that at one point, tears were streaming down the cartoonist's cheeks while he was watching a documentary about the Jonestown massacre. Capp gave money anonymously to charities and "people in need" at various points in his life.


Sexual misconduct claims

In her autobiography, American actress Goldie Hawn stated that Capp sexually propositioned her on a casting couch and exposed himself to her when she was 19 years old. When she refused his advances, Capp became angry and told her that she was "never gonna make anything in your life" and that she should "go and marry a Jewish dentist. You'll never get anywhere in this business." Two biographies, one about Goldie Hawn and the other about Grace Kelly, describe Capp as trying to force Kelly into having sex with him, and he later tried to do the same with Hawn. In 1971, investigative journalist Jack Anderson (columnist), Jack Anderson wrote that Capp had exposed his genitals to four female students at the University of Alabama. In 1972, after an incident at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, Capp was arrested. He pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted adultery, while charges of indecent exposure and sodomy were dropped. He was fined US$500 (). In 2019, Jean Kilbourne was inspired by the MeToo movement to publish in ''Hogan's Alley (magazine), Hogan’s Alley'' her own experience of being groped and sexually solicited by Al Capp while doing freelance writing and research work for him in contemplation of a permanent job in 1967.


Production methods

Like many cartoonists, Capp made extensive use of assistants (notably Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson, and Frank Frazetta). During the extended peak of the strip, the workload grew to include advertising, merchandising, promotional work, public service comics, and other specialty work—in addition to the regular six dailies and one Sunday strip per week. From the early 1940s to the late 1950s, there were scores of Sunday strip-style magazine ads for Cream of Wheat using the ''Abner'' characters, and in the 1950s, Fearless Fosdick became a spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil hair tonic in a series of daily strip-style print ads. The characters also sold chainsaws, underwear, ties, detergent, candy, soft drinks—including a licensed version of Capp's moonshine creation, Kickapoo Joy Juice—and General Electric and Procter & Gamble products, all requiring special artwork. No matter how much help he had, Capp insisted on his drawing and inking the characters' faces and hands—especially of Abner and Daisy Mae—and his distinctive touch is often discernible. "He had ''the touch,''" Frazetta said of Capp in 2008. "He knew how to take an otherwise ordinary drawing and really make it ''pop''. I'll never knock his talent." As is usual with collaborative efforts in comic strips, his name was the only one credited— although, sensitive to his own experience working on ''Joe Palooka'', Capp frequently drew attention to his assistants in interviews and publicity pieces. A 1950 cover story in ''Time'' even included photographs of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. Ironically, this highly irregular policy (along with the subsequent fame of Frank Frazetta) has led to the misconception that his strip was "ghosted" by other hands. The production of ''Li'l Abner'' has been well documented, however. In point of fact, Capp maintained creative control over every stage of production for virtually the entire run of the strip. Capp originated the stories, wrote the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and drew and inked the hands and faces of the characters. Frazetta authority David Winiewicz described the everyday working mode of operation in ''Li'l Abner Dailies: 1954 Volume 20'' (Kitchen Sink, 1994): There was also a separate line of comic book titles published by the Caplin family-owned Toby Press, including ''Shmoo Comics'' featuring Washable Jones. Cartoonist Mell Lazarus, creator of ''Miss Peach'' and ''Momma'', wrote a comic novel in 1963 entitled ''The Boss Is Crazy, Too'' which was partly inspired by his apprenticeship days working with Capp and his brother Elliot at Toby. In a seminar at the Charles Schulz Museum on November 8, 2008, Lazarus called his experience at Toby "the five funniest years of my life". Lazarus went on to cite Capp as one of the "four essentials" in the field of newspaper cartoonists, along with Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz, and Milton Caniff. Capp detailed his approach to writing and drawing the stories in an instructional course book for the Famous Artists School, beginning in 1956. In 1959, Capp recorded and released an album for Folkways Records (now owned by the Smithsonian) on which he identified and described "The Mechanics of the Comic Strip". Frazetta, later famous as a fantasy artist, assisted on the strip from 1954 to December 1961. Fascinated by Frazetta's abilities, Capp initially gave him a free hand in an extended daily sequence (about a biker named "Frankie," a caricature of Frazetta) to experiment with the basic look of the strip by adding a bit more realism and detail (particularly to the inking). After editors complained about the stylistic changes, the strip's previous look was restored. During most of his tenure with Capp, Frazetta's primary responsibility—along with various specialty art, such as a series of ''Li'l Abner'' greeting cards—was tight-penciling the Sunday pages from studio roughs. This work was collected by Dark Horse Comics in a four-volume hardcover series entitled ''Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years''. In 1961, Capp, complaining of declining revenue, wanted to have Frazetta continue with a 50% pay cut. "[Capp] said he would cut the salary in half. Goodbye. That was that. ''I'' said goodbye," (from ''Frazetta: Painting with Fire''). However, Frazetta returned briefly a few years later to draw a public service comic book called ''Li'l Abner and the Creatures from Drop-Outer Space'', distributed by the Job Corps in 1965.


Public service works

Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies, and charitable or nonprofit organizations, spanning several decades. The following titles are all single-issue, educational comic books and pamphlets produced for various public services: *''Al Capp by Li'l Abner''— Public service giveaway issued by the American Red Cross, Red Cross (1946) *''Yo' Bets Yo' Life!''— Public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Army (circa 1950) *''Li'l Abner Joins the Navy''— Public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Navy, Dept. of the Navy (1950) *''Fearless Fosdick and the Case of the Red Feather''— Public service giveaway issued by Red Feather Services, a forerunner of United Way of America, United Way (1951) *''The Youth You Supervise''— Public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (1956) *''Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery!''— Public service giveaway issued by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (1956) *''Operation: Survival!''— Public service giveaway issued by the Civil Defense, Dept. of Civil Defense (1957) *''Natural Disasters!''— Public service giveaway issued by the Department of Civil Defense (1957) *''Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story''— Public service giveaway issued by The Fellowship of Reconciliation (1958) *''Li'l Abner and the Creatures from Drop-Outer Space''— Public service giveaway issued by the Job Corps (1965) In addition, Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the U.S. Treasury, the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Sister Kenny Foundation, the Boy Scouts of America, Community Chest (organization), Community Chest, the National Reading Council, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, Christmas Seal & Charity Stamp Society, Christmas Seals, the National Amputation Foundation, and Disabled American Veterans, among others.


Public figure

In the Golden Age of the American comic strip, successful cartoonists received a great deal of attention; their professional and private lives were reported in the press, and their celebrity was often nearly sufficient to rival their creations. As ''Li'l Abner'' reached its peak years, and following the success of the Shmoos and other high moments in his work, Al Capp achieved a public profile that is still unparalleled in his profession, and arguably exceeded the fame of his strip. "Capp was the best known, most influential and most controversial cartoonist of his era," writes publisher (and leading Shmoo collector) Denis Kitchen. "His personal celebrity transcended comics, reaching the public and influencing the culture in a variety of media. For many years he simultaneously produced the daily strip, a weekly syndicated newspaper column, and a 500-station radio program..." He ran the Boston Summer Theatre with ''The Phantom (comics), The Phantom'' cartoonist Lee Falk, bringing in Hollywood actors such as Mae West, Melvyn Douglas, and Claude Rains to star in their live productions. He even briefly considered running for a Massachusetts Senate seat. Vice President Spiro Agnew urged Capp to run in the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party Massachusetts primary in 1970 against Ted Kennedy, but Capp ultimately declined. (He did, however, donate his services as a speaker at a $100-a-plate fundraiser for Republican Congressman Jack Kemp.) Besides his use of the comic strip to voice his opinions and display his humor, Capp was a popular guest speaker at universities, and on radio and television. He remains the only cartoonist to be embraced by television; no other comic artist to date has come close to Capp's televised exposure. Capp appeared as a regular on ''The Author Meets the Critics'' (1948–'54) and made regular, weekly appearances on ''Today (NBC program), Today'' in 1953. He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's ''Who Said That?'' (1948–'55), and co-hosted DuMont's ''What's the Story?'' (1953). Between 1952 and 1972, he hosted at least ''five'' television shows–three different talk shows called ''The Al Capp Show'' (1952 and 1968) and ''Al Capp'' (1971–'72), ''Al Capp's America'' (a live "chalk talk," with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons, 1954), and a CBS game show called ''Anyone Can Win'' (1953). He also hosted similar vehicles on the radio—and was a familiar celebrity guest on various other broadcast programs, including NBC Radio's long-running ''Monitor (NBC radio), Monitor'' with its famous ''Monitor'' Beacon audio signature, as a commentator dubbed "An expert of nothing with opinions on everything." His frequent appearances on NBC's ''The Tonight Show'' spanned three emcees (Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson), from the 1950s to the 1970s. One memorable story, as recounted to Johnny Carson, was about his meeting with then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Capp was ushered into the Oval Office, his Prosthesis, prosthetic leg suddenly collapsed into a pile of disengaged parts and hinges on the floor. The President immediately turned to an aide and said, "Call Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Walter Reed (Hospital), or maybe National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda," to which Capp replied, "Hell no, just call a good local mechanic!" (Capp also spoofed Carson in his strip, in a 1970 episode called "The Tommy Wholesome Show".) Capp portrayed himself in a cameo role in the Bob Hope film ''That Certain Feeling'', for which he also provided promotional art. He was interviewed live on ''Person to Person'' on November 27, 1959, by host Charles Collingwood (journalist), Charles Collingwood. He also appeared as himself on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', Sid Caesar's ''Your Show of Shows'', ''The Red Skelton Show'', ''The Merv Griffin Show'', ''The Mike Douglas Show'', and guested on Ralph Edwards' ''This Is Your Life (American franchise), This Is Your Life'' on February 12, 1961, with honoree Peter Palmer. Capp also freelanced very successfully as a magazine writer and newspaper columnist, in a wide variety of publications including ''Life magazine, Life'', ''Show'', ''Pageant'', ''The Atlantic'', ''Esquire (magazine), Esquire'', ''Coronet'', and ''The Saturday Evening Post''. Capp was impersonated by comedians Rich Little and David Frye. Although Capp's endorsement activities never rivaled Li'l Abner's or Fearless Fosdick's, he was a celebrity spokesman in print ads for Sheaffer Snorkel fountain pens (along with colleagues and close friends Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly), and—with an irony that became apparent later—a brand of cigarettes (Chesterfield cigarettes, Chesterfield). Capp resumed visiting war amputees during the Korean War and Vietnam War. He toured Vietnam with the USO, entertaining troops along with Art Buchwald and George Plimpton. He served as chairman of the Cartoonists' Committee in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's People-to-People program in 1954 (although Capp had supported Adlai Stevenson II, Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952 and 1956), which was organized to promote Savings bonds for the United States Department of the Treasury, U.S. Treasury. Capp had earlier provided the Shmoo for a special Children's Savings Bond in 1949, accompanying President Harry S. Truman at the bond's unveiling ceremony. During the Soviet Union's blockade of West Berlin in 1948, the commanders of the Berlin airlift had cabled Capp, requesting inflatable shmoos as part of "Operation: Little Vittles". Candy-filled shmoos were air-dropped to hungry West Berliners by America's 17th Military Airport Squadron during the humanitarian effort. "When the candy-chocked shmoos were dropped, a near-riot resulted," (reported in ''Newsweek''—October 11, 1948). In addition to his public service work for charitable organizations for the handicapped, Capp also served on the National Reading Council, which was organized to combat illiteracy. He published a column ("Wrong Turn Onto Sesame Street") challenging federally funded public television endowments in favor of educational comics—which, according to Capp, "didn't cost a dime in taxes and never had. I pointed out that a kid could enjoy ''Sesame Street'' ''without'' learning how to read, but he couldn't enjoy comic strips ''unless'' he could read; and that a smaller investment in getting kids to read by supplying them with educational matter in such ''reading'' form might make better sense." Capp's academic interests included being one of nineteen original "Trustees and Advisors" for "Endicott, Junior College for Young Woman", located in Pride's Crossing (Beverly), Massachusetts, which was founded in 1939. Al Capp is listed in the 1942 Mingotide Yearbook, representing the first graduating class from Endicott Junior College. The yearbook entry includes his credential as a "Cartoonist for United Feature Syndicate" and a resident of New York City. "Comics," wrote Capp in 1970, "can be a combination of the highest quality of art and text, and many of them are." Capp produced many giveaway educational comic books and public services pamphlets, spanning several decades, for the American Red Cross, Red Cross, the United States civil defense, Department of Civil Defense, the United States Department of the Navy, Department of the Navy, the U.S. Army, the Anti-Defamation League, the United States Department of Labor, Department of Labor, Community Chest (organization), Community Chest (a forerunner of United Way of America, United Way), and the Job Corps. Capp's studio provided special artwork for various civic groups and nonprofit organizations as well. Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Boy Scouts of America, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, the National Amputation Foundation, and Disabled American Veterans, among others. They were also used to help sell Christmas Seals. In the early 1960s, Capp regularly wrote a column entitled ''Al Capp's Column'' for the newspaper ''The Schenectady Gazette'' (currently ''The Daily Gazette''). He was the ''Playboy'' interview subject in December 1965, in a conversation conducted by Alvin Toffler. In August 1967, Capp was the narrator and host of an ABC network special called ''Do Blondes Have More Fun?'' In 1970, he was the subject of a provocative NBC documentary called ''This Is Al Capp''.


The 1960s and 1970s

Capp and his family lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard during the entire Vietnam War protest era. The turmoil that Americans were watching on their television sets was happening live—right in his own neighborhood. Campus Far left, radicals and "hippies" inevitably became one of Capp's favorite targets in the sixties. Alongside his long-established caricatures of right-wing, big business types such as General Bullmoose and J. Roaringham Fatback, Capp began spoofing counterculture icons such as
Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
(in the character of Joanie Phoanie, a wealthy folksinger who offers an impoverished orphanage ten thousand dollars' worth of "protest songs"). The sequence implicitly labeled Baez a limousine liberal, a charge she took to heart, as detailed years later in her 1987 autobiography, ''And A Voice To Sing With: A Memoir''. Another target was Senator Ted Kennedy, parodied as "Senator O. Noble McGesture", resident of "Hyideelsport". The town name is a play on Hyannisport, Massachusetts, where a number of the Kennedy clan have lived. Capp became a popular public speaker on college campuses, where he reportedly relished hecklers. He attacked militant antiwar demonstrators, both in his personal appearances and in his strip. He also satirized student political groups. The Youth International Party (YIP) and Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged in ''Li'l Abner'' as "Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything!" (SWINE). In an April 1969 letter to ''Time'', Capp insisted, "The students I blast are not the dissenters, but the destroyers—the less than 4% who lock up deans in washrooms, who burn manuscripts of unpublished books, who make combination pigpens and playpens of their universities. The remaining 96% detest them as heartily as I do." Capp's increasingly controversial remarks at his campus speeches and during television appearances cost him his semi-regular spot on the ''Tonight Show''. His contentious public persona during this period was captured on a late sixties comedy LP called ''Al Capp On Campus''. The album features his interaction with students at Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno) on such topics as "sensitivity training," "humanitarianism," "abstract art" (Capp hated it), and "student protest". The cover features a cartoon drawing by Capp of wildly dressed, angry hippies carrying protest signs with slogans like "End Capp Brutality", "Abner and Daisy Mae Smoke Pot", "Capp Is Over [30, 40, 50—all crossed out] the Hill!!", and "If You Like Crap, You'll Like Capp!" Highlights of the strip's final decades include "Boomchik" (1961), in which America's international prestige is saved by Mammy Yokum, "Daisy Mae Steps Out" (1966), a female-empowering tale of Daisy's brazenly audacious "homewrecker gland", "The Lips of Marcia Perkins" (1967), a satirical, thinly-veiled commentary on venereal disease and public health warnings, "Ignoble Savages" (1968), in which Mafia, the Mob takes over Harvard, and "Corporal Crock" (1973), in which Bullmoose reveals his reactionary cartoon role model, in a tale of obsession and the fanatical world of comic book collecting. The cartoonist visited John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their 1969 Bed-In for Peace in Montreal, and their testy exchange later appeared in the documentary film ''Imagine: John Lennon'' (1988). Introducing himself with the words "I'm a dreadful Neanderthal fascist. How do you do?", Capp sardonically congratulated Lennon and Ono on their ''Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, Two Virgins'' nude album cover: "I think that everybody owes it to the world to prove they have pubic hair. You've done it, and I tell you that I applaud you for it." Following this exchange, Capp insulted Ono ("Good God, you've gotta live with that?"), and was asked to "get out" by Lennon publicist Derek Taylor. Lennon allowed him to stay, however, but the conversation had soured considerably. On Capp's exit, Lennon sang an impromptu version of his song "The Ballad of John and Yoko" with a slightly revised, but nonetheless prophetic lyric: "Christ, you know it ain't easy / You know how hard it can be / The way things are goin' / They're gonna crucify ''Capp!'' " Despite his political conservatism in the last decade of his life, Capp is reported to have been liberal in some particular causes; he supported gay rights, and did not tolerate any attempts at homophobic jokes. He is also said to have supported Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for racial equality in American society, although he was very sceptical of the tactics of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. In 1968, a theme park called Dogpatch USA opened at Marble Falls, Arkansas, based on Capp's work and with his support. The park was a popular attraction during the 1970s, but was abandoned in 1993 due to financial difficulties. By 2005, the area once devoted to a live-action facsimile of Dogpatch (including a lifesize statue in the town square of Dogpatch "founder" General Jubilation T. Cornpone) had been heavily stripped by vandals and souvenir hunters, and was slowly being reclaimed by the surrounding Arkansas wilderness. On April 22, 1971, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported allegations that in February 1968 Capp had made indecent advances to four female students when he was invited to speak at the University of Alabama. Anderson and an associate confirmed that Capp was shown out of town by university police, but that the incident had been hushed up by the university to avoid negative publicity. The following month, Capp was charged in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in connection with another alleged incident following his April 1 lecture at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Capp was accused of propositioning a married woman in his hotel room. Although no sexual act was alleged to have resulted, the original charge included Sodomy laws in the United States, "sodomy". As part of a plea agreement, Capp pleaded guilty to the charge of "attempted adultery" (adultery was a felony in Wisconsin) and the other charges were dropped. Capp was fined $500 and court costs. In a December 1992 article for ''The New Yorker,'' Seymour Hersh reported that President Richard Nixon and Charles Colson had repeatedly discussed the Capp case in Oval Office recordings that had recently been made available by the National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives. Nixon and Capp were on friendly terms, Hersh wrote, and Nixon and Colson had worked to find a way for Capp to run against Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate. "Nixon was worried about the allegations, fearing that Capp's very close links to the White House would become embarrassingly public", Hersh wrote. "The White House tapes and documents show that he and Colson discussed the issue repeatedly, and that Colson eventually reassured the president by saying that he had, in essence, fixed the case. Specifically, the president was told that one of Colson's people had gone to Wisconsin and tried to talk to the prosecutors." Colson's efforts failed, however. The Eau Claire district attorney, a Republican, refused to dismiss the attempted adultery charge. In passing sentence in February 1972, the judge rejected the D.A.'s motion that Capp agree to undergo psychiatric treatment. The resulting publicity led to hundreds of papers dropping his comic strip,Dogpatch confidential – Salon.com
and Capp, already in failing health, withdrew from public speaking. Celebrity biographer James Spada has claimed that similar allegations were made by actress Grace Kelly. However, no firsthand allegation has ever surfaced. "From beginning to end, Capp was acid-tongued toward the targets of his wit, intolerant of hypocrisy, and always wickedly funny. After about 40 years, however, Capp's interest in ''Abner'' waned, and this showed in the strip itself," according to Don Markstein's ''Toonopedia''. On November 13, 1977, Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the recently declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to declining health. "If you have any sense of humor about your strip—and I had a sense of humor about mine—you knew that for three or four years ''Abner'' was wrong. Oh hell, it's like a fighter retiring. I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted, adding that he couldn't breathe anymore. "When he retired ''Li'l Abner'', newspapers ran expansive articles and television commentators talked about the passing of an era. ''People magazine'' ran a substantial feature, and even the comics-free ''The New York Times, New York Times'' devoted nearly a full page to the event", wrote publisher Denis Kitchen. Capp's final years were marked by advancing illness and by family tragedy. In October 1977, one of his two daughters died; a few weeks later, a beloved granddaughter was killed in a car accident. A lifelong Smoking, chain smoker, Capp died in 1979 from Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire. Capp is buried in Mount Prospect Cemetery in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Engraved on his headstone is a stanza from Thomas Gray: ''The plowman homeward plods his weary way / And leaves the world to darkness and to me'' (from ''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'', 1751).


Legacy

"Neither the strip's shifting political leanings nor the slide of its final few years had any bearing on its status as a classic; and in 1995, it was recognized as such by the United States Postal Service, U.S. Postal Service", according to ''Toonopedia''. ''Li'l Abner'' was one of 20 American comic strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of USPS commemorative stamps. Al Capp, an inductee into the National Cartoon Museum (formerly the International Museum of Cartoon Art), is one of only 31 artists selected to their Hall of Fame. Capp was also inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2004. Sadie Hawkins Day and :wikt:double whammy, double whammy are two terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. Other, less ubiquitous Cappisms include skunk works and Lower Slobbovia. The term shmoo also has entered the lexicon, defining highly technical concepts in no fewer than ''four'' separate fields of science, including the variations Mating of yeast, shmooing (a microbiological term for the "budding" process in yeast reproduction), and shmoo plot (a technical term in the field of electrical engineering). In socioeconomics, a "shmoo" refers to any generic kind of good that reproduces itself, (as opposed to "widget (economics), widgets" which require resources and active production). In the field of particle physics, "shmoo" refers to a high energy survey instrument, as used at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to capture subatomic cosmic ray particles emitted from the Cygnus X-3 constellation. Capp also had a knack for popularizing certain uncommon terms, such as List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom, druthers, schmooze, and -nik, nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. In his book ''The American Language'', H.L. Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning—not with beatnik or Sputnik—but earlier, in the pages of ''Li'l Abner''. Al Capp's life and career are the subjects of a new life-sized mural commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth. Created by resident artist Jon P. Mooers, the mural was unveiled in downtown Amesbury, Massachusetts, Amesbury on May 15, 2010. According to the ''Boston Globe'' (as reported on May 18, 2010), the town has renamed its amphitheater in the artist's honor, and is looking to develop an Al Capp Museum. Capp is also the subject of an upcoming WNET-TV ''American Masters'' documentary, ''The Life and Times of Al Capp'', produced by his granddaughter, independent filmmaker Caitlin Manning. Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies. Underground comix, Underground cartoonist and ''Li'l Abner'' expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as consultant on nearly all of them. Kitchen is currently compiling a biographical monograph on Al Capp. At the San Diego Comic Con in July 2009, IDW Publishing, IDW announced the upcoming publication of ''Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays'' as part of their ongoing The Library of American Comics series. The comprehensive series, a reprinting of the entire 43-year history of ''Li'l Abner'', spanning a projected 20 volumes, began on April 7, 2010.


Notes


Further reading

*Capp, Al, ''Li'l Abner in New York'' (1936) Whitman Publishing *Capp, Al, ''Li'l Abner Among the Millionaires'' (1939) Whitman Publishing *Capp, Al, ''Li'l Abner and Sadie Hawkins Day'' (1940) Saalfield Publishing *Capp, Al, ''Li'l Abner and the Ratfields'' (1940) Saalfield Publishing *Sheridan, Martin, ''Comics and Their Creators'' (1942) R.T. Hale & Co, (1977) Hyperion Press *Waugh, Coulton, ''The Comics'' (1947) Macmillan Publishers *Capp, Al, ''Newsweek Magazine'' (November 24, 1947) "Li'l Abner's Mad Capp" *Capp, Al, ''Saturday Review of Literature'' (March 20, 1948) "The Case for the Comics" *Capp, Al, ''The Life and Times of the Shmoo'' (1948) Simon & Schuster *Capp, Al, ''The Nation'' (March 21, 1949) "There Is a Real Shmoo" *Capp, Al, ''Cosmopolitan Magazine'' (June 1949) "I Don't Like Shmoos" *Capp, Al, ''Atlantic Monthly'' (April 1950) "I Remember Monster" *Capp, Al, ''Time Magazine'' (November 6, 1950) "Die Monstersinger" *Capp, Al, ''Life Magazine'' (March 31, 1952) "It's Hideously True!!..." *Capp, Al, ''Real Magazine'' (December 1952) "The REAL Powers in America" *Capp, Al, ''The World of Li'l Abner'' (1953) Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Farrar, Straus & Young *Leifer, Fred, ''The Li'l Abner Official Square Dance Handbook'' (1953) A.S. Barnes *Mikes, George, ''Eight Humorists'' (1954) Allen Wingate, (1977) Arden Library *Lehrer, Tom, ''The Tom Lehrer Song Book'', introduction by Al Capp (1954) Crown Publishers *Capp, Al, ''Al Capp's Fearless Fosdick: His Life and Deaths'' (1956) Simon & Schuster *Capp, Al, ''Al Capp's Bald Iggle: The Life it Ruins May Be Your Own'' (1956) Simon & Schuster *Capp, Al, et al. ''Famous Artists Cartoon Course'' – 3 volumes (1956) Famous Artists School *Capp, Al, ''Life Magazine'' (January 14, 1957) "The Dogpatch Saga: Al Capp's Own Story" *Brodbeck, Arthur J, et al. "How to Read Li'l Abner Intelligently" from ''Mass Culture: Popular Arts in America,'' pp. 218–224 (1957) Free Press (publisher), Free Press *Capp, Al, ''The Return of the Shmoo'' (1959) Simon & Schuster *Hart, Johnny, ''Back to B.C.'', introduction by Al Capp (1961) Fawcett Publications *Lazarus, Mell, ''Miss Peach'', introduction by Al Capp (1962) Pyramid Books *Gross, Milt, ''He Done Her Wrong'', introduction by Al Capp (1963 Ed.) Dell Books *White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel, eds. ''The Funnies: An American Idiom'' (1963) Free Press *White, David Manning, ed. ''From Dogpatch to Slobbovia: The (Gasp!) World of Li'l Abner'' (1964) Beacon Press *Capp, Al, ''Life International Magazine'' (June 14, 1965) "My Life as an Immortal Myth" *Toffler, Alvin, ''Playboy Magazine'' (December 1965) interview with Al Capp, pp. 89–100 *Moger, Art, et al. ''Chutzpah Is'', introduction by Al Capp (1966) Colony Publishers *Berger, Arthur Asa, ''Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire'' (1969) Twayne Publishers, (1994) Univ. Press of Mississippi *Sugar, Andy, ''Saga Magazine'' (December 1969) "On the Campus Firing Line with Al Capp" *Gray, Harold, ''Arf! The Life and Hard Times of Little Orphan Annie'', introduction by Al Capp (1970) Arlington House *Moger, Art, ''Some of My Best Friends are People'', introduction by Al Capp (1970) Directors Press *Capp, Al, ''The Hardhat's Bedtime Story Book'' (1971) Harper & Row *Robinson, Jerry, ''The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art'' (1974) G.P. Putnam's Sons *Maurice Horn, Horn, Maurice, ''The World Encyclopedia of Comics'' (1976) Chelsea House, (1982) Avon (publishers), Avon *Blackbeard, Bill, ed. ''The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics'' (1977) Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Inst. Press/Harry Abrams *Marschall, Rick, ''Cartoonist PROfiles'' No. 37 (March 1978) interview with Al Capp *Capp, Al, ''The Best of Li'l Abner'' (1978) Holt, Rinehart & Winston *Lardner, Ring, ''You Know Me Al: The Comic Strip Adventures of Jack Keefe'', introduction by Al Capp (1979) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich *Van Buren, Raeburn, ''Abbie an' Slats'' – 2 volumes (1983) Ken Pierce Books *Capp, Al, ''Li'l Abner: Reuben Award Winner Series Book 1'' (1985) Blackthorne *Marschall, Rick, ''Nemo, the Classic Comics Library'' No. 18, pp. 3–32 (April 1986) *Capp, Al, ''Li'l Abner Dailies'' – 27 volumes (1988–1999) Kitchen Sink Press *Marschall, Rick, ''America's Great Comic Strip Artists'' (1989) Abbeville Press *Capp, Al, ''Fearless Fosdick'' (1990) Kitchen Sink *Capp, Al, ''My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg'' (1991) John Daniel & Co. *Capp, Al, ''Fearless Fosdick: The Hole Story'' (1992) Kitchen Sink *Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from ''Journal of Popular Culture;'' Vol. 25, Issue 4 (Spring 1992) *Caplin, Elliot, ''Al Capp Remembered'' (1994) Bowling Green State University *Theroux, Alexander, ''The Enigma of Al Capp'' (1999) Fantagraphics Books *Lubbers, Bob, ''Glamour International #26: The Good Girl Art of Bob Lubbers'' (May 2001) *Capp, Al, ''The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo'' (2002) Overlook Press *Capp, Al, ''Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years'' – 4 volumes (2003–2004) Dark Horse Comics *Al Capp Studios, ''Al Capp's Complete Shmoo: The Comic Books'' (2008) Dark Horse *Capp, Al, ''Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays Vol. 1 – Vol. x(ongoing)'' (2010–present) The Library of American Comics *Capp, Al, ''Al Capp's Complete Shmoo Vol. 2: The Newspaper Strips'' (2011) Dark Horse *Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from ''Comics and the U.S. South'', pp. 3–27 (2012) Univ. Press of Mississippi *Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, ''Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary'' (2013) Bloomsbury Publishing


External links


''Li'l Abner'' official site
* *
Denis Kitchen biography: Al Capp

Animation Resources: Al Capp part I

Animation Resources: Al Capp part II

Animation Resources: Al Capp part III

Animation Resources: Al Capp part IV

Animation Resources: Al Capp part V

Al Capp Deserves a Tribute (''Newburyport News'', 28 Sept. 2009)





Dogpatch and ''Li'l Abner'' on Broadway in ''Life'', January 14, 1957, pp. 71–83Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Art Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capp, Al Al Capp, 1909 births 1979 deaths American amputees American comic strip cartoonists American parodists American satirists 20th-century American writers Deaths from emphysema American people of Latvian-Jewish descent American people of Russian-Jewish descent Inkpot Award winners Jewish American artists Jewish American writers Artists from Bridgeport, Connecticut Artists from New Haven, Connecticut School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts alumni Reuben Award winners Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame inductees Comedians from Connecticut Obscenity controversies in comics