William Morgan DeBeck (April 15, 1890 – November 11, 1942), better known as Billy DeBeck, 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 ...
. He is most famous as the creator of the comic strip ''Barney Google'', later retitled ''
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', originally ''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance'', is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appea ...
''. The strip was especially popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and featured a number of well-known characters, including the title character, Bunky, Snuffy Smith, and Spark Plug the race horse. Spark Plug was a merchandising phenomenon, and has been called the
Snoopy
Snoopy is an anthropomorphic beagle in the comic strip ''Peanuts'' by Charles M. Schulz. He can also be found in all of the ''Peanuts'' films and television specials. Since his debut on October 4, 1950, Snoopy has become one of the most recog ...
of the 1920s.
DeBeck drew with a scratchy line in a "big-foot" style, in which characters had giant feet and bulbous noses. His strips often reflected his love of sports. In 1946, 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 ...
inaugurated the Billy DeBeck Memorial Awards (or the Barney Awards), which became the
Reuben Award
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 ...
in 1954.
Life and career
Early life
William Morgan DeBeck was born on April 15, 1890 on the
South Side of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, where his father, Louis DeBeck, was a newspaperman employed by the Swift Company. The elder DeBeck was of
French descent, and the name ''DeBeck'' was originally spelled ''DeBecque''. His mother, Jessie Lee Morgan, was of
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
and
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
descent, and had lived on a farm and was a schoolteacher.
Early career
After graduating from
Hyde Park High School in 1908, DeBeck attended the
Chicago Academy of Fine Arts
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...
. He sold cartoon drawings during this time to finance himself, at first in 1908 for the ''
Chicago Daily News
The ''Chicago Daily News'' was an afternoon daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, published between 1875 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.
History
The ''Daily News'' was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty ...
''. His caricatures of models drew the attention of his fellow students, and though he had intended to become a painter in the
Flemish tradition, he quit the Academy after two years after he got a cartooning job with the weekly paper ''Show World'' in 1910. His cartoons showed the influence of
John T. McCutcheon and
Clare Briggs
Clare A. Briggs (August 5, 1875 – January 3, 1930) was an early American comic strip artist who rose to fame in 1904 with his strip '' A. Piker Clerk''. Briggs was best known for his later comic strips ''When a Feller Needs a Friend'', ''Ain't ...
, whom he had admired in his youth; he also had the skill to draw in the more fastidiously
cross-hatched style of a
Charles Dana Gibson
Charles Dana Gibson (September 14, 1867 – December 23, 1944) was an American illustrator. He was best known for his creation of the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent Euro-American woman at the turn of the ...
, copies of whose drawings he sold as originals.
![Billy DeBeck with Jack Dempsey 1919](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Billy_DeBeck_with_Jack_Dempsey_1919.jpg)
DeBeck soon left ''Show World'' for better opportunities at ''Youngstown Telegram'' in
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
as an
editorial cartoonist
An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary. Their cartoons are used to convey and question an aspect of daily news or curren ...
, then again at the ''Pittsburgh Gazette-Time'' in late August 1912. He later contributed cartoons to the
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
humor magazines ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...
'' and ''
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
''. While living in Pittsburgh, he traveled to New York to show comic strip samples to
Arthur Brisbane
Arthur Brisbane (December 12, 1864 – December 25, 1936) was one of the best known American newspaper editors of the 20th century as well as a real estate investor. He was also a speech writer, orator, and public relations professional who coach ...
, an editor working for
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...
's newspaper empire; Brisbane rejected the work. DeBeck later stated the examples "were terrible" as he "had been doing political cartoons for the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', and the comics were new" to him. He returned to Youngstown and married Marion Louise Shields there in 1914.
In May 1915, DeBeck and a partner named Carter launched a newspaper syndicate and
correspondence cartooning course; DeBeck's advice to his correspondence students was: "First learn how to draw—then go to a good art school and get a firm foundation in the arts". The school was not a success, and DeBeck returned to Chicago and joined the ''
Chicago Herald'' in December 1915. He worked on a strip called ''Finn an' Haddie'' for the
Adams Newspaper Service on the side. On December 9, immediately after starting at the ''Herald'', he began a strip called ''Married Life'' that so caught the attention of Hearst; legend says that, to acquire DeBeck, Hearst bought the ''Herald'' and merged it with the ''
Chicago Examiner'', as DeBeck had refused to join the Hearst empire after the ''Examiner'' raised his monthly salary from $35 to $200. DeBeck's creations were first adapted to film when an animated version of ''Married Life'' appeared in a ''
Seattle Sunday Times'' newsreel in 1917. DeBeck created a number of other features, especially for the sports section, while his antics made him something of a local celebrity.
Barney Google
![Barney Google 1922-07-17](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Barney_Google_1922-07-17.jpg)
On June 17, 1919, a new comic strip by DeBeck in the vein of ''Married Life'' debuted on the sports page; ''Take Barney Google, For Instance''.
It differed in that it was about a henpecked, sports-obsessed husband and his travails defying his wife. Google was interested in non-fictional sports stories, such as the heavyweight championship between
Jess Willard
Jess Myron Willard (December 29, 1881 – December 15, 1968) was an American world heavyweight boxing champion billed as the Pottawatomie Giant who knocked out Jack Johnson in April 1915 for the heavyweight title. Willard was known for size rat ...
and
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (June 24, 1895 – May 31, 1983), nicknamed Kid Blackie and The Manassa Mauler, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1914 to 1927, and reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926. ...
. It was not long before DeBeck refigured the tall, thin Google into the short, squat character he was to be remembered as, and the title too was soon shortened to ''
Barney Google
''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', originally ''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance'', is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appea ...
''. It was not popular until DeBeck had Google acquire a race horse named Spark Plug (nicknamed "Sparky") in a strip dated July 17, 1922. The dilapidated, blanket-covered horse became such a marketing and merchandising phenomenon that the character has been called the
Snoopy
Snoopy is an anthropomorphic beagle in the comic strip ''Peanuts'' by Charles M. Schulz. He can also be found in all of the ''Peanuts'' films and television specials. Since his debut on October 4, 1950, Snoopy has become one of the most recog ...
of the 1920s—toys, balloons, and games were among the popular items adorned with Sparky's image. When DeBeck introduced the horse, he also introduced a little-used technique into the strip: continuity. ''Barney Google'' went from being a
gag-a-day
A gag-a-day comic strip is the style of writing comic cartoons such that every installment of a strip delivers a complete joke or some other kind of artistic statement. It is opposed to story or continuity strips, which rely on the development of ...
strip to one in which both humor and suspense kept readers coming back each day, as Google desperately tried to get his horse to win a race. The sequence in which Spark Plug was introduced into the strip was republished in the October 1922 issue of ''Comic Monthly''—likely the earliest newsstand comics periodical.
DeBeck kept readers on the edges of their seats with uncertain suspense: sometimes Spark Plug actually won a race. While DeBeck resisted at first, Hearst demanded a pretty girl be introduced into the strip. DeBeck brought in Sweet Mama, which initially created a stir, and certain papers dropped the strip, but after the phrase swept the nation, the strip's popularity only increased. Over the years, DeBeck was credited with introducing more
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
s and
catchphrase
A catchphrase (alternatively spelled catch phrase) is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through word of mouth and a variety of mass ...
s, such as "
heebie-jeebies", "
horsefeathers", "balls of fire" and "time's a-wastin'". In 1923,
Billy Rose
Billy Rose (born William Samuel Rosenberg; September 6, 1899 – February 10, 1966) was an American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. For years both before and after World War II, Billy Rose was a major force in entertainment, with sh ...
penned a
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street ...
pop hit called "
Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)
''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', originally ''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance'', is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appearin ...
". A series of ''Barney Google'' live-action films starring Barney Hellum appeared in 1928 and 1929.
![Paul Fung (circa 1917)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Paul_Fung_%28circa_1917%29.jpg)
DeBeck had included a
topper called ''Bughouse Fables'' (signed "Barney Google)" with his main strip since 1921, though he soon handed it off to assistant
Paul Fung
Paul Fung (1897–1944) was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip ''Dumb Dora''.
Fung's father was a Baptist minister, the Reverend Fung Chak, a graduate of Stanford University. Paul was born in Seattle,[< ...]
. On May 16, 1926, he replaced ''Bughouse Fables'' with ''Parlor, Bedroom & Sink Starring Bunky'', a strip that was popular enough on its own to survive until 1948.
According to later ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'' scripter Brian Walker, DeBeck had become "one of the highest-paid cartoonists in America" at this point. In the early 1920s, DeBeck moved to Riverside Drive in New York City, and in 1927 remarried Mary Louise Dunne. The couple spent the next two years in Europe, after which they settled down again in New York. DeBeck's active lifestyle sometimes caused him to miss deadlines. He enjoyed traveling, deep sea fishing,
golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
and playing
bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...
. As a golfer since 1916, DeBeck spent time on courses with such notables as
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.Obituary ''Variety'', March 10, 1971, page 55.
One of the most influential film co ...
,
,
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), known best as Rube Goldberg, was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.
Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadge ...
,
Fontaine Fox
Fontaine Talbot Fox, Jr. (June 4, 1884 – August 9, 1964) was an American cartoonist and illustrator best known for writing and illustrating his ''Toonerville Folks'' comic panel, which ran from 1913 to 1955 in 250 to 300 newspapers across North ...
,
Clarence Budington Kelland
Clarence Budington "Bud" Kelland (July 11, 1881 – February 18, 1964) was an American writer. Prolific and versatile, he was a prominent literary figure in his heyday, and he described himself as "the best second-rate writer in America".
Kelland ...
and bridge authority
P. Hal Sims. He was also acquainted with such celebrities as
Babe Ruth
George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Su ...
,
Lowell Thomas
Lowell Jackson Thomas (April 6, 1892 – August 29, 1981) was an American writer, actor, broadcaster, and traveler, best remembered for publicising T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). He was also involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen ...
and
Damon Runyon
Alfred Damon Runyon (October 4, 1880 – December 10, 1946) was an American newspaperman and short-story writer.
He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To ...
. His best friend was the cartoonist
Frank Willard
Frank Henry Willard (September 21, 1893 in Anna, Illinois – January 11, 1958 in Los Angeles, California), was a cartoonist best known for his syndicated newspaper comic strip ''Moon Mullins'' which ran from 1923 to 1991, working alongside assist ...
, who also attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.
Snuffy Smith
''Barney Google''s popularity persisted into the Depression era; in 1933, ''
Fortune
Fortune may refer to:
General
* Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck
* Luck
* Wealth
* Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling
* Fortune, in a fortune cookie
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
'' magazine reported DeBeck's weekly earnings at $1200. In the spring of 1933, DeBeck hired 17-year-old
Fred Lasswell
Fred D. Lasswell (July 25, 1916 – March 4, 2001) was an American cartoonist best known for his decades of work on the comic strip ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith''.
Life and career
Though born in Kennett, Missouri, Lasswell spent most of his c ...
as an assistant after seeing a big poster of Lasswell's funny characters rushing to the Tampa Chamber of Commerce Jamboree. De Beck was a refined city gentleman, an avid golfer, world traveler, and bon vivant. He wanted to create a rural down-home character with whom depression-era audiences could relate. He needed some help. Fred Lasswell was a confirmed hayseed from the sticks with much kinfolk wisdom, make-do humor, a talent for drawing clean lines and blending funny images with text. Lasswell recalls his "big tour with Billy" and the copious notes DeBeck took of Hillbilly phrases, while Lasswell drew sketches of backwoods characters, critters and scenes he already knew. The result became comic strip history in 1934, when Snuffy Smith met Barney Google and sales of the comic strip, soon to become ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', soared. Over the next seven years, Lasswell became the son DeBeck never had. DeBeck sent him to apprentice with some of the great illustrators, to study at the Art Students League in New York, and to walk the streets of the city with a sketchbook to capture the movement, personalities and situations he saw. After eight years of mentoring Lasswell, DeBeck died and Lasswell took over his mentor's strip. Under Lasswell ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'' has become the longest continuously produced comic strip in American's newspaper history.
DeBeck gained a growing interest into the culture of
Appalachia
Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ca ...
in the 1930s and amassed a library on the subject that he later donated to
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virgini ...
. Among the books he admired were those featuring Sut Lovingood by
George Washington Harris
George Washington Harris (March 20, 1814 – December 11, 1869) was an American humorist best known for his character "Sut Lovingood," an Appalachian backwoods reveler fond of telling tall tales. Harris was among the seminal writers of Southe ...
; inside ''Sut Lovingood Yarns'' (1867) DeBeck produced his first sketch of Snuffy Smith, a character that grew from talking with and sketching the Appalachian
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 west ...
locals. Just as the strip's circulation was starting to flag, DeBeck introduced Snuffy in a storyline in which Barney inherited an estate in the mountains of
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...
. After dodging the ornery hillbilly's bullets, the two became fast friends. The strip was eventually renamed ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', and Snuffy would take over from Barney Google as the central character. Lasswell, with his own country roots, provided much of the inspiration for Snuffy and his Appalachian environment. Especially, he provided a source for the locals' dialect. Hillbilly culture enjoyed much popularity in the 1930s; Snuffy Smith appeared the same year as
Al Capp
Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip ''Li'l Abner'', which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (wi ...
's ''
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 ...
''. By 1940, DeBeck's strip appeared in 210 newspapers with a combined circulation of ten million.
The
Charles Mintz
Charles Bear Mintz (November 5, 1889 – December 30, 1939)''Social Security Death Index, 1935–2014''. Social Security Administration. was an American film producer and distributor who assumed control over Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictu ...
studios produced four full-color animated ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'' shorts in 1935. The series had two more live-action adaptations in 1942:
Bud Duncan
Bud Duncan (October 31, 1883 – November 25, 1960) was an American actor of the silent era, most known for his early work with silent film comedian Lloyd Hamilton. He appeared in more than 160 films between 1912 and 1942.
Early life
Duncan ...
starred as Snuffy Smith in ''
Private Snuffy Smith
''Private Snuffy Smith'' (reissued as ''Snuffy Smith, Yardbird'') is a 1942 American army comedy film directed by Edward F. Cline and starring Bud Duncan as comic-strip character Snuffy Smith and Edgar Kennedy as his commanding officer. A se ...
'' and co-starred with
Cliff Nazarro
Clifford Nazarro (January 31, 1904 – February 18, 1961) was an American double-talk
Double-talk is a form of speech in which inappropriate, invented, or nonsense words are interpolated into normal speech to give the appearance of knowledg ...
as Barney Google in ''
Hillbilly Blitzkrieg
''Hillbilly Blitzkrieg'' is a 1942 American comedy film directed by Roy Mack that was a sequel to ''Private Snuffy Smith''. The film is also known as ''Enemy Round-Up'' (American TV title).
Plot
Nazi spies mistake Snuffy Smith's moonshine for ...
''.
Later life and death
DeBeck had a
studio apartment
A studio apartment, also known as a studio flat ( UK), a self-contained apartment (Nigeria), efficiency apartment, bed-sitter (Kenya) or bachelor apartment, is a small apartment (rarely a condo) in which the normal functions of a number of ro ...
on
Park Avenue
Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenu ...
in New York, and homes in
Great Neck
Great Neck is a region on Long Island, New York, that covers a peninsula on the North Shore and includes nine villages, among them Great Neck, Great Neck Estates, Great Neck Plaza, Kings Point, and Russell Gardens, and a number of unincor ...
in New York and
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
in Florida. In the early 1940s, he developed cancer and found it increasingly difficult to work. Sensing his end was near, he made a special trip to see Marian Shields. His last signed
daily strip
A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays.
Bud Fisher's ''Mutt and Jeff'' is commonly regarded as the first daily c ...
appeared July 4, 1942, and his last
Sunday
Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. In most Western countries, Sunday is a day of rest and a part of the weekend. It is often considered the first day of the week.
For most observant adherents of Christianity, Sunday ...
the following August 2. With Lasswell contributing to the
war effort
In politics and military planning, a war effort is a coordinated mobilization of society's resources—both industrial and human—towards the support of a military force. Depending on the militarization of the culture, the relative size ...
, the strip continued under an assistant, Joe Musial. On November 11, 1942, DeBeck died at the age of 52 in New York City, with his wife at his bedside. They had no children. ''Barney Google'' appeared in 206 newspapers at the time, and Musial continued the strip until Lasswell took it on full-time in 1945. Over time, Barney faded from the strip, and the title contracted to ''Snuffy Smith''.
In 1943, Mary DeBeck donated to the
Ringling School of Art
Ringling College of Art and Design (RCAD) is a private art and design school in Sarasota, Florida. It was founded by Ludd M. Spivey as an art school in 1931 as a remote branch of Southern College but separated by 1933.
History
The origins of ...
all of her husband's art supplies, including
drawing table
Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...
s, reams of drawing paper, hundreds of colored pencils, lamps, drawing boards, inks, drawing pens, artist smocks, etching plates, and an etching press. She remarried, and died February 14, 1953, aboard
National Airlines Flight 470
National Airlines Flight 470 was a regularly scheduled flight between Tampa and New Orleans that crashed on February 14, 1953 after encountering severe turbulence. The crash marked the deadliest accident in the history of National Airlines, ki ...
, a
DC-6
The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and cargo aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with th ...
that fell into the
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
during a thunderstorm on a flight from
Tampa
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County ...
to
.
Style
![Billy DeBeck - Married Life 1918-05-06](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Billy_DeBeck_-_Married_Life_1918-05-06.jpg)
DeBeck's drawing style falls in the "big-foot" tradition of American comic strips such as ''
The Katzenjammer Kids
''The Katzenjammer Kids'' is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949).[Hägar the Horrible
''Hägar the Horrible'' is the title and main character of an American comic strip created by cartoonist Dik Browne and syndicated by King Features Syndicate. It first appeared in February 1973 and was an immediate success. Since Browne's reti ...]
'', and
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...
. It had a scratchy line and characters with bulbous noses and giant feet. Though he often procrastinated, DeBeck could work quickly and make it just in time for his deadlines.
DeBeck put ''Barney Google'' through great changes throughout his twenty-three-year run on the strip, changing situations and characters frequently. The storylines reflected the outlook of the 1920s boom years, the Great Depression, and World War II.
Legacy
DeBeck's main strip continued in the hands of Fred Lasswell long after its creator's death. The number of newspaper that carried it had been flagging in the years leading to DeBeck's passing, partly because the hillbilly dialect in the dialogue was difficult to read for many. The syndicate informed Lasswell that if many more newspapers dropped the strip, it would be canceled. Lasswell refocused on Snuffy Smith, dropped much of the dialect, and moved away from continuity to a gag-a-day format. The strip's popularity once again increased, and by 1989 it was running in 900 newspapers in 21 countries. It has continued in different hands since Lasswell's death in 2001.
Debeck's hillbilly depictions, though stereotyped and distorted, had a higher degree of accuracy that those of Al Capp or other contemporary cartoonists, and painted hillbillies in a better light. DeBeck included authentic expressions such as "plime-blank" ("exactly") and "a lavish of" ("a lot of"), and included explanations of dialect unfamiliar to his readers. Some such as country singer
Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the "King of Country Music", Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown ...
objected that the strip perpetuated stereotypes of hillbilly culture.
DeBeck is credited with introducing or popularizing a number of
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
s and
catchphrase
A catchphrase (alternatively spelled catch phrase) is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through word of mouth and a variety of mass ...
s via ''Barney Google'', including "heebie-jeebies", "
horsefeathers", "hotsy totsy", "balls of fire", "time's a-wastin'", "touched in the head", and "bodacious".
Charles M. Schulz, creator of the ''
Peanuts
''Peanuts'' is a print syndication, syndicated daily strip, daily and Sunday strip, 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. ' ...
'' comic strip, was nicknamed "Sparky" after DeBeck's racehorse character, and DeBeck's drawing style has been an influence on contemporary cartooning and popular culture, and on such later cartoonists as
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...
and
Bobby London
Robert "Bobby" London (born June 29, 1950) is an American underground comix and mainstream comics artist. His style evokes the work of early American cartoonists like George Herriman and Elzie Crisler Segar.
Biography
As a child, London was "pen ...
. The ''Barney Google''
Sunday page
The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers, almost always in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies.
The first US newspap ...
for September 18, 1938 was placed in the
time capsule
A time capsule is a historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a deliberate method of communication with future people, and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians. The preservation of holy relics dates ba ...
at the
1939 World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purcha ...
.
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 annual award was originally named the Billy DeBeck Memorial Award. Created by Mary DeBeck Bergman in 1946, these were known as the Barney Awards. She also made the annual presentation of engraved silver cigarette cases, with DeBeck's characters etched on the cover, to the winners (
Milton Caniff
Milton Arthur Paul Caniff (; February 28, 1907 – April 3, 1988) was an People of the United States, American cartoonist famous for the ''Terry and the Pirates (comic strip), Terry and the Pirates'' and ''Steve Canyon'' comic strips.
Biography
...
,
Al Capp
Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip ''Li'l Abner'', which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (wi ...
,
Chic Young
Murat Bernard "Chic" Young (January 9, 1901March 14, 1973) was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip ''Blondie (comic strip), Blondie''. His 1919 ''William McKinley High School Yearbook'' cites his nickname as Chicken, source of hi ...
,
Alex Raymond
Alexander Gillespie Raymond Jr. (October 2, 1909 – September 6, 1956) was an American cartoonist who was best known for creating the '' Flash Gordon'' comic strip for King Features Syndicate in 1934. The strip was subsequently adapted into m ...
,
Roy Crane
Royston Campbell Crane (November 22, 1901 – July 7, 1977), who signed his work Roy Crane, was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer. He pioneered the adventure comic strip, establi ...
,
Walt Kelly
Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. (August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973), commonly known as Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip ''Pogo (comic strip), Pogo''. He began his animation career in 1936 at The Walt ...
,
Hank Ketcham
Henry King Ketcham (March 14, 1920 – June 1, 2001) was an American cartoonist who created the '' Dennis the Menace'' comic strip, writing and drawing it from 1951 to 1994, when he retired from drawing the daily cartoon and took up painti ...
and
Mort Walker
Addison Morton Walker (September 3, 1923 – January 27, 2018) was an American comic strip writer, best known for creating the newspaper comic strips ''Beetle Bailey'' in 1950 and ''Hi and Lois'' in 1954. He signed Addison to some of his strips. ...
). In 1954, after her death, the DeBeck Award was renamed the
Reuben Award
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 ...
after
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), known best as Rube Goldberg, was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.
Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadge ...
, and all of the earlier winners were re-awarded Reuben statuettes.
List of comic strips
![Bughouse Fables 1922](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Bughouse_Fables_1922.jpg)
*''Finn an' Haddie'' (1916)
*''Married Life'' (1916)
*''Olie Moses and Mara, Inc''
*''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance'' (1919), later ''Barney Google'', then ''
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', originally ''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance'', is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appea ...
''
*''Bughouse Fables'', soon taken over by DeBeck's assistant,
Paul Fung
Paul Fung (1897–1944) was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip ''Dumb Dora''.
Fung's father was a Baptist minister, the Reverend Fung Chak, a graduate of Stanford University. Paul was born in Seattle,[< ...]
*''Parlor, Bedroom & Sink'' (1926), later ''Bunky''
References
Works cited
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External links
"Barney Google and the Bigfoot Style" by Richard ThompsonBarnacle Press: DeBeck, BillyHeebie jeebies
{{DEFAULTSORT:DeBeck, Billy
1890 births
1942 deaths
American comic strip cartoonists
American people of Irish descent
American people of Welsh descent
American people of French descent
Artists from Chicago
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)