Li'l Abner

Li'l Abner
Al Capp's Li'l Abner (October 12, 1947)"It's Jack Jawbreaker!" Li'l Abner visits the corrupt Squeezeblood comic strip syndicate in a classic Sunday continuity from October 12, 1947.
Author(s)Al Capp
Current status/scheduleConcluded
Launch dateAugust 13, 1934
End dateNovember 13, 1977
Syndicate(s)United Feature Syndicate (1934–1964)
Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (1964–1977)
Publisher(s)Simon & Schuster, HRW, Kitchen Sink Press, Dark Horse, The Library of American Comics
Genre(s)Humor, satire, politics

Li'l Abner was a satirical American comic strip that appeared in multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies living in the impoverished fictional mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. Written and illustrated by Al Capp (1909–1979), the strip ran for 43 years, from August 13, 1934, through November 13, 1977. The Sunday page debuted on February 24, 1935, six months after the daily. It was originally distributed by United Feature Syndicate and later by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.

Before Capp introduced Li'l Abner, his comic strips typically dealt with northern urban American experiences. However, Li'l Abner was his first strip based in the Southern United States. The comic strip had 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers across 28 countries.

Characters

Main characters

Supporting characters and villains

Fearless Fosdick

Fearless Fosdick was a comic strip-within-the-strip parody of Chester Gould's plainclothes detective, Dick Tracy. It first appeared in 1942 and ran intermittently in Li'l Abner over the next 35 years. Gould was also personally parodied in the series as cartoonist Lester Gooch — the small and occasionally deranged creator of Fearless Fosdick. The style of the Fosdick sequences closely mimicked Tracy, including the urban setting, outrageous villains, high mortality rate, hatched shadows, and lettering style — Gould's signature was also parodied. Fosdick battles several archenemies with absurd names like Rattop, Anyface, Bombface, Boldfinger, the Atom Bum, the Chippendale Chair, and Sidney the Crooked Parrot, as well as his own criminal mastermind father, "Fearful" Fosdick (aka "The Original"). Fosdick is perpetually pierced by so many bullets that he resembles Swiss cheese. Fosdick seems impervious and considers the holes "mere scratches", however, and always reports back to his corrupt superior "The Chief" for duty the next day.

Besides being fearless, Fosdick is "pure, underpaid and purposeful," according to his creator. He has notoriously bad aim, often causing collateral damage to pedestrians. Fosdick sees his duty as destroying crime rather than maintaining safety. Fosdick lives in squalor at a dilapidated boarding house run by his mercenary landlord, Mrs. Flintnose. He never marries his fiancée Prudence Pimpleton (despite an engagement of 17 years). He became the star of his own NBC puppet show that same year. Fosdick was the long-running advertising spokesperson for Wildroot Cream-Oil, a popular men's hair product of the period.

Setting and fictitious locales

Although apparently set in the Kentucky mountains, situations often took the characters to different destinations — including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, the South American Amazon, tropical islands, the Moon, and Mars — as well as some purely fictional locations:

Dogpatch

Including every stereotype of Appalachia, the impoverished Dogpatch consists mostly of ramshackle log cabins, turnip fields, pine trees, and hogwallows. Most Dogpatchers are shiftless, ignorant scoundrels and thieves. The men are too lazy to work, and Dogpatch girls are desperate enough to chase them. Those who farm their turnip fields watch turnip termites swarm by the billions every year to devour Dogpatch's only crop (along with their homes, their livestock, and all their clothing).

The local geography is fluid and complex; Capp continually changes it to suit the current storyline. Natural landmarks include (at various times) Teeterin' Rock, Onneccessary Mountain, Bottomless Canyon, and Kissin' Rock. Local attractions include the West Po'k Chop Railroad; the "Skonk Works", a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch; and the General Jubilation T. Cornpone memorial statue.

In one storyline, Dogpatch's Cannonball Express train, after 1,563 tries, finally delivers its cargo to Dogpatch citizens on October 12, 1946. Receiving a 13-year stack of newspapers, Li'l Abner's family realizes that the Great Depression is happening and that banks will close; they race to take their money out of the bank before realizing they have no money to begin with. Other news from the stack includes the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president on March 4, 1933 (although Mammy Yokum thinks the President is Teddy Roosevelt), and a picture of Germany's new leader Adolf Hitler (April 21, 1933).

Capp intended for suffering Americans in the midst of the Great Depression, to laugh at the residents of Dogpatch even worse off than themselves. In his words, Dogpatch was "an average stone-age community nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere." Early in the continuity, Capp referred to Dogpatch being in Kentucky, but he was careful afterward to keep its location generic, probably to avoid cancellations from Kentucky newspapers. He then referred to it as Dogpatch, USA, and did not give any specific location. Many states tried to claim ownership of the town (like Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama), yet Capp did not confirm any of these. Dogpatch's distinctive cartoon landscape became as identified with the strip as any of its characters. Later, Capp licensed and was co-owner of an 800-acre (3.2 km2), $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas.

Lower Slobbovia

Frigid, faraway Lower Slobbovia was a political satire of communist nations and foreign diplomacy. Its residents are perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hang from their frostbitten noses. The favorite dish of the starving natives is raw polar bear. Lower Slobbovians speak with pidgin Russian accents.

Slobbovia is an iceberg, which continually capsizes as its lower portions melt. This dunks Upper Slobbovia into Lower Slobbovia, and raises the latter into the former.

Conceptually based on Siberia, or perhaps specifically on Birobidzhan, the region made its first appearance in Li'l Abner in April 1946. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians are even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. Their monetary unit is the "rasbucknik",: one was worth nothing and a large quantity is worth even less, due to the trouble of carrying them around. The local children are read tales from "Ice-sop's Fables", parodies of Aesop's Fables with a dark sardonic bent (and titles like "Coldilocks and the Three Bares").

Other fictional locales

Other fictional locales included Skonk Hollow, El Passionato, Kigmyland, the Republic of Crumbumbo, Lo Kunning, Faminostan, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, Pineapple Junction and the Valley of the Shmoon.

Mythic creatures

Li'l Abner features many allegorical animals, designed to satirize a disturbing aspect of human nature. They include:

Dialogue and catchphrases

Capp, a northeasterner, wrote all the dialogue in Li'l Abner using his approximation of a mock-southern dialect (including phonetic sounds, eye dialect, incorrect spelling, and malapropisms). He interspersed boldface type and included prompt words in parentheses (chuckle!, sob!, gasp!, shudder!, smack!, drool!, cackle!, snort!, gulp!, blush!, ugh!, etc.) to bolster the effect of the speech balloons. Almost every line was followed by two exclamation marks for added emphasis.

Outside Dogpatch, characters use a variety of stock Vaudevillian dialects. Mobsters and criminals speak slangy Brooklynese, and residents of Lower Slobbovia speak pidgin-Russian, some Yinglish. British characters also have comical dialects — like H'Inspector Blugstone of Scotland Yard (who has, a Cockney accent) and Sir Cecil Cesspool (whose speech is a clipped, King's English). Various Asian, Latin, Native American, and European characters speak in a wide range of caricatured dialects as well. Capp has credited his inspiration for vividly stylized language to early literary influences like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon, as well as old-time radio and the burlesque stage.

Comics historian Don Markstein has commented that Capp's "use of language was both unique and universally appealing; and his clean, bold cartooning style provided a perfect vehicle for his creations."

The following is a partial list of characteristic expressions that appear often in Li'l Abner:

Toppers and alternate strips

Li'l Abner had several toppers on the Sunday page, including

The Sunday page debuted six months into the run of the strip. The first topper was Washable Jones, a weekly continuity about a four-year-old hillbilly boy (Washable Jones) who goes fishing and accidentally hooks a ghost. Capp ended the strip with Washable's mother waking him up, revealing that the story was a dream. After this, Capp expanded Li'l Abner by another row and filled the rest of the space with a page-wide title panel and a small panel called Advice fo' Chillun. Washable Jones appeared in the strip in 1949, and appeared with the Shmoos in two one-shot comics – Al Capp's Shmoo in Washable Jones' Travels (1950, a premium for Oxydol laundry detergent) and Washable Jones and the Shmoo #1 (1953, published by the Capp-owned publisher Toby Press).

Al Capp also wrote two other daily comic strips:

Licensing, advertising and promotion

Capp devised several publicity campaigns to boost circulation and increase public visibility of Li'l Abner, often coordinating with national magazines, radio and television. In 1946, Capp persuaded six of the most popular radio personalities (Frank Sinatra, Kate Smith, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope, Fred Waring, and Smilin' Jack Smith) to broadcast a song he'd written for Daisy Mae: (Li'l Abner) Don't Marry That Girl!! Other promotional tie-ins included the Lena the Hyena Contest (1946), the Name the Shmoo Contest (1949), the Nancy O. Contest (1951), and the Roger the Lodger Contest (1964).

Li'l Abner characters were often featured in mid-century American advertising campaigns including Grape-Nuts cereal, Kraft caramels, Ivory soap, Oxydol, Duz and Dreft detergents, Fruit of the Loom, Orange Crush, Nestlé cocoa, Cheney neckties, Pedigree pencils, Strunk chainsaws, U.S. Royal tires, Head & Shoulders shampoo, and General Electric light bulbs. There were Dogpatch-themed family restaurants called "Li'l Abner's" in Louisville, Kentucky, Morton Grove, Illinois, and Seattle, Washington.

Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads: Chesterfield cigarettes (he was a lifelong chainsmoker); Schaeffer fountain pen with his friends Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly; the Famous Artists School (in which he had a financial interest) along with Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Virgil Partch, Willard Mullin, and Whitney Darrow Jr.; and, though a teetotaler, Rheingold Beer.

Awards and recognition

Li'l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head.

— John Updike, from My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg (1991)

Fans of the strip include novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp "very possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953 and recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature, and media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life." John Updike, calling Li'l Abner a "hillbilly Candide", said that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean." Capp has been compared to Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, and François Rabelais. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly and Time called him "the Mark Twain of cartoonists". Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes, and Queen Elizabeth are all reportedly fans of Li'l Abner.

In book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan called Li'l Abner's Dogpatch "a paradigm of the human situation". Comparing Capp to other contemporary humorists, McLuhan wrote: "Arno, Nash, and Thurber are brittle, wistful little précieux beside Capp!" In his essay "The Decline of the Comics", (Canadian Forum, January 1954) literary critic Hugh MacLean classified American comic strips into four types: daily gag, adventure, soap opera, and "an almost lost comic ideal: the disinterested comment on life's pattern and meaning." In the fourth type, according to MacLean, there were only two: Pogo and Li'l Abner. In 2002, the Chicago Tribune, in a review of The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo, noted: "The wry, ornery, brilliantly perceptive satirist will go down as one of the Great American Humorists." In America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1997), comics historian Richard Marschall analyzed the misanthropic subtext of Li'l Abner:

Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li'l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. It was a commentary on human nature itself.

Li'l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of a 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, use of dialogue, self-caricature and grotesquerie, the strip's overall place 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 Berger, "Li'l Abner is worth studying...because of Capp's imagination and artistry, and because of the strip's very obvious social relevance." The book was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994.

Al Capp's life and career are the subjects of a life-sized mural commemorating his 100th birthday, displayed in downtown Amesbury, Massachusetts. According to The Boston Globe, the town renamed its amphitheatre in his honor.

Influence and legacy

Sadie Hawkins Day

Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday created in the strip. It first appeared in Li'l Abner on November 15, 1937. Capp originally created it as a comedic plot device, but in 1939, two years after its debut, a double-page spread in Life proclaimed, "On Sadie Hawkins Day Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges". By 1952, the event was reportedly celebrated at 40,000 venues. It became a rite of women's empowerment at high schools and college campuses before second-wave feminism gained prominence.

Outside of the comic strip, a Sadie Hawkins dance is a gender role reversal. Women and girls take the initiative in inviting a man or boy out on a date — almost unheard of before 1937 — to a dance. When Capp created the event, it wasn't his intention to have it occur annually on a specific date. However, due to its enormous popularity and the numerous fan letters he received, Capp made it a tradition in the strip every November, lasting four decades. In many localities, the tradition still continues.

Al Capp ended his comic strip by setting a date for Sadie Hawkins Day. In the strip on November 5, 1977, Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae make a final visit to Capp, and Daisy insists that Capp settle on a date. Capp suggests November 26, and Daisy rewarded him with a kiss.

Language

Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Capp that have entered the English lexicon. Others include double whammy, skunkworks, and Lower Slobbovia. The term shmoo is used in defining technical concepts in four fields of science.

Capp has been credited with popularizing terms such as "natcherly", schmooze, druthers, nogoodnik, and neatnik. (In his book The American Language, H. L. Mencken credits the postwar trend of adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning in Li'l Abner.)

Franchise ownership and creators' rights

In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks, and licensing rights to comic strips. According to publisher Denis Kitchen, "Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not the strips' creators. And virtually all cartoonists remain content with their diluted share of any merchandising revenue their syndicates arrange. When the starving and broke Capp first sold Li'l Abner in 1934, he gladly accepted the syndicate's standard onerous contract. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li'l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."

In an October 1947 strip, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the corrupt Squeezeblood Syndicate, a thinly veiled dig at the United Feature Syndicate. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!!", was a satire of DC Comics's notorious exploitation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster over Superman. It was later reprinted in The World of Li'l Abner (1953).

In 1964, Capp left United Features and took Li'l Abner to the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.

Integration of women in the NCS

Capp was outspoken in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. The NCS had originally disallowed female members into its ranks. In 1949, when they refused membership to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip Teena, Capp temporarily resigned in protest. "Capp had always advocated a more activist agenda for the Society, and he had begun in December 1949 to make his case in the Newsletter as well as at the meetings," wrote comics historian R. C. Harvey. According to Tom Roberts, author of Alex Raymond: His Life and Art (2007), Capp authored a monologue that was instrumental in changing the rules the following year. Hilda Terry was the first woman cartoonist admitted in 1950.

Social commentary in comic strips

Through Li'l Abner, the American comic strip achieved unprecedented relevance in the postwar years, attracting new readers who were more intellectual and informed on current events (according to Coulton Waugh, author of The Comics, 1947). "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," wrote comics historian Rick Marschall in America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989). With adult readers far outnumbering young ones, Li'l Abner cleared away the concept that humor strips were solely the domain of adolescents and children. Li'l Abner provided a new template for contemporary satire and personal expression in comics, paving the way for Pogo, Feiffer, Doonesbury, and MAD.

Mad

Fearless Fosdick and other Li'l Abner comic strip parodies, such as "Jack Jawbreaker!" (1947) and "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952), were likely an inspiration to Harvey Kurtzman when he created Mad, which began in 1952 as a comic book that parodied other comics in the same manner. By the time EC Comics published Mad #1, Capp had been doing Fearless Fosdick for nearly a decade. Similarities between Li'l Abner and the early Mad include the incongruous use of mock-Yiddish slang terms, the disdain for pop culture icons, the black humor, the dearth of sentiment, and the broad visual styling. The trademark comic signs that clutter the backgrounds of Will Elder's panels had a precedent in Li'l Abner, in the residence of Dogpatch entrepreneur Available Jones, though they're also reminiscent of Bill Holman's Smokey Stover. Kurtzman resisted doing feature parodies of either Li'l Abner or Dick Tracy in Mad, despite their prominence.

Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. I've never heard anyone mention this, but Capp is 100% responsible for inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad Magazine. Just look at Fearless Fosdick — a brilliant parody of Dick Tracy with all those bullet holes and stuff. Then look at Mad's "Teddy and the Pirates", "Superduperman!" or even Little Annie Fanny. Forget about it — slam dunk! Not taking anything away from Kurtzman, who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. Kurtzman carried that forward and passed it down to a whole new crop of cartoonists, myself included. Capp was a genius. You wanna argue about it? I'll fight ya, and I'll win!

— Ralph Bakshi at ASIFA-Hollywood, April 2008

Parodies and imitations

Al Capp once told one of his assistants that he knew Li'l Abner had finally "arrived" when it was first pirated as a pornographic Tijuana bible parody in the mid-1930s. Li'l Abner was also parodied in 1954 (as "Li'l Melvin" by "Ol' Hatt") in the pages of EC Comics' humor comic, Panic, edited by Al Feldstein. Kurtzman eventually did spoof Li'l Abner (as "Li'l Ab'r") in 1957, in his short-lived humor magazine, Trump. Both the Trump and Panic parodies were drawn by Will Elder. In 1947, Will Eisner's The Spirit satirized the comic strip business in general, as a denizen of Central City tries to murder cartoonist "Al Slapp", creator of "Li'l Adam". Capp was also caricatured as an ill-mannered, boozy cartoonist (Capp was a teetotaler in real life) named "Hal Rapp" in the comic strip Mary Worth by Allen Saunders and Ken Ernst. Supposedly done in retaliation for Capp's "Mary Worm" parody in Li'l Abner (1956), a media-fed "feud" commenced briefly between the rival strips. It turned out to be a collaborative hoax by Capp and his longtime friend Saunders as a publicity stunt.

Li'l Abner's success also sparked some comic strip imitators. Jasper Jooks by Jess "Baldy" Benton (1948–'49), Ozark Ike (1945–'53), and Cotton Woods (1955–'58), both by Ray Gotto, were inspired by Capp's strip. Boody Rogers' Babe was a series of comic books about a beautiful hillbilly girl who lives with her kin in the Ozarks, with many similarities to Li'l Abner. Looie Lazybones, an overt imitation (drawn by Frank Frazetta) ran in several issues of Standard's Thrilling Comics in the late 1940s. Charlton Comics published the short-lived Hillbilly Comics by Art Gates in 1955, featuring "Gumbo Galahad", who looked identical to Li'l Abner, similar to Pokey Oakey by Don Dean, which ran in MLJ's Top-Notch Laugh and Pep Comics. Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–'71) as inspired by Li'l Abner, prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 Playboy interview.

Popularity and production

Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy, Salomey and Pappy narrowly survive another incident in this strip excerpt from March 29, 1947.

Li'l Abner made its debut on August 13, 1934, in eight North American newspapers, including the New-York Mirror. Initially owned and syndicated through United Feature Syndicate, a division of the E. W. Scripps Company, it was an immediate success. According to publisher Denis Kitchen, Capp's "hapless Dogpatchers hit a nerve in Depression-era America. Within three years Abner's circulation climbed to 253 newspapers, reaching over 15,000,000 readers. Before long he was in hundreds more, with a total readership exceeding 60,000,000." At its peak, the strip was read daily by 70 million Americans with a circulation of more than 900 newspapers in North America and Europe.

During the peak of the strip, Capp's workload grew to include advertising, merchandising, promotional work, comic book adaptations, and public service material in addition to the regular six dailies and one Sunday strip per week. Capp had a team of assistants in later years who worked under his direct supervision. They included Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson, and Frank Frazetta, who penciled the Sunday continuity from studio roughs from 1954 to the end of 1961 before his fame as a fantasy artist.

Due 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 included photos of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. This irregular policy has led to the misconception that his strip was ghostwritten by others. However, the production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, and 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 faces and hands of the characters. "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."

Many have commented on the shift in Capp's political viewpoint, from as liberal as Pogo in his early years to as conservative as Little Orphan Annie when he reached middle age. At one extreme, he displayed consistently devastating humor, while at the other, his mean-spiritedness came to the fore — but which was which seems to depend on the commentator's own point of view. 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...

— Don Markstein's Toonopedia

Li'l Abner ran until November 13, 1977, when Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to advancing illness. "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." When the strip retired, People magazine ran a substantial feature and The New York Times devoted nearly a full page to the event, according to publisher Denis Kitchen. Capp, a lifelong chain smoker, died from emphysema two years later at age 70, at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire, on November 5, 1979.

In 1988 and 1989, many newspapers ran old of Li'l Abner strips, mostly from the 1940s run, distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association and Capp Enterprises. Following the 1989 revival of Pogo, a revival of Li'l Abner was also planned in 1990. Drawn by cartoonist Steve Stiles, the new Li'l Abner was approved by Capp's widow and his brother Elliott Caplin, but Al Capp's daughter, Julie Capp, objected at the last minute and permission was withdrawn.

Li'l Abner in other media

Radio and recordings

With John Hodiak in the title role, the Li'l Abner radio drama ran weekdays on NBC from Chicago, from November 20, 1939, to December 6, 1940. The rest of the cast included Laurette Fillbrandt as Daisy Mae, Hazel Dopheide as Mammy Yokum, and Clarence Hartzell as Pappy. Durward Kirby was the announcer. The radio show was written by Charles Gussman, who consulted closely with Capp on the storylines.

Selections from the Li'l Abner musical have been recorded by Percy Faith, Mario Lanza, André Previn, and Shelly Manne. Over the years, Li'l Abner characters have inspired compositions in pop, jazz, country, and rock and roll:

Sheet music

Comic books and reprints

Kitchen Sink Press began publishing the Li'l Abner Dailies in hardcover and paperback, one year per volume, in 1988. The demise of KSP in 1999 stopped the reprint series at Volume 27 (1961). Dark Horse Comics reprinted the limited series Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, in four full-color volumes covering the Sunday pages from 1954 to 1961. They also released an archive hardcover reprint of the complete Shmoo Comics in 2009, followed by a second Shmoo volume of complete newspaper strips in 2011.

At the San Diego Comic-Con in July 2009, IDW Publishing and The Library of American Comics announced the publication of Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays: Vol. 1 (1934–1936). The comprehensive series titled Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, a reprinting of the complete 43-year history of Li'l Abner spanning a projected 20 volumes, began on April 7, 2010.

Public service works

Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. The following titles are all single-issue, educational comic books and pamphlets produced for public services:

Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the United States Department of the Treasury, the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Sister Kenny Foundation, the Boy Scouts of America, Community Chest, the National Reading Council, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, the Christmas Seal & Charity Stamp Society, the National Amputation Foundation, and Disabled American Veterans.

Animation and puppetry

Beginning in 1944, Li'l Abner was adapted into a series of color theatrical cartoons by Screen Gems for Columbia Pictures, directed by Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham, and Howard Swift. The five titles were: Amoozin But Confoozin, Sadie Hawkins Day, A Peekoolyar Sitcheeyshun, Porkuliar Piggy, and Kickapoo Juice. Capp was reportedly not pleased with the results, and the series was discontinued after five shorts. Li'l Abner was voiced by Frank Graham.

Evil-Eye Fleegle makes an animated cameo appearance in the United States Armed Forces Special Weapons Project training film, Self Preservation in an Atomic Attack (1950). Lena the Hyena makes a brief animated appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

In 1952, Fearless Fosdick was incorporated into a short-lived TV series. The puppet show was created and directed by puppeteer Mary Chase, written by Everett Crosby, and voiced by John Griggs, Gilbert Mack, and Jean Carson. Fearless Fosdick premiered on Sunday afternoons on NBC; 13 episodes featuring the Mary Chase marionettes were produced. The storylines and villains were mostly unique to the show. Among the original TV characters were Mr. Ditto, Harris Tweed (a disembodied suit of clothes), Swenn Golly (a Svengali-like mesmerist), counterfeiters Max Millions and Minton Mooney, Frank N. Stein, Batula, Match Head (a pyromaniac), Sen-Sen O'Toole, Shmoozer, and Herman the Ape Man.

Shmoos were originally meant to be included in the 1956 Broadway Li'l Abner musical, employing stage puppetry. The idea was reportedly abandoned in the development stage by the producers for reasons of practicality. After Capp's death, the Shmoo was used in two Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning cartoon series for TV. First in the 1979 The New Shmoo (later incorporated into Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo), and again from 1980 to 1981 in the Flintstone Comedy Show, in the Bedrock Cops segments.

Stage, film and television

The first Li'l Abner film was made at RKO Pictures in 1940, starring Jeff York (credited as Granville Owen), Martha O'Driscoll, Mona Ray, and Johnnie Morris. This film gives a fairly faithful portrayal of the Dogpatch characters up until that time. Buster Keaton appears as Lonesome Polecat, and the title song had lyrics by Milton Berle. Silent comedy veterans in the cast include Bud Jamison, Lucien Littlefield, Johnny Arthur, Mickey Daniels, Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy, and Al St. John. The story concerns Daisy Mae's efforts to catch Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. Since this movie predates their comic strip marriage, Abner makes a last-minute escape.

A much more successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip, also titled Li'l Abner, opened on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on November 15, 1956, and had a run of 693 performances, followed by a nationwide tour. Among the actors originally considered for the title role were Dick Shawn and Andy Griffith. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount Pictures in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with an original score by Nelson Riddle. Starring Peter Palmer, Leslie Parrish, Julie Newmar, Stella Stevens, Stubby Kaye, Billie Hayes, Howard St. John, Joe E. Marks, Carmen Alvarez, William Lanteau, and Bern Hoffman, with cameos by Jerry Lewis, Robert Strauss, Ted Thurston, Alan Carney, Valerie Harper, and Donna Douglas. Three members of the original Broadway cast did not appear in the film version: Charlotte Rae (who was replaced by Billie Hayes early in the stage production), Edie Adams (who was pregnant during the filming) and Tina Louise. The musical has since become a favorite of high school and amateur productions, due to its popular appeal and modest production requirements.

Li'l Abner never sold as a TV series despite several attempts (including an unsold pilot that aired once on NBC on September 5, 1967). Capp appeared as a regular on Author Meets the Critics. He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? Capp has appeared as himself on The Ed Sullivan Show, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, The Today Show, The Red Skelton Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, as well as This Is Your Life on February 12, 1961, with host Ralph Edwards and honoree Peter Palmer. He hosted five television programs between 1952 and 1972: three talk shows called The Al Capp Show (twice), and Al Capp, Al Capp's America (a live "chalk talk", with Capp providing commentary while sketching cartoons), and a game show called Anyone Can Win. Capp's appearances on NBC's The Tonight Show spanned three emcees; Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson.

Filmography

A 1971 musical special on ABC: the modern world comes to Dogpatch.

Comic strip adaptations

Animation

TV Animation


Live-action

Beyond the comic strip

References

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Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Li'l Abner.
Al Capp's Li'l Abner
Characters and elements
Adaptations and spin-offs
Related articles