Abie the Agent
Encyclopedia
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
about a Jewish car salesman by Harry Hershfield
Harry Hershfield
Harry Hershfield was an American comic artist, humor writer and radio personality. A columnist once labeled him "the Jewish Will Rogers".Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Hershfield was the son of Jewish immigrants...
. When Hershfield had success with a Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
character in his comic strip Desperate Desmond
Harry Hershfield
Harry Hershfield was an American comic artist, humor writer and radio personality. A columnist once labeled him "the Jewish Will Rogers".Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Hershfield was the son of Jewish immigrants...
, he was encouraged by his editor to create a new strip centered around Yiddishism and Jewish immigrants in the United States.
Characters and story
Abraham Kabibble, known as Abie the Agent, was the first Jewish protagonist in an American comic strip. The car salesman debuted in the New York JournalNew York Journal American
The New York Journal American was a newspaper published from 1937 to 1966. The Journal American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst: The New York American , a morning paper, and the New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper...
on February 2, 1914. Abie was a positive rebuttal of the many Jewish stereotypes in caricatures, and showed with gentle humor a successful middle-class immigrant. While Abie and his friends had many typical Jewish characteristics, such as their names or their use of Yiddish words and accents, they also lacked many of the negative or malicious elements, such as exaggerated physical traits, found in the depictions of Jews from this time. Abie was in many ways indistinguishable from other white Americans, and he was a prime example of the belief in the integration of German Jews into U.S. society. In 1917, Abie enlisted in the Army to help the USA win World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
The character lost many of his more typical Jewish characteristics over the decades, showing his successful integration but also slowly diminishing the particular character that set this comic strip apart from the others. However, the comic can hardly be seen as anti-racist or anti-discriminatory, since it only tried to promote the assimilation of Jews as white Americans, but at the same time distanced them from other ethnicities like the Mexicans or the African Americans who were generally depicted in an inferior role.
Animation
Syndicated by King FeaturesKing Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...
, the strip became popular, and in 1917 two animated cartoons were made. No further spinoffs or much merchandise appeared though, and the comic strip went on hiatus between 1931 and 1935, to finally disappear in 1940. An indication of its popularity was the reference to Abie Kabibble used in Animal Crackers
Animal Crackers (film)
Animal Crackers is a 1930 American comedy film, in which mayhem and zaniness ensue when a valuable painting goes missing during a party in honor of famed African explorer Captain Spaulding. The film was both a critical and commercial success upon initial release, and remains one of the Marx...
, the 1930 Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
movie. In a time when Jews were often caricatured and put in a negative light in America, the gentle humor of Hershfield and the positive depiction of a Jew as a successful lower middle class
Lower middle class
In developed nations across the world, the lower middle class is a sub-division of the greater middle class. Universally the term refers to the group of middle class households or individuals who have not attained the status of the upper middle class associated with the higher realms of the middle...
immigrant trying to integrate himself, shed a different light on the problems immigrants faced in those years, and is one of the reasons Abie the Agent has been called the first adult comic.
