Billy De Beck
Encyclopedia
William Morgan DeBeck was a popular cartoonist
who was widely known as Billy DeBeck. He created some of the memorable comic strip characters of the 1920s and 1930s, including Barney Google
, Bunky, Snuffy Smith and the racehorse Spark Plug. The first awards of the National Cartoonists Society
, beginning in 1946, were the Billy DeBeck Memorial Awards, aka the Barney Awards.
DeBeck’s art style is considered to be in the classic "big-foot" tradition of American comic strips (e.g., The Katzenjammer Kids, Hägar the Horrible
and Robert Crumb
's characters).
DeBeck was born and grew up on the South Side of Chicago
, where his father, Louis DeBeck, was a former newspaperman employed by the Swift Company. His father was French, and the name DeBeck evolved from DeBeque. His Irish-Welsh mother, Jessie Lee Morgan, had lived on a farm and was a former schoolteacher.
, who rejected the work. DeBeck later admitted, "They were terrible. I had been doing political cartoons for the Pittsburgh Gazette, and the comics were new to me."
As Barney Google found an increasing readership, he moved to New York and lived on Riverside Drive. In 1921, he began the gag panel Bughouse Fables, which he signed Barney Google. Above Barney Google, he later added Bughouse Fables as a topper
strip, which he eventually turned over to his assistant, Paul Fung
. On May 16, 1926, he replaced Bughouse Fables with another topper, Parlor Bedroom and Sink, which evolved into Bunky.
In 1927, he married Mary Louise Dunne, and they spent two years traveling about Europe. After their return, the couple maintained a Park Avenue apartment and a house in Great Neck, Long Island. DeBeck first began working in St. Petersburg, Florida
in 1929. Later, he acquired Villa Florentina, a large home at Snell Isle in St. Petersburg, where he lived at 321 Brightwaters Boulevard on Coffee Pot Bayou. This was only a short walk from 375 Brightwaters Boulevard, the home of his friend Wally Bishop
(1905–82), cartoonist of the Muggs and Skeeter comic strip. Bishop moved to St. Petersburg in 1928, and DeBeck soon followed.
DeBeck hired 17-year-old Fred Lasswell
as an assistant in 1933. During winters, DeBeck and Lasswell worked at the St. Petersburg house, usually opening it up in late October or November. Another assistant to DeBeck was Cliff Rogerson, later an editorial cartoonist for Newsday
beginning in 1946.
DeBeck's active lifestyle sometimes caused him to miss deadlines. He enjoyed deep sea fishing and playing bridge. As a golfer since 1916, DeBeck spent time on golf courses with such notables as Harold Lloyd
, Walter Huston
, Rube Goldberg
, Fontaine Fox
, Clarence Budington Kelland
and bridge authority P. Hal Sims
. He was also acquainted with such celebrities as Babe Ruth
, Lowell Thomas
and Damon Runyon
. His best friend was the cartoonist Frank Willard
.
. He also traveled into mountain country in Virginia and Kentucky, doing sketches of the locals. Following this research, he introduced Barney's hillbilly
friend, Snuffy Smith, in 1934. Readers found the strip a comic relief from tragic conditions of the Great Depression
, and Snuffy Smith eventually became the central character of the strip. DeBeck popularized such expressions as "sweet mama", "heebie jeebies
" (a fit of intense nervousness), "horsefeathers", "hotsy-totsy", "balls of fire" and "What did the doodle-bug say?" "Times a-wasting" has remained a familiar catchphrase to the present day. DeBeck's Sunday page for September 18, 1938 was placed in the Time Capsule at the 1939 World's Fair. After DeBeck's death from cancer on Veterans Day
, 1942, the strip was continued by Joe Musial until Fred Lasswell took over completely in 1945.
In 1943, Mary DeBeck donated to the Ringling School of Art all of her late husband's art supplies, including drawing tables, reams of drawing paper, hundreds of colored pencils, lamps, drawing boards, inks, drawing pens, artist smocks, etching plates and an etching press. Mary DeBeck remarried, and she died February 14, 1953, aboard a National Airlines DC-6 which went down in the Gulf of Mexico during a thunderstorm on a flight from Tampa to New Orleans.
'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
, Al Capp
, Chic Young
, Alex Raymond
, Roy Crane
, Walt Kelly
, Hank Ketcham
and Mort Walker
).
In 1954, after her death, the DeBeck Award was renamed the Reuben Award (after Rube Goldberg
's first name). When the award name was changed in 1954, all of the prior winners were given Reuben statuettes.
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
who was widely known as Billy DeBeck. He created some of the memorable comic strip characters of the 1920s and 1930s, including Barney Google
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Barney Google, is a long-running American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck . Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a huge international readership, appearing in 900 newspapers in 21 countries...
, Bunky, Snuffy Smith and the racehorse Spark Plug. The first awards of the National Cartoonists Society
National Cartoonists Society
The National Cartoonists Society 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 troops...
, beginning in 1946, were the Billy DeBeck Memorial Awards, aka the Barney Awards.
DeBeck’s art style is considered to be in the classic "big-foot" tradition of American comic strips (e.g., The Katzenjammer Kids, Hägar the Horrible
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 retirement in 1988 , his son Chris Browne has continued the...
and Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
's characters).
DeBeck was born and grew up on the South Side of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where his father, Louis DeBeck, was a former newspaperman employed by the Swift Company. His father was French, and the name DeBeck evolved from DeBeque. His Irish-Welsh mother, Jessie Lee Morgan, had lived on a farm and was a former schoolteacher.
Political cartoons
Graduating from Hyde Park High School in 1908, Billy DeBeck enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and began doing cartoons that same year for the Chicago Daily News. In 1910 he took a job as a staff artist with a local weekly theater publication, Show World. From 1912 to 1916 he was an illustrator and political cartoonist with the Youngstown Chronicle Telegraph and the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times. In Youngstown he married Marian Louise Shields in 1914. While in Pittsburgh, he went to a Hearst newspaper in New York and showed comic strip samples to Arthur BrisbaneArthur Brisbane
Arthur Brisbane was one of the best known American newspaper editors of the 20th century.-Biography:...
, who rejected the work. DeBeck later admitted, "They were terrible. I had been doing political cartoons for the Pittsburgh Gazette, and the comics were new to me."
Barney Google and other early strips
He launched a correspondence school that included cartoon instruction, and in 1916, back in Chicago, he started the comic strip, Finn an' Haddie, for the Adams Syndicate. At the Chicago Herald he created Married Life, a panel that eventually became a strip. He taught at the Chicago Academy and experimented with another panel, Olie Moses and Mara, Inc. He introduced Barney Google in 1919 in a strip titled Take Barney Google, F'rinstance.As Barney Google found an increasing readership, he moved to New York and lived on Riverside Drive. In 1921, he began the gag panel Bughouse Fables, which he signed Barney Google. Above Barney Google, he later added Bughouse Fables as a topper
Topper (comic strip)
A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.Toppers usually were drawn...
strip, which he eventually turned over to his assistant, Paul Fung
Paul Fung
Paul Fung 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, where his father was pastor of Seattle's Chinese Baptist mission...
. On May 16, 1926, he replaced Bughouse Fables with another topper, Parlor Bedroom and Sink, which evolved into Bunky.
Daily grind at Coffee Pot Bayou
Marian and Billy DeBeck divorced, remarried in 1921 and finally ended their marriage. In 1925, health problems prevented DeBeck from working on the strip. According to newspaper reports, he suffered "an attack of neuro-circulatory asthenia" (a psychosomatic anxiety disorder) but made a satisfactory recovery in a New York hospital.In 1927, he married Mary Louise Dunne, and they spent two years traveling about Europe. After their return, the couple maintained a Park Avenue apartment and a house in Great Neck, Long Island. DeBeck first began working in St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. It is known as a vacation destination for both American and foreign tourists. As of 2008, the population estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau is 245,314, making St...
in 1929. Later, he acquired Villa Florentina, a large home at Snell Isle in St. Petersburg, where he lived at 321 Brightwaters Boulevard on Coffee Pot Bayou. This was only a short walk from 375 Brightwaters Boulevard, the home of his friend Wally Bishop
Wally Bishop
Wallace Bond Bishop , better known as Wally Bishop, was an American cartoonist who drew his syndicated Muggs and Skeeter comic strip for 49 years....
(1905–82), cartoonist of the Muggs and Skeeter comic strip. Bishop moved to St. Petersburg in 1928, and DeBeck soon followed.
DeBeck hired 17-year-old Fred Lasswell
Fred Lasswell
Fred Lasswell was an American cartoonist best known for his decades of work on the comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.Born in Kennett, Missouri, he got his start as a sports cartoonist for the Tampa Daily Times...
as an assistant in 1933. During winters, DeBeck and Lasswell worked at the St. Petersburg house, usually opening it up in late October or November. Another assistant to DeBeck was Cliff Rogerson, later an editorial cartoonist for Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
beginning in 1946.
DeBeck's active lifestyle sometimes caused him to miss deadlines. He enjoyed deep sea fishing and playing bridge. As a golfer since 1916, DeBeck spent time on golf courses with such notables as Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....
, Walter Huston
Walter Huston
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
, Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...
, Fontaine Fox
Fontaine Fox
Fontaine Talbot Fox Jr. was an American cartoonist and illustrator born near Louisville, Kentucky.Fox is best known for writing and illustrating his Toonerville Folks comic panel. It ran from 1913 to 1955 in 250 to 300 newspapers across North America.The cartoons are set in the small town of...
, Clarence Budington Kelland
Clarence Budington Kelland
Clarence Budington Kelland was an American writer. He once described himself as "the best second-rate writer in America"....
and bridge authority P. Hal Sims
P. Hal Sims
Philip Hal Sims was an American bridge player.In the early game, he was considered one of the best players in the United States. In 1931, he formed the Four Horsemen team composed of himself, Oswald Jacoby, Willard S...
. He was also acquainted with such celebrities as Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...
, Lowell Thomas
Lowell Thomas
Lowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveler, best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous...
and Damon Runyon
Damon Runyon
Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and 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 New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...
. His best friend was the cartoonist Frank Willard
Frank Willard
Frank Henry Willard was a cartoonist best known for his comic strip Moon Mullins which ran from 1923 to 1991. He sometimes went by the nickname Dok Willard....
.
Characters and story
The main character, Barney, was initially a simple henpecked husband and avid follower of sports, but within ten years Barney morphed into an urban rascal and natty dresser. The bony and goofy racehorse, Spark Plug, trotted into the storyline in 1922. During the early 1930s, DeBeck made a study of Appalachian language, customs and folklore. evident in his book collection later donated to Virginia Commonwealth UniversityVirginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University is a public university located in Richmond, Virginia. It comprises two campuses in the Downtown Richmond area, the product of a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968...
. He also traveled into mountain country in Virginia and Kentucky, doing sketches of the locals. Following this research, he introduced Barney's hillbilly
Hillbilly
Hillbilly is a term referring to certain people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas of the United States, primarily Appalachia but also the Ozarks. Owing to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term is frequently considered derogatory, and so is usually offensive to those Americans of...
friend, Snuffy Smith, in 1934. Readers found the strip a comic relief from tragic conditions of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, and Snuffy Smith eventually became the central character of the strip. DeBeck popularized such expressions as "sweet mama", "heebie jeebies
Heebie Jeebies
Heebie-jeebies or heebie jeebies may refer to:*Heebie-jeebies , used to describe a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, depression or illness.*"Heebie Jeebies" , a 1926 single by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five...
" (a fit of intense nervousness), "horsefeathers", "hotsy-totsy", "balls of fire" and "What did the doodle-bug say?" "Times a-wasting" has remained a familiar catchphrase to the present day. DeBeck's Sunday page for September 18, 1938 was placed in the Time Capsule at the 1939 World's Fair. After DeBeck's death from cancer on Veterans Day
Veterans Day
Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, is an annual United States holiday honoring military veterans. It is a federal holiday that is observed on November 11. It coincides with other holidays such as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, which are celebrated in other parts of the world and also mark...
, 1942, the strip was continued by Joe Musial until Fred Lasswell took over completely in 1945.
In 1943, Mary DeBeck donated to the Ringling School of Art all of her late husband's art supplies, including drawing tables, reams of drawing paper, hundreds of colored pencils, lamps, drawing boards, inks, drawing pens, artist smocks, etching plates and an etching press. Mary DeBeck remarried, and she died February 14, 1953, aboard a National Airlines DC-6 which went down in the Gulf of Mexico during a thunderstorm on a flight from Tampa to New Orleans.
Awards
The National Cartoonists SocietyNational Cartoonists Society
The National Cartoonists Society 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 troops...
'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 Caniff
Milton Arthur Paul Caniff was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.-Biography:...
, Al Capp
Al Capp
Alfred Gerald Caplin , better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats and Long Sam...
, Chic Young
Chic Young
Murat Bernard Young , better known as Chic Young, was an American cartoonist who created the popular, long-running comic strip Blondie. His 1919 William McKinley High School Yearbook cites his nickname as Chicken, source of his familiar pen name and signature...
, Alex Raymond
Alex Raymond
Alexander Gillespie "Alex" Raymond was an American cartoonist, best known for creating Flash Gordon for King Features in 1934...
, Roy Crane
Roy Crane
Royston Campbell Crane , who signed his work Roy Crane, was an influential American cartoonist who created the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer. He pioneered the adventure comic strip, establishing the conventions and artistic approach of that genre. Comics historian...
, Walt Kelly
Walt Kelly
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. , or Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip, Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio and Fantasia. Kelly resigned in 1941 at the age of 28 to work at Post-Hall Syndicate,...
, Hank Ketcham
Hank Ketcham
Henry King "Hank" Ketcham 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 page and took up painting full time in his studio at his home. He received the Reuben Award for the strip in 1953...
and Mort Walker
Mort Walker
Addison Morton Walker , popularly known as Mort Walker, is an American comic artist best known for creating the newspaper comic strips Beetle Bailey in 1950 and Hi and Lois in 1954. He has signed Addison to some of his strips.Born in El Dorado, Kansas, he grew up in Kansas City, Missouri...
).
In 1954, after her death, the DeBeck Award was renamed the Reuben Award (after Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...
's first name). When the award name was changed in 1954, all of the prior winners were given Reuben statuettes.
