Mutt and Jeff
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
newspaper comic strip
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....
created by cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
Bud Fisher
Bud Fisher
Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher was an American cartoonist who created Mutt and Jeff, the first successful daily comic strip in the United States....
in 1907 about "two mismatched tinhorns." It is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip. The concept of a newspaper strip featuring recurring characters in multiple panels on a six-day-a-week schedule had previously been pioneered through the short-lived A. Piker Clerk
A. Piker Clerk
A. Piker Clerk was a short-lived yet influential newspaper comic strip created in 1903 by the cartoonist Clare Briggs. It was syndicated in William Randolph Hearst's Chicago American for a short period.-Characters and story:...
by Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs
Clare A. Briggs 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 It a Grand and Glorious Feeling?" and "The Days of Real Sport".-Early life:Born in Reedsburg,...
, but it was Mutt and Jeff as the first successful daily comic strip that staked out the direction of the future trend.
It remained in syndication until 1982, employing the talents of several cartoonists, chiefly Al Smith
Al Smith (cartoonist)
Al Smith was an American cartoonist whose work included a long run on the comic strip Mutt and Jeff.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Smith was the art editor for the syndication department of the New York World from 1920 to 1930. He began working on Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff in 1932. Smith drew Mutt...
who drew the strip for nearly 50 years. The series became a comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
(initially published by All-American Publications
All-American Publications
All-American Publications is one of three American comic book companies that combined to form the modern-day DC Comics, one of the world's two largest comics publishers...
and later by DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
, Dell Comics
Dell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...
and Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by Alfred Harvey in 1941, after buying out the small publisher Brookwood Publications. His brothers Robert B...
), as well as cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
s, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s, merchandising
Merchandising
Merchandising is the methods, practices, and operations used to promote and sustain certain categories of commercial activity. In the broadest sense, merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer...
and reprints.
Syndicated success
Under its initial title, A. Mutt debuted on November 15, 1907 on the sports pages of the San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
. The featured character had previously appeared in sports cartoons by Fisher, but was unnamed. Fisher had approached his editor, John P. Young about doing a regular strip as early as 1905, but was turned down. According to Fisher, Young told him, "It would take up too much room, and readers are used to reading down the page, and not horizontally."
This strip focused on a single main character, until the other half of the duo appeared on on March 27, 1908. It appeared only in the Chronicle, so Fisher did not have the extended lead time that syndicated strips require. Episodes were drawn the day before publication, and frequently referred to local events that were currently making headlines, or to specific horse races being run that day. A 1908 sequence about Mutt's trial featured a parade of thinly-disguised caricatures of specific San Francisco political figures, many of whom were being prosecuted for graft.
On June 7, 1908, the strip moved off the sports pages and into Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
's San Francisco Examiner where it was syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
by King Features
King 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...
and became a national hit, subsequently making Fisher the first big celebrity of the comics industry. Fisher had taken the precaution of copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
ing the strip in his own name, facilitating the move to King Features and making it impossible for the Chronicle to continue the strip using another artist.
A dispute between Fisher and King Features arose in 1913, and Fisher moved his strip on September 15, 1915, to Wheeler Syndicate (later Bell Syndicate), who gave Fisher 60% of the gross revenue, an enormous income in those times. Hearst responded by launching a lawsuit which ultimately failed. By 1916, Fisher was earning in excess of $150,000 a year. By the 1920s, merchandising and growing circulation had increased his income to an estimated $250,000.
In 1918, Mutt and Jeff added a Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...
, and as success continued, Fisher became increasingly dependent on assistants to produce the work. Fisher hired Billy Liverpool and Ed Mack, artists Hearst had at one point groomed to take over the strip, who would do most of the artwork. Other assistants on the strip included Ken Kling, George Herriman
George Herriman
George Joseph Herriman was an American cartoonist, best known for his classic comic strip Krazy Kat.-Early life:...
, and Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963.-Early life:...
while still in high school.
Fisher appeared to lose all interest in the strip during the 1930s, and after Mack died in 1932, the job of creating the strip fell to Al Smith. The strip retained Fisher's signature until his death, however, and not until December 7, 1954 was the strip signed by Smith.
Al Smith received 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...
Humor Comic Strip Award in 1968 for his work on the strip. Smith continued to draw Mutt and Jeff until 1980, two years before it ceased publication.
In the introduction to Forever Nuts: The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff, Allan Holtz
Allan Holtz
Allan Holtz is a comic strip historian who researches and writes about newspaper comics for his Stripper's Guide, launched in 2005. His research encompasses some 7,000 American comic strips and newspaper panels...
gave the following reason for the strip's longevity and demise:
The strip's waning circulation got a shot in the arm in the 1950s when President Eisenhower
Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
sang its praises, and then again in the 1970s when a nostalgia craze swept the nation. It took the 1980s, a decade focused on the here and now, and a final creative change on the strip when even Al Smith had had enough, to finally allow the strip the rest it had deserved for decades.
During this final period it was drawn by George Breisacher. Currently, Andrews McMeel Universal continues to syndicate Mutt and Jeff under the imprint Classic Mutt and Jeff (in both English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Spanish language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
versions) under the signature of Pierre S. de Beaumont (1915-2010), founder of the Brookstone
Brookstone
Brookstone is a chain of retail stores in the United States. Its first store was opened in 1973 in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Its headquarters are currently located in Merrimack, New Hampshire....
catalog and retail chain. He inherited the strip, as detailed in The New York Times:
- Mr. de Beaumont happened to own the rights to an emblematic American art form, the Mutt and Jeff comic strip, which he had inherited from his mother, a countess and occasional Broadway chorus girl. She had obtained them after a marital dispute that was widely covered in the newspapers and also involved frogs... The Countess de Beaumont had married — and, in a welter of wooings and suings avidly chronicled in the press, separated from — the cartoonist Harry C. Fisher. Mr. Fisher, known as Bud, had created what became Mutt and Jeff, the long-popular comic strip about two mismatched tinhorns, in 1907. In 1925, Mr. Fisher married Countess de Beaumont aboard a trans-Atlantic liner. In 1927, a New York judge granted her a legal separation after she testified, as The New York Times reported, to “her husband’s cruelty” in “permitting her to be neglected by his servants while they looked after a number of live frogs he maintained in their former apartment on Riverside Drive.” Mr. Fisher died in 1954. Mrs. Fisher, who apparently never divorced him, retained the rights to “Mutt and Jeff.” These later devolved on Mr. de Beaumont.
Characters and story
Augustus Mutt is a tall, dimwitted racetrack character - a fanatic horse-race gambler who is motivated by greed. Mutt has a wife, known only as Mrs. Mutt (Mutt always referred to her as "M'love") and a son named Cicero. Mutt first encountered the half-pint Jeff, an inmate of an insane asylum who shares his passion for horseracing, in 1908. They appeared in more and more strips together until the strip abandoned the horse-race theme, and concentrated on Mutt's other outlandish, get-rich-quick schemes. Jeff usually served as a (sometimes unwilling) partner. Jeff was short, bald as a billiard ball, and wore mutton chop sideburns. He has no last name, stating his name is "just Jeff — first and last and always it's Jeff." However, at one point late in the strip's life, he is identified in the address of a cablegram as "Othello Jeff." He has a twinTwin
A twin is one of two offspring produced in the same pregnancy. Twins can either be monozygotic , meaning that they develop from one zygote that splits and forms two embryos, or dizygotic because they develop from two separate eggs that are fertilized by two separate sperm.In contrast, a fetus...
brother named Julius. They look so much alike that Jeff, who can't afford to have a portrait painted, sits for Julius, who is too busy to pose. Rarely does Jeff change from his habitual outfit of top hat and suit with wing collar. Friends of Mutt and Jeff have included Gus Geevem, Joe Spivis and the English Sir Sidney. Characteristic lines and catchphrases that appeared often during the run of the strip included "Nix, Mutt, nix!", "For the love of Mike!" and "Oowah!"
The original inspiration for the character of "Jeff" was Jacques "Jakie" Fehr, a tiny (4'8") irascible Swiss-born shopkeeper in the village of Occidental, California. One summer day in 1908, Fisher, a member of San Francisco's Bohemian Club
Bohemian Club
The Bohemian Club is a private men's club in San Francisco, California, United States.Its clubhouse is located at 624 Taylor Street in San Francisco...
, was riding the North Pacific Coast narrow-gauge railway passenger train northbound to the Bohemian Grove
Bohemian Grove
Bohemian Grove is a campground located at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, California, belonging to a private San Francisco-based men's art club known as the Bohemian Club...
, the club's summer campsite. During a stop in Occidental, Fisher got off the train to stretch his legs and observed the diminutive walrus-moustached Fehr in heated altercation with the tall and lanky "candy butcher," who sold refreshments on the train and also distributed newspapers to shops in towns along the train route. The comic potential in this scene prompted Fisher to add the character of Jeff to his A. Mutt comic strip, with great success.
Cicero's Cat
The spin-offSpin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
strip Cicero's Cat starred Desdemona, a cat that Smith originally introduced in 1933 as a pet for Mutt's son, Cicero. This pantomime strip was 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...
", a Sunday-only feature packaged with the Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...
.
Comic books and reprints
- The Cupples & Leon Co. produced at least 18 reprint collections of Mutt and Jeff daily strips, in 10" x 10" softcover books from 1919 to 1933. They also published two larger hardcover editions, Mutt and Jeff BIG Book (1926) and Mutt and Jeff BIG Book No. 2 (1929).
- Mutt and Jeff also appeared in comic books. They were featured on the front cover of Famous FunniesFamous FunniesFamous Funnies is an American publication of the 1930s that represents what popular culture historians consider the first true American comic book, following seminal precursors.-Immediate precursors:...
#1, the first modern format comic book, and reprints appeared in DC ComicsDC ComicsDC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
' All American Comics. It has been suggested that some of the Mutt and Jeff material published by DC Comics were new stories drawn by Sheldon Mayer
- In 1939, DC gave them their own comic book, published until 1958 for 103 issues, that consisted entirely of newspaper reprints. Dell ComicsDell ComicsDell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...
took over the feature after DC dropped it, but their tenure only lasted for one year and 12 issues. Many of the Dell issues featured new, conventional-length stories drawn by Smith.
- Harvey ComicsHarvey ComicsHarvey Comics was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by Alfred Harvey in 1941, after buying out the small publisher Brookwood Publications. His brothers Robert B...
, which had several other comic strip reprint comics running at the time, picked up Mutt and Jeff from Dell, and this version of the comic ran to 1965 for a total of 33 issues, plus two short-lived spinoff titles: Mutt & Jeff Jokes and Mutt & Jeff New Jokes. These later versions also included Smith's Cicero's Cat.
- In 2007, comics publisher NBMNBM PublishingNBM Publishing is an American publisher of graphic novels. The company specializes in non-superhero comic genres and has translated and published over 150 graphic novels from Europe and Canada, as well as several works by Americans...
published a reprint volume, Forever Nuts: The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff. ISBN 1561635022
Stage shows and sheet music
- Mutt and Jeff: A Musical Comedy Song Book (1912) Songs include: The Barn-Yard Rag; Sail on Silv'ry Moon; Mr. Ragtime Whippoorwill; Oh You Girl!; A Mother Old and Gray; Let Me Call You Sweetheart; Years Years Ago; If I Forget; Bohemia Rag; Undertaker Man; Tell Me That You Love Me
- The Face in the Flag I Love (from Mutt and Jeff in Panama, 1913)
- At the Funny Page Ball (1918)
- Mutt and Jeff on Their Honeymoon (aka Mutt and Jeff Divorced, 1920) Songs include: My Dearie; My Dixie Rose; The Wild Irish Rose That God Gave Me; Why Can't My Dreams Come True; Just One Little Smile; Songs My Mother Sang to Me; When Someone Dreams of Someone; When I Am Dreaming of You
- Mutt and Jeff: And They Called It the Funny Sheet Blues (1923)
- Mutt and Jeff Songster (Date unknown)
Motion pictures
In early July 1911, during the silent eraSilent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
of motion pictures
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, at David Horsley
David Horsley
David Horsley was an English born pioneer of the movie industry who built the first movie studio in Hollywood....
's Nestor Comedies
Nestor Studios
The Nestor Motion Picture Company was a motion picture studio/production company located in Bayonne, New Jersey, and Hollywood, California, which was owned and operated by David Horsley and his brother, William Horsley....
in Bayonne, New Jersey
Bayonne, New Jersey
Bayonne is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. Located in the Gateway Region, Bayonne is a peninsula that is situated between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east...
, Al Christie
Al Christie
Al Christie was a Canadian-born motion picture director, producer and screenwriter.-Career:Born Alfred Ernest Christie, in London, Ontario, Canada, he was one of a number of Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood who made their way to Hollywood, California, attracted by the newly developing motion...
began turning out a weekly one-reel live-action Mutt and Jeff comedy
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
short, which was based on the comic strip.
The Mutt and Jeff serial was extremely popular and after the Nestor Company established a studio
Movie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
in Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
, in late October 1911, Christie continued to oversee a weekly production of a one-reel episode.
In the fall of 1911, Nestor began using an alternate method of displaying the intertitle
Intertitle
In motion pictures, an intertitle is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of the photographed action, at various points, generally to convey character dialogue, or descriptive narrative material related to, but not necessarily covered by, the material photographed.Intertitles...
s in the Mutt and Jeff comedies. Instead of a cut
Cut (filmmaking)
In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a cut is an abrupt, but usually trivial film transition from one sequence to another. It is synonymous with the term edit, though "edit" can imply any number of transitions or effects. The cut, dissolve and wipe serve as the three...
to the dialogue titles, the dialogue was displayed at the bottom of the image on a black background so the audience could read them as a subtitle
Subtitle (captioning)
Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
, which was similar to the way they appeared in the cartoon strips. Horsley was very proud of the device and claimed to have entered a patent on it. He advertised the Mutt and Jeff movies as "talking pictures."
The first actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
s to portray Mutt and Jeff in the comedy shorts were Sam D. Drane, a tall man noted for his resemblance to President Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, who actually played Lincoln in his last movie, The Crisis (1916
1916 in film
The year 1916 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 17 - release of A Daughter of the Gods, the first US production with a million dollar budget, with the first nude scene by a major star....
), as A. Mutt, and Gus Alexander, whose nickname was "Shorty," as Jeff. When Alexander was leaving the serial, Christie hired the small actor Bud Duncan
Bud Duncan
Bud Duncan was an American actor of the silent era. He appeared in 167 films between 1912 and 1942. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:...
. Duncan played Jeff in two installments before the serial ended in 1912.
Animation
In 1916, Fisher licensed the production of Mutt and Jeff for animationAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
with pioneers Charles Bowers
Charles Bowers
Charles R. Bowers was an American cartoonist and slapstick comedian during the silent film and early "talkie" era. He was forgotten for decades and his name was notably absent from most histories of the Silent Era, although his work was enthusiastically reviewed by André Breton and a number of...
and Raoul Barré
Raoul Barré
Raoul Barré was a Canadian and American cartoonist, animator of the silent film era, and artist.Barré was born in Montreal, Quebec, the only artistic child of an importer of communion wine...
of the Barré Studio
Barré Studio
Barré Studio was, in all probability, the first film studio dedicated to animation . It was founded by Raoul Barré and William Nolan in 1914. They began with advertising films , then got a series with Edison called the Animated Grouch Chaser...
. The animated series lasted 11 years and more than 300 animated Mutt and Jeff shorts were released, making it the longest running theatrical animated movie serial second to Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George Herriman, published daily in newspapers between 1913 and 1944. It first appeared in the New York Evening Journal, whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, was a major booster for the strip throughout its run...
.
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
entitled Mutt and Jeff: the Original Animated Odd Couple; included on the disc are several Mutt and Jeff animated cartoons. Also, individual Mutt and Jeff cartoons have been mixed with other titles on low-cost video collections, such as the Cartoon Craze DVDs from Digiview Entertainment.
Popular culture
- Mutt and Jeff, Texas, was a small community located at the intersection of State Highway 37 and Farm Road 14, near Big Sandy CreekBig Sandy Creek (Texas)There are several streams called Big Sandy Creek in Texas, including:*Big Sandy Creek *Big Sandy Creek *Big Sandy Creek...
, six miles from Winnsboro. The town was so named in the 1920s because of two area merchants, who reminded locals of the comic strip characters. The population decreased during the 1930s, and Mutt and Jeff, Texas, was abandoned by the early 1960s. - The "good cop/bad copGood cop/Bad copGood cop/bad cop, known in British military circles as Mutt and Jeff and also called joint questioning and friend and foe, is a psychological tactic used for interrogation....
" police interrogation tactic is also called "Mutt and Jeff". - In rhyming slang, "mutton" is used as a shortening of "Mutt'n'Jeff", meaning "deaf".
External links
- A.Word.A.Day
- The Classic Mutt and Jeff strips GoComics
- A suicide-themed Mutt and Jeff strip from November 1911 (An animated short film)