Smitty was a popular 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 in the early 1920s by Walter Berndt

Walter Berndt

Walter Berndt was a cartoonist known for his long-run comic strip, Smitty, which he drew for 50 years....

. Syndicated nationally by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate

Tribune Media Services

Tribune Media Services is a syndication company owned by the Tribune Company.The company has two divisions, "News and Features" and "Entertainment Products"...

, it ran from November 29, 1922 to 1973 and brought Berndt a Reuben Award in 1969.

Characters and story

The strip featured young office boy Smitty, his six-year-old brother Herby, his girlfriend Ginny and his dog Scraps. Other characters were Smitty's boss, Mr. Bailey, and the Indian guide, Little Moose. Berndt based the strip on his own experience as an office boy, recalling, "I learned the tricks, shenangians and schemes of an office boy and became expert at them." Berndt saw his creation as featuring "flashbacks of things you did as a young fellow." As the strip progressed, the teenage Smitty aged to young adulthood (approximately 13 to 23) and eventually got married. From 1938 through 1960, Berndt also produced the comic strip Herby 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...

 to Smitty.

Origins of Smitty

Berndt's first strip, That's Different, drawn for the Bell Syndicate, lasted less than a year. In 1922, he created Smitty, which he continued until 1973. Yet it did not begin without a struggle, as cartoonist Mike Lynch described in a 2005 lecture:

After a stint drawing sports cartoons under T.A. "TAD" Dorgan (If you look at Walter Berndt's signature, you can see he draws his "T" just like TAD did), he took over the And the Fun Begins panel from Milt Gross

Milt Gross

Milt Gross , was an American comic strip and comic book writer, illustrator and animator. He wrote his comics in a Yiddish-inflected English. He originated the non-sequitur "Banana Oil!" as a phrase deflating pomposity and posing. His character Count Screwloose's admonition, "Iggy, keep an eye on...

. By 1920, Berndt had left the Journal to start his own strip. The strip lasted a year. Then he worked at The New York World. But within weeks, he was fired for insubordination. (I tried to find out more about this, but this is all I know.) Berndt was out of work and broke. So, with zany cartoonist timing, he got married! And then he began making the rounds with a new strip titled Billy the Office Boy. It was 1922. The World Series was on. Big news, and so no one could get near the editors. Berndt couldn't get in to see anyone. Segar said there wasn't a World Series in Chicago and suggested he send the proposal to Captain Patterson. So Berndt mailed the strip to the Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

. Patterson, opening a phone book for reference, renamed it Smitty and bought it at Berndt's high asking price. The strip became a mainstay, with the adventures of Smitty and Herby continuing for over 50 years.

Books and toys

Smitty merchandising included tin toys, Cupples & Leon reprint books, comic books and sheet music for the song "Smitty". The Smitty tin toy is valued at more than $1000.

External links

• History of the Berndt Toast Gang by Mike Lynch