Stephen Slesinger
Encyclopedia
Biography
Slesinger was born on December 25, 1901, in New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
; He was a second generation New Yorker of Hungarian and Russian ancestry. His father, Anthony, was a dress manufacturer, and his mother, Augusta (née Singer), was a prominent psychoanalyst. He studied at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School
Ethical Culture Fieldston School
The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, known as "Fieldston", is a private "independent" school in New York City and a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. It has about 1600 students and a staff of 400 people , led by Dr. Damian J...
from September 1914 until June 1919 and later attended Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. His younger sister was the author and screenwriter Tess Slesinger
Tess Slesinger
Tess Slesinger was a Jewish-American writer and screenwriter and is credited as being a charter member of the New York intellectual scene....
.
Slesinger died at 4:45am on December 17, 1953, of gastric hemorrhage at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.
Media pioneer
In 1927, Slesinger set up shop in New YorkNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
as a literary agent
Literary agent
A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...
, and went on to represent, among others, Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal
The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association . The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The award has been given since 1922. ...
-winning writers Hendrik Willem van Loon
Hendrik Willem van Loon
Hendrik Willem van Loon was a Dutch-American historian and journalist.-Life:He was born in Rotterdam, the son of Hendrik Willem van Loon and Elisabeth Johanna Hanken. He went to the United States in 1902 to study at Cornell University, receiving his degree in 1905...
(who won the first Newbery Medal in 1922), Western authors Zane Grey
Zane Grey
Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the Old West. Riders of the Purple Sage was his bestselling book. In addition to the success of his printed works, they later had second lives and continuing influence...
and Rex Beach
Rex Beach
Rex Ellingwood Beach was an American novelist, playwright, and Olympic water polo player.- Biography :...
, Will James and journalist Andy Rooney. Slesinger acquired the rights to popularize illustrations, texts, characters and personalities in other media, a pioneering effort into ancillary rights uses and licensing. Always interested in new media, Slesinger took out patents for experimental television presentations of cartoons and presented Winnie the Pooh as the first Sunday morning TV cartoon in the mid-1940s. (The New York TImes)
Winnie-the-Pooh
Slesinger acquired US and Canadian merchandising, television, recording and other trade rights to Winnie-the-PoohWinnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh , and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner...
from A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...
in the 1930s, and developed Winnie-the-Pooh commercializations for more than 30 years. Slesinger created Pooh's trademark red shirt and adapted Shepard's drawings into classic Americanized versions for the stage, radio, television and character licensing. In the 1950s, after Slesinger's death, his widow, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell
Shirley Slesinger Lasswell
Shirley Slesinger Lasswell was an American brand marketing pioneer. She is best known for licensing the rights to Winnie The Pooh to the Walt Disney Company in 1961 and later suing the company in a dispute over royalties.-Early and personal life:Lasswell was born Shirley Ann Basso in Detroit,...
, took over the business and launched her own nationwide licensing campaigns. In 1961 and 1983, Stephen Slesinger, Inc. licensed certain Pooh rights to the Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
.
Premiums and products
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...
' Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
character and produced a series of Big Little Books, games, premiums, toys, treasure maps and other products. Slesinger's marketing and media strategy for Tarzan became the blueprint for success in character merchandising, even among competing characters such as Superman. Slesinger's The New Adventures of Tarzan "Pop-Up" (Blue Ribbon Press, 1935) book, which he also illustrated, was chosen by Albert Tillman as one of the 100 best pop-up books ever published and featured on the cover of Tillman's historical survey, Pop-Up! Pop-Up! (Whalestooth, 1998).
Slesinger purchased the rights to the Ozark Ike
Ozark Ike
Ozark Ike was a newspaper comic strip about dumb but likable Ozark Ike McBatt, a youth from a rural area in the mountains. The strip was created by Rufus A. Gotto while he was serving in the Navy during World War II in Washington, D.C...
comic strip from creator Rufus A. ("Ray") Gotto. In 1936, it became his first comic strip in syndication. Other licensing included Tom Mix
Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features...
, King of the Royal Mounted
King of the Royal Mounted
King of the Royal Mounted is a fictional series featuring the character Dave King, created by Stephen Slesinger in 1936. Slesinger licensed popular Western writer Zane Grey's byline and marketed the character as Zane Grey's King of the Royal Mounted....
, Alley Oop
Alley Oop
Alley Oop is a syndicated comic strip, created in 1932 by American cartoonist V. T. Hamlin, who wrote and drew the popular and influential strip through four decades for Newspaper Enterprise Association...
, Captain Easy
Captain Easy
Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune was an action/adventure comic strip created by Roy Crane that was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association beginning on Sunday, July 30, 1933...
, Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs was a comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from April 14, 1924 to January 10, 1988.Initially titled Washington Tubbs II, it originally was a gag-a-day strip which focused on the mundane misadventures of the title character, a bespectacled bumbler who ran a store. However, Crane soon...
, Polly the Powers Model, Charlie Chan
Charlie Chan
Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese-American detective created by Earl Derr Biggers in 1919. Loosely based on Honolulu detective Chang Apana, Biggers conceived of the benevolent and heroic Chan as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes, such as villains like Fu Manchu...
, Buck Rogers
Buck Rogers
Anthony Rogers is a fictional character that first appeared in Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan in the August 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories. A sequel, The Airlords of Han, was published in the March 1929 issue....
and Og, Son of Fire, as well as all Newspaper Enterprise Association
United Media
United Media is a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. It syndicates 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core business is the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association...
comic strips.
Original characters
In the late 1930s, Slesinger began developing original characters, which he then hired artists to bring to life. Most prominent among these are Red RyderRed Ryder
Red Ryder was a popular long-running Western comic strip created by Stephen Slesinger and artist Fred Harman. Beginning Sunday, November 6, 1938, Red Ryder was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association, expanding over the following decade to 750 newspapers, translations into ten languages and...
and King of the Royal Mounted
King of the Royal Mounted
King of the Royal Mounted is a fictional series featuring the character Dave King, created by Stephen Slesinger in 1936. Slesinger licensed popular Western writer Zane Grey's byline and marketed the character as Zane Grey's King of the Royal Mounted....
, which became Slesinger's most popular characters, syndicated internationally in newspaper comic strips and also generating books, radio shows, motion pictures and numerous ancillary commercial products.
Red Ryder and Little Beaver
Working with artist Fred HarmanFred Harman
Fred Harman was an American artist, best known for his popular Red Ryder comic strip, which he drew for 25 years, reaching 40 million readers through 750 newspapers. Harman sometimes used the pseudonym Ted Horn....
, who came from Pagosa Springs, Colorado
Pagosa Springs, Colorado
Pagosa Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat of, and the only incorporated municipality in, Archuleta County, Colorado, United States. The population was 1,591 at the 2000 census...
, Slesinger launched the popular comic strip Red Ryder. The strip's artistic style evolved from Harman's 1937 comic strip, Bronc Peeler
Bronc Peeler
Bronc Peeler was an American fictional cowboy created by Fred Harman. Harman created the Western adventure comic strip in 1933. Harman is best known as the artist for the Red Ryder comics, which was created by Stephen Slesinger....
. The two worked on the project for a year before Red Ryder was launched in 1938.
Between 1938 and 1967, the long-run Red Ryder comic strip was also a long-run comic book, the subject of 12 chapter films, 26 motion pictures and numerous merchandising and promotional tie-ins, including the still-produced Red Ryder Daisy Carbine Air Rifle, which holds the longest continuing license in the history of the licensing industry and was depicted in the film A Christmas Story
A Christmas Story
A Christmas Story is a 1983 American Christmas comedy film based on the short stories and semi-fictional anecdotes of author and raconteur Jean Shepherd, including material from his books In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories. It was directed by Bob Clark...
(1983).
King of the Royal Mounted
In 1937 Slesinger licensed Zane Grey's byline and created King of the Royal Mounted, the adventures of a Canadian Mountie who always got his man. King appeared in newspaper strips, comics, Little Big Books and other ancillary items. Grey's son Romer and Slesinger collaborated on many of the stories, and the artwork was produced by Allen Dean and Charles Flanders in Slesinger's New York studio. A movie serial was produced in 1942.Television and films
In 1940 Slesinger licensed to Republic Pictures the right to produce a 12-chapter Red Ryder serial and 23 Red Ryder motion pictures from 1944 to 1946.In the mid-1940s through the early 1950s, Stephen Slesinger Productions began producing films and television programs, including adaptations of Winnie-the-Pooh, Red Ryder, King of the Royal Mounted and The West That Lives Forever. He formed Telecomics Presents, which displayed scripted comic strip segments as static images instead of animation. There were approximately 130 episodes produced, each lasting about three minutes. Each episode began with the opening of a comic book, the first page showing a silhouette of the lead character (Space Barton, Danny March or Kid Champion); the page then turned to show a full-page illustration. Telecomics is generally noted as one of the first cartoon series produced for television. In 1950, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
optioned Telecomics' product and repackaged it as NBC Comics.
Blondie
In 1951, Slesinger acquired the rights to make a Blondie television show with Arthur LakeArthur Lake (actor)
Arthur Lake was an American actor known best for bringing Dagwood Bumstead, the bumbling husband of Blondie, to life in film, radio and television.-Early life and career:...
as Dagwood Bumstead
Dagwood Bumstead
Dagwood Bumstead is a main character in comic artist Chic Young's long-running comic strip Blondie. He first appeared sometime prior to 17 February 1933....
. He was working on the pilot episode at the time of his death on December 17, 1953.
Among Slesinger's many honors was a proclamation shortly before his death in 1953 from the County of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
which singled him out as a "nationally known humanitarian" whose works "are read by more than 25 million youngsters and adults" and who "has devoted much of his personal time and energy toward helping underprivileged children throughout the nation" and whose "interest in underprivileged children stems from the magnificent work done by his mother, Augusta Slesinger, who served as a psychoanalyst and social worker… for 40 years". The proclamation ends with Slesinger being "complimented for continuing to help in the program of making better citizens out of the youth of the land."