The Gumps
Encyclopedia
Sidney Smith (The Gumps)
For the British expert on the Yoruba people of Nigeria, see Professor Robert Sidney Smith.Robert Sidney Smith , known as Sidney Smith, was the creator of the influential comic strip, The Gumps, based on an idea by Captain Joseph M. Patterson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune.He was born...
in 1917, launching a 42-year run in newspapers from February 12, 1917 until October 17, 1959.
As revealed in Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
in 1937, Smith's strip was inspired by a real-life person he met through his brother: "Born 47 years ago in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Bay Saint Louis is a city located in Hancock County, Mississippi. It is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 8,209. It is the county seat of Hancock County...
, as Andy Wheat, he acquired his unusual physiognomy as the result of an infection following the extraction of a tooth, which eventually necessitated the removal of his entire lower jaw. Through Dr. Thomas Smith of Bloomingdale, Illinois
Bloomingdale, Illinois
Bloomingdale is a village in DuPage County, Illinois, United States, approximately 25 miles west of Chicago. The population was 21,675 at the 2000 census.-History:...
, a dentist and a brother of Sidney Smith, he met the cartoonist, who saw in him an ideal comic character. Andy subsequently had his name legally changed to Gump. His wife's name is Min and he has two children named Chester and Goliath, now living in San Francisco, and an Uncle Bim who lives in Georgia. His home is in Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
, but he also has a farm near his birthplace in Mississippi."
Characters and story
The Gumps were utterly ordinary: chinless, bombastic blowhard Andy Gump, who is intimidated by his wife, Min (short for Minerva), their son Chester, wealthy Uncle Bim and their annoying maid Tilda. They had a cat called Hope and a dog named Buck. The idea was envisioned by Joseph PattersonJoseph Medill Patterson
Joseph Medill Patterson was an American journalist and publisher, grandson of publisher Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago Tribune and a mayor of Chicago, Illinois.-Family:...
, editor and publisher of 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...
, who was important in the early histories of Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...
and other long-run comic strips. Patterson referred to the masses as "gumps" and thought a strip about the domestic lives of ordinary people and their ordinary happenings would appeal to the "gumps." He hired Smith to write and draw the strip, and it was Smith who breathed life into the characters.
Debut
The Gumps made its debut in an unusual way. Cartoonist Sidney Smith had previously drawn and written Old Doc YakOld Doc Yak
Old Doc Yak was a comic strip by Sidney Smith that centered around a talking goat. The origin of the character was Buck Nix, a goat Smith drew in 1908 for the Chicago Evening Journal. For three years, Nix romanced a she-goat called Nanny...
, a talking-animal strip that sustained only a brief run. The very last Old Doc Yak strip depicted the Yak and his family moving out of their house, while wondering who might move into the house next. On Thursday, February 8, 1917, the last panel showed only the empty house. On Monday, February 12, 1917, after the Gumps were introduced in the space formerly occupied by Old Doc Yak, they moved into the house formerly occupied by the Yak family.
The Gumps had a key role in the rise of syndication when Robert R. McCormick
Robert R. McCormick
Robert Rutherford "Colonel" McCormick was a member of the McCormick family of Chicago who became owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper...
and Patterson, who had both been publishing 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...
since 1914, planned to launch a tabloid in New York, as comics historian Coulton Waugh
Coulton Waugh
Frederick Coulton Waugh was a cartoonist, painter, teacher and author, best known for his illustration work on the comic strip Dickie Dare and his book The Comics , the first major study of the field.His father was the marine artist Frederick Judd Waugh, and his grandfather was the Philadelphia...
explained:
- So originated on June 16, 1919, the Illustrated Daily News, a title which, as too English, was almost at once clipped to Daily News. It was a picture paper, and it was a perfect setting for the newly developed art of the comic strip. The first issue shows but a single strip, The Gumps. It was the almost instant popularity of this famous strip that directly brought national syndication into being. Midwestern and other papers began writing to the Chicago Tribune, which also published The Gumps, requesting to be allowed to use the new comic, and the result was that the heads of the two papers collaborated and founded the Chicago Tribune New York News SyndicateTribune Media ServicesTribune Media Services is a syndication company owned by the Tribune Company.The company has two divisions, "News and Features" and "Entertainment Products"...
, which soon was distributing Tribune-News features to every nook and cranny of the country.
Films
As one of the earliest continuity strips, The Gumps was extremely popular, with newspaper readers anxiously following the convoluted storylines. By 1919, this popularity prompted an interest in film adaptations, and in 1920-21, with writing credited to Smith, animation director Wallace A. Carlson produced and directed more than 50 animated shorts, some no longer than two minutes, for distribution through Paramount. Between 1923 and 1928, Universal PicturesUniversal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
produced at least four dozen Gumps two-reel comedies starring Joe Murphy (1877–1961), one of the original Keystone Cops, as Andy Gump, Fay Tincher
Fay Tincher
Fay Tincher was a comic actress in motion pictures of the silent film era. She was from Topeka, Kansas. Her hair was black and her eyes were brown. Tincher's appearance was sometimes compared to that of a French woman....
as Min and Jack Morgan as Chester. Many of these shorts were directed by Norman Taurog
Norman Taurog
Norman Rae Taurog was an American film director, and screenwriter.Between 1920 and 1968, Taurog directed over 140 films, and directed Elvis Presley in more movies than any other director...
, later famed as the leading director of Elvis Presley movies.
In the comic strip, Sidney Smith had Andy run for Congress in 1922 and for President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
in 1924 and in practically every succeeding election, one of the first of many comic strip and cartoon characters to run for office. In 1924, Smith wrote his characters into a novel, Andy Gump: His Life Story, published in Chicago by Reilly & Lee. In 1929, when Smith killed off Mary Gold, she was the first major comic strip character to die, and 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...
had to hire extra staff to deal with the constant phone calls and letters from stunned readers.
The strip and its merchandising (toys, games, a popular song, playing cards, food products) made Smith a wealthy man. On his way home from signing a $150,000 a year contract in 1935, he crashed his new Rolls-Royce and died. Patterson replaced Smith with sports cartoonist Gus Edson
Gus Edson
Gus Edson was an American cartoonist known for two popular, long running comic strips, The Gumps and Dondi....
. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when actor Martin Landau
Martin Landau
Martin Landau is an American film and television actor. Landau began his career in the 1950s. His early films include a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest . He played continuing roles in the television series Mission: Impossible and Space:1999...
was a cartoonist, he worked as Edson's assistant on The Gumps, eventually drawing 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...
s for Edson.
Radio
The Gumps launched a craze for continuity strips in newspapers. It also had a huge influence on the history of radio and television programming. Radio/TV sitcoms and serialized dramas can all be traced back to The Gumps, as detailed by broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod in the "Andy Gump to Andy Brown" section of her popular culture essay, and her book, The Original Amos 'n' Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, and the 1928-43 Radio Serial (McFarland, 2005).At the Chicago Tribunes radio station WGN, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll signed on as staffers in 1925. WGN executive Ben McCanna believed that a dramatic serial could work on radio just as it did in newspapers. When he approached Gosden and Correll to adapt The Gumps to radio, they declined and instead devised their own characters for the 1926-27 radio serial, Sam 'n' Henry
Sam 'n' Henry
Sam 'n' Henry was a radio series by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll which aired on Chicago radio station WGN in 1926-1928. The ten minute program is often considered to be the first situation comedy...
. After reworking these characters for Amos 'n' Andy
Amos 'n' Andy
Amos 'n' Andy is a situation comedy set in the African-American community. It was very popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s on both radio and television....
in 1928-29, while borrowing certain elements from The Gumps, they were on their way to becoming millionaires, and the radio serial format they created soon became the model for many other serialized radio dramas.
After The Gumps were finally heard on WGN in 1931, the series moved to CBS for a four-year run (1934-1937), produced and directed by Himan Brown
Himan Brown
Himan Brown , also known as Hi Brown and Mende Brown, was an American producer of radio programs. Producing for the major radio networks and also for syndication, Brown worked with such actors as Helen Hayes, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles while creating...
with scripts by Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw was a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best-known for his novel, The Young Lions about the fate of three soldiers during World War II that was made into a film starring Marlon...
. Shaw had been scripting the Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy is a comic strip featuring Dick Tracy, a hard-hitting, fast-shooting and intelligent police detective. Created by Chester Gould, the strip made its debut on October 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror. It was distributed by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate...
radio series, when Brown asked him if he thought he could write comedy. Brown later said, "He was sensational". Karo Syrup and Pebeco toothpaste/tooth powder were the sponsors.
In the early programs, Jack Boyle portrayed Andy Gump with Dorothy Denvir as Min, Charles Flynn as their son Chester and Bess Flynn as Tilda the maid. Bess Flynn, who was born August 18, 1899 in Tama, Iowa. Flynn scripted for soap operas, including Bachelor's Children
Bachelor's Children
Bachelor's Children was a domestic daytime drama broadcast which originated on Chicago's WGN in 1935-36, continuing on CBS and NBC until 1946....
, Martha Webster and We, the Abbotts, and she also portrayed the title role on Martha Webster. In 1935, Wilmer Walter played Andy Gump with Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Robertson Moorehead was an American actress. Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences...
, in her first radio role, portraying Min during the last two years of the series when Lester Jay and Jackie Kelk were heard as Chester.
Reprints
A gift from the Tribune management to Smith was a large statue of Andy Gump, which stood on Smith's Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Lake Geneva is a city in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 7,148 at the 2000 census. A resort city located on Geneva Lake, it is southwest of Milwaukee and popular with tourists from metropolitan Chicago and Milwaukee.-History:...
estate. After Smith died in 1935, the statue was moved to a city park. In 1943, the statue was acquired by the city of Lake Geneva, but it was destroyed in 1967 during a drunken riot. It was replaced with a new statue, which was stolen in 1989 and again replaced. A plaque honoring Smith was also stolen from Lake Geneva in 1952, but it was later found. The statue is currently on display at the Lake Geneva Museum.