Monthly Archives: August 2015

Frank Mott, Miss Mizzou, & Mort Walker

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IMAGE: An inscribed personal photo of Milton Caniff sent to Dean Frank Mott made it to the front page of the Columbia Missourian on October 10th, 1952. Used with permission of the Columbia Missourian.

In the Miss Mizzou book I tell of how Milton Caniff was invited to speak at MU Journalism Week by MU Dean Frank Mott in 1949. Caniff visited during the conference which eventually led to the creation of Miss Mizzou. If it hadn’t have been for Frank Mott, there would have been no Miss Mizzou.

Recently I was reminded that Caniff wasn’t the only cartoonist who interacted with Frank Mott. Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey went to school at Mizzou and also had a run in with Mott as a student.

This “run in” took form of an argument that developed when it came to Mott’s attention that Walker had not taken his “History and Principles of Journalism” course and therefore could not graduate from the MU Journalism School. Apparently when the dust had settled, Mott had booted Walker out of the Journalism School. You can hear Mort Walker tell the story in this video.

Everything eventually worked out though. Walker got his degree from MU in 1948 with a BA in humanities and went on to become one of the biggest comic strip success stories of the century. Walker’s expulsion from the Journalism School became a bit of campus legend, but at least in one case the legend was a bit garbled; in 1965, a student writing for the “Williams House Word” suggested Milton Caniff faced “expulsion” from the MU Journalism School, when it was actually Mort Walker.

Miss Mizzou Story in MIZZOU Magazine

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mizzou fall 2015Miss Mizzou is the cover story in the fall 2015 issue of MIZZOU Magazine, the quarterly magazine of the Mizzou Alumni Association. Kelsey Allen interviewed me for the story and did a wonderful write-up about the book. (Don’t forget to check out her story with cartoonist Mort Walker in the issue too.) Past articles of the magazine (previously called the Missouri Alumnus before it was changed to MIZZOU) were incredibly helpful when it came to writing the book, so I’m glad the character could make a reappearance on the pages of the magazine!

Miss Mizzou & the Korean War

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, October 16, 1950– Copyright 2015 the Milton Caniff Estate. Steve Canyon tells Reed Kimberly that he’s rejoined the military because of the Korean conflict.

“Steve Canyon” started out in 1947 as a “post-World War II” comic strip. The protagonist Steve Canyon was a pilot in the war, but went into the civilian sector to deliver packages by air. A lot of the early story-lines in the strip mentioned his military connections from the war and how his current civilian life contrasted with his years in the service. The World War II years of Caniff’s previous strip “Terry and the Pirates” had won him a dedicated audience interested in military matters and the Steve Canyon strip made a nod to this where it could. When the Korean War started in 1950, Caniff felt it appropriate to get Steve Canyon back into military life, so the character re-enlisted. The strip stayed a military strip for the rest of its run until 1988.

During World War II, Caniff had created the comic strip “Male Call” with the character Miss Lace. The strip was exclusively made for servicemen overseas and fit right in with the pin-up girl culture that was becoming popular with that audience. Perhaps the introduction of Miss Mizzou in 1952 could also be seen as carrying on the legacy of Miss Lace for the servicemen involved with the Korean conflict? Many drawings of Miss Mizzou have somewhat of a “pin-up” look to them so this may have been the case.

It must be said that the images of Miss Mizzou that have a “pin-up” look stand in contrast to how Miss Mizzou was drawn in the comic strip most of the time. Suggestive Miss Mizzou images occasionally made it into newspapers or magazines to promote the comic strip, but within the borders of the comic strip, the character was drawn quite conservatively. This demure character image was probably a calculated move by Caniff to satisfy censors so they would ignore the risqué dialog he would occasionally give to the character. R.C. Harvey has written about this technique Caniff used at various points in his strip.

Miss Mizzou wasn’t the only cartoon character tied to Mid-Missouri and the Korean War. Columbia, Missouri native Bill Hume (1916–2009) was stationed in Japan during the Korean War and drew a series of cartoons featuring a Japanese woman he named Babysan. Politically incorrect by today’s standards, the character would speak in broken English and pose in suggestive outfits. Hume returned to Columbia, Missouri after the war and put out several books with the character. R.C. Harvey has written an essay about Hume that has appeared in the recent book “Insider Histories of Cartooning.” (Miss Mizzou is briefly mentioned in the essay as well.)

Miss Mizzou, Bild Lilli, & Barbie

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IMAGE: Bild tabloid Kiosk in Germany, 2008. Photo via R/DV/RS on flickr. Some rights reserved.

In the Miss Mizzou book I mention that in the summer of 1958 there were two Miss Mizzou dolls that went to a prototype phase that never went into mass production. One was a paper doll, and the other was a doll similar to a Barbie. The prototype Miss Mizzou doll actually preceded the Barbie doll by a year though; Barbie appeared for the first time in 1959. What you might not know is that Barbie herself had her origins in newspaper comics, just like the Miss Mizzou doll. Let me explain further.

Back in 1952, artist Reinhard Beuthien created a single panel cartoon called Lilli for the tabloid “Bild-Zeitung” in Hamburg, Germany. The cartoon reportedly started out as a fill in cartoon on June 24, 1952, the first issue of the paper. The Lilli character was an independent blonde woman who was employed as a secretary at a newspaper. The cartoon presented humorous takes on various subjects, but the primary appeal of strip was the suggestive visuals and dialogue aimed at a men’s audience.

In 1953 the “Bild-Zeitung” tabloid decided to create a doll based on the character and enlisted Max Weissbrodt from the toy company O&M Hausser to bring the drawings to life. The Bild Lilli doll went on sale in 1955 and was initially marketed to adults as a sexy novelty toy, but eventually she became popular with children.

Ruth Handler of the Mattel toy company had wanted to create doll with adult features that she suspected might fill a consumer interest for children. Handler came across the Bild Lilli doll while on vacation in Switzerland & Austria during 1956. She returned to America and reworked the doll, which debuted in March of 1959 under the Mattel brand as Barbie. The doll became popular and Mattel bought out the rights to the Bild Lilli doll in 1964.

Cartoonist Reinhard Beuthien stopped doing the Lili series January 5, 1961, supposedly because the tabloid asked him to marry off the Lilli character. He created two similar characters afterward: Schwabinchen for “Abendzeitung” (which inspired it’s own doll) and Gigi for “Revue.” The Lilli character was revived for a while by the “Bild” tabloid (formerly “Bild-Zeitung”) back in in the late 1980s by cartoonist John M. Burns, and in 2007 by the cartoonist studio of Ully Arndt. Both revivals kept the suggestive undertones of the original, but they both changed the name to Lilly; this was probably done in an effort to avoid rights hassles with Mattel.

The story of Bild Lilli is somewhat similar to Miss Mizzou: Both women were blonde cartoon characters introduced into newspapers in 1952 who eventually inspired dolls to be created. One has to wonder: What would have happened if a Miss Mizzou doll would have got out of the prototype phase? Would the doll have rivaled the sales of Barbie?

Author note: I’m not sure if I got all the facts right on this post or not, but I cobbled it together the best I could. It’s hard to find credible information about the Bild Lilli doll and comic since Mattel controls the rights to the character and little to nothing has been officially published about the doll. You can read more about the rights issues in doll maker Rolf Hausser’s interview or in the book “Barbie and Ruth.”