IMAGE: Miss Mizzou talks about being a waitress in her debut in the Steve Canyon comic strip, September 5th, 1952. Copyright 2015 the Milton Caniff Estate.
Milton Caniff had many influences in creating the character Miss Mizzou. Actress Marilyn Monroe & character model Bek Stiner helped inspire the character visually, while a 1949 visit Caniff made to Columbia, Missouri helped inspire the character’s name & back-story. However, the “waitress” part of her back-story came from Caniff’s days as a student at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. In a 1985 interview, Caniff said the Columbia atmosphere sparked his memory: “It reminded me of when I was in college; there was a gal who was a waitress/night cook in a little diner off campus. All the guys went there. They went ostensibly to eat, but they really went to watch this cute kid.”
The only diner that I’ve found mentioned from Caniff’s college years is “Hennick’s,” a restaurant that was situated at 1824 N. High St. in Columbus, Ohio.
Oddly enough, this happens to be directly across the street from the present day Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Sullivant Hall on the Ohio State University Campus. The library & museum was founded in 1977 due to a gift of artwork and papers of alumnus Milton Caniff, and was relocated to Sullivant Hall in 2013.
Here’s what R.C. Harvey had to say about the “Hennick’s” in Caniff’s “Meanwhile” biography: “Owner Herbert Hennick was everybody’s confidant, an entrepreneur who understood college kids and their problems–including, notably, the financial difficulties that arose because money from home came only once a month, which wasn’t often enough.” Harvey goes on to explain that Caniff once earned a week’s meals by decorating the walls with portraits of campus heroes.
“Hennick’s” later became part of “Terry and the Pirates” lore when Caniff introduced “Dude Hennick” into the comic strip. The character was based on an old friend of Caniff’s named Frank Higgs. As Milton Caniff wrote in 1986: “… Dude was his college nickname, and Hennick came from the name of a prominent eatery located directly across the street from Ohio State. It was the campus hangout and Higgs had been associated with it, like Walter Winchell had been associated with the Stork Club in New York.”
It’s hard to say if “Hennick’s” was the place that Caniff was talking about from his college days in regard to Miss Mizzou, but it’s a definite possibility. For more information on the eatery, the “Columbus Dispatch” has an article with a photo from 1946.