A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE…
By PETER BOSCH
George McManus was part of a generation of comic-strip artists who were not only great illustrators, but became rich making people laugh.
McManus was born January 23, 1884, in St. Louis and, like the character he would be most famous for drawing — Jiggs in Bringing Up Father — he was of Irish heritage and he was not rich to begin with. The son of a theater manager, young George liked to draw… and draw… and draw — until one day a teacher caught him sketching an image of a classmate. She turned it and other drawings he had in his desk over to his father, who asked him if he had done them.
George said yes, expecting the worst but his father took them to a local newspaper, whose editor bought the drawing of the classmate — and hired George for $5 a week as an office boy. He moved up from that position to providing illustrations for the newspaper’s reporting.
George McManus dressed as Jiggs, 1952.
Success did not come easy for him. As an adult, he had been drawing almost a dozen different strips before he created Bringing Up Father, which debuted as a daily strip January 2, 1913. (A Sunday was added April 14, 1918.) Bringing Up Father was the point at which McManus himself became a celebrity. He acquired many fans, one of whom was the great Charlie Chaplin.
George McManus and his wife, Florence, on a visit to Charlie Chaplin’s film set for The Kid (1921). Child actor Jackie Coogan stands between them. (Coogan would grow up to play Uncle Fester on TV’s The Addams Family.)
The basic premise of the strip was that Jiggs and Maggie were nouveau riche (McManus never revealed within the strip how they became millionaires, but some historians have stated incorrectly he won a sweepstakes). Despite the money, Jiggs longed for those days when he was just an Irish immigrant worker who carried bricks on construction sites and shared a pint with his friends at Dinty Moore’s.
Maggie, though a loving wife and mother when they were poor, turned into a real battle axe after he became rich, always wanting to become accepted within society life but blaming his lack of sophistication as a deterrent to that happening. And a battle axe was about the only thing she did not throw at Jiggs when she was upset with him. It became a main gag with him getting all sorts of household items thrown at him.
But, oh, the art of those strips! McManus never stopped amazing readers with the intricacies of his drawing crowds and scenery. (While the strip was solely credited to McManus, he was ably assisted with writing by his brother Charles, who died in 1941, and art by his assistant, Zeke Zekley.)
Bringing Up Father newspaper strip, November 15, 1936
One of the great highlights in the strip’s run by McManus was when he had the family touring the United States from 1939 to 1940. (This was a follow-up to a series of strips with them exploring Europe.) Here are 13 of the many exceptional Sundays from that storyline.
(Bear in mind, the scans below are a mere fraction of the original size of a newspaper Sunday page in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In their original size, they are much more jaw droppingly incredible!)
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The American vacation storyline begins. First stop is Boulder Dam, previously called Hoover Dam. By 1947, it had officially reverted to Hoover Dam. December 3, 1939.
The Grand Canyon. December 17, 1939.
Times Square. December 31, 1939.
Seeing the first panel from the above strip blown up shows why it took McManus and Zekley several weeks to complete it.
Jiggs and Maggie are in New York, back where they grew up. Jiggs is delighted people remember him, but Maggie is horrified the ladies recall her from her days as a laundress. January 7, 1940.
More New York sights. February 11, 1940.
Philadelphia. February 25, 1940.
Washington, D.C. March 17, 1940.
This March 24, 1940, Sunday page featured a number of stops along the way.
Boston. March 31, 1940.
Chicago. April 21, 1940.
Pittsburgh. April 28, 1940.
Atlantic City. May 5, 1940.
Home again, home again. July 7, 1940.
In addition to the Sundays, the daily strip during that time was also devoted to their holiday. Here are several of the weekday strips:
Bringing Up Father had an audience of 80 million readers in 400 newspapers across 22 countries. And the strip was adapted to many other formats — including…
…a Broadway musical…
…six movies…
…a radio program…
…and various merchandising, including several series of comic books.
Jiggs and Maggie #11 (1949, Standard/Pines). (It is unconfirmed if the cover really was drawn by McManus.)
In 1952, McManus said that Bringing Up Father had earned him $12 million during his lifetime.
The newspaper strip included a lot of comic violence — but MAD #17 (Nov. 1954, EC) decided to look beyond the humor and show what it would have been really like if Maggie continued to bean Jiggs with dishes and anything else close at hand. The script by Harvey Kurtzman divided it into the way the comic strip looked to readers (with McManus’ style perfectly imitated by Bill Elder) and how it would have been in real life (illustrated by Bernie Krigstein):
George McManus died of a stroke October 22, 1954. The strip was assigned by the syndicate to a number of artists and writers over the decades, but none was ever able to duplicate McManus’ inventiveness. The strip finally came to an end May 28, 2000, 87 years after it began.
But to wrap up this tribute to McManus (and to Jiggs), here is the Sunday immediately following the famous American tour.
July 14, 1940
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MORE
— WARREN TUFTS AND THE WILD WEST: A 100th Birthday Tribute. Click here.
— STAN DRAKE and THE HEART OF JULIET JONES: A Rich, Artistic Legacy. Click here.
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13th Dimension contributor-at-large PETER BOSCH’s first book, American TV Comic Books: 1940s-1980s – From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, was published by TwoMorrows. (You can buy it here.) A sequel, American Movie Comic Books: 1930s-1970s — From the Silver Screen to the Printed Page, is out now. (Buy it here.) Peter has written articles and conducted celebrity interviews for various magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hollywood.
