Lil Abner & Al Capp History

"Li'l Abner" ranks among the greatest comic strips ever created. Devotees argue that it is the greatest. But what is indisputable is that Al Capp (Alfred Gerald Caplin) was the best known, most influential and most controversial cartoonist of his era. "Li'l Abner," at its peak, appeared in more than 900 newspapers with a daily readership of 90,000,000. A handful of competing comic strips appeared in more newspapers, but Capp's exposure didn't end in the comic section. His personal celebrity transcended comics, reaching the public and influencing the culture in a variety of media. For many years he simultaneously produced the daily strip, a weekly syndicated newspaper column and a 500-station radio program while maintaining a steady presence on television screens.

In a single five-year cluster five of America's top magazines paid prominent homage to Capp's genius. In 1947 he earned a Newsweek cover story. That same year The New Yorker's profile on him was so long that it ran in consecutive issues. In 1950 he was a cover story for TIME. Two years later he and his characters graced the covers of both LIFE and TV Guide.

In 1937 Capp created Sadie Hawkins Day as an annual November plot device in "Li'l Abner," in which Dogpatch's love-starved maidens were allowed to chase and catch the town's eligible bachelors. In 1939, only two years after its inauguration, a double-page spread in LIFE proclaimed, "On Sadie Hawkins Day Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges." In 1952 the fictional event was celebrated at 40,000 known venues!

Capp was an aggressive and fearless businessman. Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not the strips' creators. And virtually all cartoonists remain content with their diluted share of any merchandising revenue their syndicates arrange. When the starving and broke Capp first sold "Li'l Abner" in 1934 (only 8 newspapers initially subscribed) he gladly accepted the syndicate's standard onerous contract. But in 1947 Capp sued United Features Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in "Li'l Abner," and wrested ownership and control of his creation. The coup occurred just in time for his family-operated Capp Enterprises, Inc. to engineer the Shmoo merchandising phenomenon of 1948-52. Close to one hundred licensed Shmoo products from seventy-five different manufacturers were produced within the first year alone, some of which sold five million units each. Capp's syndicate was frozen out.

Capp was also a master of the art of product endorsement. For decades it was difficult to look at a major periodical without seeing Al Capp's cast of characters in one prominent advertisement or another. His bumbling detective Fearless Fosdick tirelessly moonlighted for Wild Root Cream Oil (a hair product) in countless black and white comic strip ads and on barbershop signage. Mammy & Pappy Yokum, Daisy Mae, Abner and other Dogpatchers pitched products as varied as Cream of Wheat and Grape Nuts cereals; Kraft caramels; Ivory, Oxydol, Duz and Dreft soap products; Fruit of the Loom underwear; Cheney neckties; Pedigree pencils; Strunk chain saws and General Electric light bulbs.

The advertising exposure (and revenue) did not end with Al Capp's two-dimensional spokesmen. Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. A chain-smoker, he happily plugged Chesterfield cigarettes; he appeared in Schaeffer fountain pens ads; pitched the Famous Artists School (in which he had a financial interest); showed his own hair slicked back by Wild Root Cream Oil; and, though a professed teetotaler, he personally endorsed Rheingold beer, among other products.

In 1956 the musical Li'l Abner, starring Peter Palmer and Edie Adams, was a Broadway hit, followed by nationwide tours, and then adapted into a 1959 Paramount film. Hollywood had earlier made a Li'l Abner film with Buster Keaton (1940) and a series of animated cartoons. Fearless Fosdick starred in his own prime-time puppet show in 1952 and no less than three Li'l Abner TV pilots or specials were filmed and aired. Many saw the hugely successful Beverly Hillbillies as a blatant rip-off. The commercial exploitation of Al Capp's creations took another leap in 1967 with the opening of a long-running amusement park in Arkansas. Dogpatch U.S.A. remained a popular tourist attraction till the 1990's.

No medium could compete with the impact of television in the last half of the twentieth century and Capp as a bombastic personality, was a natural fit. He remains the only cartoonist to be embraced by TV. No other comic artist has come close to Capp's televised exposure.

During TV's infancy Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics (1947-54). He was a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? (1948-55). In 1953 Capp moderated What's the Story? for the Dumont network. The same year he hosted Anyone Can Win for CBS (wherein one panelist regularly wore one of Capp's Hairless Joe masks). He could appear as a celebrity guest on a kid show like Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers as well as Sid Caesar's top-rated Your Show of Shows. For two decades the outspoken Capp regularly entertained millions as a regular guest on NBC's Tonight show, spanning three hosts (Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson). And no less than four different times he had his very own TV vehicle: The Al Capp Show (1952), Al Capp's America (1954), The Al Capp Show (1968), Al Capp (1971-72) and was the subject of an NBC special, This is Al Capp (1970).

By the mid '60s Capp, a longtime outspoken liberal, took a hard swing to the right. He became one of America's highest-paid college lecturers, belittling longhaired students and anti-war protesters in cantankerous and acrimonious tones. "Li'l Abner" plots also reflected the cartoonist's new conservative political views. In 1970 he garnered headlines when his White House friends Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew encouraged him to run for the Massachusetts Senate seat against solid incumbent Ted Kennedy, but Capp was disqualified on a technicality. Very soon afterward sex scandals created altogether different headlines and a long downward personal and career spiral began.

Conservative syndicated columnists Jack Anderson and Brit Hume published a blistering exposé charging Capp with sexual harassment and assault of co-eds during his lecture tours. He garnered further unwanted news coverage when he was charged on three morals counts over an incident in Eau Claire WI in 1971. He got off in 1972 by pleading guilty to a lesser charge and paying a fine, but he lost one-third of his client newspapers and his career never recovered. Later, prominent actresses such as Grace Kelly, Edie Adams and Goldie Hawn added to his ignominy with public accounts of Capp's inappropriate sexual behavior.

Despite his public humiliations, "Li'l Abner" staggered on for several more years. Capp himself admitted that it ceased being funny. When he retired in 1977, newspapers ran expansive articles and television commentators talked about the passing of an era. People magazine ran a substantial feature, and even the comics-free New York Times devoted nearly a full page to the event. When Capp died two years later, there was further extensive media coverage.

Public interest in Al Capp and his creations did not ended with his passing. In 1992 muckraking journalist Seymour Hirsh, in The New Yorker, charged that President Nixon had used his political connections to "fix" Capp's 1972 sex case in Wisconsin. Capp is prominently, though not flatteringly, featured in three recent documentary films, including Imagine, on John Lennon and Yoko Ono; and a documentary on Capp himself is in progress.

Since the late '80s, no less than thirty-six books from five different domestic publishers have been solely devoted to Capp's work. Licensed merchandise continues to be produced, including a roll-out of several Li'l Abner slot machines from Bally Gaming in 2004 and 2005.

~ By Denis Kitchen, © 2004