Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary - Rilegato

Schumacher, Michael; Kitchen, Denis

 
9781608196234: Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary
Rilegato
ISBN 10: 1608196232 ISBN 13: 9781608196234
Casa editrice: Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA, 2013

Sinossi

More than thirty years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached ninety million readers. The strip ran for forty-three years, spawned two movies and a Broadway musical, and originated such expressions as "hogwash" and "double-whammy." Capp himself was a familiar personality on TV and radio; as a satirist, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain.

Though Li'l Abner brought millions joy, the man behind the strip was a complicated and often unpleasant person. A childhood accident cost him a leg-leading him to art as a means of distinguishing himself. His apprenticeship with Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, started a twenty-year feud that ended in Fisher's suicide. Capp enjoyed outsized publicity for a cartoonist, but his status abetted sexual misconduct and protected him from the severest repercussions. Late in life, his politics became extremely conservative; he counted Richard Nixon as a friend, and his gift for satire was redirected at targets like John Lennon, Joan Baez, and anti-war protesters on campuses across the country.

With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen have written a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure-told here with authority and heart.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Denis Kitchen created Mom's Homemade Comics in 1968 as a self-published underground cartoonist in Milwaukee. A year later, he formed Krupp Comic Works, Inc., a hippie comix empire. Kitchen is also the founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Since the '70s, he has been both an agent for and publisher of comics and books. He lives in Shutesbury, Massachusetts.

Michael Schumacher has written biographies of Allen Ginsberg, Eric Clapton, Phil Ochs, Francis Ford Coppola, George Mikan, and, most recently, comics pioneer Will Eisner. His other recent books include Wreck of the Carl D. and Mighty Fitz. He lives in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

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AL CAPP

A LIFE TO THE CONTRARY

By MICHAEL SCHUMACHER, DENIS KITCHEN

BLOOMSBURY

Copyright ©2013 Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60819-623-4

Contents

Preface....................................................................vii
1 Flashpoint...............................................................1
2 Young Dreams and Schemes.................................................12
3 The Hills................................................................25
4 Uncle Bob's Generosity...................................................36
5 Breaking into the Business...............................................46
6 Hatfield and McCoy.......................................................58
7 Li'l Abner...............................................................75
8 Nina.....................................................................92
9 Merry-Go-Round...........................................................103
10 Greetings from Lower Slobbovia..........................................119
11 The Shmoo, the Kigmy, and All One Cartoonist Could Ever Want............128
12 Demise of the Monster...................................................151
13 Bright Lights...........................................................181
14 In the Halls of the Enemy...............................................201
15 Scandals................................................................225
16 Descent.................................................................240
Notes......................................................................265
Bibliography...............................................................283
Acknowledgments............................................................291
Index......................................................................295

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

FLASHPOINT


No one will ever know the precise, unvarnished details surrounding AlCapp's losing his left leg at the age of nine. He'd claim that it was the turningpoint of his life, and there is no reason to doubt it, any more than there isgood reason to question his assertion that he never enjoyed a pain-free dayover the next six de cades.

Capp, a first-rate storyteller, comic strip artist, humorist, inventor oftall tales, occasional liar, entertainer supreme, and hair-trigger wit, offeredmany versions of the accident that cost him a leg, each account slightly differentfrom the others—each, one suspects, tailored for a specific audienceor readership.

"Al Capp may have been his own greatest creation," Dave Schreiner, acomics historian and editor, once wrote. "He built around himself out of hispersonal history a pyramid of truth, near-truth, and myth which helpedtransform the already colorful and interesting Alfred Gerald Caplin into thecontroversial and legendary Al Capp, world's best-known newspaper cartoonist."

Schreiner, whose significant work in comics included editing all buttwo of comics giant Will Eisner's graphic novels, believed that Capp had theability to make any story believable, including his account of losing his leg.

"Capp was one of the very best storytellers," Schreiner observed, "andhe did not confine his enormous talent to the funny pages. He mixed plausibilityand outrageousness in his work, and when he related anecdotes andincidents from his life, the same rules applied."

What is known about the accident that claimed Capp's leg is thatCapp, then answering to his given name of Alfred Caplin, was in need of ahaircut. The eldest son of Otto and Matilda "Tillie" Caplin, of New Haven,Connecticut, Alfred was five weeks shy of his tenth birthday and had a fullhead of thick black hair that, more often than not, looked as if it had beengroomed with a mixing spoon. Alfred's parents would let it go until it hadgrown too long for the day's standards, at which point one or the otherwould hand him enough money for a haircut.

On this day—Friday, August 21, 1919—father and son were on theirown. Tillie was upstate with the other children: younger sons Bence andElliott and daughter Madeline, all afflicted with the mumps. She had rentedrooms in a farm house, hoping the clean country air would do them good. Thatafternoon, Otto Caplin pressed a fifty-cent piece into the palm of Alfred'shand: thirty-five cents for the haircut, with five cents as a tip and ten centsto cover trolley fare.

But Alfred had other ideas. He knew something about money, even atthat young age, and after some quick calculations, he figured that he couldget more bang for his half-buck if he made a few adjustments to the plan.He knew of a Prof. Amoroso's Barber Academy, where, he later remembered,"you could get a haircut for fifteen cents and they'd bind your wounds," aplace of wonder where tips were rejected—the perfect transaction.

There was one hitch to the plan. The academy was across town, a fairdistance from the Caplins' Stevens Street house. Rather than catch a trolleyand cut into his potential savings, Alfred decided to hitch a ride on the backof an ice wagon. The free ride, not to mention a sliver of ice on a hot day,seemed to be the ideal solution. "I hopped on that wagon, in a state of bliss,"he'd write many years later.

Somewhere, somehow, Alfred tumbled off the wagon. It might haveoccurred as he was dismounting near the academy, as Alfred would claimin his accounts, or he might have simply walked in front of the trolley withoutlooking, as Otto Caplin later suggested. What ever happened, the resultwas horrific: Alfred wound up sprawled out on the tracks, directly in thepath of an oncoming trolley. Unable to stop, it rolled over Alfred's left leg,crushing his thigh well above the knee. Mercifully, the boy blacked out.

When he regained consciousness, he was in a hospital emergencyroom, surrounded by people in white, all trying to bring him around longenough to determine his identity. Alfred stole a peek at the damage. Thesickening mess reminded him of scrambled eggs. "There was just nothingthat you could call a 'leg' left of it," he'd remember later.

Indecision was the rule of the hour. Hospital personnel didn't want totake action until they had talked to the boy's father. Otto Caplin didn't wantto make a decision until he'd talked to his wife. Tillie Caplin, stuck in themiddle of nowhere with three kids under the age of nine, didn't know whatto think.

Elliott Caplin would never forget the call from home. His mother, inthe kitchen of the farm house, was handed the phone, and she struggled toget details while a group of people stood around the kitchen, listening to Tillieand trying to piece together what had happened. Something was wrong,and it had to be bad. No one called long distance in those days unless it wasserious.

"Her expression never altered," Elliott recalled. "Her face had lost allcolor, but her hand remained steady throughout what must have been anightmare."

Otto told her someone would be picking them up as soon as he couldarrange the ride. Then he rushed to the hospital and joined Alfred, who layon a table near the emergency room. Alfred, sweating profusely, stared aheadin a daze.

"How are you doing?" Otto asked.

"All right," his son answered. He looked like he was about to nod off,but suddenly opened his eyes. "Don't you tell Ma," he implored.


Doctors didn't immediately remove Alfred's damaged leg. Instead, he wasgiven painkillers but very little hope. When the hospital emergency physicianinsisted that Alfred's leg would have to be amputated, Otto Caplindemanded a second opinion. Two other doctors confirmed the original finding,but rather than allow the hospital staff to work on the leg, Otto insistedthat another specialist handle it. Hours passed. The doctor couldn't be located.Finally, the following morning, the doctor arrived and Alfred's leftleg was amputated well above the knee.

In writing about the procedure in his unpublished autobiography manyyears later, Al Capp played down the trauma. "There is no more drama aboutthe amputation of a leg than about a pedicure," he wrote. "The offendingmess is lopped off, and the remains sewn up. It makes no difference whetherit's down near the ankle or six inches from the hip, as mine was."

At the time, however, the boy was in agony. Alfred was not immediatelytold that his leg had been removed, and for days on end he lay in adaze, heavily medicated, in and out of consciousness. Tillie refused to leavehis bedside. When Alfred finally discovered that he'd lost his leg, he wasangry and accusatory.

"They took my leg off!" he shouted at his mother.

"We had to, to save your life," she assured him. She attempted to explainhow they had consulted the best doctors, how they had prayed for himto survive, how he was now like the brave soldiers who came home fromwars without arms or legs.

Alfred wasn't interested in explanations.

"But they have lived," he said of the soldiers. "I'm only a kid. I've juststarted to live!"

Alfred healed quickly, and three weeks after the accident he returnedhome. His childhood, at least the one he knew, had ended.


Alfred hated being a one-legged curiosity. Classmates who once had no interestin him at all were suddenly overflowing with concern and pity.

"With two legs I had been a nobody," he observed bitterly. "With oneleg I was somebody."

Nor did he care for the smothering he received from his mother, whofretted over his condition and cooked him heaps of steaks and lamb chops,protein-laden foods that doctors recommended for the healing pro cess. Hewas relieved when the money ran low, as it always did, and she was forcedto serve the usual meals.

Alfred could be a terror around the apartment. He'd always been temperamental,but following the loss of his leg, he became even more stubbornand surly, prone to explosive fits of rage, usually directed at his mother.He did not attend school for a prolonged period following the accident, andhis sense of isolation and immobility fueled his dark moods.

"Alfred fidgeted," his father later wrote in his own account of his son'slife. "He hated dark days; he hated monotony. He had an insatiable urge tokeep moving."

He was tormented by phantom pains and itches in his missing leg andtoes. He'd experience these sensations—not uncommon for amputees—forthe rest of his life.

Getting around on one leg at home was relatively easy. Alfred couldhop from room to room in the apartment. When he had to leave home, he'duse crutches, his left pantleg pinned up and out of his way. But travelingany kind of distance, like to his school on Davenport Avenue, was problematic.Otto Caplin would take Alfred on those occasions when he was athome; otherwise, the job fell to Alfred's Uncle Ellie, whose difficulties meetingcar payments made the week-to-week arrangement precarious.

Alfred's parents plotted to rearrange their finances in a way that wouldpermit them to buy him an artificial limb. The nearest supplier, a man withthe unfortunate name of Butcher, worked out of Hartford, and his ser vicesweren't cheap. Otto managed to come up with a twenty-five-dollar deposit,and Butcher began custom-designing a prosthetic leg that would fit Alfred.

Alfred hoped the artificial limb would allow him to walk around withlittle effort—and look normal while he was doing it. Those hopes weredashed as soon as Butcher showed up in New Haven with the leg. Theolder man led Alfred into a bedroom and, while the Caplin family waitedanxiously in the living room, instructed him on how to use the leg. Alfredstrapped it on.

There was nothing natural about moving with the leg, and after a fewtentative, stumbling, uncomfortable steps, he grew frightened. He couldbarely maintain his balance, let alone move around smoothly and naturally.

In his memoir, Al Capp Remembered, Elliott Caplin recalled his olderbrother attempting to demonstrate the device. Alfred slipped and cursed; hewas held on his feet by Butcher. He shook off Butcher's support and promptlyfell to the floor. Tillie Caplin screamed. "Shut up, Momma," Alfred said.

"My brother never mastered the art of walking with a wooden leg,"Elliott Caplin wrote. "He would sway precariously with every step like adamaged airplane making an emergency landing."


Later in his life, when he was a wealthy comic strip artist with a face instantlyrecognizable from magazine covers and television appearances, AlCapp would speak of a recurring nightmare in which he fathered a son bornwith one leg. One might escape the immediate effects of an accident suchas his, but its residual effects were never distant.

In the first years following the accident, Alfred grew intimately acquaintedwith just how much he'd lost. He could make light of the fact that,as a marginally gifted athlete, he would no longer embarrass himself on theplaying field. But there was no joking about what the loss of a leg meant tohis choices in career or even his relationships with others. His limitationswere spelled out every time he took a step or tried to negotiate stairs.

Bitter realities and lessons hit him in unexpected ways. For instance,he was always aware that his parents had very little money. It was a realityhe accepted without much thought—until, that is, he lost his leg. Whensomething went wrong with his prosthesis, and it often did, he couldn'tsimply consult with the company that sold him the leg. That would haveeaten more money than the Caplins could afford. Of course, the fact thatOtto Caplin hadn't been making timely payments on the leg didn't help,either. So, instead of having the leg repaired by a specialist, Alfred wouldtake it to a garage where an automotive mechanic would put it back togetherproperly.

Then there was the issue of growth. Alfred's right leg was growing atthe normal rate; his left leg, fashioned out of wood, was going nowhere. Bythe time Alfred was reaching his teen years, one leg was substantiallyshorter than the other. His walking, awkward to begin with, became almostgrotesque.

There was also the problem of shoes. Alfred wore out the sole and heelof his right shoe at a very quick pace, due to the exertion placed on his "good"leg, whereas the left shoe wasn't nearly as worn. As an adult, he'd buy threepairs of shoes at a time, storing or tossing out a couple of the left shoes whilewearing out the right ones, but this wasn't an option when Alfred was a boy.

The physical problems compounded the psychological suffering thatAlfred did his damnedest to deny. He would be able to shrug off a lot of itin later years, but he felt isolated at the time, removed from his friends andschoolmates, with no hope of ever really belonging. He addressed this feelingin a brief autobiographical fragment, written in 1922 and 1923, and publishedposthumously in the collection My Well-Balanced Life on a WoodenLeg. In the fragment, "The Autobiography of a Freshman," Alfred wroteabout living an Eden-like existence for his first ten years, when he had companionsand an uncluttered life in the garden. That changed dramaticallywhen he lost his leg and suddenly found himself outside the garden gate:

To this day, I sit at the gate, vainly waiting for the day when I may enter.Sometimes the children come to the edge of the gate and speak a fewwords of pity to me—but not for long. They hear the call of health and,hastening back, resume their play.


* * *

By the time he began attending Central High School in Bridgewater, Connecticut,Alfred was aware that he would never be regarded the same as hismale classmates, especially when it came to dating. He was as rowdy andobsessed with girls as the next guy, but as he later complained, "My roostertoughness and rowdiness was forgiven with sweet understanding [by thegirls] when all I wanted was the same thrilled contempt that was accordedtwo-legged rowdies for the same behavior."

To be successful, he decided, he would have to trick girls into seeinghim as normal. But since he gave himself away as soon as he took a step ortwo, he had to come up with a way to be noticed while he was standingstock-still.

He began staking out street corners. A favorite was on the corner ofthe city's busiest intersection, at D. M. Read's Main Street storefront. He'dlean against the building, looking as cavalier as any other smart-ass highschooler, and call out to girls in passing cars or to those going by him on thesidewalk. Alfred considered it a victory if someone turned back and gavehim a withering look. It would be a great day if he received several of these.

It was a technique that, by its very nature, was bound for failure. Atime would come when he'd have to move, and later in life, Capp wouldrecount one of these failures in a story whose tragic irony is almost too perfectto believe. The question of accuracy doesn't lessen its impact, though.

One day, while he was holding down his preferred spot, the boy's ritualtook a new and intriguing turn. Three teenage girls pulled up in a carnearby and, waiting in traffic, presented Alfred with an opportunity. Alfredshot them a look—a leer, as he would describe it. Two of the girls wouldhave nothing to do with him, but one, to Alfred's delight, smiled back. Thenshe did the unthinkable: she dropped her school pad out of the car windowand into the street. It was a ruse; the girl wanted him to retrieve the pad andhand it back to her. Alfred froze, unwilling to hobble out to the street. Thecar moved on. The pad stayed in the street.

When it was safe to move, Alfred limped away from the building andpicked up the pad. The girl's name and address were written inside, which,under other circumstances, would have been nothing less than a triumph.For Alfred, there were logistics to consider. The young woman hailed fromthe wealthy section of town, where all the houses had porches or verandas,with steps leading up to them. On flat ground, Alfred could at least make anoble effort to walk like the average Joe; steps required his reaching back andphysically pulling his left leg to the next step. If she were to witness this ...well, it wouldn't be good. But could he really pass up this rare opportunity?

Alfred, in the end, concluded that the rewards might be worth therisks, especially if he could minimize the chances of her seeing him negotiatethe steps. The plan he hatched was simply to call the girl, arrange themeeting, show up before the agreed-upon time, and try to make it upthe stairs and onto the porch before he was noticed. He'd wait until the appointedtime, they'd meet, and, if all went well, they'd spent the eve ning onthe veranda.

The early portion of the arrangement went without a hitch. Alfredcalled and explained that he wanted to return her pad, preferably to night,and she invited him to drop by at seven o'clock for a glass of lemonade. Alfredarrived at the girl's house fifteen minutes early. He made it up thestairs without attracting any attention, and shortly before seven he was sittingon the veranda, waiting for her to come out.

His perfect plan blew up on him when she opened the door a few minutesbefore their scheduled meeting time, started outside, saw him, andstopped abruptly. She said nothing for a few moments. She finally told himthat she couldn't see him that eve ning; she had somewhere else she had tobe. She thanked him for his trouble and asked him to leave the pad on thechair. That said, she turned and walked back into the house.

Alfred didn't try to call her back.

"It would have been too much for both of us to bear," he wrote in hisaccount of the incident,

for we both had been playing the same game. I had arrived early so shewould not see me walk. She had planned to be waiting on the porch soI would not see her walk. For in the instant of her turning away at thedoor, I had seen the stiffening of her shoulder, the outthrust movementof her hip—the sure signs that she, too, of all sad, shy girls on earth, hadan artificial limb.


(Continues...)
Excerpted from AL CAPP by MICHAEL SCHUMACHER. Copyright © 2013 by Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen. Excerpted by permission of BLOOMSBURY.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editore
Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA
Data di pubblicazione
2013
Lingua
Inglese
ISBN 10 
1608196232
ISBN 13 
9781608196234
Rilegatura
Copertina rigida
Numero di pagine
305
Contatto del produttore
non disponibile
Persona responsabile
WordUnited GmbH
distribution@wordunited.com

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