History of Hatlo: Los Angeles and Apologies to Gale

Where and when does the History of Hato begin?

For my purposes here, I am starting the story with what appears to be Jimmy Hatlo's first attributed work as a cartoonist.  The biographical background is that Hatlo dropped out of high school after his freshman year and took a job as a linotype apprentice with the Los Angeles Times.  He moved  to the art department of the paper in 1917.  While likely doing unattributed work such as spot illustrations and advertising pieces, his Hatlo signature first appeared on October 6, 1917; the art was a page wide banner cartoon featuring silhouettes of individuals celebrating the beginning of the 1917 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants.

Featured on the same page was a one-panel comic entitled "The Battle of Ball Run" by the Times own established cartoonist Ted Gale.  It would be the first in a series of sports page vignettes about the World Series that Gale would hand over to Hatlo beginning with the fifth installment.  It noted, "continued by Hatlo" in the bottom right corner.

Installment #6 would further elevate the young staff artist.  The cartoon credited Hatlo a byline at the top right which he would retain for the remainder of the series.  He signed the piece with "apologies to Gale."  The art distinctly showed the influence of Bud Fisher's Mutt & Jeff, a comic strip the Times was then running.  "The Battle of Ball Run" concluded with the eleventh installment which showcased the triumphant White Sox.  The illustrations Hatlo produced featured rather strong and often stark World War I imagery including trench warfare, bombs, a field ambulance, tanks and biplanes.  Following the conclusion of the World Series, Hatlo produced a few additional cartoons for the Times sports page throughout the rest of October 1917.

Hatlo surfaced again on November 13th with another full page banner cartoon, this time featured on the paper's Automobile page and tied to the city's Auto Show.  Four days later he produced a cartoon recapping the show entitled "Impressions of the Auto Show by Our Eminent Cartoonist."

These cartoons from late 1917 would be prescient of the subjects that would largely influence and inform Hatlo's output for the next two decades.  Sports and automobiles, but primarily sports, would more or less define Hatlo's work in the years leading up to the debut of TDIET.  He would byline additional material at the Times throughout 1918 but it was occasional rather than consistent.  Thirteen bylines can be found, all relating to either sports or automobiles.

As previously noted, I'm primarily using the 2012 Hogan's Alley article "Jimmy Hatlo-Man of Many Hats" by Ed Black as my biographical source material, but I have found one inconsistency with it and my own research.  Black states that " . . .in early 1918 some of his cartoons about Kaiser Wilhelm made the front page as editorial cartoons."  As noted, there are thirteen Hatlo bylines in 1918, but none made the front page nor were any editorial in nature.  It is possible that material by Times cartoonist Ted Gale has been mistakenly identified as belonging to Hatlo.  Gale's editorial cartoons frequently made page one and there is at least one example of his work featuring Wilhelm in January of 1918.  Gale's and Hatlo's styles are similar and it is possible the young Hatlo was emulating the more experienced Gale.

UP NEXT: Hatlo travels up the California coast to Oakland and San Francisco

History of Hatlo - Introduction

Hatlo's first appearance as his cartoon self in They'll Do It Every Time on April 15, 1929

It seems history has left Jimmy Hatlo behind.

In the mid 20th century, cartoonist Jimmy Hatlo was undeniably a comic strip superstar, as popular then as later creators Charles Shultz, Hank Ketchum and Lynn Johnston would become in future decades.  Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Hatlo's They'll Do It Every Time was arguably the most popular comic in the country and the name Jimmy Hatlo became a brand unto itself.  He tragically left the world at what now feels like a very young sixty-six years of age.  His creation went on to endure without him for more than forty years.  Unfortunately, in that time, the name Jimmy Hatlo slowly faded into obscurity.

Sadly, the lasting legacies of comic strips are more often the memorable characters produced rather than the individuals who created them.  Creators frequently rode the coattails of their creations, i.e. Shultz with Charlie Brown, Ketchum with Dennis the Menace and Smythe with Andy Capp.  While TDIET did feature a stable of regulars such as Henry Tremblechin, Lushwell, Bigdome and most notably Little Iodine, those characters were secondary to the overall format and dynamic of the strip.  Little Iodine made the greatest impact, channeling TDIET notoriety into a spinoff Sunday feature, comic books and even a modest B-grade feature film.  But the popularity of TDIET sprang from its concept of showcasing the frustrations, absurdities and hypocrisies of the human condition (as submitted by readers), and its recurring characters were never able to enter the popular culture to any significant degree. 

Hatlo died on December 1, 1963. As I was only two years old at the time, it is safe to say I was never exposed to Hatlo and his own original work on TDIET. Hatlo debuted the one-panel comic in 1929 and was it's creative force until his untimely death. As an avid comic strip reader growing up, I occasionally encountered the strip on the pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette when it was being shepherded by the team of Bob Dunn and Al Scaduto. But I never developed a continued interest in it as my family subscribed to the city's other daily, the Pittsburgh Press, which without argument had the better comics pages.

In researching other mid 20th century comic strips over the past decade or so, I kept bumping into TDIET and was subsequently impressed with the rather dense dialog and detailed artwork that was unusual for a gag-a-day one panel.  I managed to trace it back to its 1936 debut with the Kings Features syndicate and began to archive it for my own personal reading.  Miraculously, a short time later, the archives for the San Francisco Call-Bulletin became available. That was the newspaper where TDIET began in 1929 and where Hatlo essentially honed his skills and refined his craft.  It is now certainly revelatory to have access to the whole of the TDIET collection and be able to trace the evolution of one of the medium's more notable talents.

Finding accurate biographical and historical information on Hatlo and TDIET is a challenge.  The Wikipedia entries are sparse and often inaccurate and the citations often lead to equally sparse and inaccurate sources.  The best and most clearly reputable information can be found in a 2012 article from the publication Hogan's Alley that has been thankfully archived on the magazine's web site.  "Jimmy Hatlo - Man of Many Hats" by Ed Black is an extensive and exceptionally well-researched biographical piece that fills in many gaps in Hatlo's life and details much of the history of the TDIET strip.

My exploration of TDIET here at Boom Pop! is intended to expand upon Ed Black's material and provide a more specific chronology of times, places, events and individuals as benefited by material that has only more recently become accessible.

To be continued - soon!