"His managing editor, Edgar T. “Scoop” Gleason, was frantic: He had a
hole to fill in his comics page when Hearst abruptly ordered him to pull
Billy DeBeck’s Bughouse Fables so it could run in the Examiner. (The other version of the story concerns a week’s worth of TAD’s Indoor Sports
getting lost in the mail from the syndicate, leaving a hole in the
newspaper.) Gleason prevailed upon Hatlo to produce something, pronto." Ed Black - Hogans Alley
"One day in 1928, his managing editor asked him to dash off a cartoon to fill a space suddenly left vacant on the comics page." San Francisco Examiner -Obituary
"In 1928 while he was an artist on the now defunct Call, the managing editor told him, 'We've just lost Bug-House Fables. You'll have to draw something to fill up the space until we buy another feature.'" Associated Press - Obituary
"He had to draw a cartoon when a package of cartoons from the syndicate failed to arrive." Lambiek Comiclopedia
"Hatlo's breakthrough came when a shipment of panels from syndicated cartoonist Tad Dorgan failed to arrive in the mail. Hatlo was tasked with creating something to fill the space, which led to the creation of They'll Do It Every Time." Chris Krol - ToonsMag
Which version of the
They'll Do It Every Time creation myth is the closest to the truth? The obituary from the
San Francisco Examiner provides the simplest, and surprisingly, most accurate explanation, but even then, they still got the date wrong.
Going straight to the source (the archives of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin), here is the essential reality of the very beginning of TDIET. A square single panel comic cartoon entitled They'll Do It Every Time debuted in the Call-Bulletin on Monday, February 4, 1929. It appeared with the paper's other comics on page 20, initially in the bottom left corner. While not having a byline, the comic displayed the signature "Jimmy Hatlo" in the top left corner of the panel. It has been long and incorrectly documented that the premiere date was February 5, 1929, with the Hogan's Alley article even featuring an image of the wrong installment.
The notion that the loss of the cartoon Bughouse Fables created the vacancy that Hatlo needed to fill is easily debunked. The single panel strip was never published in the San Francisco Call-Bulletin. It was a regular feature of the San Francisco Examiner and had been since 1921.
Myth #2: Tad's Indoor Sports
The single panel comic Indoor Sports by Tad Dorgan was featured on the Call-Bulletin's sports page, so it could not have caused a vacancy in the comics section. Also, installments of the strip were published in the Call-Bulletin the week of February 3rd, so apparently nothing was lost in the mail. This premise may have been rooted in the fact that Dorgan passed away in May of 1929 and Hatlo was likely recruited to help fill the space that Indoor Sports had occupied on the sports page.
The actual reason for the vacancy on the comics page is not nearly as exciting as lost syndicate shipments or William Randolph Hearst comic strip shuffling. There appears to be a rather simple explanation. The syndicated column Maybe I'm Wrong by humorist John P. Medbury that occupied that corner of the page was moved to a different part of the paper. Managing Editor Gleason likely wanted or needed to move the column to another location and then simply recruited his staff artist/cartoonist to fill in the white space. Almost immediately popular, TDIET would quickly slide up to the top left side of the comics page, a coveted spot it would occupy until 1934.
UP NEXT: The Road to Syndication
History of Hatlo
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