History of Hatlo: The Creation Myths

"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.

Myth #1: Bughouse Fables

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

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Los Angeles and Apologies to Gale

Part 3: Gasoline Gossip

Part 4: Cartoonist on Call

History of Hatlo: Gasoline Gossip

Sometime in early 1919, Jimmy Hatlo left Los Angeles behind and traveled north up the California coast. His name next appeared in print in the March 23rd edition of the Oakland Tribune. Referred to as "CARTOONIST HATLO," he reported on the Santa Monica Races, once again pursuing his interest in automobiles. Hatlo would be credited for cartoons at the Tribune nine more times through the end of that year.

In the Hogan's Alley article, Ed Black reports that after World War I, Hatlo worked briefly as a movie publicist before moving to an agency that represented automobile dealers. His Tribune material was comprised entirely of automobile related content, with a particular focus on Chevrolet, supporting the notion that Hatlo was working for an outside interest and not necessarily on the Tribune staff. In fact, one of Hatlo's Tribune cartoons showcased a Chevrolet branch manager and "his aggressive sales organization," further reinforcing the publicist nature of his work there.

In January of 1920, it is noted in multiple bay area newspapers that Hatlo was working for the Elliot Pabst Company while acting as an official observer of a Fageol-manufactured truck test run between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Hatlo would ultimately write an article on the Fageol demonstration for the Tribune.  Throughout much of 1920 and into early 1921, he would continue to produce "publicity" cartoons that appeared in various California newspapers.

Black reports that Hatlo became the automobile page editor of the San Francisco Bulletin in 1923, but that actually occurred earlier in 1921.  The Automotive Section was a weekly feature of the Bulletin, published every Saturday.  Hatlo assumed his editorial duties on May 7, 1921.  Cartooning immediately took a back seat (pun intended) and his bylines became attached to articles, not art.  In July of 1923, he started his own weekly column entitled Gasoline Gossip, that featured a cartoon self portrait in the header.  On May 28, 1924, Hatlo was featured in a front page in-house advertisement showcasing five Bulletin staffers.  The ad described him as a "former cartoonist" who is now one of the "best-liked automobile writers on the Pacific coast."

In September of 1924, two significant things happened.  First, Hatlo was elected to the position of vice president of the San Francisco Press Club, further reinforcing his newspaper reporting credentials. But then ironically, he returned to his artistic roots and created a new cartoon for the Automobile Section.  It was his first large scale, full panel effort in three years.  It was especially significant in that it would foreshadow material Hatlo would produce some three decades later for Sunday editions of TDIET.  Entitled "If There Be Hell Then Pity These," it could easily be considered the very first episode of Hatlo's Inferno.  Hatlo produced one more auto-themed cartoon for the Bulletin in late October.  It was his last printed work for the paper.  It can be assumed that this was when he left the Bulletin to become the automobile editor at the San Francisco Call.  His first byline for the Call appeared on January 3, 1925.

UP NEXT:  The sports cartoon that set everything in motion.

History of Hatlo

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Los Angeles and Apologies to Gale

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!

But He Sure Doesn't Act Like a Bear!

Yogi Bear was an established feature on the Sunday comics pages for two decades, but he did enjoy a brief stint as a one-panel strip in the early 1960s.  The daily dose of Yogi could be found in newspapers from late 1962 through fall of 1963.  Here's a bit of meta humor from January 7, 1963.