Some of the Scrappy fans who went to the movies in 1932 got to take Scrappy home with him — in the form of The Adventures of Scrappy and His Dog Yippy, a serialized story which appears to have been told across at least ten little booklets.

The booklets — at least the ones I’ve seen — have drawings by Dick Heumor, who is actually Dick Huemer experimenting with a new spelling for his name. They seem, however, to be mostly or entirely stock art.

Here’s chapter three, the earliest one I own, in which Scrappy and Margie (aka Margy) go to the circus; as it begins, Scrappy has just finished fishing. (I’m guessing that chapter two was titled “Scrappy Goes Fishing,” and now I’m wondering if there’s any chance that I own a piece of art from it.) I’d love to own the whole set someday — especially since chapter ten apparently reveals an exciting prize that was to given to every boy and girl. If it turned out it wasn’t Scrappy-related, it would be terribly disappointing.

Here’s Charles Mintz’s entry in the biographical section of the 1937 Film Daily Product Guide and Director’s Annual. It speaks of the cartoon producer in the third person, but one suspects that it’s his official view of himself. And it’s fascinating.

Mintz doesn’t mention his wife, pioneering cartoon distributor Margaret Winkler. He does assign himself credit for some series we usually associate with her, including the Felixes and Alice cartoons. And he dwells on his ill-fated association with Walt Disney, claiming to have “discovered” Walt and been the first person to “appreciate the young man with great ideas.”

Mintz calls himself the producer of the Oswalds and calls Disney his production chief for the Alices and Oswalds; I’m not sure if that counts as downplaying Disney’s role, but it surely emphasizes Mintz’s involvement more than most people would. (Elsewhere in the directory, Walt Disney’s entry says that he was the producer of the Alice cartoons and Oswald’s creator and producer.)

Oh, and Mintz says that he’s released cartoons solely through Columbia since the dawn of sound — news which would come as a surprise to RKO’s Toby the Pup.

Was Mintz haunted by the Oswald debacle? We may never know for sure. But once Disney became a phenomenon, he seems to have been happy to remind everyone else in the business that he was once Walt Disney’s boss.

He also cheerfully takes credit for personally creating Scrappy — and mentions that he’s president of the Motion Picture Cartoon Producers Association, an organization I’m unfamiliar with. Wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on the wall at its meetings?

I hope I won’t offend anyone by saying this: Columbia may have worked harder promoting Scrappy cartoons than it did making Scrappy cartoons. There were Scrappy clubs and educational aids and clothing and comics and toys and other tie-ins of all sorts. And I’ve always assumed that if there wasn’t a Scrappy radio show, there should have been one.

Now Scrappyologist and radio scholar Andrew Leal has the first definitive evidence that Scrappy did hit the airwaves — or tried to do so, at least. The July 15, 1937 issue of Broadcasting featured the following news tidbit:

“Presentation series” means that the Biddick company created (or intended to create) a pilot for a Scrappy program. I don’t know whether anything it produced survives. I have no idea whether it led to anything. Whatever happened or didn’t happen, it’s good to get confirmation that Columbia made a good-faith effort to put Scrappy on radio. And further research is warranted.

When I read this, I thought for a moment that it was saying that the proposed Scrappy show was sponsored by America’s furriers. Nah — Andrew explained that was a totally different Biddick program. But it’s still a delightful idea.

If you know Dick Huemer’s drawing style, you won’t need to look at the signature to identify this illustration as his work. It’s of President Lyndon Baines Johnson dancing with a dame representing the U.S. voter, and that’s Barry Goldwater cutting in.

The image above is part of the cover of a 1964 LP titled Presidential Primer — full art here — and was shared with me by Andrew Leal. I don’t know much about it except that Huemer wrote part of it. Perhaps Andrew will tell us more in the comments.

I promise not to make a habit of showing items relating to non-Charles Mintz characters on Scrappyland. But the Popeye soap on a rope depicted above — which I recently found in an antique mall outside Seattle — isn’t just any Popeye soap on a rope.

It was sculpted by Lester Gaba (1907-1987), the same fellow responsible for the wondrous soap figurines of Scrappy, Margy and Yippy. (Here’s the example in the Scrappyland collection, and here’s a photo of Scrappy’s pal Cora Sue Collins posing with the soap.)

Back in the 1930s, Gaba was everywhere. His soap toys, manufactured by a company called Kerk Guild, seem to have been very popular. And judging from how many of them survive today, many people treated them as prized collectibles rather than as cleaning products.

Here (from a Hake’s Americana auction) is his Shirley Temple(s).

And his Wimpy, Olive Oyl, and Popeye.

 

And a drawing from his patent for Dionne Quintuplets soap figures.

And here, from Gaba’s book Soap Carving, are some more of his figures — including Scrappy, Yippy, Wimpy, Shirley, and Charlie McCarthy plus a cherub and a little Dutch girl.

Gaba’s soap figurines also appeared on the cover of the old-old version of Life magazine, where they wore clothes fashioned from real fabric and posed in what amounted to three-dimensional cartoons.

But Gaba’s greatest fame — and for a time, it was considerable — came from the Gaba Girls, the department-store dummies he designed. The next version of Life (the famous one) liked them so much that they devoted two extensive photo essays (and one cover) to them in 1937. (You can check out the stories here and here.)

The most famous Gaba Girl, and Gaba’s constant companion, was Cynthia, who he designed for Saks Fifth Avenue. In the 1930s, Cynthia went to fancy parties, attended shows, hobnobbed at nighclubs, and smoked and drank cocktails (or at least held cigarettes and sat near cocktails).

Here are Gaba and Cynthia at Manhattan’s legendary Stork Club, as photographed by Life‘s Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1937.

Cynthia also did radio and TV, and apparently appeared in at least one movie, Jack Benny’s Artists and Models Abroad (1938). Here she is in a publicity shot with Benny, Joan Bennett and a cop.

Gaba may have been seen all around town with Cynthia, but latter-day scuttlebutt pairs him with another celebrity who, like Gaba, started out as a window dresser: Vincente Minnelli.

If you want to learn more about Gaba’s soap toys, read this spread from Soap Carving (click it for a larger version). Sadly, the man doesn’t seem to have been moved to carve a life-sized Scrappy…

I own a copy of a photo of Scrappy with the Three Stooges which I like so much that I’ve posted it repeatedly. But I’ve never seen these additional two shots of Moe, Curly and Larry palling around with his Scrappiness, which were brought to my attention by Scrappyland reader Billie Towzer. Aren’t they fantastic?

If you were a Columbia child star in the 1930s, you were also a part-time shill for Scrappy merchandise. It was true of Cora Sue Collins as well as Edith Fellows and Dickie Walters. And the above photo shows it was also the case with Jackie Moran.

That’s him on the right with Edith, fooling around with Scrappy handkerchiefs. This publicity photo was apparently released in April 1936, in conjunction with a Columbia film in which they both appeared, And So They Were Married. (It’s going to be on TCM in December.)

And So They Were Married was Jackie’s first movie. He also had a small role in Gone With the Wind, and played Huck Finn to Tommy Kelly’s Tom Sawyer. And IMdB says he eventually worked with with exploitation-movie master Russ (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) Meyer, although Wikipedia says that may (or may not) have been a different John Moran.

Moran — the one who posed with Scrappy hankies — died in 1990. Edith Fellows passed away just last year. Dickie Walters, I’m not sure about. And Cora Sue Collins, I’m pleased to report, is still with us. I wonder if she has memories — fond or otherwise — of her time as a Scrappy spokesmodel?