Harold Teen | |
---|---|
Author(s) | Carl Ed |
Current status/schedule | Concluded daily & Sunday strip |
Launch date | 4 May 1919 |
End date | 18 November 1959 |
Syndicate(s) | Chicago Tribune Syndicate |
Publisher(s) | Dell Comics Whitman Publishing |
Genre(s) | Humor, Adolescence |
Harold Teen is a discontinued, long-running American comic strip written and drawn by Carl Ed (pronounced "eed"). Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson may have suggested and certainly approved the strip's concept, loosely based on Booth Tarkington's successful novel Seventeen . The strip ran from 1919 to 1959. Asked in the late 1930s why he had started the strip, Ed answered, "Twenty years ago, there was no comic strip on adolescence. I thought every well-balanced comic sheet should have one." [1]
Under the title The Love Life of Harold Teen, it debuted as a Sunday strip in the Chicago Tribune on May 4, 1919, and a few months later it was nationally syndicated by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. A daily strip was added later that year. The strip was so successful in depicting the Jazz Age that it became a minor cultural icon of its time. The principal characters were Covina High School student Harold Teen, his girlfriend Lillums Lovewell, his diminutive sidekick Alec "Shadow" Smart and Pop Jenks, proprietor of the Sugar Bowl soda shop where Harold consumed Gedunk sundaes. The Sugar Bowl (aka Ye Sugar Bowl) also sold "Sodas and how" and advertised "the biggest soda in town."
Pop Jenks was inspired by the real-life Pop Walters, who ran a soda fountain and stationery shop across from the high school Ed attended in Moline, Illinois. The Gedunk sundaes reached such popularity that Ed had to answer requests for a recipe. In the 1928 Harold Teen film, the sundae is a soupy concoction of ice cream and hot chocolate which is eaten by "gedunking" a large ladyfinger cookie in it. As noted in Random House’s Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the word "gedunk" soon entered military slang to refer to snack shops and ice cream beginning with a 1931 usage in Leatherneck Magazine . [2]
The success of the strip led to toys, figurines, pins and other products. Reprints appeared in Dell's Popular Comics, and Whitman published a Better Little Book, Harold Teen in Swinging at the Sugar Bowl (1939). During World War II, Harold joined the Navy. In the post-war period, the strip failed to retain its relevance. When Ed, who lived at 711 Michigan Avenue in Evanston, Illinois, died in 1959, his once-popular comic strip died with him.
Three different topper strips by Carl Ed ran on his page, positioned beneath Harold Teen: The Absent Minded Professor (January 4, 1931 to November 9, 1933), Josie (1935 to early 1940s) and Myrtle (1943 to 1951). [3]
Carl Ed received writing credit for both film adaptations of Harold Teen. In the 1928 silent version, Harold was portrayed by Arthur Lake, best known for his many performances as Dagwood Bumstead. The Educational Screen commented: "The lovelorn hero of the comic strips is delightfully done by Arthur Lake who is the real Spirit of Seventeen. Everybody and everything you've laughed over in the papers is there, including Lillums, Horace, Beezie, the Gedunk sundae and the autographed Ford and slicker." [4] Tap dancer Hal Le Roy had the title role in the 1934 Harold Teen musical .
Willard P. Farnum (1906–1994) and Charles Flynn portrayed Harold Teen in the 1941–1942 radio series which aired on Tuesday evenings at 7:30 p.m. Willard Waterman was also in the cast.
There was also a Harold Teen radio show mid-day on Saturdays on the Tribune radio station WGN in Chicago. It was mostly a DJ show with Harold and his buddy Shad spinning the latest hits. This was during the 1950s.[ citation needed ]
Kansas City jazz band pianist Joe Sanders wrote a song about the "Don Juan of comic strip fame", describing him as a "human love machine" and as "romance personified". A performance by the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra can be heard in the March 1, 1929, episode of the Maytag Frolics radio program. [5]
Moon Mullins is an American comic strip which had a run as both a daily and Sunday feature from June 19, 1923, to June 2, 1991. Syndicated by the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, the strip depicts the lives of diverse lowbrow characters who reside at the Schmaltz boarding house. The central character, Moon, is a would-be prizefighter—perpetually strapped for cash but with a roguish appetite for vice and high living. Moon took a room in the boarding house at 1323 Wump Street in 1924 and never left, staying on for 67 years. The strip was created by cartoonist Frank Willard.
A Gedunk bar or geedunk bar is the canteen or snack bar of a large vessel of the United States Navy or the United States Coast Guard. The term in this sense was first recorded in Leatherneck Magazine in 1931. A service member who works in the geedunk is traditionally referred to only as that "geedunk guy" or "geedunk girl", or more informally as a "geedunkaroo". The term was popular during World War II.
Harold Lincoln Gray was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the newspaper comic strip Little Orphan Annie.
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A soda shop, also often known as a malt shop and as a malted shop in Canada, is a business akin to an ice cream parlor and a drugstore soda fountain. Interiors were often furnished with a large mirror behind a marble counter with goose-neck soda spouts, plus spinning stools, round marble-topped tables, and wireframe sweetheart chairs.
Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra was the first Kansas City jazz band to achieve national recognition, which it acquired through national radio broadcasts. It was founded in 1918, as the Coon-Sanders Novelty Orchestra, by drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders.
Russell Johnson was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator and artist of Mister Oswald, a monthly comic strip that ran for more than six decades in the national trade journal now called Hardware Retailing. The strip documents a large portion of the history of American business life, as seen through the eyes of the main character, Oscar S. Oswald, a prominent citizen of the fictional Dippy Center, US. Although the strip was known primarily to hardware retailers, a book, Forty Years With Mister Oswald, was published in 1968, collecting the comic strips.
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Carl Frank Ludwig Ed was a comic strip artist best known as the creator of Harold Teen. His name is pronounced eed.
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Harold Teen is a teenage comedy old-time radio program in the United States. It was broadcast initially on WGN in Chicago, Illinois, and a decade later was heard nationally on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Harold Teen is a 1928 American silent comedy film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and written by Thomas J. Geraghty. It is based on the comic strip Harold Teen by Carl Ed. The film stars Arthur Lake, Mary Brian, Lucien Littlefield, Jack Duffy, Alice White, and Jack Egan. The film was released on April 29, 1928, by First National Pictures.
Harold Teen is a 1934 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Murray Roth and written by Paul Gerard Smith and Alfred A. Cohn. It is based on the comic strip Harold Teen by Carl Ed. The film stars Hal Le Roy, Rochelle Hudson, Patricia Ellis, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert and Hobart Cavanaugh. The film was released by Warner Bros. on April 7, 1934.
Harold Teen was an American comic strip written and drawn by Carl Ed.