Fisher would have been hard-pressed to come up with a list of allies. NCS members tried to avoid him at their meetings. At best, he was the proverbial wet blanket capable of dampening anyone’s mood in very short order; at his worst, he was nasty and spiteful, a man who had no friends for good reason. Moe Leff, his longtime assistant, could barely tolerate a workday with him. Marilyn Fisher, Ham’s wife, had hinted that she was growing tired of his tirades at home.
Cartoonist Morris Weiss, the artist on “Mickey Finn” and other strips, might have been Fisher’s only true friend during the ordeal of his final months. Fisher would frequently drop by Weiss’s apartment, and the two men would play checkers. Weiss, in his own words, became Fisher’s “father confessor.” Fisher would air his gripes, and Weiss would push his checkers across the board and listen.
“He was very unhappy,” Weiss remembered. “It bothered him very much that he wasn’t getting appreciation from his fellow cartoonists. And Capp engineered his being expelled from the Society. Ham had photostats blown up of suggestive things in ‘Li’l Abner.’ He sent them out to the newspapers. When it came to the Cartoonists Society ethics committee, Ham denied that he had done it. Capp was able to prove that it was [Fisher’s] signature on the borders.”
In the end, it was proved that the writing on the borders belonged to Fisher, but there was never conclusive proof that Fisher had altered the images, as Capp asserted. For discerning readers, including Fisher, Capp’s frequent visual and verbal double entendres were indisputable, but they were always clever enough to be ambiguous and thus fly below the radar of the vast majority of unassuming readers. Fisher wasn’t the only one seeing blue and thinking Capp’s naughty inserts were self-evident. In 1953 the popular scandal magazine Confidential had run a cover story, “Al Capp Exposed: The Secret Sex Life of Li’l Abner,” discussing and picturing some of the same things Fisher was asserting.
Two sworn affidavits, submitted by William H. Mauldin, who had examined the photostats of the “Li’l Abner” strips prior to the 1950 New York State Joint Legislative Committee’s investigation, and Charles A. Appel Jr., a Washington, D.C., document examiner hired to look into the current set, testified that some tampering was present, but neither was prepared to say that Fisher had created or added new images to the strips. In all likelihood, Fisher had enhanced or edited the existing images to prove his point. Mauldin was especially direct in his conclusion: “I think this stuff has been deliberately presented in a way to suggest dirt where no dirt existed in the original.” Appel’s conclusion—“that the questioned notations were written by … Ham Fisher”—sealed Fisher’s fate. He was formally expelled from the National Cartoonists Society on February 9, 1955.
For Fisher, this was the final defeat and humiliation at the hands of Al Capp. He would never understand that the NCS was more interested in ending an embarrassing public feud than in exposing Capp for his suggestive art in “Li’l Abner.”
In the months that passed between his expulsion from the NCS and his death, Fisher raged about the inequities of his life, most often to Morris Weiss.
“He came to our apartment one day and he went off on a tirade,” Weiss’s wife, Blanche, would recall. “He just kept spewing and spewing. I never heard such hatred come out of a person in my life.”
Morris Weiss listened to it for as long as he could, but as the year drew to an end, he’d finally heard enough.
“I did sincerely want to help him,” he insisted, adding that he had approached members of the Cartoonists Society on Fisher’s behalf, to no avail. But Fisher’s daily visits were taking Weiss away from his own work and creating friction between him and his wife. Fisher asked Weiss to come work for him; Weiss politely declined. When Fisher continued with his black rages, showing no indication that he was willing to do anything to improve his life, Weiss finally stood up to him.
“I don’t want you to come to me with any more of your problems unless you do something concrete to help yourself,” he told Fisher. “Moe Leff is driving you crazy? Fire Moe Leff. You’ll get another. Believe me, I’ll have no trouble getting you an assistant who will do just as good. You’re tired of the strip? Go to England—London. You have enough money to travel. Do things. You’re unhappy with Marilyn? Get a divorce. I don’t want to hear from you until you’re doing something concrete to help yourself.”
Fisher considered what Weiss was saying. “I’m going to do something tomorrow,” he promised.
The following afternoon, Weiss received a call from a very worried Marilyn Fisher. Her husband hadn’t called, and no one answered when she called Moe Leff’s studio, where Fisher was working. Ham Fisher always called for his messages—he never failed. Weiss reassured her that there had to be a good reason for her husband’s silence, but Marilyn continued to worry. She called Weiss several more times, each call increasingly desperate. Eventually, around six o’clock that evening, Weiss dressed and drove first to Marilyn’s, where he attempted to calm her in person, and then to Leff’s Manhattan studio. With Leff gone, vacationing in Florida, Weiss had to talk the building superintendent into using his passkey to let him into the studio.
Fisher had been dead for some time when Weiss discovered his body. The suicide letter, written in pencil, was brief:
My sight has gone to a great extent, is getting progressively worse, and my health has gone with it. May God and my beloved ones forgive me. I have provided for them amply.
Weiss picked up the phone and called the New York Daily Mirror, the flagship paper for “Joe Palooka” since 1930. Weiss figured they deserved the scoop on the story. Then he called the police.
While waiting for the police to arrive, Weiss returned to the couch. “I stood over him and called him a miserable son of a bitch for doing it,” he recalled.
Fisher’s suicide brought an ending to the Capp-Fisher feud, but Capp still couldn’t let it rest. Within days of Fisher’s funeral, he was entertaining listeners in Sardi’s, the high-visibility bar and restaurant in Manhattan’s theater district. An article in the New York Daily News reported on Capp’s meeting there with Lee Falk, writer for “Mandrake the Magician” and “The Phantom.”
“He has ennobled our feud,” Capp told Falk. Not satisfied to share what he considered to be a brilliant observation with just one man, Capp turned to everyone in the room.
“He ennobled it,” he proclaimed, in his big, booming voice. “It is a noble thing he did.”
Falk stared down into his glass. “My God,” he thought. “The man thinks this is Tristan and Isolde.”
This was not enough. About nine months after Fisher’s demise, Capp wrote Milton Caniff and asked that he use his position in the Cartoonists Society to put into writing the society’s findings on Fisher and his complaints about the sexual content in “Li’l Abner.”
“With the FCC business ended and Fisher gone,” Capp wrote, “the final act of the Society—to say plainly what its findings were and to say plainly that the stigma attached to my work by one of its members was a crime against the Society and against me—has one value, and that is that my kids and my grandchildren will know that I was an honorable man and no discredit to my profession.”
13 Bright Lights
Al Capp had been disappointed by earlier attempts to move “Li’l Abner” off the newspaper pages and into other forms of entertainment. The 1940 movie adaptation had been a bomb, and the animated cartoon version was even worse. The Fearless Fosdick kids’ show had gone nowhere. “Li’l Abner” possessed all the qualities, from characters to storylines, found in successes on the big screen, onstage, and in early television, yet no one seemed to be up to making the adaptation. Nevertheless, Capp was hopeful when it looked as if a “Li’l Abner” play might actually take a bow on Broadway.
The Broadway adaptation had been in the works for four years, dating back to 1952, when lyricist Alan Jay Lerner (Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot) purchased the rights. Capp was elated, but as the months gave way without any sign of the p
lay moving forward, he grew skeptical of its ever being produced. Lerner let the option expire in 1955. Capp attempted a script on his own, but he discovered that there was an enormous difference between producing a comic strip and tackling the logistics of a Broadway play.
Fortunately, other film and theater producers were now lining up for a shot at bringing “Li’l Abner” to life. Paramount Pictures made the most attractive offer: the company would purchase the stage and film rights for “Li’l Abner,” reportedly for an amount in excess of $300,000. As a bonus, Capp would be awarded a small role—playing himself—in That Certain Feeling, a Paramount film starring Bob Hope.
“They asked me who I might suggest to play the role of Al Capp,” he quipped, adding that his first choice would have been Tyrone Power. “We finally compromised on me because I would be cheapest, and so I came out and did play myself with only forty-six years of rehearsal.”
The team involved in the Broadway production was as fine as could be assembled. Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, the brain trust behind the films White Christmas, Knock on Wood, and others, produced, directed, and wrote Li’l Abner. Choreographer Michael Kidd, whose work included Finian’s Rainbow, the stage and screen versions of Guys and Dolls, and the film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, was enlisted to choreograph the dancing through Dogpatch and would also direct. The team responsible for the Oscar-winning score for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was brought in to do the same with Li’l Abner. The songs would be written by Gene de Paul, a veteran of countless film scores, with lyricist Johnny Mercer (“You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “Blues in the Night,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Autumn Leaves”).
Casting for the leading roles of Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae wound up yielding two relative newcomers. After an extensive search that included Andy Griffith and even inquiries about the availability of Elvis Presley, comedic actor Dick Shawn was selected for the role of Li’l Abner. Panama and Frank, however, weren’t totally satisfied with the selection. Li’l Abner was taller and more muscular than Shawn. He’d have to develop a physique for the role. While Shawn worked with a trainer to add bulk to his frame, casting continued for other parts. Then, one Sunday evening, while watching The Ed Sullivan Show, Panama, Frank, and Kidd saw a young man dressed in a military uniform, singing “Granada.” He was blond, but at 6′4″ and 220 pounds, sporting the muscular build of the offensive tackle he’d been at the University of Illinois, and possessing a singing voice much better than Shawn’s, Peter Palmer was the Li’l Abner they were looking for. After delivering the bad news to Shawn, the producers placed a few calls to Washington, D.C., and secured an early discharge for Palmer.
Finding someone to play Daisy Mae was much easier—and, ironically, came as the result of another Ed Sullivan appearance. Singer/actress Edie Adams had loved “Li’l Abner” since she was a teenager and, dressed as Daisy Mae, had won a Sadie Hawkins competition. When she learned that a “Li’l Abner” Broadway musical was in development, she had her agent send out the word that she was interested in the part of Daisy Mae. The sultry blonde with Marilyn Monroe looks was married to popular comedian Ernie Kovacs and had gained national exposure on his television programs. She was slated for an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and she made a point of seeing that certain people knew about it. She called Milton Caniff and asked him to be sure Al Capp was watching.
It wouldn’t have been the first time Al Capp saw Adams, though he may not have remembered the prior occasion. Six years earlier he was a judge on the DuMont Network’s 1950 Miss U.S. Television beauty contest, and the fresh-faced New York entry, one Edith Adams, had been the winner.
As Adams recalled, she never had to audition for the role. The Ed Sullivan appearance convinced the Broadway production’s powers-that-be of her qualifications to play Daisy Mae.
She wasn’t pleased, however, by the play’s script. She had counted on its capturing some of the snappy satire she so admired in the comic strip, but by her thinking, the script wound up being more of a formulaic, predictable comedy that even a stellar cast couldn’t save. Her role had little substance—“in a possible acting range of ten, poor Daisy seemed no more than a three,” she complained—and because she was barefoot throughout the performance, the dance numbers were more physically demanding than usual. Adams hoped that some of the play’s shortcomings might improve when Al Capp eventually visited the rehearsals and made script alterations, but it didn’t happen.
“Not only did he not fix the show,” she recalled, “[but] he made passes at all the gorgeous girls in the cast and at me, a very publicly married woman. He took me to dinner and made some adolescent and amateurish passes at me. I wasn’t even upset, just disappointed.”
It would come as no surprise that the womanizing Capp found much to admire in the cast. The women were featured in a pictorial in Playboy and in a cover story—with a large photo spread—in Life. Julie Newmar, as Stupefyin’ Jones, didn’t have a line in the play, but she would make enough of an impression to push her career forward. Tina Louise, who would later star in the role of Ginger on television’s Gilligan’s Island, won the role of Appassionata von Climax.
Capp was satisfied with the way his strip had been adapted to the stage. All the major characters were accounted for, the hillbilly language was preserved, Sadie Hawkins Day figured prominently in the script, the song and dance numbers were snappy, and the costumes were colorfully trashy. The story, centered around the government’s intention of making Dogpatch a nuclear testing ground, might have been strictly formula, as Adams had asserted, but it was complex enough that songs had to be rewritten or eliminated in order to bring the show in at a reasonable performance time.
Li’l Abner opened on November 15, 1956, at the St. James Theater and would run for 693 performances—the most successful run of a play based on a comic strip until Annie opened in 1977. When the 1957 Tony Award nominations were announced, Michael Kidd was nominated for (and won) the Outstanding Choreographer award, while Edie Adams was nominated for Distinguished Supporting or Featured Musical Actress.
She had to be coaxed into attending the awards ceremony. She had disliked the Daisy Mae role from the beginning, and when her one-year contract expired, she’d dropped out of the production and been replaced. (Charlotte Rae, who played Mammy Yokum, and Tina Louise also left the play when their contracts were up.) Adams was flabbergasted when she was nominated for the Tony. As far as she was concerned, there had been very little to the part—certainly not enough to compete with much bigger roles—and she couldn’t imagine that she had any chance of winning. Talked into attending the ceremony at the last minute, she accepted the Tony when she won. She would never win another.
Capp was on a roll. “Li’l Abner” had hit a new peak. The comic strip was now appearing in seven hundred newspapers, with a circulation of forty million. The Broadway musical had garnered national attention, with articles and pictorials running in major magazines and newspapers across the country. Capp was earning more than a quarter of a million a year.
He was now working on a second strip, “Long Sam,” for which he was the writer, similar to his earlier role with “Abbie an’ Slats.” “Long Sam” was a sort of “Li’l Abner” from the female perspective. The title character was a mountain girl who had been hidden away from civilization by her mother, a woman distrustful of all men. She, like the Strange Gal characater in “Li’l Abner,” was eventually exposed to the modern, “civilized” world, which gave Capp the opportunity to present the contrasts in a humorous way. The strip opened in 1954.
Bob Lubbers, the artist on the strip, had earned his reputation after taking over “Tarzan” from Burne Hogarth in 1950. He was recommended for the job by Raeburn Van Buren, Capp’s artist for “Abbie an’ Slats.” He met Capp at just the right moment.
“One day in November 1953, as my ‘Tarzan’ contract was nearing renewal, he called me, inviting me to his Waldorf suite for a chat about a new project he thought might interest me. He had
seen my pretty girl stuff and thought his scripts and my art would be a happy combo. That was the start of our 25-year alliance.”
Capp would eventually turn the writing over to his brother Elliott, as he’d done with “Abbie an’ Slats,” but Lubbers would reunite with Capp to work on “Li’l Abner” during its last years. “Long Sam,” while entertaining, never matched “Li’l Abner” in either popularity or content, and it would become a footnote in Capp’s career.
Capp began 1957 with a take-no-prisoners “Li’l Abner” commentary on the youth culture, as powered by a new phenomenon called rock ’n’ roll. Where he once roasted Frank Sinatra and his horde of swooning female fans, he now gave the treatment to the effects that Elvis Presley and his swiveling hips had on American youth. Presley had scored heavily on the music charts the previous year with “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me Tender” among five hits reaching No. 1 status on the Billboard charts; Capp, who preferred the time-honored sagas of opera over the amplified energy of rock ’n’ roll, took notice. His “Li’l Abner” story, featuring an Elvis-like character named Hawg McCall, lambasted the youthful hero-worship of his fans while attacking the adult world striving to cash in on the fad.
This would be a year of parodies. Capp trained his sights on two popular comic strips: the soap opera strip “Mary Worth” and his friend Milton Caniff’s action strip, “Steve Canyon.” In the case of “Mary Worth,” Capp added a wrinkle by manufacturing another public feud, this one with “Mary Worth” writer Allen Saunders. The idea for the feud had been hatched the previous year in Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the cartoonists committee of President Dwight Eisenhower’s People to People program—a committee that Capp chaired.
“We cartoonists decided that ours was the dullest possible profession, since we all liked each other,” Capp cracked. “We decided it might add some interest to the entire profession if a couple of us murdered each other.”
Al Capp Page 20