Gene Byrnes
Encyclopedia
Reg'lar Fellers
Reg'lar Fellers was a long-run newspaper comic strip adapted into a feature film, a radio series on NBC and an animated cartoon. Created by Gene Byrnes , the comic strip offered a humorous look at a gang of suburban children...
, which he signed Gene Byrnes. His humorous look at suburban children (who nevertheless spoke like New York street kids) was distributed by the Bell Syndicate and other syndicates from 1917 to 1949.
Born and educated in New York City, Byrnes was ten years old when he entered a contest that involved drawing a picture in a store window and won the prize, a $5 suit. He took a job as an office boy at McClure's
McClure's
McClure's or McClure's Magazine was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century. The magazine is credited with creating muckraking journalism. Ida Tarbell's series in 1902 exposing the monopoly abuses of John D...
when he was 15, and a year later he went to work in his father's harness business and soon started his own business, making horse collars. He also worked as a bug spray salesman, shoemaker and shoe salesman, introducing electric shoe repairs to New York.
Byrnes planned a career in sports, but after he broke his leg during a wrestling match, he began copying the cartoons of Tad Dorgan
Thomas A. Dorgan
Thomas Aloysius Dorgan also known as Tad Dorgan, was an American cartoonist who signed his drawings as Tad. He is known for his cartoon panel Indoor Sports and the many words and expressions he added to the language.He was born in San Francisco on April 29, 1877...
while recuperating in the hospital. He was a graduate of the Landon School of Illustration and Cartooning correspondence course, which displayed his name in its advertisements.
Cartoons to comics
Byrnes met Winsor McCayWinsor McCay
Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator.A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades...
who gave him a letter of recommendation which led to work as a sports cartoonist. At the New York Telegram
New York World-Telegram
The New York World-Telegram, later known as the New York World-Telegram and Sun, was a New York City newspaper from 1931 to 1966.-History:...
where Things That Never Happen was part of Byrnes' larger feature, It's A Great Life If You Don't Weaken, syndicated by the New York Evening Telegram from 1915 to 1919. It's a Great Life If You Don't Weaken became a rallying cry of the American Army during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. In 1917, this cartoon feature introduced the Reg'lar Fellers characters.
In 1919, he began Wide Awake Willie as a New York Herald
New York Herald
The New York Herald was a large distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between May 6, 1835, and 1924.-History:The first issue of the paper was published by James Gordon Bennett, Sr., on May 6, 1835. By 1845 it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the UnitedStates...
Sunday page, and this too featured Reg'lar Fellers characters. With Reg'lar Fellers running as a daily strip in 1920, he changed the name of the Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...
to Reg'lar Fellers. Byrnes and his wife lived in New York with a summer home in Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain is a natural, freshwater lake in North America, located mainly within the borders of the United States but partially situated across the Canada—United States border in the Canadian province of Quebec.The New York portion of the Champlain Valley includes the eastern portions of...
. During a 16-day trip west by automobile in 1922, they saw Carmel, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea, often called simply Carmel, is a small city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated in 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, the town is known for its natural scenery and rich artistic history...
and decided to live there. They acquired the stone house then known as the Foster house, built in 1906, and remodeled it.
In 1923, he was interviewed by Helen Hilliard of The Oakland Tribune
The Oakland Tribune
The Oakland Tribune is a daily newspaper published in Oakland, California, by the Bay Area News Group , a subsidiary of MediaNews Group...
:
- I sat and watched Gene Byrnes draw a cartoon of himself for me. And I marveled as I watched. How anybody could sit down off-hand, take up pencil and paper, and start right off on a picture. When I had asked him for a photograph, he had looked rather dubious. He had his doubts if he had any pictures of himself. “But,” he continued, “I can make that all right.” A soft drawing pencil appeared magically in his fingers, and deftly he began to trace various figures on a square of drawing paper. As I looked on the lines gradually began to take shape until I could see the faint resemblance to a man. The pencil suddenly disappeared and its place was taken by a pen. This he dipped in India ink and with big swift strokes blotted out the penciled lines with streaks of heavy black. A small paint brush put on the finishing touches. And lo and behold! there was the picture all finished, showing Gene Byrnes, cartoonist, with two Reg’lar Fellers on the top of his desk.
Byrnes, who was soon earning $25,000 a year, also did two topper
Topper (comic strip)
A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.Toppers usually were drawn...
strips—Daiseybelle and Zoolie. He overcame his limited drawing skills by hiring a phalanx of talented cartoonists to assist and ghost his strip, which continued to run in newspapers until 1948. Benjamin Thackston Knight (1895-1977), aka “Tack” Knight, was Byrnes' assistant on Reg’lar Fellers from 1924 to 1929.
Books
Cupples & Leon published a Reg'lar Fellers collection in 1929. With syndication in 800 newspapers, plus book reprints and comic books, Byrnes' cartoon kids made him a wealthy man. Merchandising included Reg'lar Fellers baseball and football equipment.Between 1939 and 1952, he wrote and edited several instructional books on cartooning and illustration. Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
learned how to draw cartoons after finding a copy of Byrnes' The Complete Guide to Cartooning in the early 1950s. Essandess published Byrnes' The How to Doodle Book in 1970.
Stonehouse Inn
Byrnes' stone house exists today as the historic Stonehouse Inn, built in 1906, with its ocean view, glass-enclosed porch, seven guest rooms, stone fireplace and hidden vault. It is located in Carmel at Eighth Avenue and Monte Verde Street.In later years in New York, Byrnes lived at 570 Park Avenue. At the age of 84, he died at New York's Roosevelt Hospital of a heart ailment in 1974.
Sources
- Strickler, DaveDave StricklerDave Strickler is a reference librarian noted for his compilation of Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924–1995: The Complete Index, regarded as a major reference work by researchers and historians of newspaper comic strips....
. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, California: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1