Harry Hershfield
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comic artist, humor writer and radio personality. A columnist once labeled him "the Jewish Will Rogers".
Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and east of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city...
, Hershfield was the son of Jewish immigrants. He studied in Chicago at the Frank Holmes School of Illustration and the Chicago Art Institute, and his career began at age 14, drawing sports cartoons and his comic strip about a dog, Homeless Hector, for the Chicago Daily News
Chicago Daily News
The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily newspaper published between 1876 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The Daily News was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty in 1875 and began publishing early the next year...
in 1899. He headed West, drawing for the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
by 1907.
Comic strips
In 1909, he was hired by Arthur BrisbaneArthur Brisbane
Arthur Brisbane was one of the best known American newspaper editors of the 20th century.-Biography:...
to work for William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
's New York Evening Journal. He switched to the New York Graphic where he did If I'm Wrong, Sue Me!, and when the Graphic folded, he went to the New York Herald Tribune and drew Meyer the Buyer.
Ron Goulart, in Encyclopedia of American Comics, described the Hershfield approach to cartoon humor:
- Hershfield drew in a vigorous, primitive cartoon style, and was enormously fond of shading, crosshatching and other basic inking techniques. Occasionally, he favored collages and sometimes made fun of other artists styles. In 1910, he started Desperate Desmond, a humorous continuity strip burlesquing melodramas, dime novels, and fiction weeklies that went in for the hairbreadth rescue and gloating villain sort of material. In addition to the villainous, top-hatted Desmond, the strip featured the stalwart Claude Éclair and the put-upon blond heroine, Rosamond. Hershfield's enthusiastic kidding of this sort of cliffhanger hokum did little to sour the public on its conventions. However, within a few years, such motion picture serials as The Exploits of ElaineThe Exploits of ElaineThe Exploits of Elaine is a film serial in the genre of The Perils of Pauline.The Exploits of Elaine tells the story of a young woman named Elaine who, with the help of a detective, tries to find the man, known only as "The Clutching Hand", who murdered her father. The Clutching Hand was the first...
and The Perils of PaulineThe Perils of Pauline (1914 serial)The Perils of Pauline is a motion picture serial shown in weekly installments featuring Pearl White as the title character. Pauline has often been cited as a famous example of a damsel in distress, although some analyses hold that her character was more resourceful and less helpless than the...
would be attracting audiences to movie houses by doing the stuff completely straight.
- In 1912, Hershfield switched heroes and introduced a new strip called Dauntless Durham of the U.S.A. Durham, a handsome, pipe-smoking combination of Sherlock HolmesSherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
, Nick CarterNick Carter (literary character)Nick Carter is a fictional character who began as a pulp fiction private detective and has appeared in a variety of formats over more than a century.-Literary history:...
and Frank MerriwellFrank MerriwellFrank Merriwell is a fictional character appearing in a series of novels and short stories by Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pseudonym Burt L. Standish...
, was the soul of honor and polite to a fault. The object of his affection was the beautiful Katrina. In 1914, Hershfield abandoned parody for a quieter sort of humor and created Abie the AgentAbie the AgentAbie the Agent was a popular early American comic strip about a Jewish car salesman by Harry Hershfield. When Hershfield had success with a Yiddish character in his comic strip Desperate Desmond, he was encouraged by his editor to create a new strip centered around Yiddishism and Jewish immigrants...
. The strip continued until 1940 and dealt with contemporary Jewish life in a big city. Hershfield specialized in gags with a Yiddish flavor.
The character was animated in Abie Kabibble Outwitted a Rival (1917).
In the 1930s, Hershfield was in demand as a banquet toastmaster, averaging some 200 banquets and dinners annually.
During his lifetime, he was toastmaster or emcee at an estimated 16,000 events, including charity affairs, dinners and stage benefits.
Involved in a legal battle with Hearst in 1933-35, Hershfield drew a Sunday half-page, According to Hoyle, for the New York Herald-Tribune during those years.
On March 11, 1938, he was signed to head the story department of MGM's cartoon studio. He later commented, "They were so glad to welcome me, the day I arrived they gave me a farewell dinner."
Radio
He entered radio with a program called One Man's Opinion, and Just after he brought Abie the Agent to an end in 1940, he became a well-known radio personality, telling jokes on Stop Me If You've Heard This OneStop Me If You've Heard This One
Stop Me If You've Heard This One was a comedy radio series, created by the actor-humorist Cal Tinney and sponsored by Quaker Oats. Hosted by Milton Berle, it aired Saturday evenings at 8:30pm on NBC beginning October 7, 1939.-Production history:The premise was that listeners received prizes for...
and Can You Top This?
Can You Top This?
Can You Top This? was a popular radio panel show in which comedians told jokes. The unrehearsed program, sponsored at one point by Colgate-Palmolive, was created by veteran vaudevillian "Senator" Edward Ford, who claimed he was taking part in a joke session at a New York theatrical club when he...
He was a frequent guest on early television shows during the 1950s.
Hershfield also was a columnist for the New York Daily Mirror
New York Daily Mirror
The New York Daily Mirror was an American morning tabloid newspaper first published on June 24, 1924, in New York City by the William Randolph Hearst organization as a contrast to their mainstream broadsheets, the Evening Journal and New York American, later consolidated into the New York Journal...
. His books include Laugh Louder, Live Longer and Now I'll Tell One.
Sources
- Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507678-8
- 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, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1.