Our Boarding House
Encyclopedia
Our Boarding House was a long-running, American
gag-panel comic strip
created by Gene Ahern
in 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association
. Set in a boarding house
run by the sensible Mrs. Hoople, it drew humor from the interactions of her grandiose, tall-tale-telling husband, the self-styled Major Hoople, with the rooming-house denizens and his various friends and cronies.
After Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create a similar feature a rival syndicate, he was succeeded by a number of artists and writers including Wood Cowan and Bela "Bill" Zaboly before Bill Freyse (1898–1969) took over the art Our Boarding House from 1939 to 1969. He was the father of the American actress Lynn Borden
.
Others who worked on the strip included Jim Branagan and Tom McCormick. The Sunday color strip
ended on March 29, 1981; the weekday panel
continued until December 22, 1984.
created the comic strip
Crazy Quilt, starring the Nut Brothers, Ches and Wal. That same year, NEA General Manager Frank Rostock suggested to Ahern that he use a boarding house
for a setting. Ahern initially used his own experiences as a boarder while a Chicago
, Illinois
, art student as grist for his comic mill, and featured the picaresque peccadilloes and bickering of its residents, presided over by the no-nonsense Martha Hoople. Our Boarding House began September 16, 1921, scoring success with readers after the January 1922 arrival of the fustian, blustery Major Amos B. Hoople, Martha's husband, who'd returned after some long sojourn. "Hoople has been compared to the type created on-screen by W. C. Fields
, but was probably closer to Falstaff
," writes comics historian Maurice Horn "A retired military man of dubious achievement like Shakespeare's [comic figure], he boasted of soldierly exploits that were perhaps not all invented, and his buffoonery sometimes concealed real pathos." That character depth diminished as the comic became more popular, with Major Hoople becoming "the one-dimensional figure of fun most people remember" of the strip. The primary boarders were the cynical Clyde and Mack, and the only somewhat more trusting Buster.
A multipanel, color Sunday strip was added in 1924. From October 1931 on, Ahern's The Nut Bros, featuring loony siblings Ches and Wal in pun-filled, vaudevillian
bit of business, ran as a topper
strip.
Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create the similar Room and Board
for King Features Syndicate
, Our Boarding House "passed into the hands of a bewildering array of artists and writers" including Bela "Bill" Zaboly, at The Comic Strip Project. before Bill Freyse took over the art for Our Boarding House from 1939 until his death in 1969. Writer Bill Braucher scripted from 1939 to 1958, followed by Tom McCormick on the daily from 1959 on. Freyse's 1960s assistant, Jim Branagan, drew the strip from 1969 to 1971, succeeded then by Les Carroll.
The Sunday strip
came to an end on March 29, 1981, and continued as a daily feature until December 22, 1984, when Carroll and writer Tom McCormick retired. Others included writers Wood Cowan in 1946, Tom Peoples on the Sunday strip circa 1968, and Phil Pastoret on the Sunday strip from 1977 on. The finale had Hoople finally striking it rich: a multimillion dollar project needed a minor patent that he had obtained many years ago. In the last strip, Hoople and Martha embarked upon their new lives of wealth.
described the characters:
Ahern once revealed the origin of Major Hoople:
There were comic book reprints in Whitman's Crackajack Funnies and a single issue of Standard Comics
' Major Hoople Comics (1943).
In 2005, Leonard G. Lee's Algrove Publishing reprinted Ahern's cartoons in Our Boarding House, 1927 as part of its Classic Reprint Series.
's Blue Network
on June 22, 1942. With Arthur Q. Bryan
in the title role, the 30-minute program aired on Mondays at 4:05pm on the American
West Coast and 7:05pm on the East Coast. The series was written by Jerry Cady (1903–48). Patsy Moran had the role of Hoople's wife, Martha. Conrad Binyon and Frank Bresee portrayed Hoople's "precocious little nephew", Little Alvin. Mel Blanc
played the star boarder, Tiffany Twiggs. The radio series ended April 26, 1943. No recordings of the Major Hoople radio program are known to exist.
The term "hooplehead", used by the character Al Swearengen
on the HBO Old West television series Deadwood
, is an anachronism
as it was "probably derive[d]" from Major Hoople. The first recording of the term appears in 1980, in Dennis Smith's Glitter and Ash ("The old man said, 'Speakin' of Maureen, you know she’s been acting like a real hooplehead lately, like a kid they let out of Creedmoor[ Psychiatric Center]
by mistake.'"). One etymologist, without giving citation, claims, "The producer and head of the scriptwriting team, David Milch
, has been reported as saying in essence that he picked something out of the air to serve as a suitable insult without great concern for its etymology. It seems he must have heard it somewhere and it came conveniently back to mind while writing the scripts.
In 1974, the Kitchener, Ontario
pop band known as Major Hoople's Boarding House charted a top-30 Canadian radio hit with the song "I'm Running After You".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
gag-panel comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
created by Gene Ahern
Gene Ahern
Eugene Leslie Ahern was a cartoonist best known for his bombastic Major Hoople, a pompous character who appeared in the long-run syndicated gag panel Our Boarding House...
in 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association
United Media
United Media is a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. It syndicates 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core business is the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association...
. Set in a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
run by the sensible Mrs. Hoople, it drew humor from the interactions of her grandiose, tall-tale-telling husband, the self-styled Major Hoople, with the rooming-house denizens and his various friends and cronies.
After Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create a similar feature a rival syndicate, he was succeeded by a number of artists and writers including Wood Cowan and Bela "Bill" Zaboly before Bill Freyse (1898–1969) took over the art Our Boarding House from 1939 to 1969. He was the father of the American actress Lynn Borden
Lynn Borden
Lynn Borden is an American actress best known for her role as "Barbara Baxter" in the final season of the Shirley Booth sitcom Hazel, which aired on CBS from 1965 to 1966.-Background:...
.
Others who worked on the strip included Jim Branagan and Tom McCormick. The Sunday color 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...
ended on March 29, 1981; the weekday panel
Daily strip
A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays....
continued until December 22, 1984.
Publication history
In 1921, Gene AhernGene Ahern
Eugene Leslie Ahern was a cartoonist best known for his bombastic Major Hoople, a pompous character who appeared in the long-run syndicated gag panel Our Boarding House...
created the comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Crazy Quilt, starring the Nut Brothers, Ches and Wal. That same year, NEA General Manager Frank Rostock suggested to Ahern that he use a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
for a setting. Ahern initially used his own experiences as a boarder while a Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, art student as grist for his comic mill, and featured the picaresque peccadilloes and bickering of its residents, presided over by the no-nonsense Martha Hoople. Our Boarding House began September 16, 1921, scoring success with readers after the January 1922 arrival of the fustian, blustery Major Amos B. Hoople, Martha's husband, who'd returned after some long sojourn. "Hoople has been compared to the type created on-screen by W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...
, but was probably closer to Falstaff
Falstaff
Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
," writes comics historian Maurice Horn "A retired military man of dubious achievement like Shakespeare's [comic figure], he boasted of soldierly exploits that were perhaps not all invented, and his buffoonery sometimes concealed real pathos." That character depth diminished as the comic became more popular, with Major Hoople becoming "the one-dimensional figure of fun most people remember" of the strip. The primary boarders were the cynical Clyde and Mack, and the only somewhat more trusting Buster.
A multipanel, color Sunday strip was added in 1924. From October 1931 on, Ahern's The Nut Bros, featuring loony siblings Ches and Wal in pun-filled, vaudevillian
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
bit of business, ran as a 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...
strip.
Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create the similar Room and Board
Room and Board (comic strip)
Room and Board was a comic strip by Gene Ahern which was syndicated from 1936 to 1953, following Ahern's memorable Our Boarding House which he drew from 1921 to 1936.-Related strips:...
for King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...
, Our Boarding House "passed into the hands of a bewildering array of artists and writers" including Bela "Bill" Zaboly, at The Comic Strip Project. before Bill Freyse took over the art for Our Boarding House from 1939 until his death in 1969. Writer Bill Braucher scripted from 1939 to 1958, followed by Tom McCormick on the daily from 1959 on. Freyse's 1960s assistant, Jim Branagan, drew the strip from 1969 to 1971, succeeded then by Les Carroll.
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...
came to an end on March 29, 1981, and continued as a daily feature until December 22, 1984, when Carroll and writer Tom McCormick retired. Others included writers Wood Cowan in 1946, Tom Peoples on the Sunday strip circa 1968, and Phil Pastoret on the Sunday strip from 1977 on. The finale had Hoople finally striking it rich: a multimillion dollar project needed a minor patent that he had obtained many years ago. In the last strip, Hoople and Martha embarked upon their new lives of wealth.
Characters and story
As comics historian Don MarksteinDon Markstein's Toonopedia
Don Markstein's Toonopedia was a web encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation. Don D...
described the characters:
- Martha scowled a lot, and ran her household the way a Sherman tank might run a stop sign; yet, her boarders, including Buster, Clyde, Mack and others who came and went, managed to hold their own in her presence. But it more likely owes its fame to one character in particular—Martha's husband, Major Amos B. Hoople, perhaps the greatest windbag, stuffed shirt and blowhard ever to "hrumph" his way across the funnies page. It was four months before the Major appeared on the scene (returning from a ten-year absence from Martha's life), but he quickly took over to the point where many people today think his name was the feature's title. Major Hoople had a huge, bulbous nose and an even huger gut. He sported a scraggly moustache and smoked rank cigars. He was seldom seen without a battered fez. In addition to near-archaic expressions like "egad" and "drat", he was often heard mouthing such non-words as "fap", "awp" and "kaff". His favorite mode of expression was long-winded discourses about his prestigious and astonishing experiences, which nobody took seriously and only his occasionally-seen nephew, Alvin, even pretended to pay attention to.
Ahern once revealed the origin of Major Hoople:
- Major Hoople was based on an old fellow I knew quite well when I was growing up. He had been in the Civil War and to hear his tall stories you'd think he had advised Grant and Sherman on every move of the war, telling them exactly what to do every morning. He even insisted he had fired the first shot. He was quite a character and everyone knew him very well. He called himself "General" in spite of the fact that he had only been a top sergeant in the Army. The General was one of those men who always put up a $10 front with a dime in their pockets—a natural subject for cartooning.
Reprints
Standard Comics
Standard Comics was a comic book imprint of American publisher Ned Pines, who also published pulp magazines under a variety of company names that he also used for the comics...
' Major Hoople Comics (1943).
In 2005, Leonard G. Lee's Algrove Publishing reprinted Ahern's cartoons in Our Boarding House, 1927 as part of its Classic Reprint Series.
Radio
The Major Hoople radio series began on NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's Blue Network
Blue Network
The Blue Network, and its immediate predecessor, the NBC Blue Network, were the on-air names of an American radio production and distribution service from 1927 to 1945...
on June 22, 1942. With Arthur Q. Bryan
Arthur Q. Bryan
Arthur Quirk Bryan was a United States comedian and voice actor, remembered best for his longtime recurring role as well-spoken, wisecracking Dr...
in the title role, the 30-minute program aired on Mondays at 4:05pm on the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
West Coast and 7:05pm on the East Coast. The series was written by Jerry Cady (1903–48). Patsy Moran had the role of Hoople's wife, Martha. Conrad Binyon and Frank Bresee portrayed Hoople's "precocious little nephew", Little Alvin. Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
played the star boarder, Tiffany Twiggs. The radio series ended April 26, 1943. No recordings of the Major Hoople radio program are known to exist.
Books
The Saalfield Publishing Company, the maker of Little Big Books, published Major Hoople and His Horse under the ancillary imprint Jumbo Books (listed as #SS41 1190), in 1940. The 400-page, hardcover book was written and drawn by the panel's successor cartoonist Bill Freyse.Cultural legacy
Al Swearengen
Ellis Albert "Al" Swearengen was a pimp and early entertainment entrepreneur in Deadwood, South Dakota, running the Gem Theater, a notorious brothel, for 22 years, and combining a reputation for brutality with an uncanny instinct for forging political alliances.Swearengen and his twin brother,...
on the HBO Old West television series Deadwood
Deadwood (TV series)
Deadwood is an American Western drama television series created, produced and largely written by David Milch. The series aired on the premium cable network HBO from March 21, 2004, to August 27, 2006, spanning three 12-episode seasons. The show is set in the 1870s in Deadwood, South Dakota, before...
, is an anachronism
Anachronism
An anachronism—from the Greek ανά and χρόνος — is an inconsistency in some chronological arrangement, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other...
as it was "probably derive[d]" from Major Hoople. The first recording of the term appears in 1980, in Dennis Smith's Glitter and Ash ("The old man said, 'Speakin' of Maureen, you know she’s been acting like a real hooplehead lately, like a kid they let out of Creedmoor
Creedmoor Psychiatric Center
Creedmoor Psychiatric Center is a psychiatric hospital in Queens Village, Queens, New York, United States that provides inpatient, outpatient and residential services for severely mentally ill patients...
by mistake.'"). One etymologist, without giving citation, claims, "The producer and head of the scriptwriting team, David Milch
David Milch
David S. Milch is an American writer and producer of television series. He has created several television shows, including NYPD Blue and Deadwood.-Biography:...
, has been reported as saying in essence that he picked something out of the air to serve as a suitable insult without great concern for its etymology. It seems he must have heard it somewhere and it came conveniently back to mind while writing the scripts.
In 1974, the Kitchener, Ontario
Kitchener, Ontario
The City of Kitchener is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada. It was the Town of Berlin from 1854 until 1912 and the City of Berlin from 1912 until 1916. The city had a population of 204,668 in the Canada 2006 Census...
pop band known as Major Hoople's Boarding House charted a top-30 Canadian radio hit with the song "I'm Running After You".
External links
- June 1997 interview with Frank Bresee who discusses his role on radio's Major Hoople
- "Your Comic Supplement: Our Boarding House, Gene Ahern", BarnaclePress.com (sample strips)
- "Our Boarding House with Major Hoople, by Bill Freyse" ComicStripFan.com (sample 1967 and 1982 strips)
- Bill Freyse Cartoons, Syracuse UniversitySyracuse UniversitySyracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
Library Finding Aids: "Abstract: 581 original cartoons from the comic strip Our Boarding House... Inclusive Dates: 1966-1967" - "PCL MS-48: Allen and John Saunders Collection: Box 21, Series VIII: Other Professional Work, Subseries A: 'Writing Comics is a Serious Business'", Bowling Green State UniversityBowling Green State UniversityBowling Green State University, often referred to as Bowling Green or BGSU, is a public, coeducational research university located in Bowling Green, Ohio, United States. The institution was granted a charter in 1910 by the State of Ohio as part of the Lowry Bill, which also established Kent State...
, Browne Popular Culture Library. Includes "Bill Braucher, Our Boarding House"