Walter C. Hoban was an American cartoonist best known for his 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....

 Jerry on the Job

Jerry on the Job

Jerry on the Job was a popular comic strip by cartoonist Walter Hoban which was set in a railroad station. Syndicated by William Randolph Hearst's International Feature Service, it ran from 1913 into the 1930s....

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Born in Philadelphia, Hoban came from a newspaper family. His brother Edwin was with The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...

, and his father was the city editor and a political and editorial writer with the Philadelphia Public Ledger

Public Ledger (Philadelphia)

The Public Ledger was a daily newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania published from March 25, 1836 to January 1942. Its motto was "Virtue Liberty and Independence". For a time, it was Philadelphia's most popular newspaper, but circulation declined in the mid-1930s.-Early history:Founded by William...

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The young Hoban attended parochial schools and Saint Joseph's College

Saint Joseph's University

Saint Joseph's University is a private, coeducational Roman Catholic Jesuit university located partially in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia and partially in Lower Merion Township and located in the Pennsylvania Main Line, Pennsylvania, United States.The school was founded in 1851 as Saint...

, but he dropped out in 1907 to take a job at Philadelphia's North American newspaper, as he recalled, "There I made borders for pictures of the 'murdered man' et al. I drew the borders and the ads so carefully that they made me sporting cartoonist, and I was allowed to see the ball games free. This lasted until late in 1913 when the call of N.Y listened good. Then I joined the Hearst's collection of trained pencil pushers—and have been gaining weight every since."

Jerry on the Job

In 1913, invited to New York by Arthur Brisbane

Arthur Brisbane

Arthur Brisbane was one of the best known American newspaper editors of the 20th century.-Biography:...

, he became a sports cartoonist at the New York Journal

New York Journal American

The New York Journal American was a newspaper published from 1937 to 1966. The Journal American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst: The New York American , a morning paper, and the New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper...

. Later that year, he was given only a weekend to devise a comic strip, and he created Jerry on the Job, about pint-size Jerry Flannigan, initially employed as an office boy and then in a variety of other jobs. The strip was launched on December 29, 1913. Comics historian Don Markstein

Don Markstein's Toonopedia

Don Markstein's Toonopedia was a web encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation. Don D...

 described Hoban's character and work situations:

Jerry was about the size of a five-year-old who was small for his age, and proportioned like an infant (larger head as compared with the rest of his body) only more so—Jerry was only two heads tall; i.e., the remainder of him, all put together, was about as big as his head... After a year or two, he began moving from job to job. He was a retail clerk, a messenger boy, even a prize fighter (at his size!) and other things before Hoban went off to fight World War I, and the strip went on hiatus. When it returned, Jerry was working at a railroad station under the supervision of Mr. Givney, the station's manager. His job included just about everything that went into making a railroad station function—selling tickets, sweeping floors, toting baggage, running little errands for the boss, etc. Sources of humor included the eccentrics who hung around the station, Mr. Givney's peevishness, and Jerry's own ineptitude. Also, Hoban pioneered in the use of humorous signs posted here and there in the background, a motif also seen in Smokey Stover

Smokey Stover

Smokey Stover is an American comic strip written and drawn by cartoonist Bill Holman, from 1935 until he retired in 1973. Distributed through the Chicago Tribune, it features the wacky misadventures of the titular fireman, and had the longest run of any comic strip in the "screwball comics"...

, Mad

Mad (magazine)

Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...

and elsewhere. And practically everyone commenting on the strip has praised Hoban for putting his characters through spectacular "takes", that is, exaggerated physical responses to surprising or disconcerting events. He specialized in what some call the "flip take", which left the character undergoing it (usually Givney) as flat on the ground as Charlie Brown after trying to kick Lucy's football.

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...

, Hoban was a sergeant in the military police. In 1918, he attended the divisional training school for officers at Camp Meade

Fort George G. Meade

Fort George G. Meade is a United States Army installation that includes the Defense Information School, the United States Army Field Band, and the headquarters of United States Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Courier Service...

 in Maryland.

In 1922, Hoban provided illustrative slides to accompany songs in the Greenwich Village Follies revue

Revue

A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...

. He was a member of the Pen and Pencil Club of Philadelphia and took part in their annual Nights in Bohemia roof garden show.

The Jerry on the Job Sunday page

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...

 began in 1919, but it later became 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 above another Hoban feature, Rainbow Duffy. The daily strip

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....

 came to an end in 1931, and the topper was dropped in 1932. During the late 1930s, Hoban's character was used to advertise Post Grape-Nut Flakes

Grape-Nuts

Grape-Nuts is a breakfast cereal developed by C. W. Post in 1897. Post was a patient and later competitor of the 19th-century breakfast food innovator, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Despite its name, the cereal contains neither grapes nor nuts. The cereal is actually made from wheat and barley, in later...

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In the 1930s, Hoban started two other strips, Needlenose Noonan and Discontinued Stories, but neither was as successful as Jerry on the Job.

Animation

Hoban's Jerry on the Job was adapted by Bray Studios into several animated films: A Thrilling Drill (1920), Swinging His Vacation (1920), The Mad Locomotive (1922) and Without Coal (1920).

On September 15, 1931, Hoban appeared with 14 other leading newspaper cartoonists on an NBC radio program, Cartoonists Convention, hosted by Arthur "Bugs" Baer. The promotional aspect of this was revealed in radio listings where it was labeled "NBC Hearst Program". The show featured an orchestra, and each cartoonist spoke for 90 seconds. Other cartoonists on the program included Billy DeBeck, Rube Goldberg

Rube Goldberg

Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...

, Milt Gross

Milt Gross

Milt Gross , was an American comic strip and comic book writer, illustrator and animator. He wrote his comics in a Yiddish-inflected English. He originated the non-sequitur "Banana Oil!" as a phrase deflating pomposity and posing. His character Count Screwloose's admonition, "Iggy, keep an eye on...

 and Cliff Sterrett

Cliff Sterrett

Clifford Sterrett , was an innovative comic strip cartoonist who created the influential Polly and Her Pals....

.

Hoban was 49 when he died in 1939. His brother, newspaperman Edwin A. Hoban, died August 23, 1931, at the age of 38.

External links

• Grape-Nuts Flakes ads