The Gumps
The Gumps were a popular comic strip about an ordinary family by Sidney Smith. The strip ran from February 12, 1917 until October 17, 1959.
The Gumps were utterly ordinary: the chinless Andy, his wife Min (short for Minerva), their son Chester, the rich Uncle Bim, and the annoying maid Tilda. The idea was envisioned by Captain Joseph M. Patterson, the editor and publisher of The Chicago Tribune who was important in the early histories of many comic strips, like Little Orphan Annie. Patterson referred to the masses as "gumps" and thought a strip about the domestic lives of ordinary people and their ordinary happenings would appeal to the "gumps". He hired Smith to write and draw the strip and it was Smith who breathed life into the characters.
The strip was extremely popular, inspiring toys, board games, sheet music, cartoons, and a radio show. The popularity was fueled by some provocative stories in the strip as well. Smith had Andy run for Congress in 1922 and for President in 1924 and in practically every succeeding election, one of the first of many comic strip and cartoon characters to run for office. Smith also stunned readers by killing off Mary Gold, a major character, in 1929.
The strip made Smith a rich man. On his way home from signing a $150,000 a year contract in 1935, he crashed his new Rolls-Royce and died. Patterson replaced Smith with sports cartoonist Gus Edson, but Edson's version was not as popular.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, actor Martin Landau was a comic strip artist and one of his jobs was as assistant to Edson on The Gumps.
External links
- Toonopedia (http://www.toonopedia.com/thegumps.htm)
- Meet the Gumps (http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=2277&si=126)