Herriman Saturday

Thursday, September 19 1907 — George Memsic is training for his fight with Joe Gans. If Herriman’s depiction of Memsic’s camp boxing ring looks a little off-kilter, don’t blame the cartoonist. The makeshift training facility was too small and the ring had to be abbreviated into a sort of triangle shape.

Thursday, September 19 1907 — A convention of the American Press Humorists is in town, and Herriman (referred to as “George the Greek” in the article) accompanies the funnymen on an outing to Mount Lowe just outside LA. They are:

William Hamilton Cline, a local press humorist whose only notable credit seems to be that he translated a book of Russian short stories. He was active in L.A. from the 1890s to at least the 1920s.

William J. Lampton, Kentucky-bred humorist and poet, he worked for the New York Sun. He died in 1917.

Fred W. Shaefer, the only fellow depicted with a cartooning background, he did the writing on several comic strip series for NEA in the 1910s. He was a Cleveland staple for decades.

T. Augustine Daly was one of those dialect poets who proliferated in the era. He specialized in Italian and Irish-accented verse.

Frank Searight, president of the APH, seems to have as his most notable achievement writing a lurid account of the Great San Francisco earthquake. It was rushed to press and sold briskly as a cheap paperback.

I can’t find any information on J.M. Lewis or Dunk Smith.

2 comments on “Herriman Saturday

  1. Hello, Allan—-Duncan ("Dunk") H. Smith was a member of the Chicago Press Association. He seemed to be primarily on the organization side of things, and delivered an occasional address on it's behalf. He was also a socialist, considered so radical that he was expelled by one faction of that group. His wife was also very involved in the Chicago women's suffrage movement.—-Cole Johnson.

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