Walter Bradford was one of the greatest lunatic cartoonists, which I don’t mean as a pejorative in any way. He just came up with totally crazy ideas, took his strips in bizarre directions and came up with unexpectedly out of left field gags. I can’t help but believe that if he had ever gotten to New York he would have made just as big a splash as Rube Goldberg. Yeah, he really was that good, in my opinion.
Bradford came to the Philadelphia North American in 1905 and began an incredibly fertile period where he created an amazing string of wacky series. He generally didn’t go in for one-shots at the NA, but here’s one that might have been in the running to become a series and just never happened. This portrayal of rooming-house life is just bursting with little gags numbering in the dozens, all in a throwaway half-page strip.
This strip ran on Sunday September 3 1905 in the North American, but our version ran the day before in a Saturday issue of the St. Paul Dispatch in glorious black and white.
Trivium: The lady in the top of the vertical panel is singing "I Can't Do the Sum", a song from Victor Herbert's "Babes in Toyland". That show debuted in 1903 and toured with frequent revivals, and sheet music of the songs must have been on many parlor pianos.
In the original, the song is sung by a schoolgirl up against nonsensical word problems in her homework. In the Disney movie, the lyrics are rewritten for heroine Mary, fretting over her family's bills. Between them came the Laurel and Hardy classic, where the tune sans lyrics served as their characters' theme music.
For that matter, the sales-lady tickling the ivories is playing the 1904 song "Teasing." You can hear Billy Murray singing it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5KzNJeJEc0