Tuesday Comic Strip Day.
A pretty girl looking for succes in Hollywood or on Broadway. There have been many strips about that. First there was Patsy, then Jeannie, then Tallulah who started out as a dumb blonde but went on to become an aspirinf actress called Jezabelle, then Down O'Day, then Mary Perkins and Dilly. In between there was Sherry and the Showgirls by Dan DeCarlo and Stan Lee and who knows who else. Jezabelle/Tallulah was was a cartoonist called Yar, whom I have not seen before or since. The Comic Strip's Who's Who tells us his real name was Ira Yarbrough. He worked in the Siegel and Shuster studio, inking Superman in the forties. He isn't mentioned as one of the assistnts of Siegel and Shuster's later strip Funnyman, although the style would fit. Remarkably, he is also mentioned as co-created of Mr. Mzyzptlk. It also mentions that Jezabelle was from another syndicate than Tallulah, but I can find no evidence of that here.
6 comments:
For what I know TALLULAH and JEZABELLE JONES were the same strip and by the same syndicate (John F. Dille)
Text were by Jerry Siegel (anonimously) and art by Ira Yarbrough.
The strip was syndicated from '50 to '52, with name changed in '51.
I've seen strips change titles when they changed the star (like Chief Wahoo - Steve Roper), but this is the first time I've seen the star re-named in midstream. Were there any others? Do you suppose Tallulah Bankhead complained?
I like how, in the first strip, the pan down Tallulah's body carefully avoids the part most male readers would have wanted to see.
The conservatism of American newspaper editors is legendary. Even when I drew "Dallas" in the 1980s the syndicate was paranoid--they were sure they'd lose papers if they showed too much skin, alcohol use, pictures of snakes, etc. I've heard about those taboos so many times, I wonder if they're urban legends. Around the time Tallulah was hiding her bustline Leslie Turner was drawing plenty of lovely lingerie scenes in "Captain Easy," and it didn't seem to hurt circulation.
Don't you think maybe there would have been a fourth (second) panel?
I can't believe I was so blind as not to see that. Do I feel stupid. Of course a panel has been dropped.Probably by one of those sensitive local editors the syndicates were afraid of.
I read Tallulah Bankhead's autobiography years ago and she mentioned this comic, and her disgust at what she felt was misuse of her name. She also complained about a radio commercial for shampoo which featured a character named Tallulah.
Yes, there was a lawsuit. It was Bankhead's second lawsuit againsta company using what she felt was an infringement of her name. Bankhead won in court in December of 1951 so the name of the character was changed to Jezebelle Jones. (Source: THE BIG SHOW: Tallulah Bankhead and her Radio Career, book being published in November 2013.)
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