Browne and Haenigsen 2

Saturday Leftover Day. For my second Browne and Haenigsen to go along with my article in the new issue of Hogan's Alley (out soon), I am going to do a repost... and it may not even be pure Browne. Somewhere in the late forties Dik Browne teamed up with Gill Fox for a series of Pennyinspired newspaper comic strip0 ads. They both worked as regulars for the Johnstone and Cushing company - though Fox may not have been there every day. In 1951, he started doing the Sunday only Jeanie (see the link for samples) for The New York Herald Tribune, which for a short period also was turned into a daily version. Their styles melted together seemlessly. So much so, that I can not pick apart who did what on each series. For a long time I have thought that the 1953 series of larger one panel ads Browne did for Camels were a solo job. They must have been done when Fox still did Jeanie Sunday and daily and they seem more like Browne's style than the stiffer Fox. But when I found another source for them and posted an almost complete run recently, newspaper history giant Alan Holtz told me he saw a bit of Hank Ketcham in them. And he is right. And although Ketcham did some advertising work, even after he started Dennis the Menace, he could never have been available for those. But on closer look, they do resemble Gill Fox' very much Ketcham and Browne inspired Bumper To Bumper filler strip for The New York Sunday News (again, see the link for the gorgeous samples). So... maybe Fox was involved after all? And what does that say about another Browne series mystery, the one panel serie he did for Listerine in 1959. They seem to be pure Browne as well, but they also look completely like The Tracy Twins series Browne did with Fox' help for the Boy Scouts of America weekly Boy's Life.

 

Here are the four Listerine ads I have in my files. I will be looking for more this week. From March 8 1959 (a bit late for Browne, but the money must have been good): From March 15 (actually my birthday):

From March 22: From July 5 1959 (a two week frequency was normal on these type of ads, so there should be more):