Toonerville Folks

"Toonerville Folks" (sometimes known as "Toonerville Trolley") was a popular newspaper cartoon feature by Fontaine Fox, syndicated from 1908 to 1955, from the 1930s on by the McNaught Syndicate.

The single-panel gag cartoon was a daily look at Toonerville, situated in what are now called the suburbs. Central to the strip was the rickety little trolley called the "Toonerville Trolley that met all the trains," driven in a frenzy by the grizzly old Skipper to meet each commuter train as it arrived in town. A few of the many richly-formed characters included The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, The Powerful Katrinka, Little Woo-Woo Wortle, Aunt Eppie Hogg and Mickey McGuire, the town bully.

Fontaine Fox described the inspiration for the cartoon series in an article that he wrote for "The Saturday Evening Post" titled "A Queer Way to Make a Living" (February 11, 1928, page six)::After years of gestation, the idea for the "Toonerville Trolley" was born one day up in Westchester County when my wife and I had left New York City to visit Charlie Voight, the cartoonist, in the Pelhams. At the station we saw a rattletrap of a street car which had as its crew and skipper a wistful old codger with an Airedale beard. He showed as much concern in the performance of his job as you might expect from Captain Hartley when docking the Leviathan...

Between 1920 and 1922, 17 "Toonerville" silent film comedy adaptations were scripted by Fox for Philadelphia's Betzwood Film Company. These starred Dan Mason as the Skipper with Wilma Wild as Katrinka. Only seven of those 17 shorts survive today. Four are preserved in the Betzwood Film Archive at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

Mickey Rooney starred as Mickey McGuire in more than 55 comedy shorts filmed between 1927 and 1936. Rooney (né Joe Yule, Jr.) adopted the professional name Mickey McGuire for a time before finally settling on the last name Rooney. The first of several Van Beuren Studios animated cartoons adapted from the syndicated panels was released by RKO on January 17, 1936. Some of these became available on laserdisc in 1994 [ [http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc.php?id=5618 Toonerville cartoons on laserdisc.] ] and later on DVD from Image Entertainment in 1999.

Over the years, various Toonerville characters acted as spokemen for popular products of the day. Skipper, Flem, and Katrinka appeared throughout the decades in advertisements for Drano, Kellogg's cereals, and Chef Boyardee foods. [ [http://graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/gallery-view?keyword=TOONERVILLE Toonerville characters as product spokesmen.] ]

Between 1934 and 1940, comic book reprints of the panel appeared in many issues of "All-American Comics", "Famous Funnies" and "Popular Comics". In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative United States postage stamps.

References

External links

* [http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/fox.html Fontaine Fox mss. at Indiana University]
* [http://www.toonopedia.com/toonrvil.htm Toonopedia]
* [http://www.comicsaccess.com/index.php Strickler, Dave. "Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index". Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0970007701]