Looking Back - Reminiscing with Jack Lebo
Family Circus’ Creator Bil Keane Offered Humor With Family Values
We have some sad news to report in this monthy’s LOOKING BACK column.
When I was a young kid, The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin carried a column for high school kids called Heigh-De-Ho. I contributed more than 200 cartoons and was thrilled to see them in print. I would deliver my work personally every Saturday, and that’s how I first met Bil Keane, who was a staff artist at the time. We became fast friends after that meeting.
For more than a half century, Bil Keane’s clever “Family Circus” comics entertained readers with a mix of humor and traditional family values, intentionally simplistic because the author thought the American public needed the consistency.
Keane who started drawing the on-panel cartoon featuring Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, P.J. and their parents in February 1960, died recently at age 89. His comic strip is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.
Jeff Keane, his son, said his father died of congestive heart failure. Bil Keane had a home in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix, but it was not immediately clear where he died.
Keane said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press that the cartoon endured because of its consistency and simplicity.
“It’s reassuring, I think, to the American public to see the same family,” he said.
Although Keane kept the strip current with references to pop culture movies and songs, the context of his comic was timeless. The ghost-like “Ida Know” and “Not Me” who got blamed for household accidents were staples of the strip. The family’s pets were dogs Barfy and Sam, and the cat, Kittycat.
“We are, in the comics, the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment,” Keane once said. “On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can’t tell what you are going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.”
His friend, Charles M. Schulz, the late creator of “Peanuts,” once said the most important thing about “Family Circus” is that it’s funny. “I think we share a care for the same type of humor,” Schulz told The Associated Press in 1995. “We’re both family men with children and look with great fondness at our families.”
Keane said the strip hit its stride with a cartoon he did in the mid-1960s.
“It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says, ‘I don’t feel so good, I think I need a hug.’ And suddenly I got a lot of mail from people about this dear little fella needing a hug, and I realized that there was something more than just getting a belly laugh every day.”
Even with his traditional side, Keane appreciated younger cartoonists’ efforts. He listed Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” among his favorites, and he loved it when Bill Griffith had his offbeat “Zippy the Pinhead” character wake up from a bump on the head thinking he was Keane’s Jeffy. Keane responded by giving Zippy an appearance in “Family Circus.”
In later years, Keane continued to produce “Family Circus” with the help of his youngest son, Jeff. Keane sketched out the ideas, characters and captions and sent them to Jeff for inking.
Born in 1922, Keane taught himself to draw in high school in his native Philadelphia. Around this time, young Bill dropped the second “L” off his name, “just to be different.”
He worked as a messenger for The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin before serving three years in the Army, where he drew for “Yank” and “Pacific Stars and Stripes.” He met his wife, Thelma (“Thel”) , while serving at a desk job in Australia.
He started a one-panel comic in 1953 called “Channel Chuckles” that lampooned the up-and-coming medium of television. (In one, a mom in front of a television, crying baby on her lap, tells husband: “She slept through two gun fights and a barroom brawl then the commercial woke her up.”)
He moved to Arizona in 1958 and two years later started a comic about a family much like his own. Keane and his wife had a daughter, Gayle, and sons, Glen, Jeff, Chris and Neal, one more son than in his cartoon family.
“I never thought about a philosophy for the strip...it developed gradually,” Keane told the East Valley Tribune in 1998. “I was portraying the family through my eyes, Everything that’s happened in the strip, has happened to me. That’s why I have all this white hair at 39 years old!”
He is survived by the five children he had with his wife Thelma “Thel” Keane, who died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2008, and was the inspiration for the Mommy character in the comic strip. When his wife died, Keane called her, “the inspiration for all of my success.... When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like Mommy, that if she was in the supermarket pushing her cart around, people would come up to her and say, ‘Aren’t you the mommy in Family Circus?”
She also served as his business and financial manager. Arizona and Keane had a mutual influence on each other. Keane’s work can be found all around from children’s centers to ice cream shops. Likewise, Arizona could also be found in Keane’s work.
A 2004 comic saw the family on a scenic lookout over the Grand Canyon with the children asking, “Why are the rocks painted different colors” and “What time does it close?”
Although Keane drew the funnies, his work was not necessarily intended to be comical. His goal was this: “I would rather have the readers react with a warm smile, a tug at the heart or a lump in the throat as they recall doing the same things in their own families.”
*
Reader Nancy Getz of Burlington City, reminds us that long before the days of talk radio, there were radio disc jockeys who played 78 rpm (revolutions per minute) records sending over the airwaves the popular tunes of the day.
The year was 1946, when these gents were the top deejays in Philadelphia. On top of the heap was genial Doug Arthur of WIBG. He was on daily with a show entitled, “Danceland,” and had a morning and evening session. Then there was Bob Knox, who hosted “Music at Eight,” on the same station, and there was “The Singing Jockey,” Gene Graves, with his stint, “Gene Graves Entertains.”
And there were dozens of others, including Mac McGuire, who hosted a morning show on WCAU; Wayne Cody, who doubled as “Uncle Wip” on WIP; Joe McCauley, with “The Dawn Patrol;” and Bob Horn with the “Midnight Bandwagon, also on WIP.
At WDAS “Merry-Go-Round Junior,” was featured daily with Pat Stanton at the helm, and on the same station, was Bill Orr, Mike Deegan and Sid Merkin, who emceed during the day. Then there was Lee Hunt, who was the record-spinner on his show, “Merry-Go-Round Senior,” heard during the evening hours on WDAS. Of course there were many others, but we will cover them in another edition.
*
Gail Krebbs of Cherry Hill recalls some of the chores she was assigned to do as a child. She writes, “On Saturday, Grandma and I would go out and beat the rugs that were hanging over the clothesline in the backyard. No one knew that on Friday night I prayed that it would rain on Saturday. It never did and so the two of us went out there with a rug beater. After that chore, Grandma went into the house to prepare supper and I was free for a little while.”
*
Dr. Charles Reiss, also of Cherry Hill, jogged our memory about things that used to be, that aren’t around anymore. When is the last time you saw wash tub wringers, Studebakers, drive-in movie theatres, Packards, a mimeograph machine, roller skate keys, S&H Green Stamps, peashooters, Charlie McCarthy dolls, Howdy Doody and pimple balls?
Some other obsolete items he recalls — galoshes with buckles, when we would use a stick to measure the amount of gas in the tank, when mom thought that cod liver oil was a miracle drug, the Sears & Roebuck main store located on Roosevelt Boulevard in Philly, Tasty Cakes at three for 5 cents, Horn & Hardarts’ automats and the Knot Hole Gang, which provided baseball game tickets to the now-gone Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
*
Haddonfield’s Richard Luongo reminded us of the Blue Laws in Philadelphia during the 1940s, when, by law, it was forbidden to present stage shows on Sundays. Being a fan of the big bands which were featured at the Earle Theatre at 9th & Market Streets, Richard explained if he missed seeing a band during the week, he would travel to the Stanley Theatre in Camden, New Jersey. It was the same big band and stage show but the movie was different from the Earle.
Richard claims that he saw just about every band that came to town, including Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Les Brown, Vaughn Monroe, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Sammy Kaye and numerous others. Along with the band, and a movie, a number of big name performers were featured. He recalls seeing such stars as Frankie Laine, Frank Sinatra, and The Ink Spots among others. He also remembers seeing Humphrey Bogart during one show
*
Steve Steiner of Burlington asked if we recalled the Langhorne Speedway, a auto racing track on Route One. Also on Route One, not too many years ago there was Greenwood Dairies, where folks came far and wide to partake of their homemade ice creams. You had to go there with an empty stomach, because the portions were so enormous, most could not finish, whether it be a bowl, cone or a thick milk shake.
But the specialty of the house was the “Pig’s Dinner,” served in a trough — the customer would be awarded a medal if they finished it. The medal was treasured and I’m told some ice cream lovers still have their original medals.
Finally, there is a sundial in the area which reads, “Grow old along with me—-The best is yet to come.” Sounds like words to live by.
*
Looking Back appears each month. Do you have a memory you’d like to share? Drop a line to: Jack Lebo, Looking Back, 37 Locust Lane, Levittown, PA 19054, or call (215) 943-8870, email: jacklebo@verizon.net.
We have some sad news to report in this monthy’s LOOKING BACK column.
When I was a young kid, The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin carried a column for high school kids called Heigh-De-Ho. I contributed more than 200 cartoons and was thrilled to see them in print. I would deliver my work personally every Saturday, and that’s how I first met Bil Keane, who was a staff artist at the time. We became fast friends after that meeting.
For more than a half century, Bil Keane’s clever “Family Circus” comics entertained readers with a mix of humor and traditional family values, intentionally simplistic because the author thought the American public needed the consistency.
Keane who started drawing the on-panel cartoon featuring Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, P.J. and their parents in February 1960, died recently at age 89. His comic strip is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.
Jeff Keane, his son, said his father died of congestive heart failure. Bil Keane had a home in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix, but it was not immediately clear where he died.
Keane said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press that the cartoon endured because of its consistency and simplicity.
“It’s reassuring, I think, to the American public to see the same family,” he said.
Although Keane kept the strip current with references to pop culture movies and songs, the context of his comic was timeless. The ghost-like “Ida Know” and “Not Me” who got blamed for household accidents were staples of the strip. The family’s pets were dogs Barfy and Sam, and the cat, Kittycat.
“We are, in the comics, the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment,” Keane once said. “On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can’t tell what you are going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.”
His friend, Charles M. Schulz, the late creator of “Peanuts,” once said the most important thing about “Family Circus” is that it’s funny. “I think we share a care for the same type of humor,” Schulz told The Associated Press in 1995. “We’re both family men with children and look with great fondness at our families.”
Keane said the strip hit its stride with a cartoon he did in the mid-1960s.
“It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says, ‘I don’t feel so good, I think I need a hug.’ And suddenly I got a lot of mail from people about this dear little fella needing a hug, and I realized that there was something more than just getting a belly laugh every day.”
Even with his traditional side, Keane appreciated younger cartoonists’ efforts. He listed Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” among his favorites, and he loved it when Bill Griffith had his offbeat “Zippy the Pinhead” character wake up from a bump on the head thinking he was Keane’s Jeffy. Keane responded by giving Zippy an appearance in “Family Circus.”
In later years, Keane continued to produce “Family Circus” with the help of his youngest son, Jeff. Keane sketched out the ideas, characters and captions and sent them to Jeff for inking.
Born in 1922, Keane taught himself to draw in high school in his native Philadelphia. Around this time, young Bill dropped the second “L” off his name, “just to be different.”
He worked as a messenger for The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin before serving three years in the Army, where he drew for “Yank” and “Pacific Stars and Stripes.” He met his wife, Thelma (“Thel”) , while serving at a desk job in Australia.
He started a one-panel comic in 1953 called “Channel Chuckles” that lampooned the up-and-coming medium of television. (In one, a mom in front of a television, crying baby on her lap, tells husband: “She slept through two gun fights and a barroom brawl then the commercial woke her up.”)
He moved to Arizona in 1958 and two years later started a comic about a family much like his own. Keane and his wife had a daughter, Gayle, and sons, Glen, Jeff, Chris and Neal, one more son than in his cartoon family.
“I never thought about a philosophy for the strip...it developed gradually,” Keane told the East Valley Tribune in 1998. “I was portraying the family through my eyes, Everything that’s happened in the strip, has happened to me. That’s why I have all this white hair at 39 years old!”
He is survived by the five children he had with his wife Thelma “Thel” Keane, who died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2008, and was the inspiration for the Mommy character in the comic strip. When his wife died, Keane called her, “the inspiration for all of my success.... When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like Mommy, that if she was in the supermarket pushing her cart around, people would come up to her and say, ‘Aren’t you the mommy in Family Circus?”
She also served as his business and financial manager. Arizona and Keane had a mutual influence on each other. Keane’s work can be found all around from children’s centers to ice cream shops. Likewise, Arizona could also be found in Keane’s work.
A 2004 comic saw the family on a scenic lookout over the Grand Canyon with the children asking, “Why are the rocks painted different colors” and “What time does it close?”
Although Keane drew the funnies, his work was not necessarily intended to be comical. His goal was this: “I would rather have the readers react with a warm smile, a tug at the heart or a lump in the throat as they recall doing the same things in their own families.”
*
Reader Nancy Getz of Burlington City, reminds us that long before the days of talk radio, there were radio disc jockeys who played 78 rpm (revolutions per minute) records sending over the airwaves the popular tunes of the day.
The year was 1946, when these gents were the top deejays in Philadelphia. On top of the heap was genial Doug Arthur of WIBG. He was on daily with a show entitled, “Danceland,” and had a morning and evening session. Then there was Bob Knox, who hosted “Music at Eight,” on the same station, and there was “The Singing Jockey,” Gene Graves, with his stint, “Gene Graves Entertains.”
And there were dozens of others, including Mac McGuire, who hosted a morning show on WCAU; Wayne Cody, who doubled as “Uncle Wip” on WIP; Joe McCauley, with “The Dawn Patrol;” and Bob Horn with the “Midnight Bandwagon, also on WIP.
At WDAS “Merry-Go-Round Junior,” was featured daily with Pat Stanton at the helm, and on the same station, was Bill Orr, Mike Deegan and Sid Merkin, who emceed during the day. Then there was Lee Hunt, who was the record-spinner on his show, “Merry-Go-Round Senior,” heard during the evening hours on WDAS. Of course there were many others, but we will cover them in another edition.
*
Gail Krebbs of Cherry Hill recalls some of the chores she was assigned to do as a child. She writes, “On Saturday, Grandma and I would go out and beat the rugs that were hanging over the clothesline in the backyard. No one knew that on Friday night I prayed that it would rain on Saturday. It never did and so the two of us went out there with a rug beater. After that chore, Grandma went into the house to prepare supper and I was free for a little while.”
*
Dr. Charles Reiss, also of Cherry Hill, jogged our memory about things that used to be, that aren’t around anymore. When is the last time you saw wash tub wringers, Studebakers, drive-in movie theatres, Packards, a mimeograph machine, roller skate keys, S&H Green Stamps, peashooters, Charlie McCarthy dolls, Howdy Doody and pimple balls?
Some other obsolete items he recalls — galoshes with buckles, when we would use a stick to measure the amount of gas in the tank, when mom thought that cod liver oil was a miracle drug, the Sears & Roebuck main store located on Roosevelt Boulevard in Philly, Tasty Cakes at three for 5 cents, Horn & Hardarts’ automats and the Knot Hole Gang, which provided baseball game tickets to the now-gone Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
*
Haddonfield’s Richard Luongo reminded us of the Blue Laws in Philadelphia during the 1940s, when, by law, it was forbidden to present stage shows on Sundays. Being a fan of the big bands which were featured at the Earle Theatre at 9th & Market Streets, Richard explained if he missed seeing a band during the week, he would travel to the Stanley Theatre in Camden, New Jersey. It was the same big band and stage show but the movie was different from the Earle.
Richard claims that he saw just about every band that came to town, including Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Les Brown, Vaughn Monroe, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Sammy Kaye and numerous others. Along with the band, and a movie, a number of big name performers were featured. He recalls seeing such stars as Frankie Laine, Frank Sinatra, and The Ink Spots among others. He also remembers seeing Humphrey Bogart during one show
*
Steve Steiner of Burlington asked if we recalled the Langhorne Speedway, a auto racing track on Route One. Also on Route One, not too many years ago there was Greenwood Dairies, where folks came far and wide to partake of their homemade ice creams. You had to go there with an empty stomach, because the portions were so enormous, most could not finish, whether it be a bowl, cone or a thick milk shake.
But the specialty of the house was the “Pig’s Dinner,” served in a trough — the customer would be awarded a medal if they finished it. The medal was treasured and I’m told some ice cream lovers still have their original medals.
Finally, there is a sundial in the area which reads, “Grow old along with me—-The best is yet to come.” Sounds like words to live by.
*
Looking Back appears each month. Do you have a memory you’d like to share? Drop a line to: Jack Lebo, Looking Back, 37 Locust Lane, Levittown, PA 19054, or call (215) 943-8870, email: jacklebo@verizon.net.
