Bazooka Joe and His Gang Read online

  “Bazooka’s Out Front.” Advertisement by Wesley Morse for National Candy Wholesaler, March 1957.

  Wesley Morse–illustrated Topps company letterhead, c.1957

  When Woody Gelman made the offer, Dad wasn’t sure he wanted to do it, so he asked me for my advice. I told him I thought it was a good idea. Imagine a grown man asking a kid for advice. But Dad was like that, often deferring to me on decisions. Despite his worldly experiences, he was very much a kid at heart. He had lost the love of his life (Mom passed away in 1951 when I was five) and needed a little guidance, even if it came from a seven-year-old. Ten years later, shortly before he died, Dad told me that Bazooka Joe had been good to us.

  When I was asked to write this essay on my personal connection to Bazooka Joe, it brought back poignant memories for me of the postwar years, when people were putting their lives back together; kids were taking cover under school desks during practice air-raid drills; the first satellites were launched; a Catholic was elected president; there were three baseball teams in New York; Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris ran a home-run race and Maris broke Babe Ruth’s record; and Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine. Life was on the move and changing fast. Through it all, the connecting thread, the one constant for me, was Bazooka Joe. My life was indelibly entwined with his. Like kids everywhere who played baseball, built tree houses, pulled pranks, and got into trouble, I was Joe. Only more so than other kids, because in my private collection of my dad’s artwork spanning five decades is that pen-and-ink drawing of the dark-haired kid. The one and only illustration of the original Bazooka Joe. It has been said that the character of Joe was modeled after the founder of Topps, Joe Shorin, but what only Dad and I and a few close friends knew was that the first depiction of Joe, the one Dad preferred, was modeled after me when I was seven years old. My wife, Nancy, likes to joke that she’s married to the original Bazooka Joe, and I guess you could say that’s true.

  I’ve heard my father referred to as the J. D. Salinger of illustration because so little is known about him. But that’s because he was a suave, generous, reticent man who let his art do the talking for him. The information and personal recollections contained in this book are just a brief glimpse into a life that was much more colorful, and his portfolio of art much more extensive than what you read and see here. Interestingly, today, fifty years after his death, his artwork keeps turning up on the Internet. And even those pieces that sell at auction and on eBay are only the tip of the iceberg of his prodigious body of work.

  This book could not have been possible without the efforts of many. I would like to thank Mitch Diamond, who cared enough for my father to find a way to draw him out of his grief; Woody Gelman, who believed in Dad’s talent and became a good friend over the years and will be forever remembered as a kind and generous man; Charles Kochman, the editor whose perseverance in bringing this book to publication over a period of four years shines a much-deserved light on Bazooka Joe and my father; Kirk Taylor, whose boundless enthusiasm has led to the discovery of some of my father’s artwork I never knew existed; and my wife, Nancy, who helped me put my scrambled memories of Bazooka Joe and my father into words.

  For readers who were a part of my father’s era, I hope this book brings back some fond memories of childhood. For younger readers, I hope this gives you a glimpse into a less complicated time. Sixty years later, I am pleased to finally reveal the story of how a drawing of a kid from Queens morphed into an international icon.

  TALLEY MORSE grew up surrounded by his father’s artwork. Many of the Bazooka Joe strips were influenced by Talley’s childhood antics. Now retired, for many years he was a musician and worked in the film industry on major motion pictures and numerous television series. He lives with his wife, Nancy, in South Florida.

  Beginning in December 1938, Topps released a one-cent chewing gum in four flavors: peppermint, spearmint, cinnamon, and pepsin. Referred to as the “changemaker” in period advertising, store patrons were encouraged to take their change in Topps gum, usually located next to the register in cylindrical cardboard containers. Packaging carried the slogan “Don’t Talk Chum … Chew Topps Gum” throughout World War II as a patriotic reminder to curtail careless talk. The ginger flavor appears to have been replaced early on in production with pepsin.

  Topps also experimented with the release of several short-lived candy bars during the war. Mairzy and Topps Chocolate and Marshmallow (aka Topps Opera Bar) were solely manufactured in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and may have been the result of sugar rationing.

  Topps Chewing Gum Incorporated company letterhead, 1940. The original headquarters were located in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, in the Gretsch Building, where musical instruments were manufactured.

  Trade article, September 1947.

  Two-page trade ad introducing Bazooka gum, October 1947.

  Window decal, late 1940s.

  A complete box of five-cent Bazooka bubble gum, 1947.

  The first comics inserted in Bazooka gum: Bubbles, illustrated by Art Helfant, and Doc Sorebones (licensed from Fawcett Publications, Inc.), 1947.

  The first Bazooka prize catalog cover, 1947.

  The earliest known reference to Bazooka Joe, printed on a postcard explaining that the first prize catalog had run out. Hand dated October 20, 1947, fifteen thousand copies were printed.

  Sell sheet distributed to candy jobbers to advertise product and current prices, July 1948.

  Comic book ad featuring Bazooka the Atom Bubble Boy, 1948.

  Gum comics found on the reverse of five-cent Bazooka foil wrappers, 1948–49. Bazooka the Atom Bubble Boy and Chip by Harry Lampert (licensed from DC Comics).

  Inner wax premium wrappers, 1948. Found inside packs of five-cent Bazooka, these wrappers served a dual purpose of protecting the comics from the gum and advertising mail-order premiums for kids.

  Cardboard advertising standee, c.1949.

  Abbott and Costello Bazooka trade ad from March 15, 1949, featuring all available Topps products on the bottom.

  Trade ad introducing one-cent Bazooka, October 28, 1949.

  Bazooka one-cent foil wrapper with a Willard Mullin sports comic on the reverse, c. 1949.

  Penny Bazooka comic book ad, 1949.

  Honey Bun by Hal Rasmusson and Willard Mullin gum comics found on the reverse of one-cent Bazooka foil wrappers, c.1949.

  Front and back panels of a one-cent Bazooka store display box, 1949.

  Ad from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus program, 1949.

  Bazooka Flexy Racer promotional box given to jobbers and store owners, c.1949.

  Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus comic book ad, July 1949.

  Trade article from Candy Industry magazine, July 5, 1949.

  Wire press photo of Gregg Sherwood, Miss Bazooka 1949—a promotion that ran for several years.

  Models hired by Topps to promote Bazooka, January 1950.

  Description from the back of a Miss Bazooka wire photo, hand dated December 3, 1948.

  Official League Baseball comic book ad, July 1950.

  Topps released a variety of gum comics leading up to the release of Bazooka Joe, experimenting with licensed characters and creations of their own. These comics were printed on wax paper and issued with one-cent Bazooka.

  Gum comics Crax and Jax by Howard Sparber and Honey Bun by Hal Rasmusson (licensed from News Syndicate Co., Inc.), c. 1951–52.

  Henry gum comics by Carl Anderson, 1953–54.

  Bazooka Double Feature Comics starring Crax and Jax by Howard Sparber, 1954. This was the last set of comics issued prior to the launch of Bazooka Joe.

  Bazooka bubble gum box panel, 1950s.

  “You’ve got a real story to tell on the BAZOOKA COMICS so don’t miss an opportunity to TELL IT!”

  —SY BERGER, TOPPS EXECUTIVE, FROM A SALESMAN’S SAMPLE FOLDER, 1957

  You could say that for Wesley Morse, born in 1897, bubble gum was practically a birthright. By then the gum industry was begin
ning to reach a wider public, and chewing gum was well on its way to becoming a national pastime. In 1888, the first vending machines designed to distribute gum were installed in New York City subways. In 1890, Morris Shorin started a company that would one day innovate the gum business. Taking advantage of the vast distribution network already established, Shorin’s heirs would later reinvent bubble gum. Meanwhile, in 1906, the first true bubble-blowing formulation was introduced, but nine-year-old Morse was too preoccupied with being a kid, running through Chicago’s back alleys with his gang, and had no way of knowing the impact this pink latex confection, or a certain corporation, would have on him later in life.

  An artistic career, which decades later produced not one but two internationally recognized advertising icons, began inauspiciously at age thirteen with Morse sketching the horses that pulled the grocery wagon he drove. Five years later, hoping to make a name for himself with his art, he headed for New York City, where opportunities for his burgeoning talent lay everywhere. At the cusp of the most exciting time of his life, the world erupted into war, and his artistic career was put on hold when, in 1917, he enlisted in the army and spent the next year in the trenches in Europe.

  When Morse returned from the Great War in 1918, New York City was teetering on the brink of the Jazz Age. Serving in France during World War I exposed him to a much more modernistic and sexually liberated mind-set. Morse arrived on the Great White Way with a new sensibility that would contribute to the transformation of the cultural landscape, pushing it with enough steam to carry through the next five decades and beyond.

  His knack for capturing the female form brought him into the employ of the great showbiz impresario, Florenz Ziegfeld. Although the exact date Morse began his tenure with the Follies is uncertain, we do know that in 1922 he was illustrating Ziegfeld’s beauties while residing in a studio at the Hotel Des Artistes, an artist cooperative on West 67th Street off Central Park. The hotel was to the visual arts what the Algonquin was to the literary circle of the day, and had become the epicenter of the impulse toward “Glorifying the American Girl,” a phrase coined by Ziegfeld and used in the promotion of the 1923 edition of the Follies. The phrase, now synonymous with the Follies, wasn’t simply sensationalism. It was a mantra—a mission statement—one its performers, writers, artists, and everyone working for Ziegfeld was held to with exacting standards.

  Bazooka Joe character portrait by Wesley Morse. Pencil, ink, and gouache on board, c. 1954.

  “Switchboard Sally” daily newspaper strip by H. C. Witwer and illustrated by Wesley Morse, July 11, 1925.

  In 1923, Morse’s drawings of chorus girls were prominently displayed in the lobby of the New Amsterdam Theatre, home of the Follies, in place of those done by Raphael Kirchner, who had been a Ziegfeld illustrator prior to his death in 1917. Morse was undoubtedly familiar with Kirchner and may well have been influenced by his risqué contributions to magazines like La vie Parisienne while Morse was stationed in France during the war. There can be no doubt about the impact working with the Ziegfeld Follies had on young Morse’s career, influencing his artistic perception and paving the way for many lifelong friendships and showbiz associations.

  It was during this time that Morse met rising star Avonne Taylor, who became his Jazz Age muse. Then a chorus girl appearing in multiple editions of the Follies and the stage musicals Sally and Kid Boots, Ziegfeld proclaimed Taylor the “Prettiest Girl of the Follies of 1922.” It was a tagline that captioned a pastel portrait of Taylor on the cover of Judge, a college humor magazine that Morse also drew one-page gags for. The bit of ballyhoo surrounding the description most likely came from the faithful pens of Ziegfeld’s press agents, but it was no less true, because the Follies were an illusion that Ziegfeld sold better than anyone, and Morse penned to perfection.

  During his year-long romance with Taylor, Morse drew a series of illustrated love letters of and for Avonne. Unseen for more than seventy years, they were discovered in a storage locker after Taylor’s death and have been compiled into the Taylor-Morse Collection. The self-portrait appearing on this page, depicting twenty-five-year-old Morse sitting at an easel laconically eyeing a work in progress, and those on this page and this page (published here for the first time), are three of many in the collection, and among the few known self-portraits of Morse to exist. Done on his personal Hotel Des Artistes stationery, they serve as a window into a poignant yet passing moment in the lives of two young people who helped define the times. The spirit of this lively age is captured in pen and ink by an artist developing the very technique that would carry him through the ensuing decades to the creation, thirty years later, for which he would be most remembered.

  The earliest evidence of Morse’s connection to the world of cartooning can be found in these illustrations. Many of the drawings are captioned “Bughouse Fables,” a clear reference to the then-popular gag panel strip by Chicago cartoonist Billy DeBeck. DeBeck’s Bughouse Fables comic strip depicted everyday folks in absurd situations, and Morse used it as a gag line in several of the drawings depicting Taylor and himself engaged in ribald hijinks. In these drawings the girl is clearly not the weaker sex. She represents the liberated woman of the 1920s—the flapper who was not timid about doing things her own way. Whether aware of it or not, Morse illustrated the shift in mores from the pervading standards of the previous generation to women’s new-found independence that brought, among other things, the freedom to wear revealing clothes and sometimes no clothes at all, as Morse so engagingly documented.

  Grape-Nuts advertisement by Wesley Morse, Collier’s, July 2, 1932.

  With his work at the Follies winding down, the associations he made influenced the new opportunities that presented themselves. Likely benefiting from the close relationship Flo Ziegfeld had with newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, Morse was given the opportunity to take his first stab at the funny pages with the comic strip Kitty of the Chorus, a perfect specimen of the then ubiquitous “flapper” strip. Kitty made her debut in 1925 on the front page of Hearst’s newly published tabloid, the Daily Mirror. When Kitty’s time in the spotlight faded, another gal stepped in.

  Switchboard Sally was penned by slanguist H. C. Witwer. Sally bears a striking resemblance to the depictions of Avonne Taylor found in Morse’s illustrations of her. Teaming with Witwer to create the strip, Morse was dubbed by Witwer “the greatest pretty-girl-artist on Broadway” for his work with the Follies. Following on the high heels of Sally came May and June, a strip about a blonde and a brunette, for the notorious tabloid the New York Evening Graphic, brainchild of pulp magazine publisher and health guru Bernarr “Body Love” Macfadden.

  Frolicky Fables by Víctor Estenio Pazmiño (Vep), illustrated by Wesley Morse for the Premier Syndicate, February 3, 1926 and, February 22, 1926.

  Another early comics association was with Victor “Vep” Pazmino, with whom Morse teamed to produce the short-lived Frolicky Fables. Distributed by the Premier Syndicate, Hearst’s second-stringer imprint, from 1925–26, the strip, drawn by Morse and scripted by Vep, reads like a Jazz Age take on Aesop.

  Morse was slowly whittling his way to a more cohesive style, ink slash by ink slash, developing the comical male character types that gave the early strips an odd duality, and carving out a comic strip style all his own—a style so distinct that even anonymity could not keep his authorship hidden from history.

  Beau Gus header, 1933. Prior to its publication in 1938 in the anthology comic book Circus: The Comic Riot, Morse’s Beau Gus was being developed with writer Bud Wiley as a four-panel strip awaiting syndication. This header was never published.

  Kitty of the Chorus by Wesley Morse, March 23, 1925.

  During this period, Morse shared a studio in New York City with Murat Bernard Young, better known as Chic Young. Their career paths were forever forged at this time, creating comic strip characters that are widely known and loved—whereas Young’s fame came from writing and illustrating Blondie, starting in 1930, Morse’s wou
ld come more than two decades later, albeit anonymously, working on Bazooka Joe.

  As the decade was drawing to a close, Morse’s glorification of the American girl took on a new dimension. In 1927, he illustrated a series of ads for Golden Glint Shampoo that appeared in Life. These ads are fine examples of his early hand in the ad game, and the beginning of the burgeoning cosmetics and beauty product boom. The 1930s saw a change in the methods used by companies to reach American consumers suffering under the economic downturn of the Great Depression. In 1932, the advertising firm of Young & Rubicam created a series of comic strip ads for Grape-Nuts cereal, which wrapped the product in an engaging story and helped lead the way toward deepening brand loyalty. When William Randolph Hearst, one of Morse’s former employers, opened up the comics section of his newspaper empire to advertisers, it increased the reach of the advertisers and brought their products into homes all across America. Morse’s contribution to the innovative campaign was a rags-to-riches full-page comic featuring mirror-image chorines, The Twinkle Toe Twins, whose boundless energy was supplied by the bowls of Grape-Nuts cereal they consumed.