LEGENDARY HEROES #15

JOE PALOOKA

In the 1920s "palooka" was a widely used term to mean someone of low intelligence and/or an inept fighter.  And a chance meeting in 1921 inspired Ham Fisher to create Joe Palooka, the comic strip heavyweight boxing champ of the world.  Fisher (1900-1955) had dropped out of high school at age 16 to begin working a host of lowly occupations, eventually becoming a reporter for his hometown paper in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  It was there outside of a poolroom that Ham Fisher met a boxer that sparked an idea of a comic strip.  Fisher conceived of a big, good-natured prize fighter who was a defender of the little guy, who championed good sportsmanship and fair play.  Fisher ran back to his newspaper office and drew a set of strips and then began making the rounds of the syndicates.  Nine years later, with numerous rejections to show for his efforts, Fisher was a salesman for the McNaught Syndicate and he sold his employers on the idea of Joe Palooka.  Joe debuted on April 19, 1930 in 20 newspapers.  At the height of its' popularity it would be carried in 900 papers and in 1948 it was ranked as one of the top five most popular strips.  

Fisher came up with most of the stories but he was not a talented artist and employed "ghosts" to do the strip.  One of his earliest "ghosts" was Al Capp of future "Li'l Abner" fame.  After Capp left, Fisher hired Moe Leff who eventually took over the strip in 1956, finally getting credit for a comic he'd been drawing for 20 years.  In 1959 Leff was replaced by Tony DiPreta who drew the strip until it ended on November 24, 1984.  Other characters in the strip consisted of cheese heiress Ann Howe who Joe married on June 24, 1949; Joe's manager Knobby Walsh; his friend and valet Smokey; a mute orphan sidekick named Little Max; and a lovable giant named Humphrey Pennyworth.  On the rare occasions that Joe had to defend his title the strip would feature real-life celebrities sitting ringside, giving the comic bouts an air of authenticity.

Joe Palooka initially appeared in comic books in the form of newspaper strip reprints, but eventually he would have his own title with all original content.  Two of the secondary characters, Little Max and Humphrey, were so popular that Harvey Comics gave them each their own comic book series.  Joe was heard on the radio on Tuesdays & Thursdays in a 15-minute show aired by CBS that ran from April 12 until August 18, 1932.  The show was sponsored by Heinz Rice Flakes.  Joe Palooka made his film debut in 1934 with Stuart Erwin as Joe and Jimmy Durante as Knobby Walsh.  Vitaphone produced nine two-reel shorts between 1936-1937 that starred Robert Norton as Joe and Shemp Howard as Knobby.  But Joe returned to feature films in 1946 when Monogram made the first of 11 movies that starred Joe Kirkwood, Jr. in the title role, Leon Errol as Knobby, and Elyse Knox as Ann Howe.  The last of the movies was released in 1951.  In 1954 a syndicated TV series was produced with Kirkwood as Joe and real-life ex-fighter "Slappy" Maxie Rosenbloom as Humphrey.

But while Joe Palooka represented fair play and good sportsmanship in the comic pages, behind the scenes it was a different story.  Al Capp was one of the early cartoonists to work for Ham Fisher, and during this time period he created a stupid musclebound hillbilly boxer named Big Leviticus who became the prototype for Li'l Abner.  Capp left the Palooka strip in 1934 to begin Li'l Abner and a disgruntled Fisher began bad-mouthing Capp to colleagues and newspaper editors, complaining that Capp had stolen the idea of Abner from him.  For years after Fisher would reintroduce Big Leviticus into the strip as the "Original Hillbilly Character" and advise readers not to be fooled by imitations.  The Capp-Fisher feud was well known in cartooning circles and it became viciously personal when Abner eclipsed Palooka in popularity.  The two men engaged in a 20-year war of words as their paths crossed often in midtown watering holes or at National Cartoonists Society banquets.  The gossip columns were full of items concerning their public showdowns.  When Fisher had some plastic surgery done Capp introduced a racehorse into the Abner strip called Ham's Nose Bob.  Capp escalated the feud in 1950 by writing a magazine article titled "I Remember Monster" that was a thinly veiled memoir about his time spent with Fisher.

Fisher retaliated, rather clumsily, falsely accusing Capp of sneaking obscenities into his Li'l Abner strip.  Fisher submitted examples of his claims to the United Features Syndicate (that distributed "Li'l Abner") and to the New York courts.  Fisher had supposedly doctored the background of strips with lines and shadows to simulate suggestive body parts.  Capp easily refuted these accusations by showing the original strips.  Scandal magazines like Confidential were quick to pick up on these claims and soon Capp was being showcased in their pages with "examples" of his supposed lewd drawings.  But in 1954 when Capp was applying for a Boston television station license, the FCC received an anonymous package that contained pornographic Li'l Abner drawings.  Capp was forced to withdraw his application and furiously demanded that the National Cartoonists Society ethics committee take action.  The NCS, an organization that Fisher helped to found, convened an ethics hearing and Ham Fisher was expelled from the organization.  To this date he is the only individual to be sanctioned by the NCS for "conduct unbecoming a cartoonist".

About the same time as his expulsion took place, Fisher's mansion in Carol Beach, Wisconsin was destroyed by a storm.  On December 27, 1955, Ham went to the studio of Moe Leff who was out of town.  From there he made a phone call to his mother at about 1 p.m., having a "sentimental conversation" according to investigators.  Later in the evening Fisher's wife was concerned when Ham had not come home or called, and she asked their friend Morris Weiss to go to Leff's studio and check on Ham.  At 9 p.m. Weiss found Ham's body with a suicide note.  He was despondent over his failing health and the unfortunate recent events and had taken an overdose of medication.  He left behind an estate of 2.5 million dollars to his wife Marilyn and daughter Wendy.  It was a tragic end to an otherwise wonderful career, and all too often the ending overshadows the real story...the story of a naive bumpkin, a gentle being who became the fictional heavyweight champion, and who extolled the virtues of clean living and good sportsmanship to children and adults alike.  In September 1948 a nine-foot tall limestone statue of Joe Palooka weighing ten tons was erected on a hill overlooking Indiana State Road 37.