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37-591: Sidney Smith 's early comic strip The Gumps had a key role in the rise of syndication when Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Medill Patterson , who had both been publishing the Chicago Tribune since 1914, planned to launch a tabloid in New York, as comics historian Coulton Waugh explained: So originated on June 16, 1919, the Illustrated Daily News , a title which, as too English,

74-461: A cat named Hope and a dog named Buck. The idea was envisioned by Joseph Patterson , editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune , who was important in the early histories of Little Orphan Annie and other long-run comic strips. Patterson referred to the masses as "gumps" and thought a strip about the domestic lives of ordinary people and their ordinary activities would appeal to the average American newspaper reader. He hired Smith to write and draw

111-565: A four-year run (1934–1937), produced and directed by Himan Brown with scripts by Irwin Shaw . In the early programs, Jack Boyle portrayed Andy Gump with Dorothy Denvir as Min, Charles Flynn as their son Chester and Bess Flynn , born 1899 in Tama, Iowa, as Tilda the maid. Flynn scripted for soap operas, including Bachelor's Children , Martha Webster and We, the Abbotts , and she also portrayed

148-406: A large estate near Chicago and a 2,200-acre (8.9 km ) farm. He believed in physical fitness, keeping in shape with amateur boxing and long-distance running. Smith's studio was in a large 12-room lakefront house at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin . Wearing a coonskin cap, Smith threw large parties at his estate, which also had a log cabin, a caretaker's home, a four-car garage and a statue of Andy Gump on

185-459: A novel, Andy Gump: His Life Story , published in Chicago by Reilly & Lee. In 1929, when Smith killed off Mary Gold, she was the first major comic strip character to die, and the Chicago Tribune had to hire extra staff to deal with the constant phone calls and letters from stunned readers. The strip and its merchandising (toys, games, a popular song, playing cards, food products) made Smith

222-417: A panel, "Light Occupations", which ran alongside an untitled local sports-oriented feature. Expanding from sports into a variety of recurring strips, it initially appeared in various odd sizes, continuing until Saturday, January 20, 1917. The last Old Doc Yak ended February 10, 1917, with the well-dressed Yak and his family leaving their house, wondering who might next move into it. The last panel showed only

259-606: A slipshod manner with no apparent restoration. In 2012, IDW 's imprint The Library of American Comics announced a new series reprinting daily strips , in the LoAC Essentials . A Gumps volume titled The Saga of Mary Gold (1928–29) was published in March 2013. A gift from the Tribune management to Smith was a large statue of Andy Gump, which stood on Smith's Lake Geneva, Wisconsin , estate. After Smith died in 1935,

296-643: A sports cartoonist at the Chicago Examiner where he created a talking goat in a feature, Buck Nix , which involved continuity: "What will tomorrow bring?" In 1911, Smith moved to the Chicago Tribune , where he introduced a new goat character when Old Doc Yak began as a daily on February 5, 1912, with the Sunday page starting a month later on March 10. In either 1912 or early 1913 he began creating "Old Doc Yak" animated films. Some sources show

333-481: A talking-animal strip that sustained only a brief run. The very last Old Doc Yak strip depicted Yak and his family moving out of their house, while wondering who might move into the house next. On Thursday, February 8, 1917, the last panel showed only the empty house. On Monday, February 12, 1917, after the Gumps were introduced in the space formerly occupied by Old Doc Yak , they moved into the house formerly occupied by

370-479: A title which, as too English, was almost at once clipped to Daily News . It was a picture paper, and it was a perfect setting for the newly developed art of the comic strip. The first issue shows but a single strip, The Gumps . It was the almost instant popularity of this famous strip that directly brought national syndication into being. Midwestern and other papers began writing to the Chicago Tribune , which also published The Gumps , requesting to be allowed to use

407-725: A wealthy man. On his way home from signing a $ 150,000 a year contract in 1935, he crashed his new Rolls-Royce and died. Patterson replaced Smith with sports cartoonist Gus Edson . In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when actor Martin Landau was a cartoonist, he worked as Edson's assistant on The Gumps , eventually drawing the Sunday strips for Edson. The Gumps launched a craze for continuity strips in newspapers. It also influenced radio and television programming. Radio/TV sitcoms and serialized dramas can all be traced back to The Gumps , as detailed by broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod in

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444-540: Is a subscription service for newspapers and other media channels. The content provided includes comics, puzzles, games, editorial cartoons, as well as feature content packages. Tribune Premium Content also syndicates content from other sources, such as The Atlantic , Rolling Stone , Kiplinger , Harvard Health and Mayo Clinic . TCA's news service, Tribune News Service , offers breaking news, lifestyle and entertainment stories, sports and business articles, commentary, photos, graphics and illustrations. Tribune SmartContent

481-457: Is an information service filtered to provide targeted content. Full-text news feeds deliver articles from 600 sources from around the world. TCA also offered products and services for niche markets via TCA Specialty Products. TCA has, worldwide, 600-plus contributors and serves more than 1,200 clients, services and resellers. Sidney Smith (cartoonist) Robert Sidney Smith (February 13, 1877 – October 20, 1935), known as Sidney Smith ,

518-564: Is in Tucson, Arizona , but he also has a farm near his birthplace in Mississippi." The Gumps were utterly ordinary: chinless, bombastic blowhard Andy Gump (short for Andrew), who is henpecked by his wife, Min (short for Minerva); their sons Chester and baby Goliath (plus an unnamed daughter in college and an unnamed son in the Navy); wealthy Uncle Bim; and their annoying maid Tilda. They had

555-871: The Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate and the Tribune-New York (Daily) News Syndicate ). An April 1933 article in Fortune described the "Big Four" American syndicates as United Feature Syndicate , King Features Syndicate , the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, and the Bell-McClure Syndicate . Mollie Slott kept the syndicate running in its mid-century glory days. In 1968, the syndicate offered about 150 features to approximately 1400 client newspapers. Tribune Publishing acquired

592-724: The Times Mirror Company in 2000, with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate being merged into Tribune Media Services . In 2006 The McClatchy Company inherited a partnership with the Tribune Company , in the news service Knight Ridder-Tribune Information Services, when it acquired Knight Ridder ; the new service was called the McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT). In 2014, Tribune bought out McClatchy's share of

629-489: The "Andy Gump to Andy Brown" section of her popular culture essay, and her book, The Original Amos 'n' Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, and the 1928–43 Radio Serial (McFarland, 2005). At the Chicago Tribune' s radio station WGN , Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll signed on as staffers in 1925. WGN executive Ben McCanna believed that a dramatic serial could work on radio just as it did in newspapers. The Gumps first aired on WGN in 1931, then moved to CBS Radio for

666-413: The "Andy Gump to Andy Brown" section of her popular culture essay, "Amos 'n' Andy—In Person," and her book, The Original Amos 'n' Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, and the 1928–43 Radio Serial . Mainly due to the research of McLeod, Sidney Smith is now regarded as a seminal figure in 20th-century popular culture. The Gumps The Gumps is a comic strip about a middle-class family. It

703-688: The McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT) was renamed the Tribune News Service (TNS). TCA distributes media products, such as news , columns , comic strips , Jumble and crosswords , printed insert books, video , and other information services to publications across the United States, Canada, and other countries in English and Spanish for both print and web syndication . Tribune Premium Content

740-474: The Yak family. ( Old Doc Yak would reappear as a topper for The Gumps Sunday page from 1930 to 1934.) The Gumps had a key role in the rise of syndication when Robert R. McCormick and Patterson, who had both been publishing the Chicago Tribune since 1914, planned to launch a tabloid in New York, as comics historian Coulton Waugh explained: "So originated on June 16, 1919, the Illustrated Daily News ,

777-640: The company, taking full ownership of MCT and moving its headquarters to Chicago. On June 25, 2013, the newspaper syndication News & Features division of Tribune Media Services became the Tribune Content Agency . On June 12, 2014, Tribune Media Services was merged into Gracenote . After the 2014 split of Tribune Company assets between Tribune Media and Tribune Publishing , Gracenote went to Tribune Media (who would sell it to Nielsen Holdings in 2016) while Tribune Content Agency content remained with Tribune Publishing. On September 22, 2014,

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814-418: The earliest cartoon deaths—was a media sensation, attracting intense interest across the country. In 1922, Smith signed a million-dollar contract ($ 100,000 per year for ten years). Two years later, he published the 183-page Andy Gump, His Life Story (1924). On October 20, 1935, he signed a new contract, giving him $ 150,000 a year. On his way home from signing that contract, he died in a head-on collision. He

851-442: The empty house. On February 12, 1917, in the space formerly occupied by Old Doc Yak , newspapers displayed the initial episodes of The Gumps , showing them moving into the same house. The Gumps had a 42-year run in newspapers, continuing until October 17, 1959. The strip, its merchandising (toys, games, a popular song, playing cards, food products) and media adaptations made Smith a wealthy man. In addition to his townhouse, he had

888-616: The extraction of a tooth, which eventually necessitated the removal of his entire lower jaw. Through Dr. Thomas Smith of Bloomingdale, Illinois , a dentist and a brother of Sidney Smith, Wheat met the cartoonist, who saw in him an ideal comic character. Wheat subsequently had his surname legally changed to "Gump" to match the cartoon character. His wife's name is Min, and he has two children, Chester and Goliath, now living in San Francisco, and an Uncle Bim who lives in Georgia. Gump's home

925-490: The first cartoon as appearing in 1912 whereas the Library of Congress lists 3 films in 1913, 13 in 1914 and 2 in 1915. This is the first animated series with a recurring character. It was distributed through Selig films, a major Chicago-based studio. No films seem to have survived, but a single printed background was in the files of Smith's final assistant Andy Hettinger. At the Chicago Tribune on October 28, 1914, he started

962-503: The front lawn. The circular drive that led to the house surrounded a large illuminated fountain. Sam Carr Polk wrote: Smith's strip was adapted into a live-action/animated film series in 1920–21 by Wallace Carlson, starring Joe Murphy (Andy) and Fay Tincher . During production, Carlson formed a partnership with Gumps writer Sol Hess , and together they launched The Nebbs , a Gumps -like family comic strip which began May 1923 and continued until 1946. Mary Gold's death in 1929—one of

999-893: The new comic, and the result was that the heads of the two papers collaborated and founded the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate , which soon was distributing Tribune-News features to every nook and cranny of the country". As one of the earliest continuity strips, The Gumps was extremely popular, with newspaper readers anxiously following the convoluted storylines. By 1919, this popularity prompted an interest in film adaptations, and in 1920–21, with writing credited to Smith, animation director Wallace A. Carlson produced and directed more than 50 animated shorts, some no longer than two minutes, for distribution through Paramount. Between 1923 and 1928, Universal Pictures produced at least four dozen Gumps two-reel comedies starring Joe Murphy (1877–1961), one of

1036-677: The new comic, and the result was that the heads of the two papers collaborated and founded the . . . syndicate, which soon was distributing Tribune-News features to every nook and cranny of the country. Patterson founded the Chicago Tribune Syndicate in 1918, managed by Arthur Crawford. In 1933, Patterson (who was then based in New York and running the Daily News ), launched the Chicago Tribune-Daily News Syndicate, Inc. (also known as

1073-471: The original Keystone Cops, as Andy Gump, Fay Tincher as Min and Jack Morgan as Chester. Many of these shorts were directed by Norman Taurog , later famed as the leading director of Elvis Presley movies. In the comic strip, Sidney Smith had Andy run for Congress in 1922 and for President in 1924 and in practically every succeeding election, one of the first of many comic strip and cartoon characters to run for office. In 1924, Smith wrote his characters into

1110-503: The statue was moved to a city park. In 1943, the statue was acquired by the city of Lake Geneva, but it was destroyed in 1967 during a drunken riot. It was replaced with a new statue, which was stolen in 1989 and again replaced. A plaque honoring Smith was also stolen from Lake Geneva in 1952, but it was later found. The statue is currently on display at the Lake Geneva Museum. Hockey great Gump Worsley , born Lorne Worsley,

1147-575: The strip, and it was Smith who breathed life into the characters. Smith was the first cartoonist to kill off a regular character: His May 1929 storyline about the death of Mary Gold caused a national sensation. The Sunday page also included several toppers over the course of the run: Old Doc Yak (Dec 7, 1930 – Feb 25, 1934), Cousin Juniper (Jan 2, 1944–1955) and Grandpa Noah (1955). The Gumps made its debut in an unusual way. Cartoonist Sidney Smith had previously drawn and written Old Doc Yak ,

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1184-420: The title role on Martha Webster . In 1935, Wilmer Walter played Andy Gump with Agnes Moorehead portraying Min during the last two years of the series when Lester Jay and Jackie Kelk were heard as Chester. Herb Galewitz assembled a selective compilation of the comic strips for the book, Sidney Smith's The Gumps , published in 1974 by Charles Scribner's Sons . However, the strips in this book were assembled in

1221-527: Was 58 years old. It is often reported that Smith crashed a brand new Rolls-Royce that was given to him by The Chicago Tribune at this time. This is only a legend. Smith was given a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost , chassis number 14MG, in 1922, not in 1935. The car in which Smith died was a "small sedan." The Gumps inspired Amos 'n' Andy and thus had a huge influence on the introduction of radio serial continuity and radio-television situation comedies , as detailed by broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod in

1258-459: Was almost at once clipped to (New York) Daily News . It was a picture paper, and it was a perfect setting for the newly developed art of the comic strip. The first issue shows but a single strip, The Gumps . It was the almost instant popularity of this famous strip that directly brought national syndication into being. Midwestern and other papers began writing to the Chicago Tribune , which also published The Gumps , requesting to be allowed to use

1295-468: Was created by Sidney Smith in 1917, launching a 42-year run in newspapers from February 12, 1917, until October 17, 1959. According to a 1937 issue of Life , The Gumps was inspired by Andy Wheat, a real-life person Smith met through his brother. "Born forty-seven years ago [i.e., in 1890] in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi , Andy Wheat acquired his unusual physiognomy as the result of an infection following

1332-610: Was nicknamed for his resemblance to Andy Gump. Jazz musician Min Leibrook , born Wilford Leibrook, received his nickname from Andy Gump's wife, Min. The town of Bim , West Virginia is named for Uncle Bim Gump. A bunker on the 16th hole of the Hinsdale Golf Club in Clarendon Hills, IL is shaped in the likeness of Andy Gump. The surgical removal of the mandible can result in a dysmorphism referred to as

1369-629: Was the creator of the influential comic strip The Gumps , based on an idea by Captain Joseph M. Patterson , editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune . He was born in Bloomington, Illinois . The son of a dentist, Smith never finished high school and began drawing cartoons for his hometown newspaper when he was 18. He also delivered chalk talks and worked in newspaper art departments in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In 1908, he signed on as

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