Word: li
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. John Arthur ("Jack") Johnson, 68, first Negro heavyweight champion of the world (1908-15); of auto-accident in juries; near Franklinton, N.C., Texas-born, "Li'l Artha" fought for a living (and a high one) for 29 years. A fine defensive boxer, Johnson won his title from Canadian Tommy Burns in 1908, lost it to Jess Willard in 1915, precariously passed the latter years of his life on the ragged edge of show business...
...with Sinatra and friends. Charlie Ross, president of Barton Music Co., agreed to publish the song. Songsmith Sammy Stept (Don't Sit under the Apple Tree, etc.) wrote the music. Capp promised to draw the radio characters straight if they in turn would treat "Daisy Mae" and "Li'l Abner" as real people. Radio, which often lives in a comic-strip world, did not have to change pace...
Fans of the Li'l Abner comic strip last week recognized the unmistakable face of Frank Sinatra. He promised Daisy Mae Scragg that he would sing her song: Li'l Abner, Don't Marry That Girl. Objective: to prevent Abner Yokum from marrying Lena the Hyena from Lower Slobbovia. To Abner readers it was no more unusual than most of Creator Al Capp's fantasies -until Sinatra last week actually sang the song on his Wednesday night show...
...funny-paper characters are busy just being funny, returned to his sharp satire on Gould, Tracy & Co. It began in 600-odd newspapers as suddenly as his casual lampooning of Orson Welles, Gone Wif the Wind, Frank Sinatra, Sewell Avery and Drew Pearson, with a scrawled appeal from hillbilly Li'l Abner Yokum (pattern: early Henry Fonda) to Cartoonist "Lester Gooch...
Just to please Li'l Abner, Capp had Gooch come through. From "Frank Half-buck, the great explorer," he heard about "Lena, the hyena from Lower Slobbovia." Because the very sight of her turned men's spines to jelly, she had to be (so far, at least) an offstage horror. The trouble she would make only handsome, happy Al Capp, who makes more than $150,000 a year out of such antics, could tell...