Our Boarding House

Our Boarding House is an American single-panel cartoon and comic strip created by Gene Ahern on October 3, 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association. Set in a boarding house run by the sensible Mrs. Hoople, it drew humor from the interactions of her grandiose, tall-tale-telling husband, the self-styled Major Hoople, with the rooming-house denizens and his various friends and cronies.
After Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create a similar feature at a rival syndicate, he was succeeded by a number of artists and writers, including Wood Cowan and Bela Zaboly, before Bill Freyse took over as "Our Boarding House" artist from 1939 to 1969. Others who worked on the strip included Jim Branagan and Tom McCormick. The Sunday color strip ended on March 29, 1981; the weekday panel continued until December 22, 1984.
Publication history.
In 1921, Gene Ahern created the comic strip "Crazy Quilt", starring the Nut Brothers, Ches and Wal. That same year, NEA General Manager Frank Rostock suggested to Ahern that he use a boarding house for a setting. Ahern initially used his own experiences as a boarder while a Chicago, Illinois, art student as grist for his comic mill, and featured the picaresque peccadilloes and bickering of its residents, presided over by the no-nonsense Martha Hoople. "Our Boarding House" began September 16, 1921, scoring success with readers after the January 1922 arrival of the fustian, blustery Major Amos B. Hoople, Martha's husband, who'd returned after some long sojourn. "Hoople has been compared to the type created on-screen by W. C. Fields, but was probably closer to Falstaff," writes comics historian Maurice Horn. "A retired military man of dubious achievement like Shakespeare's [comic figure], he boasted of soldierly exploits that were perhaps not all invented, and his buffoonery sometimes concealed real pathos." That character depth diminished as the comic became more popular, with Major Hoople becoming "the one-dimensional figure of fun most people remember" of the strip. The primary boarders were the cynical Clyde and Mack, and the only somewhat more trusting Buster.
According to comics historian Allan Holtz, a multi-panel Sunday strip was added on December 31, 1922. This Sunday page had a series of topper strips, beginning with "Boots and Her Buddies", which ran from September 12, 1926 to October 18, 1931. The next week, Ahern's "The Nut Bros" began, featuring loony siblings Ches and Wal in pun-filled, vaudevillian bits of business. This ran until June 6, 1965.
For some of "The Nut Bros"' run, there would be an extra panel filled by a series of different titles running in tandem, including: "Comic Scrap Book" (1932), "Silly Snapshots" (1932-1933), "One in a Million" (1934-1945), "Mister Blotto" (1935-1946), "Major Hoople - Jobs I Would Like" (1936-1937), "Rummy Riddles" (1936-1937), "Brainwavy" (1938-1939), "Honks from Otto Auto" (1938-1939), "Postcard Pests" (1938-1940s), "Screwy Scenarios" (1943), "Looney Letters" (1943-1944) and "Scientific Corner" (1946). The panel cartoons mostly disappeared after 1946, although "Mister Blotto" did return sporadically until 1957.
Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create the similar "Room and Board" for King Features Syndicate. "Our Boarding House" "passed into the hands of a bewildering array of artists and writers" including Bela "Bill" Zaboly at The Comic Strip Project, before Bill Freyse (the father of the American actress Lynn Borden) took over the art for "Our Boarding House" from 1939 until his death in 1969. Writer Bill Braucher scripted from 1939 to 1958, followed by Tom McCormick on the daily from 1959 on. Freyse's 1960s assistant, Jim Branagan, drew the strip from 1969 to 1971, succeeded then by Les Carroll.
The Sunday strip came to an end on March 29, 1981, and continued as a daily feature until December 22, 1984, when Carroll and writer Tom McCormick retired. Others who worked on the strip included writers Wood Cowan in 1946, Tom Peoples on the Sunday strip circa 1968, and Phil Pastoret on the Sunday strip from 1977 on. The finale had Hoople finally striking it rich: a multimillion-dollar project needed a minor patent that he had obtained many years ago. In the last strip, Hoople and Martha embarked upon their new lives of wealth.
Ahern once revealed the origin of Major Hoople:
Reprints.
There were comic book reprints in Whitman's "Crackajack Funnies" and a single issue of Standard Comics' "Major Hoople Comics" (1943).
In 2005, Leonard G. Lee's Algrove Publishing reprinted Ahern's cartoons in "Our Boarding House, 1927" as part of its Classic Reprint Series.
In other media.
Radio.
The "Major Hoople" radio series began on [[NBC]]'s [[Blue Network]] on June 22, 1942. With [[Arthur Q. Bryan]] in the title role, the 30-minute program aired on Mondays at 4:05 p.m. on the [[United States|American]] West Coast and 7:05 p.m. on the East Coast. The series was written by Jerry Cady (1903–1948). Patsy Moran had the role of Hoople's wife, Martha. Conrad Binyon and [[Frank Bresee]] portrayed Hoople's "precocious little nephew", Little Alvin. [[Mel Blanc]] played the star boarder, Tiffany Twiggs. The radio series ended April 26, 1943. No recordings of the "Major Hoople" radio program are known to exist. (Coincidentally, Arthur Q. Bryan was the actor who first voiced the role of [[Elmer Fudd]] in the Warner Bros. cartoons, opposite Blanc's Bugs Bunny.)
Books.
The [[Saalfield Publishing Company]], the maker of Little Big Books, published "Major Hoople and His Horse" under the ancillary imprint Jumbo Books (listed as #SS41 1190), in 1940. The 400-page, hardcover book was written and drawn by the panel's successor cartoonist Bill Freyse.
Music.
In 1974, the [[Kitchener, Ontario]], pop band known as [[Major Hoople's Boarding House]] charted a top-30 [[Canada|Canadian]] radio hit with the song "I'm Running After You".
Cultural legacy.
[[File:Gene Ahern's Our Boarding House (December 31, 1931).jpg|right|thumb|Gene Ahern's "Our Boarding House" (December 31, 1931)]]
The first recording of the term "hooplehead" appears in 1980, in Dennis Smith's "Glitter and Ash" ("The old man said, 'Speakin' of Maureen, you know she's been acting like a real hooplehead lately, like a kid they let out of [[Creedmoor Psychiatric Center|Creedmoor [Psychiatric Center]]] by mistake.'").
"Hooplehead", as used by the character [[Al Swearengen]] on the [[HBO]] [[Old West]] [[television series]] "[[Deadwood (TV series)|Deadwood]]", is an [[anachronism]] as it was "probably derive[d]" from Major Hoople. One [[etymologist]], without giving citation, said, "The producer and head of the scriptwriting team, [[David Milch]], has been reported as saying in essence that he picked something out of the air to serve as a suitable insult without great concern for its etymology. It seems he must have heard it somewhere and it came conveniently back to mind while writing the scripts.
External links.
[[Category:American comic strips]]
[[Category:1921 comics debuts]]
[[Category:Gag-a-day comics]]
[[Category:1984 comics endings]]
[[Category:Comics adapted into radio series]]
[[Category:NBC Blue Network radio programs]]
[[Category:1942 radio programme debuts]]
[[Category:1943 radio programme endings]]
[[Category:American comedy radio programs]]
[[Category:Radio programs based on comic strips]]