Harold Teen

Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune Syndicate

Name: Harold Teen
Launch Dates: May 4, 1919 (Sunday), September 25, 1919 (Daily)
Last Strip: November 18, 1959

Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1944

Late one afternoon some years ago a man by the name of Carl Ed performed a routine chore by answering the doorbell of his three story brick home at 711 Michigan av., Evanston, Ill.

“On the porch,” he related afterward with obvious relish, “were four awkward boys—fellows at the age where they don’t know what to do with their big hands and feet. They looked at me without a word, just like zombies.

“So I invited them in. They marched past single file and stood in the hall. I went to the stairs and called to my daughter, who was a high school freshman then: ‘ Jean! We got stuff down here!’ She came sailing down the stairs, smiled at the zombies, and said, ‘Hello!’

“Still they didn’t have a word to offer. Suddenly one kid whirled and cracked another on the jaw. You could have heard the noise a block away. That was the signal for a general slugfest and free-for-all that wound up with a mess of torn shirts, broken lamps, and overturned furniture.

“It was all over in a few minutes. The kids stood up, straightened their neckties, and yelped, ‘Hi, Jean!’ The tension was broken, but it took this outburst of roughhousing to do it. That’s the way youngsters are. See what I mean?”

Carl Ed, whose last name is pronounced to rhyme with “feed” instead of “fed,” is on solid ground when discussing the behavior of teen-age Americans. For 25 years his familiar comic strip, “Harold Teen,” has sympathetically interpreted that strange, violent, and unpredictable animal, the adolescent, to other puzzled segments of the population. This is the rough-hewn specimen once described by Brooks Shephard with more justice than mercy: “The average adolescent boy is ignorant, indolent, half-baked, oversexed, and self-conscious as a parson on a binge. Nevertheless, in the middle of this horrific thicket in which he has hidden himself sits an honest, friendly, and simple creature.”

In the 1920s many a good soul was convinced that this youngster, under the name of “flaming youth,” had jettisoned all redeeming qualities and was headed straight for perdition in a handbasket. It was the age of slang, bell-bottomed pants, trick hats, the Charles-ton, flivvers chalked with saucy mottoes, sideburns, bobbed hair, too much makeup, garterless socks, and hair a la vaselino. Instead of imitating the old folks, as good children always had, teenagers insisted on setting their own styles of garb and deportment.

Stationed at his observation post on the north shore (best place in the country to study the young of the species), Carl Ed wasn’t worried. Adolescent America seemed fundamentally about the same.

“The thundering herd tromped in and out of our house all the time,” he now recalls. “They’d come clattering in and fall flat on their faces. Kids kept our icebox cleaned out. One of them could eat a dozen bananas without drawing a breath, and he threw the kimonos in the sink. On the way home to supper he’d stop for a couple of hamburgers to take the fierce edge off his appetite. Another boy with his hat turned up in front like Hollywood’s idea of a reporter tried to smoke a cigar in front of our house. He got sick. Are kids like that sinister and bad? Don’t make me laugh, mister!”

Now 53 years old, Carl is a jovial 215-pounder with fingers the shape of dill pickles and a conversational habit of adding, “You see what I mean?” to almost every sentence. His studio, where he likes to work at night with the windows wide open, is a big, cluttered room on the third floor of 711—a number in which, by the way, he takes an ivory roller’s delight. Before settling down to work he customarily mills about in circles like a pup selecting a spot to nap. He finds an excuse to visit the basement, ambles upstairs again to look over a pile of letters and papers, smokes endless cigarets, Investigates the 1792 Swedish-made violin which stands in a corner, wonders why it’s so difficult to start the job a fellow loves so well, and finally, in stark, martyred desperation, flings himself at the blank white bristol board.

He insists that “some of these other fellows can draw rings about me,” but the luscious armfuls he sometimes sketches have few rivals. As the bristol board begins to fill he works with increasing cheerfulness and absorption. Once started, he can’t stop. Over on the bookcase a clock is ticking. In winter the studio’s temperature falls rapidly, but the colder it gets the better Carl likes it. He works in a loose shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and a loose pair of old pants. This strikes him, indeed, as ideal wear for any occasion; he hates to “dress up.”

The studio has two big south windows and the chevron-shaped celling common to third floor rooms. On the floor is a green carpet, protected from the scuffing of a swivel chair by a slab of green linoleum. A green blotter is thumb tacked to the drawing board. Within easy reach from the swivel chair are a telephone, smoking stand, tiny radio, electric razor, and a little cabinet containing pencils, erasers, penholders, india ink, scissors, and a razor blade for sharpening pencils.

Nowadays these are the bare essentials of a cartoonist’s trade. It was different at the turn of the century in Moline, IIl., when a little boy named Carl Ed used to beg a foot or two of wrapping paper from the grocer. In those days grocers had no ready made sacks.
They improvised by spinning a sheet of wrapping paper into a cone and twisting the end.

On this rough paper were drawn the first Ed cartoons — laborious imitations of Buster Brown and Happy Hooligan. One night as he was drawing by the light of a coal oil lamp a newsboy hurried by, hawking an extra. Mrs. Ed bought a paper to learn the news: President McKinley had been shot. That happened on Sept. 6, 1901.

In the summer Moline boys spent most of their time swimming and fishing in the Mississippl. Since bathing suits were unutterably ridiculous, the bodies of these young Huck Finns were deeply tanned before summer got very old.

The gang was pretty much like the roster of characters in “Harold Teen.” There was the inevit. able fat boy (Beezy); the sharp little chiseler (Shadow), in rebellion against all society’s rules and regulations; the dope (Goofy), and other types somewhat less sharply defined. Harold himself is a straight man, with qualities fine but occasionally verging on the ridiculous. He has terrifie ups and downs. “In adolescence,” explains his creator, “we all die a thousand deaths every day. One minute our emotions are in the clouds, the next our chins are dragging the floor. In later years, of course, our feelings mercifully lose their flexibility.”

Carl’s father, who had planned to send his son to an art institute, died when Carl was 13, and the youngster never saw the interior of an art school till years later. Then it was as an instructor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago.

He grew up wanting to be a cartoonist and nothing else. In school he hated mathematics so much he still won’t use a ruler in his work. He went from job to job, toiling in factories and offices, even heating rivets for boilermakers. Neighbors predicted the Ed boy would come to no good end. “Our sons work steady, but he’s just a drifter.”

Across from the Moline High school a crusty old character named Pop Walters ran a combination stationery shop and soda fountain. Pop was a woman hater, but he loved kids.

“He was the happiest man I ever knew,” says Carl. “We told him all our secrets about girls, and he always gave this advice: ‘Beware of wimmen!’ There must have been a tragic chapter in his life, but we never found out what it was. I can see him yet, with his old fashioned sleeve garters, standing there shaking up those delicious concoctions, letting us have stuff on the cuff. It goes without saying that he was the inspiration for Poppa Jenks.”

On the strength of his ability to turn out an occasional cartoon, Carl got a job as sports writer on the Rock Island, Ill., Argus at the age of 20. And on the strength of the job, he got married the following year. That was 1911.

By 1917 he was city editor of the Argus (which he still reads falthfully every day). He had long spent extra time doing drawings for the World Color Syndicate of St. Louis, Mo. Now, he thought, was a time of decision. He came to Chicago and got a job as sports cartoonist on the American.

A year later he heard The Chicago Tribune was looking for somebody to draw a comic strip about adolescents. Saturated with the subject from reading Booth Tarkington’s “Seventeen,” he called on Capt. J. M. Patterson, co-editor and publisher of The Tribune, now publisher of the New York Dally News. “I didn’t know who he was,” confessed Carl later. “I thought he was head of the syndicate or something. I talked his arm off. But I got the job.”

“Harold Teen” got off just ahead of the youthful uprising of the early ’20s. The first Sunday page was printed May 4, 1919 (right), and showed Harold as a peculiar looking lad with straw hat, collegiate jacket, skin tight pants, and bedroom eyes. Its characters are reminiscent of movie players of that period.

For months the young Swede from Moline (whose last name is not an abbreviation) was fearful for his job. But his development proceeded rapidly, influenced by Captain Patterson and by the veteran cartoonists, Gaar Williams and John T. McCutcheon. Once McCutcheon watched him work and remarked: “Carl, I don’t see how you can do that. I couldn’t.” It was a piece of kindly encouragement always remembered.

When the Valentino craze came along, Carl Ed invented the word “sheba” as a feminine counterpart of ” sheik.” It was something everybody had been trying to think of, and it speedily achieved international currency. When students at the University of Illinois began driving flivvers with such mottoes as “Squad Car,” ” Ax the Man Who Owns One,” and “Bored of Education,” Carl gave the idea a fillip that carried it across the country. When it spread to rain-coats, Harold Teen was again on the ball. The strip originated ” He Man Week” and popularized Oxford bags—a fact soberly recorded in 1925 by the London correspondent of the New York Times.

Harold Teen’s phraseology swept the land. “Lamb’s lettuce, ” Leaping Lena,” ” fan mah brow,” “lolly-popsie,” “pantywaist,” “big hunk of stuff,” “fate’s plaything.” and “destiny’s tot” insinuated themselves into the language. Most of these terms were coined outright by Carl. Others he popularized. “Destiny’s tot” he purloined from a Noel Coward play to describe the irrepressible Shadow.

Once at breakfast Carl and an old friend, Adman Milt Fisher, were wisecracking and fooling around. Somehow the word “gedunk” popped out. The cartoonist put it into his strip. Poppa Jenks started serving Gedunk sundaes.

Letters poured in. “What is a Gedunk sundae? How do you make it?” Carl didn’t know, but with friends he figured out a recipe; two spoonfuls of ice cream in a cup of chocolate. This delicacy must not be eaten boorishly—it must be consumed by dunking with ladyfingers. And the Gedunker must wear a bib while indulging.

It was silly, of course, but the Gedunk sundae swept the country. In a slangy, faddish age of transition, “Harold Teen” was rolling in high gear. He broke into the movies in 1928 with a feature length silent picture. It was the first directing essay of a nervous kid named Mervyn Le Roy, who later became a great producer.

The leading players were Arthur Lake, Mary Brian, Alice White, and Hedda Hopper. Hedda, now best known for her Hollywood column, wore a blonde wig as the Widow Hazzit.

The cartoonist kept up with the parade by endless study of youngsters in all their phases. He dutifully read “Flaming Youth,” “The Plastic Age,” “Grim Youth,” “The Rampant Age,” and dozens of others. Often he gleefully utilized incidents that occurred in his own home. Always he tried to remember that a comic strip artist is playing to an audience aged 8 to 80.

Hollywood remade “Harold Teen” with sound in 1933, Hal Le Roy and Rochelle Hudson tenanting the roles of Harold and Lillums. Carl watched the production process thoughtfully, borrowing some of the screen’s technique for his strip. By this time the Sugar Bowl gang was on the air, too.

So the years passed. Donna Jean was married to Frederick Reynolds, W-G-N traffic manager. Granddaughter Joan, now 3½ years old, was born—”my fourth generation of petticoat influence.” The jive epidemic ravaged America and left its scars. Then the war came, bringing new and difficult problems. Because mails were slower, deadlines were advanced. Paper shortages made it necessary to draw Sunday pages so they could be cut into three different sizes. With these complications work once tossed off in three days of the week took twice as long to complete.

All the old gang that formerly thundered thru the Ed home in Evanston was in military service by this time, most of them as officers. The boy who got sick on the cigar became a pilot in the army air forces. Harold Teen himself went into the navy and was wounded at Tarawa.

What Carl Ed said to Harold thru Poppa Jenks when Harold came back wounded last winter expressed his abiding confidence in past and future youth. Pop’s sentiments were:

“It wasn’t so long ago all parents were worried about their hep-cats—predicted a dismal future for our kids. But I wasn’t—an’ dog-gonit! look how you punks have delivered—yea, man!”

Motion Picture News, May 26, 1928

“Harold Teen” Cartoons Used in Novel Exploitation
Novel use of the cartoon strips featuring “Harold Teen,” cartoon character and now seen in a feature motion picture of that title, is being made at the theatres exploiting the film. Among two highly successful newspaper tie-ups reported on “Harold Teen” are the stunts staged by Con Hoobler, publicity and exploitation director for Blooming Theatres, Inc., and Bloomington, Ill., and Manager F. Hookailo of the Olympia theatre, Boston, Mass.

The drawings for a Harold Teen newspaper strip, minus the speeches of the characters, were printed, with spaces for the contestant to supply the conversation. Three thousand of the printed forms were distributed to the high school pupils of the city. The school papers reprinted the entire form and two weeks before the opening, Hoobler was already receiving answers to his contest.

Manager Hookailo tied up with the Boston Traveler in a coloring contest. The newspaper has been running the comic strips of Harold Teen and it was an easy matter to get this paper to come in on the tie-up.

For the best colored sets of the comic strip of Harold Teen, 50 sets of tickets to see the picture were awarded as prizes. All that was necessary to win one of the prizes was to color the comics using either crayon or paints.

In addition to running the contest, the newspaper further publicized the contest by running advance stories pertaining to the contest, picture, theatre and play dates as well as carrying banners on all their delivery trucks.

Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1928.

By May Tinée.
Good morning!
“Gedunking we must go; gedunking we must go.
Slop, slup, the choc’lit up,
Gedunking we must go.”

(I did NOT make that up.)

Guess there’s nothing to prevent starting out the week with a review of the film made from our own Carl Ed’s comic strip—is there?

It is just as young and foolish as the strip, and through the somewhat garbled story the human pups, as impersonated by young Mr. Lake and his confrères, gambol and woof and show harmless white teeth and have a great deal of fun taking themselves very seriously, even as Mr. Ed’s pen characters do.

I’m sure I don’t know where they could have found an abler or funnier “Harold Teen” than Arthur Lake. He carries through his exploits at high school in a desperate, rollicking manner that is most amusing, and you, along with the rest of his gang, are strong for him and death on his two-timing cousin, Horace Teen, portrayed unpleasantly by a young gentleman with amazing teeth.

Lillums is sweetly present in the person of Mary Brian and a vivacious land most extreme blonde rolls Giggles’ eyes at Harold. The most comical event in the film is the motion picture presented by the Seniors in which Harold is the hero and Horace the villain. This ferociously amateur movie is thrown on a screen by an amateur operator and is ridiculous and mirth provoking.

The story, as said, is a bit garbled, but it gets in a lot of incident. It ends with a good ol’ football game, which of course, leaves Harold sitting pretty with his school and the desirable Lillums.

If you like the comic strip you’ll like the fillum. Says I.

Chicago Tribune, November 29, 1933

NEW HAROLD TEEN MOVIE BASED ON SUCCESS OF FIRST.
By George Shaffer.
Hollywood, Cal., Nov. 28.—[Special.]—One of the department heads at Warner studio was talking: “In the movies it is a good recipe when a story has once proved a big hit to make it again. O, sure, we will change the title or shift the characters or give things a new location, but the important thing is after something has met high public favor to give it to the public again. So we have big hopes for our talkie re-make of ‘Harold Teen.'”

The high school age comic strip characters are being brought to camera life a second time at Warner’s with a cast headed by Hal Leroy, 19 years old, dancer-musical comedian from New York, and Patricia Ellis. Miss Ellis plays Mimi, a character reminiscent of the first sweetheart whom Carl Ed, cartoonist, introduced for Harold preceding Lillums. “Lillums” has not been definitely cast, but Gloria Blondell, Joan’s sister, may get this rôle.

Murray Roth will direct the picture.

New York Daily News, August 31, 1938

Swingin’ At The Sugar Bowl

Swingin’ at the Sugar Bowl.,
Doing that covina roll.
They’re having a session at the Sugar Bowl
Harold Teen has got his queen,
Jumping like a jelly bean.
They’re rompin’ and stompin’. That can be no roll.

Old Pop Jenks is doin’ his thing

Everyone has lost control
Doing that covina roll
And Harold Teen is swinging at the Sugar Bowl.

Chicago Tribune, March 28, 1948

HAROLD TEENS DISC SHOW TO OPEN SATURDAY
Swinging at Sugar Bowl Slated by W-G-N
As you know if you’re following Harold Teen’s adventures in The Tribune he’s making plans to become a disc jockey. And when he launches this new venture in the daily comic strip appearing in hundreds of other newspapers besides The Tribune W-G-N w111 introduce ‘a program paralleling Harold’s grafic adventures.

This new weekly disc jockey show titled Swinging at the Sugar Bowl will be introduced over #-G-N from 12:30 to 1 p.m. next Saturday, the same day H. Teen gets going as a platter chatterer in The Tribune.

Reynolds Plays Harold
Taking the part of Harold on the air will be Fred Reynolds, #-G-N continuity writer and dialog writer for the Harold Teen newspaper strip. Swinging at the Sugar Bowl will have all the flavor of the comic strip. Harold’s pals–Lillums, Peggy Wing, Shadow, Pop Jenks, Al Bitzer Jr., and Brick Jackhouse will find. their way into Reynolds’ scripts.

Some of these characters , (no offense, Harold!) will make personal appearances on the show—that is to say. their real life counterparts. will drop in for guest shots on the program. Brick Jackhouse, of course, is named for Jack Brickhouse, sports service manager and sports broadcaster for W-G-N, WGNB and WGN – TV. Brickhouse will be invited to assist Harold at the turn-table and pass along to fans the latest gossip from his fictional fashion emporium—the Maison de Jackhouse.

Ed To Drop In
Carl Ed, creater of Harold Teen, also will be heard from now and then. Reynolds has a 3,000 platter record collection. He will present many choice items from this library.

Harold Teen has been a favorite of newspaper roaders for 29 yers. Harold nowadays has some 30 million followers in the United States and Europe. Representing the lively pace of youth Harold Teen is a clean cut character who seems to appeal to people in every age group. That is expected to be true, too, of Swinging at the Sugar Bowl.

Chicago Trubune, January 8, 1950

FRED REYNOLDS PARLAYS HOBBY INTO RADIO JOB
By Anton Remenih
Fred Reynolds, radio’s Harold Teen, parlayed a hobby into a career.

The dapper, good looking emcee and disk jockey of W-G-N’s Swinging at the Sugar Bowl and Collector’s Corner shows started amassing phonograf records while in high school. The son of a Wall st. broker manifested laudable ingenuity in collecting the platters.

He launched a prep school paper column full of chitchat on the latest recorded efforts of the nation’s singers, ensembles, and orchestras. Recording companies were not only delighted but anxious to send him samples.

On College Paper
When Fred matriculated at Wesleyan university, Middletown, Conn., he continued his platter chatter in the college paper, with the record firms still coöperating.

The Reynolds home in Wilmette today bulges with at least 5,000 recordings, old, rare, and new. When Fred and his wife, Donna Jean, shopped for a home three years ago they knew exactly what they needed.

“The house had to have two bathrooms and a den,” Fred explained. Our problems are a son, Ward, 5, and a daughter, Joan, 9, and a frate car full of records. The platters have overflowed the den and are spilling into the living room. When that’s full we’ll begin filling the sun porch. Ultimately we may need a bigger house.”

Cartoonist a Relative
That Reynolds is radio’s Harold Teen is no coincidence. His father-in-law is Carl Ed, creator of Harold Teen comic strip carried by The Tribune and 100 other papers from coast to coast.

When Swinging at the Sugar Bowl started in April, 1948, H. Teen’s radio adventures paralleled those of the comic strip. Father-in-law still plugs son-in-law and vice versa. It works out fine. Thrushes, robins, and celebrities who don’t sing are happy to make guest appearances on Fred’s show. A number left impressions.

“Frances Langford and John Hall were refreshing because they seemed so much in love despite the handicap of Hollywood,” Fred recalled. “They spent spare moments holding hands. And Lena Horne. There may be better singers but no one surpasses her in timing, poise, and expressive hands. Besides she’s a striking beauty.”

Chicago Tribune, October 11, 1959

CARL ED, 69, HAROLD TEEN’S CREATOR, DIES!
Cartoonist Retired for Only 2 Weeks
Carl Ed, 69, creator of the Harold Teen comic strip and originator of innumerable slang expressions, such as “fan mah brow” and “panty-waist,” died Saturday in Evanston hospital.

Mr. Ed, who lived at 7914 Kolmar av., Skokie, retired from drawing the strip only two weeks ago. It is distributed thru the Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate. and was carried in about 90 papers at the time of his death.

Strip to Be Dropped
His family said the strip will be discontinued after the advance drawings run out in mid-November.

The cartoonist is survived by his widow, Ellen; a daughter, Mrs. Donna Jean Reynolds, wife of Frederick Reynolds, recording director for RCA Victor, and three grand-children.

Funeral services will be private.

Mr. Ed (his last name rhymed with “Swede,” which sometimes was his nickname) was born in Moline, Ill. His father died when the boy was 13.

Gets Start as Cartoonist
Until he was 20 Carl worked in offices and at odd jobs, nourishing the ambition to become a cartoonist. In 1910 he became a sports writer on the Rock Island Argus. Later he got his first cartooning job with the Chicago American sports department. He also drew a cartoon strip, Luke McGluke, for the World Color syndicate of St. Louis.

By 1918 Mr. Ed’s talents had come to the attention of Capt. J. M. Patterson, co-publisher of The Chicago Tribune, who hired him. He began experimenting with comic strip characters under the tutelage of the late John T. McCutcheon and the late Gaar Williams and on May 4, 1918, Harold Teen made his full page Sunday debut.

Source of Inspiration
Mr. Ed said he got his inspiration for Harold from the swains of his daughter, Donna Jean. Teen began as a rather clownish individual but later became typical of adolescence, shifting from high to low spirits at the drop of a thoughtless remark by Lillums.

Pop Jenks’ Sugar Bowl became the symbol of the teen-age hangout and the expressions Mr. Ed conjured up for his brain children became parts of the language.

At one time Teen became fond of a mythical “gedunk” sundae. A deluge of pleas from soda fountain operators thruout the country compelled Mr. Ed to invent one.

Harold Teen

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