“the Furry 40’s”? They weren’t, very. It was not until Furry Fandom started in the 1980s that I was able to look back and realize that I had been a Furry fan all my life and had never realized it.
I was born in 1940. My parents gave me their old 1910s children’s books, which in addition to the Roosevelt Bears books that I’ve already told you about, included the Uncle Wiggily Longears books about “the gentleman rabbit”, and the Three Billy Goats Gruff books. I did not realize at the time how outdated they were, partly because both my parents worked during World War II and just after, and I was raised at home by my grandmother, who was more old-fashioned than any of us had suspected. I started in elementary school in 1947, and was bewildered by my schoolmates’ talk about what their fathers had done in "the War". According to my grandmother, the War had ended when the Union Army occupied New Orleans in ’62. Once my parents realized what Gramma had been teaching me, they brought me up to the present, but we never did convince Gramma that the Union occupation of New Orleans in 1862 was not The End of the World.
"Everybody in New Orleans used to be SO POLITE, until the Union Army moved in and started ENFORCING the laws against dueling!"
I did real well in 19th century American history, though.
My parents taught me to read on the comic strips in the Los Angeles Times and Herald Examiner, and when I was four or five, they subscribed to Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories for me. I read anything that I could get my hands on (I was reading my father’s Philo Vance mysteries and my mother’s Perry Mason mysteries before I was given Dick and Jane in school), but the comic books that I picked out for myself were the funny animal titles. Besides the Disney comic books, there were the Looney Tunes comics (Bugs Bunny and the other Warner Bros. cartoon characters), Our Gang comics with Tom & Jerry and the MGM cartoon characters, Real Screen comics with the Fox and the Crow and other nominal Columbia funny animals (who I never saw in the movies), New Funnies comics with Woody Woodpecker, Oswald Rabbit, and the other Universal/Walter Lantz stars, several Terrytoons titles, and all the funny animal comic books not based on any movie studio’s licensed characters. Animal Comics with Pogo Possum and where Howard Garis had moved Uncle Wiggily to; the DC funny animal comics with the Dodo and the Frog, Nutsy Squirrel, and others; Giggle and Ha-Ha comics with Superkatt and Robespierre, also a cat (I later learned that they were written & drawn by moonlighting animation-studio cartoonists; Robespierre was by Disney’s Ken Hultgren, who later designed the Id Monster for “Forbidden Planet”), and obscure independent titles like ‘Red’ Rabbit (a funny-animal cowboy), Foxy Fagan, Super Duck, and more. My first “favorite character” who I wanted to grow up to be, when I was about five, was Sheldon Mayer’s Amster the Hamster – he could talk ANYbody into ANYthing! (Mayer also created Dizzy Dog, Doodles Duck, McSnertle the Turtle, The Three Mousketeers, Ferenc the Fencing Ferret, and others for DC comics; all childhood favorites. I was crushed when, in 1989, I got the chance to interview Mayer just before his death. I asked him why he particularly liked funny animals. He said that he didn’t; he thought they were stupid! But the editors at DC assigned him to write and draw them, so he did.)
There was nothing unusual about an under-ten boy liking funny animal comics. But I continued to like them after most boys had moved on to costumed-hero and horror comics.
At the public library, I guess that my favorite books were the animal fantasies, before I discovered science-fiction in 1950. Doctor Doolittle. Freddy the Pig. My favorites here were Robert Lawson’s children’s novels that mixed fantasy with s-f. The Fabulous Flight, with Sam the seagull who let a shrinking boy ride on his back. Mr. Twigg’s Mistake, about the mole, General DeGaulle, who grew bigger and bigger and bigger! Rabbit Hill, about a group of New England animals who worry that the new human family moving into the neighborhood may be the type who put out poison and go hunting. The novels that retold history from an animal’s viewpoint: Ben and Me (Ben Franklin and Amos Mouse), Captain Kidd’s Cat, I Discover Columbus (by his ship’s parrot), and Mr. Revere and I (by Paul Revere’s horse). I learned of Lawson's death in the '50s when I noticed that the copyright statement in his last novel had a tag, "The Estate of Robert Lawson", pasted over it.
My parents got our first TV set in 1950, just in time for TV’s first funny animal cartoon, Crusader Rabbit (Los Angeles, September 1950). I was so frustrated that there were no Crusader Rabbit toys, like there were for all the Disney and WB and MGM cartoon animal stars! During my teens, kid’s TV became a dumping ground for all of the 1930s black-&-white theatrical cartoons that were never meant for just children. When I became active in early animation fandom in the 1970s, some fan was always saying, “Here’s a cartoon that hasn’t been seen by anyone since the 1930s!”, and he would show a ratty 16 mm. print of a WB cartoon that I saw many times on TV in the ‘50s, including all the Politically Incorrect ones.
But I always felt alone. My teachers and children’s librarians said that Robert Lawson’s books, and the Freddy the Pig books, were very popular, and I guess that they must have been or their publishers would not have kept printing new titles; but I never met anyone else who particularly liked them. In my teens I got more and more into s-f, then in the 1960s when costumed heroes made a comeback and comics fandom developed, I bought all the DC and Marvel titles like the other fans. But I also resumed buying and enjoying what funny animal comics were still out there. I thought that I was the only adult who still enjoyed the funny animals, until the 1980s when Furry Fandom came together.
“the Furry 40’s”? They weren’t, very. It was not until Furry Fandom started in the 1980s that I was able to look back and realize that I had been a Furry fan all my life and had never realized it.
I was born in 1940. My parents gave me their old 1910s children’s books, which in addition to the Roosevelt Bears books that I’ve already told you about, included the Uncle Wiggily Longears books about “the gentleman rabbit”, and the Three Billy Goats Gruff books. I did not realize at the time how outdated they were, partly because both my parents worked during World War II and just after, and I was raised at home by my grandmother, who was more old-fashioned than any of us had suspected. I started in elementary school in 1947, and was bewildered by my schoolmates’ talk about what their fathers had done in "the War". According to my grandmother, the War had ended when the Union Army occupied New Orleans in ’62. Once my parents realized what Gramma had been teaching me, they brought me up to the present, but we never did convince Gramma that the Union occupation of New Orleans in 1862 was not The End of the World.
"Everybody in New Orleans used to be SO POLITE, until the Union Army moved in and started ENFORCING the laws against dueling!"
I did real well in 19th century American history, though.
My parents taught me to read on the comic strips in the Los Angeles Times and Herald Examiner, and when I was four or five, they subscribed to Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories for me. I read anything that I could get my hands on (I was reading my father’s Philo Vance mysteries and my mother’s Perry Mason mysteries before I was given Dick and Jane in school), but the comic books that I picked out for myself were the funny animal titles. Besides the Disney comic books, there were the Looney Tunes comics (Bugs Bunny and the other Warner Bros. cartoon characters), Our Gang comics with Tom & Jerry and the MGM cartoon characters, Real Screen comics with the Fox and the Crow and other nominal Columbia funny animals (who I never saw in the movies), New Funnies comics with Woody Woodpecker, Oswald Rabbit, and the other Universal/Walter Lantz stars, several Terrytoons titles, and all the funny animal comic books not based on any movie studio’s licensed characters. Animal Comics with Pogo Possum and where Howard Garis had moved Uncle Wiggily to; the DC funny animal comics with the Dodo and the Frog, Nutsy Squirrel, and others; Giggle and Ha-Ha comics with Superkatt and Robespierre, also a cat (I later learned that they were written & drawn by moonlighting animation-studio cartoonists; Robespierre was by Disney’s Ken Hultgren, who later designed the Id Monster for “Forbidden Planet”), and obscure independent titles like ‘Red’ Rabbit (a funny-animal cowboy), Foxy Fagan, Super Duck, and more. My first “favorite character” who I wanted to grow up to be, when I was about five, was Sheldon Mayer’s Amster the Hamster – he could talk ANYbody into ANYthing! (Mayer also created Dizzy Dog, Doodles Duck, McSnertle the Turtle, The Three Mousketeers, Ferenc the Fencing Ferret, and others for DC comics; all childhood favorites. I was crushed when, in 1989, I got the chance to interview Mayer just before his death. I asked him why he particularly liked funny animals. He said that he didn’t; he thought they were stupid! But the editors at DC assigned him to write and draw them, so he did.)
There was nothing unusual about an under-ten boy liking funny animal comics. But I continued to like them after most boys had moved on to costumed-hero and horror comics.
At the public library, I guess that my favorite books were the animal fantasies, before I discovered science-fiction in 1950. Doctor Doolittle. Freddy the Pig. My favorites here were Robert Lawson’s children’s novels that mixed fantasy with s-f. The Fabulous Flight, with Sam the seagull who let a shrinking boy ride on his back. Mr. Twigg’s Mistake, about the mole, General DeGaulle, who grew bigger and bigger and bigger! Rabbit Hill, about a group of New England animals who worry that the new human family moving into the neighborhood may be the type who put out poison and go hunting. The novels that retold history from an animal’s viewpoint: Ben and Me (Ben Franklin and Amos Mouse), Captain Kidd’s Cat, I Discover Columbus (by his ship’s parrot), and Mr. Revere and I (by Paul Revere’s horse). I learned of Lawson's death in the '50s when I noticed that the copyright statement in his last novel had a tag, "The Estate of Robert Lawson", pasted over it.
My parents got our first TV set in 1950, just in time for TV’s first funny animal cartoon, Crusader Rabbit (Los Angeles, September 1950). I was so frustrated that there were no Crusader Rabbit toys, like there were for all the Disney and WB and MGM cartoon animal stars! During my teens, kid’s TV became a dumping ground for all of the 1930s black-&-white theatrical cartoons that were never meant for just children. When I became active in early animation fandom in the 1970s, some fan was always saying, “Here’s a cartoon that hasn’t been seen by anyone since the 1930s!”, and he would show a ratty 16 mm. print of a WB cartoon that I saw many times on TV in the ‘50s, including all the Politically Incorrect ones.
But I always felt alone. My teachers and children’s librarians said that Robert Lawson’s books, and the Freddy the Pig books, were very popular, and I guess that they must have been or their publishers would not have kept printing new titles; but I never met anyone else who particularly liked them. In my teens I got more and more into s-f, then in the 1960s when costumed heroes made a comeback and comics fandom developed, I bought all the DC and Marvel titles like the other fans. But I also resumed buying and enjoying what funny animal comics were still out there. I thought that I was the only adult who still enjoyed the funny animals, until the 1980s when Furry Fandom came together.
Fred Patten