If you'd like to believe all great artists are great human beings, you might want to lay off Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary, a new book by Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen. It's an exhaustive and apparently well-researched biography of the creator of Li'l Abner, done with access to Capp's personal papers and many of his family members and close associates. I know Denis as a man who has done more than anyone else to honor and promote the genius body of work (well, genius up to a point) that was Abner…so I applaud his honesty. It must be tough to co-author a book that reveals that the creator of one of your favorite comic strips was a pretty horrible human being. I guess that point is unavoidable when you write about a serial rapist.
Abner was a wonderful comic strip, at least until the sixties when it evolved into what a friend of mine used to call "the kind of conservatism that embarrassed Barry Goldwater." Milton Caniff, a longtime friend of Capp's, was as far to the right in his work but somehow never turned into a clown about it. For Capp, the political stuff seemed to be all about saying outrageous things to get on TV and get attention. Thank goodness there's no one doing that kind of thing today.
I could easily overlook his politics but I have a bit more trouble with the way he used his power and position to force himself on unwilling young women. A year or three after Capp plea-bargained his way out of legal jeopardy and swore to keep the hell away from co-eds, I met a lady who had been one of his victims and heard her tell a story that was…well, the kind of thing that almost makes you ashamed to share the perpetrator's gender. The book also does not speak well of Capp in other, non-sexual capacities. All of this has impaired my ability to love his work. I certainly understand the argument that it shouldn't but it does.
I met Al Capp but once. Not long before the revelations, back when he was lecturing on college campuses, he appeared in the quad area at U.C.L.A. This was around late 1970 and that was my then-current place of education. Little clip-out forms had been printed in the school paper, The Daily Bruin. They said at the top, "Al Capp is an expert on nothing and has opinions on everything. I would like to ask Al Capp the following question…" and then there were blank lines on which you could write a question and deposit it in a box at the Bruin office. This was how Capp did his "lectures," responding to questions submitted this way. I submitted one asking him about his feelings on the Broadway play and subsequent movie, then arranged with friends to go see 'n' hear him.
The night before, I listened to Al Capp on Campus, a recently-released record that captured one of his earlier speaking engagements. Then on the big afternoon, we sat and experienced it live. Capp limped up to the podium amidst a mix of applause and boos. The boos clearly were like the way when you go see Peter Pan, you're expected to boo Captain Hook on his entrance. Capp was there, after all, to tell us that as college students, we were all worthless scum.
The first part of his presentation, as I remember, was a too-long account of why he was lecturing there for much less than his usual speaking fee. He'd been insulted by the money U.C.L.A.'s speakers bureau had offered but then learned that a young and talented artist he knew was up for a scholarship at our university. So, he explained, he'd agreed to appear for bad money if it would go towards that student's education. Throughout his talk when he insulted us and we booed back, he'd occasionally remind us he was only doing this to help a student and I think once he threatened to walk off and keep the money for himself if we got unruly.
A lady I knew had been involved in setting up Capp's appearance and later that day, she told me the story about lowering his price to help a student was at least in part untrue. She said Capp spoke for whatever price he could get — often, less that he was getting for being there today — and they couldn't verify he ever received this much higher amount he claimed as the norm. They also couldn't verify how much of today's fee, if any, was going to a student Capp did not identify. The one thing she was sure of was that she could get me into a reception that evening where I might have the chance to meet Mr. Capp…but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
After he finished talking about his pay, he hauled out a pile of (allegedly) the questions we'd submitted. He said he'd just been handed them and had not seen them before, then he began to read them aloud and offer (mostly) witty or at least funny replies. My question was not among them…and neither were any others that had been submitted via the Daily Bruin; not unless we'd all submitted the same ones, verbatim, as the kids in the audience for that Al Capp on Campus record. The questions and his replies were word-for-word identical. They were even in the same order. At one point, I whispered to my friends what the next question and answer would be…and sure enough, I was right. Near the end, Capp did take some live questions from the floor, mostly so he could insult the questioners to their faces.
His thesis, to the extent he had one, went something like this: He had lost a leg when he was a kid. He had had no family connections or wealth but in spite of all that, he had become rich and famous…and in America, anyone could do that. If you couldn't, you were a lazy bum who didn't deserve it. At one point, he said, "And I am proof," and someone yelled out, "And you are white!" That makes some difference now — we can debate how much — but it made more back in '70 and a lot more back in the thirties when Al Capp (né Caplin) was growing up. His closing speech though was rather nice and warm and reminded me a bit of those cop-out endings Don Rickles used to do where he toasted the audience for being good sports. I got the feeling Capp did it so he'd exit to applause…and make it off the quad alive.
That evening, my friend did indeed get me into the reception. Capp was good-natured but loud and actually rather funny, though everything he uttered sounded like a prepared line. Years later, his brother Elliott told me Al had notebooks full of scripted quips for any situation he was likely find himself in. He'd study them before any public or social engagement and apply them as necessary. When I was introduced to him as someone involved (or maybe just interested) in the field of cartooning, he dug into his repertoire of pre-existing remarks about comics, laid a few on me and then asked if I wanted to know anything about Li'l Abner. I said, "I do but I'd rather ask you about Long Sam."
That was another strip Capp had done for a time, working with an artist named Bob Lubbers, and I was probably the only person within a hundred-mile radius who'd ever heard of it. Upon its mention, he turned into a completely different person and for the next ten minutes or so, he didn't talk to me like Al Capp the Public Figure. He talked to me like Al Capp, the guy who was proud to be a cartoonist. We talked about Milton Caniff and Charles Schulz and others in that profession of his and he seemed genuinely pleased that I knew his work on that level. Then a reporter stepped up and interrupted and he turned back into The Public Figure again, carrying on about "those kids today." I was thereafter ignored.
Still, I left there with a certain respect for the guy. It was all an act but it wasn't a bad act. At the time — I know some readers of this blog will find this hard to believe — I was rather conservative. I didn't like most of the current conservative leaders but I liked what they were supposed to stand for. Not long after, I began to drift to the left. It was not because of my in-person experience with Al Capp…but realizing what a phony he was sure caused me to reassess a lot of what he and prominent right-wingers of the day were selling. His attitude towards the poor, the one he cribbed from Marie Antoinette, particularly repulsed me.
Shortly after the day Capp did his well-scripted spontaneous routine at U.C.L.A., I was talking with my friend Shel Dorf, who is of course best remembered as the most visible founder of what we now call Comic-Con International. Shel worshipped all cartoonists — if you were syndicated, you were at least a small-"g" god — and had an amazing collection of strips clipped from newspapers. When we spoke of Capp, he asked if I'd ever read a long run of the early Li'l Abner strips. I hadn't. In '70, there were no reprint collections or anyplace one could find such a thing. Then a week later, Shel dropped off several thick scrapbooks at my home — a loan, of course. They contained about three years of late 1940's Abner and boy, was that stuff good. I'm a big fan of great newspaper strips but not when read one-a-day as they appear. Gimme a couple of months of them at a time or forget it.
So even as I became a lesser fan of Al Capp as a human being, I became a bigger fan of his work. For a while, I could balance the two…but then came the news stories of Capp being ordered off college campuses and then he pled guilty…and when Shel offered me more volumes of his scrapbooks, I asked if he could loan me Walt Kelly or Elzie Segar instead.
I should mention something that fascinated me. In the seventies, I had occasion to meet and hang out with a lot of Capp's peers — men (they were all men) who produced other syndicated strips and were roughly of the same generation. Their profession then had a certain camaraderie and there was a "mens' club" feel to the National Cartoonists Society.
The name of Capp came up often and everyone had stories. I witnessed an amazing evolution…perhaps you could call it an enlightening. At first, tales of Capp's sexual advances were treated almost as colorful pranks. It was not denied that he did such things but what he was said to have done was also not viewed as rape or even a crime. He was like some guy who was out on a date with a girl and had tricked her into going farther than she wanted. One prominent cartoonist shocked me — and I am not easily shocked — with the expressed belief that "these girls today, going around dressing like that…they're practically begging for it."
But you could feel that change with all but the most neanderthal of my sex. At first, the allegations against Capp, even the ones he'd copped to, were "trumped-up" charges by political enemies who would stop at nothing to silence him. That rationale eventually lost all its steam as did the notion that rape is some form of zany mischief. In the seventies, a lot of males finally woke up about such matters and adjusted accordingly. At the 1983 N.C.S. banquet, I even heard the "practically begging for it" cartoonist describe Capp, who'd died a few years prior, as "a brilliant cartoonist but a very sick man who should have been locked up."
That was a few years after I met that lady — the one I mentioned earlier who claimed to me that she'd been assaulted by Capp. I couldn't imagine any reason she would have had to make up such a thing, especially since she'd have had to research his modus operandi. What she told me — trembling with rage — roughly matched other encounters that had been reported. Needless to say, a story like that has a special impact when you hear it straight from a victim, still putting out angry tears long after the incident. It was years later that I could even stand to read Li'l Abner…around 1988, I suppose, which was when Denis Kitchen — co-author of the book I set about to review here — began reprinting the early ones.
Yes, I guess I started this blog post as a favorable review of Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary and then made a right turn and wrote instead about my own dual feelings about the man. "A brilliant cartoonist but a very sick man who should have been locked up" is not a bad description…but read this honest, important book and decide for yourself. You can order a copy via this link. Maybe you'll even find a way to separate the artist from his art. I sure can't.