Recollecting and Collecting Mutt and Jeff by Linda Rosenkrantz on Creators.com

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Recollecting and Collecting Mutt and Jeff

Even today, more than a century after they entered the realm of popular culture, this comic-strip team's name is part of the common vernacular — put a tall guy and a short guy next to each other and they'll almost inevitably still be called Mutt and Jeff.

The popular, long-running comic strip debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907 and is now considered to be the first continuously published six-day-a-week newspaper strip.

Mutt and Jeff was the creation of Henry Conway "Bud" Fisher, a former sports cartoonist for Hearst newspapers in Chicago, who had a year earlier drawn "A. (for Augustus) Mutt." — a character who offered tongue-in-cheek racing tips — for the sports pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. Although this strip was a hugely popular success, it was when Mutt met a gentle, top-hatted shrimp named Jeffries, in an insane asylum of all places, and uttered the words, "This is gonna be a scream" that the magic match was made. The duo had as much chemistry and antic appeal as Laurel and Hardy and Abbott & Costello. (Jeff was based on a 4-foot 8-inch Swiss-born California shopkeeper named Jacques ("Jakie") Fehr whom Fisher encountered on a train.)

It was the Mutt and Jeff strip that was most instrumental in setting the daily comics format. A previous cartoonist, Clare Briggs, had strung his pictures together single file across a Chicago newspaper page a couple of years earlier, but it ran sporadically and only for a short time, whereas M and J continued until 1982, inspiring imitators and establishing the strip form for daily newspaper comics as a permanent fixture.

Its popularity was based on the singular personalities of the two characters and their interaction as a pair. After Jeff got out of the asylum (he was there because he was under the delusion that he was heavy-weight boxing champ James J. Jeffries), he became the perfect innocent foil for Mutt — a compulsive horse race gambler (readers actually took his fictitious tips seriously) who hatched avaricious schemes to raise his betting money.

A cast of supporting players added to the mayhem, including Mutt's shrewish wife (who was gradually toned down); his son, Cicero; and cronies Gus Geevem, Joe Spivis and the British Sir Sidney. Cicero's cat was spun off into its own Sunday pantomime strip.

In addition to the newspaper strips, Mutt and Jeff have had a long comic book history, beginning with some hardcover publications. Fisher's daily strips were collected and published by Ball Publishing Co. in a volume that retailed for 50 cents, and this was followed by four more, all widely distributed. Another firm, Cupples and Leon, then published an additional series of 18.

The duo also appeared on the cover of the first successful 10-cent newsstand comic book in the standard format, "Famous Funnies," published in 1934, and got their own comic book in 1939.

They also branched out into other media, beginning with one-reel motion picture comedy shorts in 1911, and then stage shows and an animated film series, which debuted in 1916 and ran for 11 years.

Collectors are always on the lookout for vintage Mutt and Jeff artifacts. One of the rarest is a tin mechanical windup toy made in the 1920s, with Jeff astride his friend's back, brightly lithographed and imprinted "SG," the trademark of S. Gutherman of Nuremburg, Germany.

Other desirable merchandise includes a pair of clothed and jointed composition figures made around 1921 and another pair with spring-mounted noses, 1920s painted bisque figures, a china cream pitcher in the form of Mutt, early ink blotters reading "Mutt and Jeff in Mexico" and "Mutt and Jeff in College," cigar boxes, fruit crate labels, sheet music, masks and, of course, the comics and hard- and soft-cover books.

Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 18 books, most recently "Beyond Ava & Aidan: The Enlightened Guide to Naming your Baby" (St. Martin's Press). Visit her baby names website at http://nameberry.com. She cannot answer letters personally. To find out more about Linda Rosenkrantz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com