li'l abner skunk works

Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome. I have seen this epithet before, usually in the phrase skunk works, meaning a semi-official project team that is tacitly licensed to bend the rules and think outside the box. The name was taken from the moonshine factory in the satirical American comic strip, Li'l Abner. The musical has since become a perennial favorite of high school and amateur productions, due to its popular appeal and modest production requirements. [9], In 2009, the Skunk Works was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. ", "Al Capp Replies to Critic of Newspaper Comic Strips;", "Li'l Abner Lost In Hollywood by Michael H. Price", "Gov. After this, Capp simply expanded Li'l Abner by another row, and filled the rest of the space with a page-wide title panel and a small panel called Advice fo' Chillun. Dogpatch characters pitched consumer products as varied as Grape-Nuts cereal, Kraft caramels, Ivory soap, Oxydol, Duz and Dreft detergents, Fruit of the Loom, Orange Crush, Nestl's cocoa, Cheney neckties, Pedigree pencils, Strunk chainsaws, U.S. Royal tires, Head & Shoulders shampoo and General Electric light bulbs. 1,193,226 2. Abner and Daisy Mae's nuptials were a major source of media attention, landing them on the aforementioned cover of Life magazine's March 31, 1952, issue. One main building still remains at 2777 Ontario Street in Burbank (near San Fernando Road), now used as an office building for digital film post-production and sound mixing. Gary Herbert says 'tone' of fundraising will change amid criticism", "Dogpatch Confidential" by Dennis Drabelle (, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Li%27l_Abner&oldid=1141466385, Al Capp claimed that he always strove to give incidental characters in, "Ef Ah had mah druthers, Ah'd druther", "As any fool kin plainly see!" Johnson promised the Pentagon theyd have their first prototype in 150 days. It didnt really matter, since he was firing me about twice a day anyways. Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp "very possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature to media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life." "How to Read Li'l Abner Intelligently" from. Honest Abe Yokum: Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae's little boy was born in 1953 "after a pregnancy that ambled on so long that readers began sending me medical books", wrote Capp. His philosophy is spelled out in his 14 Rules and Practices. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was immensely popular in the 1940s and '50s. Its name was taken from the moonshine factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner . Harvey. Following the 1989 revival of the Pogo comic strip, a revival of Li'l Abner was also planned in 1990. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li'l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."[51]. Origin of the name "Skunk Works" The name originated from cartoonist Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip, which featured an outdoor still called the "Skonk Works" in which "Kickapoo Joy Juice" was manufactured from old shoes and dead skunks. The name "Skunk Works" was taken from the moonshine factory in the comic strip "Li'l Abner." Where it was originally spelled "Skonkworks" and their swill was made from old boots and dead skunks. I'll fight ya, and I'll win! It cruised at 70,000 feet, snapping aerial photographs of Soviet installations. The Creator of Li'l Abner Tells Why His Hero Is (SOB!) After his lower wisdom teeth grew so long that they squeezed his cerebral Goodness Gland and emerged as forehead horns, he proved himself capable of evil. "One of the few strips ever taken seriously by students of American culture," wrote Professor Berger, "Li'l Abner is worth studyingbecause of Capp's imagination and artistry, and because of the strip's very obvious social relevance." Capp is also the subject of an upcoming PBS American Masters documentary produced by his granddaughter, independent filmmaker Caitlin Manning. Li'l Abner also featured a comic strip-within-the-strip: Fearless Fosdick was a parody of Chester Gould's plainclothes detective, Dick Tracy. Li'l Abner featured a whole menagerie of allegorical animals over the years each one was designed to satirically showcase another disturbing aspect of human nature. [49], Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. There was not much industry in Dogpatch. Li'l Abner himself was a mattress tester, and most others were either moonshiners or bootleggers. Initially owned and syndicated through United Feature Syndicate, a division of the E.W. Capp also excelled at product endorsement, and Li'l Abner characters were often featured in mid-century American advertising campaigns. Supposedly done in retaliation for Capp's "Mary Worm" parody in Li'l Abner (1956), a media-fed "feud" commenced briefly between the rival strips. Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output . Li'l Abner visits the corrupt Squeezeblood comic strip syndicate in a classic Sunday continuity from October 12, 1947. Underground cartoonist and Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as a consultant on nearly all of them. Wed!! [1] Lockheed took over the building but the sour smell of bourbon mash lingered, partly because the group of buildings continued to store barrels of aging whiskey. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians were even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. The production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, however. [57] "When he retired Li'l Abner, newspapers ran expansive articles and television commentators talked about the passing of an era. They included: Al Capp, a native northeasterner, wrote all the final dialogue in Li'l Abner using his approximation of a mock-southern dialect (including phonetic sounds, eye dialect (nonstandard spelling for speech to draw attention to pronunciation), nonstop "creative" spelling and deliberate malapropisms). [55] Kurtzman eventually did spoof Li'l Abner (as "Li'l Ab'r") in 1957, in his short-lived humor magazine, Trump. In his seminal book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan considered Li'l Abner's Dogpatch "a paradigm of the human situation". [30] The favorite dish of the starving natives was raw polar bear (and vice versa). The Skunk Worksis the proud home of eight Collier Trophies. This was followed by a heated conversation among the adults who advised her that Flower was too bashful to go into space, and it couldnt be Pepe Le Pew, another famous cartoon skunk, because he wasnt serious enough to be in the space program. In 1949, when the all-male club refused membership to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip Teena, Capp temporarily resigned in protest. Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. Brown, Rodger, "Dogpatch USA: The Road to Hokum" article, Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 05:42, explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, 418 Search and Rescue Operational Training Squadron, "This Day in Jewish History / Al Capp, Choleric Creator of Li'l Abner, Dies an Embittered Man", Li'l Abner "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Daisy Mae "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Mammy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Pappy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Honest Abe "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Tiny Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Marryin' Sam "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Kickapoo Joy Juice page at deniskitchen.com, Joe Btfsplk "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary Michael Schumacher, Denis Kitchen Google Books, General Bullmoose "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Earthquake McGoon "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Evil-Eye Fleegle "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Sadie Hawkins "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Fearless Fosdick "biography" at deniskitchen.com, The Shmoo "biography" at deniskitchen.com. Taking action to help you protect what matters most. By the time EC Comics published Mad #1, Capp had been doing Fearless Fosdick for nearly a decade. The Skunk Works had predicted that the U-2 would have a limited operational life over the Soviet Union. Skunk Works is an official alias for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs ( ADP ), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. [9] She is consistently the toughest character throughout Li'l Abner. His appearances on NBC's The Tonight Show spanned three emcees; Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. (The relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) [1][2][3] The Sunday page debuted six months after the daily, on February 24, 1935. Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. German jets had appeared over Europe. This dunks Upper Slobbovia into Lower Slobbovia, and raises the latter into the formera classic example of a literal revolution. No other cartoonist to date has come close to Capp's televised exposure. German jets had appeared over Europe. He would eventually acquire a couple of supporting character friends for his own semi-regularly featured adventures in the strip. [50], Capp has also been credited with popularizing many terms, such as "natcherly", schmooze, druthers, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. Besides being fearless, Fosdick was "pure, underpaid and purposeful", according to his creator. Engineers from Skunk Works subsequently developed the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 . [4] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. He never married his own long-suffering fiance Prudence Pimpleton (despite an engagement of 17 years), but Fosdick was directly responsible for the unwitting marriage of his biggest fan, Li'l Abner, to Daisy Mae in 1952. Jasper Jooks by Jess "Baldy" Benton (1948'49), Ozark Ike (1945'53) and Cotton Woods (1955'58), both by Ray Gotto, were clearly inspired by Capp's strip. Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics. The staff was cautioned that they had to operate in strict secrecy. Boody Rogers' Babe was a peculiar series of comic books about a beautiful hillbilly girl who lived with her kin in the Ozarks with many similarities to Li'l Abner. Since the system entered service with the U.S. Air Force in late 2014, Auto GCAS has been credited with seven saves eight pilots and seven F-16s. This drone was launched from the back of a specially modified A-12, known as M-21, of which there were two built. Later, Capp licensed and was part-owner of an 800-acre (3.2km2) $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas. Ironing Pappy's trousers fell under her wifely duties as well, although she didn't bother with preliminaries like waiting for Pappy to remove them first. The F-22 is the worlds preeminent air dominance fighter and a proven strategic deterrent. Mammy Yokum: Born Pansy Hunks, Mammy was the scrawny, highly principled "sassiety" leader and bare knuckle "champeen" of the town of Dogpatch. He was portrayed as a naive, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly. Consequently, Salomey is frequently targeted by unscrupulous sportsmen, hog breeders and gourmands (like J.R. Fangsley and Bounder J. Roundheels), as well as unsavory wild boars with improper intentions (such as Boar Scarloff and Porknoy). Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning not with beatnik or Sputnik, but earlier in the pages of Li'l Abner. "When Li'l Abner made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. This aircraft first flew in 1966 and remained in service until 1998. The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. Contest (1951), the Roger the Lodger Contest (1964) and many others. Capp has credited his inspiration for vividly stylized language to early literary influences like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon, as well as Old-time radio and the Burlesque stage. The story is explained as well in the Wikipedia: " [] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. Since this movie predates their comic strip marriage, Abner makes a last-minute escape (natcherly!). An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." Schertz, Texas 78154. Rounding out the cast were soap opera star Laurette Fillbrandt as Daisy Mae, Hazel Dopheide as Mammy Yokum, and Clarence Hartzell (who was also a prominent actor on Vic and Sade) as Pappy. The name "Skunk Works" and the skunk design are now registered trademarks of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. For 18 years of the run of the strip, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's marital crosshairs time and time again. It first appeared in 1942 and proved so popular that it ran intermittently in Li'l Abner over the next 35 years. Auto GCAS improves the safety of aircraft and pilots by helping to eliminate the leading cause of F-16 pilot fatalities in military aviation: crashing an undamaged aircraft into the ground. The ambitious puppet show was created and directed by puppeteer Mary Chase, written by Everett Crosby and voiced by John Griggs, Gilbert Mack and Jean Carson. The D-21 drone, similar in design to the Blackbird, was built to overfly the Lop Nur nuclear test facility in China. Selections from the Li'l Abner musical score have been recorded by everyone from Percy Faith and Mario Lanza to Andr Previn and Shelly Manne. During the extended peak of the strip, the workload grew to include advertising, merchandising, promotional work, comic book adaptations, public service material and other specialty work in addition to the regular six dailies and one Sunday strip per week. ", signaled the end of all further discussion. Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was popular in the 1940s and '50s. Known locations include United States Air Force Plant 42 and United States Air Force Plant 4. During most of the epic, the impossibly dense Abner exhibited little romantic interest in her voluptuous charms (much of it visible daily thanks to her famous polka-dot peasant blouse and cropped skirt). The name skunkworks originates from a cartoon series called " Li'l Abner " by Al Capp. The concept came in the wake of the Gary Powers incident. [44] Journalism Quarterly and Time have both called him "the Mark Twain of cartoonists". Most of the old Skunk Works buildings in Burbank were demolished in the late 1990s to make room for parking lots. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. Long before today's widespread use of drones, the Skunk Works built an unmanned aerial vehicle that could hitch a ride aboard an A-12. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Lil Abner, which was immensely popular from 1935 through the 1950s. Taking action to help you protect what matters most. [6] The range modifications were performed in Lockheed's Building 304, starting with 100 P-38F models on April 15, 1942. The name was adapted by the Lockheed Corporation, the predecessor of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, more than 50 years ago. When the starving and broke Capp first sold Li'l Abner in 1934, he gladly accepted the syndicate's standard onerous contract. Privacy Policy. A customer would go to the Skunk Works with a request, and on a handshake the project would begin no contracts in place, no official submittal process. The Sunday page debuted six months into the run of the strip. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with an original score by Nelson Riddle. And virtually all cartoonists remain content with their diluted share of any merchandising revenue their syndicates arrange. Al Capp was a master of the arts of marketing and promotion. Named for a run-down factory in the Li'l Abner comics, Skunk Works has been the home of some of the most advanced plane research in history, including the U-2, F-22 Raptor and SR-71 Blackbird . 2023 Lockheed Martin Corporation. Durward Kirby was the announcer. The term shmoo has also entered the lexicon used in defining highly technical concepts in no fewer than four separate fields of science. He challenged the bureaucratic system that stifled innovation and hindered progress. [8] Once married, Abner became relatively domesticated. We have invested in developing and demonstrating hypersonic technology for over 30 years. In June 1943, the U.S. Armys Air Tactical Service Command (ATSC) met with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to express its dire need for a jet fighter to counter a rapidly growing German jet threat. After 1989, Lockheed reorganized its operations and relocated the Skunk Works to Site 10 at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, where it remains in operation today. Conceived in 1943, the Skunk Works divisiona name inspired by a mysterious locale from the comic strip Li'L Abner was formed by Johnson to build America's first jet fighter. The secret facility was housed in a large tent at what is now Burbank Airport. For the game featuring the. By 1973, Pentagon officials were calling for the creation of an attack aircraft that could fly undetected past enemy radar. Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies and charitable or non-profit organizations, spanning several decades. By 1960, Soviet radar and surface-to-air missile technology had caught up with the U-2. Even the trademark comic "signs" that clutter the backgrounds of Will Elder's panels had a precedent in Li'l Abner, in the residence of Dogpatch entrepreneur Available Jones, though they're also reminiscent of Bill Holman's Smokey Stover. (Upon his retirement in 1977, Capp declared Mammy to be his personal favorite of all his characters.) Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared across multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. It has also developed. A superhuman dynamo, Mammy did all the household chores and provided her charges with no fewer than eight meals a day of "po'k chops" and "tarnips" (as well as local Dogpatch delicacies like "candied catfish eyeballs" and "trashbean soup"). It was Kellys unconventional organizational approach that allowed the Skunk Works to streamline work and operate with unparalleled efficiency. The phrase "skunk works" originated from the aeronautics industry, and in that context it had a specific meaning (and still does). Not taking anything away from Kurtzman, who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. Other familiar silent comedy veterans in the cast include Bud Jamison, Lucien Littlefield, Johnny Arthur, Mickey Daniels, and ex-Keystone Cops Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy and Al St. John. A rapidly growing German jet threat gave Lockheed an opportunity to develop an airframe around the most powerful jet engine that the allied forces had access to, the British Goblin. Ben Rich and "Kelly" Johnson set the origin as June 1943 in Burbank, California; they relate essentially the same chronology in their autobiographies. But Lockheeds chief engineer, Clarence Kelly Johnson, simply fielded all requests and relayed to his handpicked band of Skunk Works employees what needed to be done. Forget about it slam dunk! During September 2015 the proposed aircraft was deemed to have developed into more of a tactical reconnaissance aircraft, instead of strategic reconnaissance.[11]. Kellys 14 Rules and Practices" are still in use today as evidenced by our small, empowered teams, streamlined processes and culture that values attempting to do things that havent been done before. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, Monitor. Our Services. The menfolk were too lazy to work, yet Dogpatch gals were desperate enough to chase them (see Sadie Hawkins Day). During AirVenture 2003, for example, a 4-year-old girl took one look at a picture of an artists drawing of the Lockheed Martin Space plane with the distinctive skunk on the tail and asked if it was a ride at Disneyland because the mascot was obviously Flower from the movie Bambi.. Skunk Works history started with the P-38 Lightning in 1939[1][2] and the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. Learn how we are strengthening the economies, industries and communities of our global partner nations. The essential spirit of the division was captured perfectly on July 15, 1955, in an entry from Kelly Johnsons logbook, after a frantic race to ready the U-2 for its inaugural test flight: Airplane essentially completed. Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies. The odor put out by Skonk Works was so hideous people avoided the area and the people who worked there. Sign up here. [13] The first YP-38 was built there before the team moved back to Lockheed's main factory a year later. Mind Works is dedicated to excellence in psychology and counseling. In July 1938, while the rest of Lockheed was busy tooling up to build Hudson reconnaissance bombers to fill a British contract, a small group of engineers was assigned to fabricate the first prototype of what would become the P-38 Lightning. Fosdick also achieved considerable exposure as the long-running advertising spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil, a popular men's hair product of the postwar period. Almost every line was followed by two exclamation marks for added emphasis. [46][47] According to the Boston Globe (as reported on May 18, 2010), the town has renamed its amphitheater in the artist's honor, and is looking to develop an Al Capp Museum. Comic strips typically dealt with northern urban experiences before Capp introduced Li'l Abner, the first strip based in the South. The comic strip had 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers in 28 countries. The designation "skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task of working on advanced or secret projects.

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