Allen Saunders (April 24, 1899 – January 28, 1986)[2] was an American writer, journalist and cartoonist who wrote the comic strips Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Mary Worth and Kerry Drake.He is credited with being the originator of the saying, "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans" [published in Reader's Digest] in 1957. The saying was later slightly modified and popularised by John Lennon in the song "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)".
Mary Worth! Is there anything less John-Lennon-like than Mary Worth?
Reading the lyrics to "Beautiful Boy," I notice that Lennon used another aphorism, one that I always knew was not original to him: "Every day in every way/It's getting better and better."[I]n 1939, he was asked to write Apple Mary when its creator (since 1932) Martha Orr left, and he developed it into Mary Worth's Family.... The Depression-era apple vendor's full name was Mary Worth, and Saunders explained his makeover of the character and how her deceased husband's stocks regained their value. The result was a new kind of continuity strip patterned on women's magazine stories of the time, as Mary met people with interesting lives and dispensed her advice when their problems reached a critical point....
Even before Mah Jong reached its climax, however, Emil Coué had arrived in America, preceded by an efficient ballyhoo; in the early months of 1923 the little dried-up Frenchman from Nancy was suddenly the most-talked-of person in the country. Coué Institutes were established, and audiences who thronged to hear the master speak were hushed into awesome quiet as he repeated, himself, the formula which was already on everybody’s lips: “Day by day in every way I am getting better and better.”
I love that this is coming up on the day I discovered the term "toxic positivity"!
From the Wikipedia article, "Émile Coué":
The application of his mantra-like conscious autosuggestion, "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better" (French: Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux) is called Couéism or the Coué method. Some American newspapers quoted it differently, "Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better."
The Coué method centered on a routine repetition of this particular expression according to a specified ritual—preferably as many as twenty times a day, and especially at the beginning and at the end of each day.
When asked whether or not he thought of himself as a healer, Coué often stated that "I have never cured anyone in my life. All I do is show people how they can cure themselves."
Unlike a commonly held belief that a strong conscious will constitutes the best path to success, Coué maintained that curing some of our troubles requires a change in our unconscious thought, which can be achieved only by using our imagination. Although stressing that he was not primarily a healer but one who taught others to heal themselves, Coué claimed to have effected organic changes through autosuggestion....
Maybe you're yelling at the screen saying Althouse, you're 6 posts into the day and you have not so much as mentioned Donald Trump, the President of the United States who — only yesterday — gave what he said might be the most important speech of his life!
And I'm only quoting you — you, the reader yelling that at your screen — because I got to the point in this post where Donald Trump actually does come up in the flow.
Trump was a devotée of Norman Vincent Peale — "He thought I was his greatest student of all time" — and...
Psychologist Albert Ellis, founder (along with Aaron Beck) of the branch of psychology known as cognitive psychology, compared the Peale techniques with those of French psychologist, hypnotherapist and pharmacist Émile Coué, and Ellis says that the repeated use of these hypnotic techniques could lead to significant mental health problems.... Ellis contends the Peale approach is dangerous, distorted, unrealistic. He compares the black or white view of life that Peale teaches to a psychological disorder (borderline personality disorder)... "In the long run [Peale's teachings] lead to failure and disillusionment, and not only boomerang back against people, but often prejudice them against effective therapy."
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49 comments:
Kind of interesting that he wrote both adventure & soap strips. That's a pro.
I stopped reading at Mary Worth, the boogeyman of my childhood lol. Thoughts of her summoning still give me chills.
“Day by day in every way I am getting better and better.” reminds me of Inspector Dreyfus in the "The Pink Panther Strikes Again". I think he kept saying something along those lines as a mantra in the psychiatric hospital.
it's interesting, that baby boomers are Always convinced; that They Invented EVERYTHING
Thank GOD you'll all be dead soon
I faithfully read the Mary Worth comic strip as a kid. I knew the story about "Apple Mary."
I was growing up as many of the 30s comic strips were in decline. "Terry and the Pirates." "Gasoline Alley."
If you look at the space a comic strip had in the 30s vs today, it's incredible. To some extent the physical limitations of today's micro-sized comic slots have changed the form.
"it's interesting, that baby boomers are Always convinced; that They Invented EVERYTHING"
We did. We invented The Far Side, Dilbert, Doonesbury, and Calvin and Hobbes. What more do you need?
Growing up, we enjoyed Dennis the Menace, TinTin, and Tumbleweeds. Great life prep.
Blogger Churchy LaFemme: said...
If you look at the space a comic strip had in the 30s vs today, it's incredible.
They may have functioned as free "Graphic Novels" of the time. High school age kids were much better educated then but the Bell Curve is not new.
I used to have my cousin's World History high school textbook. It had the Punic Wars and the Doric Invasion, which kids today have no idea of. It read like a novel. Nothing like todays 50% picture books. I left it behind went I went to college and could never find it again. He graduated from high school the year I was born.
Santa Royale is Santa Teresa is Santa Barbara. My college GF granny looked acted and wore the same Jean Nate apre shower fragrance as Mary Worth. She lived up on the Riviaria past the mission. My daughter is named after her. I miss that old school California.
I never liked the comic strips that weren't even trying to be funny. I wouldn't even read Mary Worth.
I liked Li'l Abner and Pogo. And the hard-not-to-read Nancy.
I am become Alley Oop
Nancy was never funny, but one read it automatically every day anyway.
Comic strips are generational. You can just barely share them with your parents or children, nut no further. And even then, some strips just fall flat outside of their few-decades window.
"Alley Oop" was rebooted recently in sort of an absurdist direction. I enjoy it, but longtime fans are up in arms.
Segar's "Thimble Theater" (aka "Popeye") was both a great adventure strip & a great humor strip. "Plunder Island" is one of the all time great adventure continuities.
I would not have thought it possible that there was a Beatles song I had not heard, but that treacly disaster rings no bell. Although I have seen the quote in question attributed to John Lennon, I had no idea he had sung it.
Mary Worth--I didn't like the strip, but I read it. I think I read every one in the paper, like I would read cereal boxes.
Now I can't recall many of the series at all, and some of the ones mentioned already are hard to recall w/o cheating.
Li'l Abner, Pogo, and Mike Nomad.
Narr
I do recall Mary's advice not to enumerate my feathered progeny until the process of incubation has been fully realized.
"I would not have thought it possible that there was a Beatles song I had not heard, but that treacly disaster rings no bell."
On their own, Lennon and McCartney were both terrible songwriters.
Harrison was much better.
In the last few years I've done a lot of reading about newspaper comic strips of my youth.
Two strips (which as a kid I found a bit beneath me) I've learned are very well-regarded by those who think about these things: Nancy and Henry.
The strip most unlike Mary Worth? I'll nominate Out Our Way.
Terry and The Pirates
Comics Curmudgeon is still at it.
I second Thimble Theater by Seagar. I have Fantagraphics volumes of the daily and Sunday strips. Fun to read and the stories had continuity. The only time I read Mary Worth is when the Comics Curmudgeon (as previously mentioned) ridicules it. I also knew about Apple Mary from being a student of comics and comic strip history. Many strips have outlasted their creator's ideas, especially the one joke per day. When I was a child and we visited my relatives in NYC, I got to read all the Sunday paper comic strips that were missing from my small town paper back in SE PA. Some I can find on the internet, others in collections, while many are gone forever. I didn't get "Out Our Way" until I was many years an adult.
E.C. Segar. Sorry for the typo misspelling.
THEOLDMAN
After I got sober, I picked up Popeye's declaration: "I yam what I yam and that's all I yam." Be comfortable in your own skin
Major Hoople. I always thought Sluggo's contributions to Nancy were undervalued.
There was even a specific to Montana comic strip, Rick O'Shay, I'm not sure it ever made it out of the Western states papers.
Popeye & Nancy are in a large group of charactes who took over a comic strip from the established main character:
Castor Oyl ==> Popeye, Fritzi Ritz ==> Nancy, Barney Google ==> Snuffy Smif, Steve Roper ==> Mike Nomad, Drabble Jr. ==> Drabble Sr., Eyebeam ==> Peaches.
The comic Dondi was less Lennon-ish than Mary Worth. A WWII Italian orphan brought to the US and adopted by a veteran and his family - so totally wholesome I doubt any of the Beatles (other than Ringo, of course) could ever even understand it.
Rick O'Shay was in either the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Daily News. Remember Hipshot Percussion?
https://www.printmag.com/post/can-not-love-nancy-sluggo-ernie-bushmiller
"It has been suggested that it takes less time to actually read Nancy than to decide whether or not to read Nancy."
A personal favorite was the strip "Abbie & Slats" (1937-1971). Created (and initially written) by Al Capp, but drawn ornately by Raeburn Van Buren, it bore little visual resemblance to Li'l Abner. As happened with a number of cartoon strips, over time the title characters faded somewhat into the background and took second place to the inimitable J. Pierpont "Bathless" Groggins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_an%27_Slats#Characters_and_story
Prince Valiant. It only appeared on Sunday. It was elaborately drawn, more like an illustration in a worthy book then a comic strip. As I recall, the plots were also complicated. The artist exposed the seamy underside of life at King Arthur's Court. They made an expensive motion picture based on it.....I would guess Lil Abner was the most successful comic strip of that era. Movies, serials, a musical, stuffed toys. He had a whole panoply of characters that were more familiar than the cast of Friends. Al Capp had the whole package. Now his insubstantial pageant has faded into air,thin air, and nothing remains. Who remembers the Shmoo?....I wonder if there are any comics that keep their appeal through generations the way select novels and songs do. Blondie has been around since the other Twenties, but she's no longer a flapper. She's not the original Blondie. I haven't read the strip in years. She's probably a feminist nowadays...I wonder if Calvin & Hobbes will go the way of The Yellow Kid and be unfunny to future generations.
“ Ann Althouse said...
I never liked the comic strips that weren't even trying to be funny. I wouldn't even read Mary Worth.”
Judge Parker, Mary Worth, Prince Valiant, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad ... I just never got what they were about.
I liked the funny ones: Snuffy Smith, Blondie, Beatle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, etc.
Skeezix.
Poteet Cannon.
Dondi.
Alley Oop.
Henry.
I see them when I look at the names. Which strip had Old Maumee?
I read cereal boxes, too.
The addiction to the visual input of symbols containing meaning has brought me to where I am today. It's amazing what sticks and for how long.
"Blondie" isn't particularly a feminist, but she does (co)-own her own business, a catering service.
Lil Abner had the musical, but never made it onto TV. "Peanuts" will be with us forever because of the Christmas & Haloween specials.
Is there anything less John-Lennon-like than Mary Worth?
Sixties Britain loved to dig up old Victorian and Edwardian stuff and use it "ironically."
It was only a matter of time before John Lennon, transplanted to America, discovered our Depression-era stuff.
Blogger mezzrow said...
Which strip had Old Maumee?
https://graphicpolicy.com/2020/02/21/preview-steve-canyon-vol-10-1965-1966/#jp-carousel-573262
Roughcoat: Yeah, Hipshot was my favorite character, esp. around Christmas he featured in some beautiful lone cowboy set pieces.
Rick O'Shay was in the NY Metro area papers. We enjoyed him and Hipshot by Stan Lynde while we could.
One contribution to society that may not still be around but did enter into the mainstream lexicon was "Sadie Hawkins Day". On February 29th, I still hear the occasional oldtimer mention it, though it is supposed to be set in November. Leap Day was an Irish tradition (I did not know that!) where women could ask their suitors for their hands in marriage.
Trivia: Olive Oyl's boyfriend prior to Popeye? Why, it was tall and lanky Ham Gravy!
THEOLDMAN
"Sadie Hawkins Day" from Li'l Abner. Just waking up from a long winter's nap. It's 73 here.
Katzenjammer Kids. Major Hoople. Jiggs and Maggie. BC. Miss Peach.
I wonder if the annoying aspects of more recent comic strips will come to be cherished the way the annoying things about old comic strips are cherished now. Probably not. There are too many other media for people - even kids - to think about. The Sunday funnies used to be a big thing for kids - like comic books used to be. Now nobody gets the papers or reads the funny pages, and the comic books are graphic novels that are too expensive for kids to buy and too artsy for them to enjoy.
All I know is Bil Keane can go to Hel.
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
Bil Keane
I read Rick O'Shay in the L.A. Times, along with Dick Tracy.
I have vague memories of a lot of these comic strips and some others from the mid-sixties when I was about ten or twelve. Can't remember any that I particularly liked at that point. A lot I actively disliked. Most especially Peanuts, maybe just to be contrarian about how awesome everyone thought it was (though I can't stand the much later TV specials on their own merits).
About the earliest comic strips I can remember liking at the time I was reading them were BC ("Clams got legs!/Now we're going to have to kill him") and the Wizard of Id ("The peasants are revolting/You said it!"). Hagar the Horrible wasn't bad. Don't know how far back those go, but I was certainly reading them in the early 70s, if not earlier.
I remember vividly a joke from one, but can't remember the strip. Parents were going out to see a movie called "Nudies Go Berserk." When asked by the children, they hemmed and hawed and finally said they were going to see an "adult" movie. One of the smartass kids then said immediately, "Oh, they're going to see Nudies Go Berserk" or something to that effect. The "Nudies Go Berserk" just cracks me up.
For the ones from "our" era, The Far Side is far and away at the top of the heap. Calvin and Hobbes second. Probably nothing else that comes close, but there were some others I enjoyed. There was a contest that revealed that Arlo of Arlo and Janis was my contemporary within a couple of months; my favorite one there was a Sunday strip where Arlo started singing "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw" in front of the kid (named Gene, I believe) and got caught up when he got to that line in the song, though I don't remember exactly how he wimped out.
I vaguely remember Dondi and don't think I ever actually read the strip. It was made into a nauseatingly saccharine movie "starring" David Janssen and an actor playing an "adorable" little Italian orphan speaking broken English. Patti Page was lurking around somewhere and sang some nauseating songs. I couldn't swear to it but, for some incomprehensible reason, I think the movie was shown by the nuns at my grammar school at some point.
The movie from the Li'l Abner musical was pretty entertaining. Haven't seen it in quite a while, though the Emerson College radio station (WERS), which has a show featuring musical theater called Standing Room Only on Saturdays and Sundays, occasionally plays some numbers from the show (usually "Jubal T. Cornpone," but sometimes "If I Had My Druthers"). There was an earlier (non-musical?) movie that I don't think I've ever seen.
I remember the Mary Worth strip but don't recall ever actually reading it. Don't know whether there's any connection, but I do know to this day that you *DON'T EVER* get a group gathered together in a dark room, hold hands (don't recall whether a mirror would also be involved), and chant "I believe in Mary Worth" three times!
--gpm
P.S. Ahh, the wonders of the Internet. I see that "Nudies Go Berserk" was actually from BC, though I didn't find a copy of the actual strip.
Also lots about believing in Mary Worth on the Internet.
--gpm
Early BC was pretty good. In early Wizard of Id, you can clearly see how the king's character design was based on the "King" face-card from a standard card deck. That's mostly lost now.
I used to like Rick O'Shay for the violence. Although basically a humor strip, whenever the Doc Holliday-like supporting character Hipshot Percussion made an appearance, it seemed like someone would soon expire of "lead poisoning."
In my one stint in student gov't, I handled the visit of Al Capp, who was one of many on the college talk circuit in '66. He was pretty much exactly the dirty old man you might expect. A rock star in his own mind. But it worked with one gal from Rawlins, WY.
Apt 3G was cool. "Tommy", the older red-headed reporter lady, was a blast.../ I think "Tommy" guest starred - or vice versa - in Apt 3G when she wasn't hanging out with Brenda Starr, the young reporter, about a third of the way down the comics page.
Sort of like that thing Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies, or Petticoat Junction and the Andy Griffith show, used to do ---- share out between them the character who was .... well, like Gomer or "Tommy".
And even if I am wrong not one in a million people in the USA could possibly know it.
Priscilla's Pop only ran in cheap newspapers - good stuff, though.
The great Gene Wolfe riffs at near-infinite length in a few pages of his great novel "There Are Doors" on Joe Palooka.
And Krazy Kat is wonderful.
Thank you, Althouse commenters, this thread has been as good as the "smells and scents" thread from a few days ago.
Apartment 3G! Imagine living in the same world as people who remember reading Apartment 3G, back in the day!!!! Imagine that!
Albert Ellis, wasn't he a grab them by the pussy sort of philosopher?
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