![](http://srbissette.com/uploaded_images/OrgyLivingDead-733271.jpg)
![](http://srbissette.com/uploaded_images/BushDance-798645.jpg)
And: Old Web Links Never Die...(They Just Turn Into Different, Glitzier New Links)
![](http://srbissette.com/uploaded_images/alfred-741355.jpg)
For instance, this grand email about
Subject: RE : Quest For Neuman
How did Alfred E. Neuman's mysterious iconic image become identified with painless dentistry? "It Didn't Hurt A Bit," say the old ads. One thing; his image was reproduced almost daily in Manitoba in two newspapers from at least 1909 to 1936 and was a familiar figure to a whole population of central Canadians. Cartoonists noticed him and possibly columnists took notice as well.
Manitoba Free Press, 1928
http://www.imagehosting.us/index.php?action=show&ident=728813
Winnipeg Tribune, 1909
http://www.imagehosting.us/index.php?action=show&ident=728816
Children's Day. 1909: Grue, Winnipeg Tribune ;
http://www.imagehosting.us/index.php?action=show&ident=728818
Old Swimmin' Hole. 1909: Grue, Winnipeg Tribune ;
http://www.imagehosting.us/index.php?action=show&ident=728823
Curiosity led me to think that perhaps he had come from one of the early travelling medicine shows, perhaps as a label on the bottles of patented painkiller. I recalled reading an article years ago in the Weekend magazine, sent all over Canada with the comic sections. I looked it up.
I don't claim this is the true story of Alfred E., merely a possible version, my version.
The King of Canadian medicine men was Thomas Patrick "Doc" Kelley (1865-1931), who, starting in 1886, travelled Canada and the U.S. selling patent medicine like East India Tiger Fat and Passion Flower tablets. He was so well known that druggists in Toronto and Winnipeg stocked his wares in their drugstores. His favored stomping grounds were Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. Other medicine shows traveled the circuit, including the Kickapoo company, but they never seemed to make it outside of Toronto.
Amongst the banjo players, wrassling bears &c., the most popular member of Kelley's troupe was a comedian, Jock McCulla, born in Scotland, whose pratfalls and slapstick, often of a very painful-looking nature, made him one of the most popular comedians in North America, pre-movies and vaudeville. I can imagine him saying after a particularly nasty fall, "It didn't hurt a bit," followed by sales of bottles of some type of pain-killer, stocked by drugstores all along the route for boys with teeth knocked out by hockey puck or baseball.
He bore an uncanny resemblance to Alfred E., with carrot-top hair and a gap-toothed grin… well, judge for yourselves… here's Jock McCulla in the flesh, possible forerunner of the What-me-worry kid, sometime between 1890 and 1896:
http://www.imagehosting.us/index.php?action=show&ident=728829
John.
Another unpaid debt American pop culture owes to Canada!
Clearly 'imagehosting.us' has changed hands and no longer hosts Canadian images (nyuk nyuk). Too bad the old links don't work -- still, glad I held on to this email (thanks, Miron), and if Cat and I can figure out how to post the email with images I saved, we'll do so pronto. What staggers my Luddite pea-brain is usually child's play to Cat.
I'm glad, though, I've held on to other old emails with once-treasured links. Some I couldn't access before our move to Windsor and high-speed internet access this past January; so, I may not be able to access the original link's intent, but have found treasures nonetheless once I've explored their new destination points.
Thankfully, though, some two-and-three-year-old links still go right where they were originally intended to go, and still delight.
![](http://srbissette.com/uploaded_images/JohnAustinFrazier-791585.jpg)
I saw this preview trailor for the Europix Orgy of the Living Dead triple-bill over thirty years ago, and have wondered who John Austin Frazier may have really been all this time. I knew he wasn't really in a mental asylum, and I sure as shit knew not a single one of the films in the triple-bill had put him there, having caught that triple-feature twice myself.
Hey, look, I'm fine. What, Me Worry?
Anyhoot, go visit Tim's Bava book blog and read all about it.
Dance them wars away...
Labels: Alfred E. Neuman, BBC Radio 4, John Austin Frazier, Orgy of Living Dead, President Bush, Rick Veitch, Tim Lucas
3 Comments:
if you still have those images saved we can post em, no sweat!
mmmmmmm...
Condi....
I was the original "It didn't hurt a bit kid" poster and have put most of them up on my blog Yesterday's Papers.
Click on the link labeled 'Quest for Neuman' on the right hand side of the page (top)and enjoy the images.
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