Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature

8. Barnaby

61 8 Barnaby Cushlamochree! Broke my magic wand! You wished for a Godparent who could grant wishes? Lucky boy! Your wish is granted! I’m your Fairy Godfather. —Mr. O’Malley, Barnaby, 21 April 1942 Crockett Johnson tried for more than two years to find a home for Barnaby. In addition to the abortive effort at self-syndication, Johnson’s idea was rejected by Collier’s. But shortly after the move to Darien, Charles Martin, Johnson’s friend and the art editor of the new PM, came to visit and saw a half-page color Sunday Barnaby strip. He offered the strip to King Features, which rejected it. But PM’s comics editor, Hannah Baker, loved it.1 Founded in 1940 by former Time editor Ralph Ingersoll, PM was a Popular Front newspaper. Original plans for the publication did not include comics, but Dante Quinterno’s Patoruzu began running in August 1941, followed in December by the antifascist adventure strip Vic Jordan by Paine (the pseudonym of Kermit Jaediker and Charles Zerner). The progressive paper’s readers included Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, Vice President Henry Wallace, bandleader Duke Ellington, and writer Dorothy Parker. It printed writings by future Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Ernest Hemingway, and Erskine Caldwell; photographs by Margaret BourkeWhite and Weegee (Arthur Fellig); maps by George Annand; and cartoons by Carl Rose, Don Freeman, and Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss).2 PM was pro–New Deal, anti–poll tax, and antifascist.When the newspaper received criticism for its leftist politics or its failure to gain a wider circulation , Geisel rose to its defense, praising it as a courageous voice amid an otherwise docile domestic news media. In March 1942, he wrote,“Give this paper a break—remember that for almost a year it was a lone voice in American journalism sounding the alarm that America would be attacked.” To avoid compromising its editorial judgment, the paper refused to run ads, relying 62 Barnaby instead on subscriptions and on department store heir Marshall Field III and other progressive investors to pay the bills.3 PM’s readers met Barnaby Baxter on 14 April 1942 in an advertisement that shows him walking, looking up, and calling “Mr. O’Malley!” Several more ads followed before the strip made its debut on 20 April. Johnson always claimed that O’Malley was not based on any particular person . Eight months after the strip’s debut, Johnson said,“None of my friends, in spite of what their friends have been saying, is Mr. O’Malley.”He continued, “O’Malley is at least a hundred different people. A lot of people think he’s W. C. Fields, but he isn’t. Still you couldn’t live in America and not put some of Fields into O’Malley. O’Malley is partly [New York] Mayor [Fiorello] La Guardia and his cigar and eyes are occasionally borrowed from Jimmy Savo,” a vaudeville comic and singer.4 For all the attention that Mr. O’Malley would ultimately receive, Johnson always considered Barnaby the star:“Even if Mr. O’Malley gets all the notice, it’s still Barnaby who is the hero. We’re all looking at Mr. O’Malley through Barnaby. He couldn’t exist without The Kid.” In late 1943, he answered the question of who had inspired Barnaby:“I don’t get anything much from kids. How can you? They are all different. And I don’t draw or write Barnaby for children. People who write for children usually write down to them. I don’t Crockett Johnson, Barnaby, 20 April 1942. Image courtesy of Rosebud Archives. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved. Crockett Johnson, Barnaby, 21 April 1942. Image courtesy of Rosebud Archives. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved. 63 Barnaby believe in that. . . . [W]hen it comes to knowing about children, it’s a terribly old thing to say, but everyone was once a child himself.”5 In the earliest strips, Johnson was still working out his style, the characters, and the boundaries between O’Malley’s world and the world of the grownups . In addition to Barnaby, Dave continued to write the Little Man with the Eyes for Collier’s and served as liaison between the U.S. Treasury Department and American Society...