Al Capp

by Denis Kitchen

  Capp loved it, especially when the letters started pouring in.

  “Who ever would have thought that so many people who like my strip are actually able to write?” he quipped.

  8 Nina

  In 1939, Capp received word that there was interest in making a feature-length movie adaptation of “Li’l Abner.” He was delighted. There was a rumor that Buddy Ebsen would be brought in to play the lead, and Capp, who had seen Ebsen onstage, was all for it. Ebsen, who would eventually play Jed Clampett in the television situation comedy The Beverly Hillbillies, a “Li’l Abner” knockoff, did not appear in the movie, and given the way the film turned out, it was probably just as well.

  Capp’s bosses at United Feature were far less enthusiastic about Hollywood’s stated interest in “Li’l Abner,” especially when Capp began making noises about driving or flying out to the West Coast to become more actively involved in the project. Hollywood, they cautioned Capp, was a town of disposable ideas, a place where today’s shiny object became tomorrow’s rusted junk. Movie options lapsed, contracts stalled; projects were lost in development hell.

  United Feature general manager George A. Carlin expressed his worries in a letter to Capp. “While, if it ever comes to happen, a Hollywood trip might be fun, or at least a new and exciting experience, I look forward with no pleasure to your participation in the screen version,” Carlin informed Capp. “I am really afraid of your reaching a saturation point on your output and I think the movie trip might not do the newspaper feature any good. However, if a definite offer comes to you, I am not going to stand in your way.”

  There was good reason for such concern. Raeburn Van Buren consistently complained to the syndicate about Capp’s habit of delivering his scripts for “Abbie an’ Slats” at the last possible moment, forcing Van Buren to hurry his artwork to meet deadlines. Van Buren saw this as a matter of Capp’s devotion to “Li’l Abner” at the cost of less attention to “Abbie.” The syndicate thought Capp was taking on more work than he could handle.

  None of this concerned Capp in the least. But once contract negotiations had been finalized, he caught a train for the West Coast. He brought along Andy Amato for help on “Li’l Abner” while he was away, and the plan called for Catherine and Madeline, Al’s sister, to join him later. There would be a brief vacation to go with all the work.

  Hollywood might have been created for someone like Capp. It was energetic, glitzy, full of beautiful people, conspicuous in its consumption, and seductive in what it promised to someone bold enough to dream. Capp’s extroverted personality, coupled with the nationwide popularity of “Li’l Abner,” made him a welcome guest at A-list house parties and posh nightclubs where the glamour crowd congregated. It was at Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood that he first set eyes on Nina Luce, a twenty-five-year-old singer and part-time model trying to break through in Southern California’s ultra-competitive nightclub scene.

  Capp was smitten the moment he and Nina met. He autographed a drink coaster and had it delivered to her, and she joined him after she was finished singing. Nina was beautiful, intelligent, feisty, and talented.

  Nina Luce was born on February 1, 1915, in Waco, Texas. Her father played fiddle, and Nina sang at family gatherings from a very early age. She loved attention, and her natural good looks and talent saw that she wasn’t short of it. As a junior in high school in Baird, Texas, she won the “Headlight Queen” crown, the equivalent of Homecoming Queen elsewhere. A year later, her family moved to Riverside, California, where she finished her schooling. Immediately after her graduation, she moved to Hollywood.

  By the time Al Capp met her in 1940, Nina (who spelled her own name Niña and pronounced it like the Spanish word), had kicked around the Los Angeles area long enough to make connections. She often sang at the shows of such bandleaders as Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey. She and Rita Hayworth modeled together and became good friends—enough so that, years later, Nina would name her daughter after the actress. She dated actor Victor Mature, director Sam Fuller, and even Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, the future Shah of Iran. Her career opportunities expanded when she met George Antheil, the self-proclaimed Bad Boy of Music, who seemed to know everyone on the West Coast—and far beyond.

  Antheil was fifteen years older than Nina. He’d been a musical prodigy in New Jersey, studying piano from the age of six and composing his own work while still a teenager. He moved to Europe in 1922, where he enjoyed enormous success and befriended the likes of Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and Ezra Pound, but the rise of Hitler convinced him that he might do best back in the United States. He wound up in Hollywood, applying his talents to film scores.

  This publicity photo of Nina Luce in a Sunset Boulevard hair salon appeared in print in August 1938, less than two years before her intense affair with Al Capp began.

  Antheil had seen Luce at one of her nightclub performances and had taken her under his guidance. He introduced her to club owners and record producers, advised her on her career, and eventually took her in to live with him and his wife, Boski Markus. Antheil described Nina in his autobiography as “one of the most extraordinary yet utterly lovable characters [he’d] ever met”; someone who “played poker like a gangster” and whose observations on life were “invariably brilliantly illuminative.”

  The attraction between Capp and Luce was immediate and very intense. Marital fidelity had never placed high on Capp’s list of priorities, but this was something special. He felt he’d found an intellectual equal.

  “There are lots of moonstruck gals who will follow me to and fro because I can do things for ’em,” he told her bluntly. “[But] you are the most independent li’l cuss of all li’l cusses,” he said, meaning it as a compliment.

  Nina, like Capp, was a night owl. She loved socializing and making the after-hours rounds. She was unattached, with no children, and showed no inclination toward getting married and settling down. To Capp, she was some of what he’d lost, some of what he’d never had, but mostly something fresh, exhilarating, and unknown.

  When asked what he was doing in Hollywood, Capp would say that he was researching for a future “Li’l Abner” story—perhaps because it soon became clear that the movie would not be a huge source of pride. “Li’l Abner” received the same treatment that many other comic strips suffered in Hollywood adaptation: a small budget, a breakneck production schedule, unimaginative writing, and a creative malaise that kept the film from rising above B-movie status.

  Ham Fisher had seen “Joe Palooka” pummeled into submission in the 1934 adaptation of his popular strip. Beginning in 1938, Columbia Pictures cranked out a series of full-length features based on Chic Young’s “Blondie”—six formulaic films in two years. No one pretended that these movies were designed to be high art or anything more than happy diversions from difficult times.

  Albert S. Rogell, Li’l Abner’s director, didn’t have full comprehension of what made the comic strip work. He understood Dogpatch and did a credible job re-creating it for the big screen, and he grasped what Capp was trying to do with the Li’l Abner/Daisy Mae relationship and the Sadie Hawkins race. Too often, however, writers Charles Kerr and Tyler Johnson played for the cheap laugh, whether it was the Dogpatch community’s southern affectations and butchering of the English language, or the slapstick comedy, which might have worked more effectively if handled with a lighter hand. Capp received onscreen credit as the creator of the comic strip and the story upon which the screenplay was based, but despite his presence in California, he had very little to do with the film’s production. For future movie trivia fanatics, a couple of major show business names crossed paths with the picture, although not in any memorable way. Comedian Milton Berle shared a songwriting credit for the film’s title song, and silent film and silver screen star Buster Keaton, his career in such a downswing that he didn’t even earn a mention on the movie’s posters, played the role of Lonesome Polecat, a recurring character in the comic strip.

  The movie, rele
ased on November 1, 1940, was ignored by the Hollywood trade journals, and none of the major newspapers bothered to review it. The comic strip’s popularity didn’t translate into acceptable box office figures, and the movie, designed for release during the busy holiday season, slipped from sight before the Christmas decorations had been pulled from department store windows.

  A scene from the 1940 RKO movie adaptation of “Li’l Abner.” Left to right: Johnny Morris as Pappy Yokum, Martha O’Driscoll as Daisy Mae, Granville Owen as Li’l Abner, and Mona Ray as Mammy Yokum.

  All of this might have been harder on Capp if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his affair with Nina Luce. The relationship became no less intense when Catherine and Madeline arrived in California. Catherine had never interfered with Capp’s work, and since Capp was ostensibly in Hollywood on business, he was able to sneak out without arousing her suspicions. It also helped that Catherine preferred to avoid the party scene—and Madeline managed to keep her occupied. Capp had a strong bond with Madeline, whom he described to Nina as “a swell and straight-thinking gal,” and he enlisted her help in keeping his affair a secret. More boldly, he confided his plans to move Nina to Boston when his time in California ended. Madeline disapproved of the plan, mainly because Nina’s health was not the best.

  In a hastily written letter sent while he was preparing to leave the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Capp told Nina that “my sister gave me whooping hell for dragging you off with your throat in bad shape.” In another, written while he was in transit on his way home, he wrote of how he and Madeline had “talked and talked,” and of how she had admonished him for being “brutish and selfish” in trying to pressure Nina into flying to Boston when she was ailing.

  Nina’s tonsils needed to be removed, which concerned her, first, because she had no money to pay for the procedure, and, second, because she would require recovery time before she could resume her singing career. Capp had no interest in the latter. He was convinced that their love was true, and he selfishly hoped she would cancel her commitments on the West Coast and move to Boston as soon as possible.

  He aggressively pursued the plan. He would buy Nina’s plane ticket. She could stay at the YWCA until she found a suitable apartment and a job, and they could pick up where they’d left off in Hollywood. Capp pressured Nina whenever she sounded like she was having second thoughts about leaving California. It didn’t matter that she had a contract to perform in a club; Capp assured her that he could use his position to free her of that obligation. When she told him that she needed to have her tonsils removed, Capp lost his temper. He’d purchased an airline ticket for her, he declared, and he insisted on her giving him a date of arrival.

  “NO BACKSLIDING!!” he wrote in a letter illustrated with an angry self-portrait. “NO MINDCHANGING!! GET THOSE DAMN TONSILS OUT AND WIRE ME!! You mustn’t let me down—or I’ll come here and drag you back by the hair!!”

  Not all his letters were so angry. Once home, Capp had established a routine that often found him leaving the house as early as three o’clock in the morning. In the total silence of an office customarily loud and busy, Capp’s thoughts soon turned to Nina, and in no time he’d be seated at his typewriter, rolling in a sheet of letterhead paper decorated with a drawing of Li’l Abner on the left margin. He’d pour out his feelings in letter after letter, addressing Nina by his pet name for her, “Gaye,” and always signing off as “Al,” unless he was angry or anxious; in those letters, he’d sign off as “Bullsh”—short, no doubt, for “Bullshit” or “Bullshitter.” On other occasions he’d sign his letters “Beast.”

  The letters could be sad, testy, sentimental, imploring, or demanding, depending upon how often she wrote him and what she said when she did. Capp wrote frankly—with more emotion than he would permit himself at any other time, with any other person. He’d write about the events in his personal and professional life, of how his wealth and fame meant nothing in comparison to how fortunate he felt about just being with her.

  “I feel like suddenly rising and roaring—NOTHING important happened to me in Hollywood—except I met Gaye!!!” he wrote in his first letter after his return to Boston, Since that time, he complained, he had been inundated by interview requests, but journalists asked the same maddening questions. He’d once enjoyed being Al Capp and dealing with the press, he told her, but it hadn’t been much fun since his return from California. His attention was elsewhere.

  Capp’s candor, placed in the context of his being thirty years old, married, and the father of two daughters, was disarming. He sounded as if he were sixteen years old again, enjoying his first taste of something other than puppy love, and trying to express himself in a manner that was honest and adult; yet, as he admitted, it always came out corny. He’d been racked with anxiety and the fear that they were through from the moment he left California.

  “It was a sweet thing, wasn’t it, Gaye?” he wrote wistfully. “Ordinarily, I have no truck with love stories, because most love stories are dishonest. So I’ve never read ’em—never lived ’em. Ours was an honest one, and a sweet one. If it’s over, that doesn’t change it. It was honest and sweet and good.”

  “I’ve never wanted anyone else—but you,” he told her in another letter. “You’re always with me now—whether I ever see you again or not—you always will be with me, Gaye. You are my kind of gal. I hope that, after you’ve read this far—I will still be your kind of guy.”

  Nina struggled with a decision. She had sent a letter in late July, in which she stated that she had been giving Capp’s proposal a lot of serious thought but would not be coming to Boston. She still remembered the good times they’d had in California, but she had to face reality. “My heart has not changed tho my mind has taken control,” she wrote.

  Capp reacted bitterly.

  “Why did you have to do it, Gaye?” he asked. “Why did you mess up something so good?” Mired in self-pity, he instructed her to gather his letters, bind them in blue ribbon, and put them away. “You’ve been loved, Gaye,” he concluded, “much more than you loved in return.”

  His anger was short-lived. The next day, he sent a conciliatory letter restating his position, admitting that he struggled with her independent spirit. He’d balked at sending her money when she’d asked in an early letter, mainly because he wanted to preserve that independence: he couldn’t bear the thought of her coming to Boston out of a sense of obligation.

  In the midst of all this drama, Capp was offered a scriptwriting job—and the chance to return to Hollywood.

  Somehow, “Li’l Abner” thrived during this stormy period. Capp complained to Nina that the emotional strain of this back-and-forth was exacting a toll on his work, but there is little evidence of it. The “Li’l Abner” stories of 1940 showed Capp and his assistants at the top of their game. John Ford’s film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath promised to be one of the motion picture events of 1940, and Capp used the occasion to create a parody, which wound up becoming one of the lengthiest continuities in the strip’s history.

  The “Li’l Abner” version of the Steinbeck classic began as little more than an excuse to relocate the strip to the big city. Capp decided to dispatch all of Dogpatch to Boston. Hard times had fallen on Dogpatch. The dreaded turnip termite had wiped out the turnip crop, and since “presarved turnips” were the town’s sole source of support, something had to be done to stave off starvation. After hearing about migrant farm workers, the Dogpatchers decided to migrate to Boston, where they planned to make their way back to financial solvency by picking oranges—in the middle of winter. From such ignorance sprang a convoluted series of adventures, including a skirmish between the feuding Yokum and Scragg families in a fractured re-creation of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  Another story, written around the time Capp was meeting Nina, probably had a deeper personal connection to Capp than the typical “Li’l Abner.” In this story, a couple of con men visiting Dogpatch overheard Daisy Mae singing a s
ad song, inspired by Li’l Abner’s disinterest in her. After drying their tears, they came up with a scam that involved secretly broadcasting her on the radio, introduced to the world as Sorrowful Sue. Li’l Abner, listening to the program, fell in love with the voice and decided he had to meet the singer, later steadfastly refusing to believe the real identity of the Sorrowful Sue he loved. Capp used the continuity for a running commentary on the shallowness of celebrity and the shady dealings in show business—at the same time he was rubbing elbows with Hollywood celebrities.

  The year’s other noteworthy story involved a new Capp character: Adam Lazonga, formerly of Dogpatch, now renowned as the world’s greatest wooer of women. Lazonga, getting on in years, was seeking a protégé, someone to teach the six main secrets of his successful method of making love, “Dogpatch style.” Li’l Abner became his unwitting student.

  In telling the story, Capp risked stepping into material unsuitable for young readers. Comic strips generally avoided the slightest hint of sexual behavior, but Capp, who had been testing limits for a long time, stacked his story with double entendres and barely concealed sexual references—even the hint, Dogpatch style, that sex was performed in a manner other than the standard missionary position. Capp modeled Lazonga’s physical appearance after George Bernard Shaw, the playwright and novelist, whose play Pygmalion was built on a similar teacher/student theme, but Lazonga’s eccentric views and behavior were based on English philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, recently in Boston’s local news because he had accepted a position as a lecturer at Harvard after having been dismissed from the City College of New York.