li'l abner skunk works

[11] His first words were "po'k chop", and that remained his favorite food. Zugang! (Although it is also the approximate Northern European pronunciation of the name "Joachim".) "There is, however, a fighting chance to escape for hundreds of innocent bystanders who happen to be in the neighborhood but only a fighting chance. It was a commentary on human nature itself. Most Dogpatchers were shiftless and ignorant; the remainder were scoundrels and thieves. Her authority was unquestioned, and her characteristic phrase, "Ah has spoken! Li'l Abner: Al Capp, Skunk Works, Dogpatch USA, Shmoo, Fearless Fosdick, Frank Frazetta, Basil Wolverton, Bob Lubbers, Lower Slobb The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was popular in the 1940s and '50s. German jets had appeared over Europe. By 1973, Pentagon officials were calling for the creation of an attack aircraft that could fly undetected past enemy radar. A lifelong chain-smoker, he happily plugged Chesterfield cigarettes; he appeared in Schaeffer fountain pen ads with his friends Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly; pitched the Famous Artists School (in which he had a financial interest) along with Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Virgil Partch, Willard Mullin and Whitney Darrow, Jr; and, though a professed teetotaler, he personally endorsed Rheingold Beer, among other products. The manned A-12 and the drone were designated as M-21 and D-21 or "Mother" and "Daughter." Durward Kirby was the announcer. Skunk Works is an industry leader in rapid prototyping, pushing the boundaries of whats possible to quickly design, develop and test innovative solutions. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians were even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. 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. Al Capp was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. City Building Map Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962'71) as owing much of its inspiration to Li'l Abner, prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 Playboy interview. He hosted at least five television programs between 1952 and 1972 three different talk shows called The Al Capp Show (twice), Al Capp, Al Capp's America (a live "chalk talk", with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons), and a game show called Anyone Can Win. The musical has since become a perennial favorite of high school and amateur productions, due to its popular appeal and modest production requirements. The Skunk Works had predicted that the U-2 would have a limited operational life over the Soviet Union. Capp claimed that he found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with, "I didn't start this Mammy Yokum did." Initially known as "Mysterious Yokum" (there was even an Ideal doll marketed under this name) due to a debate regarding his gender (he was stuck in a pants-shaped stovepipe for the first six weeks), he was renamed "Honest Abe" (after President Abraham Lincoln) to thwart his early tendency to steal. Li'l Abner visits the corrupt Squeezeblood comic strip syndicate in a classic Sunday continuity from October 12, 1947. Fellow employees quickly adopted the name for their mysterious division of Lockheed and eventually "Skonk Works" became "Skunk Works.". Learn how we are strengthening the economies, industries and communities of our global partner nations. Since this movie predates their comic strip marriage, Abner makes a last-minute escape (natcherly!). The staff was cautioned that they had to operate in strict secrecy. Not taking anything away from Kurtzman, who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into Li'l Abner," wrote comics historian Rick Marschall in America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989). 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. In 1988 and 1989 many newspapers ran reruns of Li'l Abner episodes, mostly from the 1940s run, distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association and Capp Enterprises. As a Skunk Works program manager aptly stated, The problem with Skunk Works programs is that they typically get credit for changing history long after they actually change history., 2023 Lockheed Martin Corporation. Harvey. [10] Pappy is dull-witted and gullible (in one storyline after he is conned by Marryin' Sam into buying Vanishing cream because he thinks it makes him invisible when he picks a fight with his nemesis Earthquake McGoon), but not completely without guile. In the comic, there was a running joke about a mysterious and malodorous place deep in the forest called the "Skonk Works," where a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. [37] Washable Jones later appeared in the strip in a Shmoo-related storyline in 1949, and he appeared with the Shmoos in two one-shot comics Al Capp's Shmoo in Washable Jones' Travels (1950, a premium for Oxydol laundry detergent) and Washable Jones and the Shmoo #1 (1953, published by the Capp-owned publisher Toby Press). Capp was a genius. Today's column maps the scope of change. January 8, 2021 What is Skunk Works? Ben Rich and "Kelly" Johnson set the origin as June 1943 in Burbank, California; they relate essentially the same chronology in their autobiographies. "When Fosdick is after a lawbreaker, there is no escape for the miscreant", Capp wrote in 1956. Outside the comic strip, the practical basis of a Sadie Hawkins dance is simply one of gender role-reversal. "He had the touch," Frazetta said of Capp in 2008. He was portrayed as a naive, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly. After a fatal mid-air collision on the fourth launch, the drones were re-built as D-21Bs, and launched with a rocket booster from B-52s. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!! 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. The local geography was fluid and vividly complex; Capp continually changed it to suit either his whims or the current storyline. Forget about it slam dunk! 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. It all turned out to be a collaborative hoax, however cooked up by Capp and his longtime pal Saunders as an elaborate publicity stunt. Lockheed Martin was awarded this prestigious medal in 2007 for an exceptional record of developing cutting-edge aircraft, technologies, and systems solutions for the U.S. Government. Capp is also the subject of an upcoming PBS American Masters documentary produced by his granddaughter, independent filmmaker Caitlin Manning. German jets had appeared over Europe. The radio show was not written by Al Capp but by Charles Gussman. [10], Next generation optionally-manned U-2 aircraft. It even made the cover of Life magazine on March 31, 1952 illustrating an article by Capp titled "It's Hideously True!! "Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not the strips' creators. As the development was very secret, the employees were told to be careful even with how they answered phone calls. Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes[45] and (reportedly) even Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of Li'l Abner. Mammy was regularly seen scrubbing Pappy in an outdoor oak tub ("Once a month, rain or shine"). From then on, he referred to it as Dogpatch, USA, and did not give any specific location as to exactly where it was supposed to be located. Various Asian, Latin, Native American and European characters spoke in a wide range of specific, broadly caricatured dialects as well. Like Mammy Yokum and the other "wimmenfolk" in Dogpatch, Daisy Mae did all the work, domestic and otherwise while the menfolk generally did nothing whatsoever. Famous quotes containing the words supporting, characters and/or villains: " It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration. Hot Dogs! Fearless Fosdick premiered on Sunday afternoons on NBC; 13 episodes featuring the Mary Chase marionettes were produced. After a series of successful test flights beginning in 1977, the Air force awarded Skunk Works the contract to build the F-117 stealth fighter on November 1, 1978. The following is a partial list of characteristic expressions that reappeared often in Li'l Abner: Li'l Abner had several toppers on the Sunday page, including[4]. Awakening, he exclaims the phrase. 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. 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). Kelly Johnson headed the Skunk Works until 1975. [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. 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. The five titles were: Amoozin But Confoozin, Sadie Hawkins Day, A Peekoolyar Sitcheeyshun, Porkuliar Piggy and Kickapoo Juice. She had married the inconsequential Pappy Yokum in 1902; they produced two strapping sons twice their own size. What sets the Skunk Works apart is its unique approach created by founder Kelly Johnson. Wed!! The menfolk were too lazy to work, yet Dogpatch gals were desperate enough to chase them (see Sadie Hawkins Day). "When Li'l Abner made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. 1400 Schertz Parkway. The CIA agreed. The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs, formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. 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. Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years, who worked under his direct supervision. The comprehensive series titled Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, is planned to be a reprinting of the complete 43-year history of Li'l Abner[60] spanning a projected 20 volumes, began on April 7, 2010. 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. 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. Those who farmed their turnip fields watched "turnip termites" swarm by the billions every year, locust-like, to devour Dogpatch's only crop (along with their homes, their livestock and all their clothing). Its name was taken from the moonshine factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner . In 1964, Capp left United Features and took Li'l Abner to the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.[52]. Capp introduced Tiny to fill the bachelor role played reliably for nearly two decades by Li'l Abner himself, until his fateful 1952 marriage threw the carefully orchestrated dynamic of the strip out of whack for a period. This would prove to be a common practice within the Skunk Works. In the comic strip Li'l Abner, the "Skonk Works" makes oil from the ground up dead skunks for some unknown . It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. 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. (The relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) Following the 1989 revival of the Pogo comic strip, a revival of Li'l Abner was also planned in 1990. 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. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) " Philosophy is written in this grand bookI mean . The F-22 is the worlds preeminent air dominance fighter and a proven strategic deterrent. Though lightning-fast, the Blackbird was not invisible. 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. Tiny Yokum: "Tiny" was a misnomer; Li'l Abner's kid brother remained perpetually innocent and 1512 "y'ars" old despite the fact that he was an imposing, 7-foot (2.1m) tall behemoth. Comparing Capp to other contemporary humorists, McLuhan once wrote: "Arno, Nash, and Thurber are brittle, wistful little prcieux beside Capp!" Kitchen is currently[when?] His engineers turned one out in 143 days, creating the P-80 Shooting Star, a sleek, lightning-fast fighter that went on to win historys first jet-versus-jet dogfight over Korea in 1950. Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics. The term shmoo has also entered the lexicon used in defining highly technical concepts in no fewer than four separate fields of science. one-page Sally and the Gang story. Three members of the original Broadway cast did not appear in the film version: Charlotte Rae (who was replaced by Billie Hayes early in the stage production), Edie Adams (who was pregnant during the filming) and Tina Louise. He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? It has also developed. [9] She is consistently the toughest character throughout Li'l Abner. 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. Li'l Abner Yokum: Abner's character was 6feet 3inches (1.91m) tall and perpetually 19 years old. According to the strip, scores of locals were done in yearly by the . For other uses, see, United States Patent and Trademark Office, "Cherokee rocket scientist leaves heavenly gift", "Lockheed Skunk Works' next-generation U-2 morphs into 'TR-X', "Aircraft Company Remodels Old Distillery", "Nominet UK Dispute Resolution Service DRS 04100 Lockheed Martin Corporation vs. UK Skunkworks Ltd Decision of Appeal Panel", "Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works Celebrates Diamond Anniversary", "75 Years of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works", "75 years on, Lockheed's Skunk Works is still innovating", "Opinion: Johnson's Skunk Works legacy is in safe hands", "Analysis: Does Skunk Works hiring binge indicate secret new programme? Fosdick battled a succession of archenemies with absurdly unlikely names like Rattop, Anyface, Bombface, Boldfinger, the Atom Bum, the Chippendale Chair, and Sidney the Crooked Parrot, as well as his own criminal mastermind father, "Fearful" Fosdick (aka "The Original"). A Mach-3 aircraft that could fly continuously for hours on end and literally outrun missiles. Li'l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head. ", Capp would answer, "Both." President Eisenhower needed something quicker, stronger, and more elusive. [citation needed]. The name skunkworks originates from a cartoon series called " Li'l Abner " by Al Capp. Among the actors originally considered for the title role were Dick Shawn and Andy Griffith. "Skonk Works", Culver repeated. Written and drawn by Al Capp (19091979), the strip ran for 43 years from August 13, 1934, through November 13, 1977. [49], Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. Capp suggests November 26, and Daisy rewarded him with a kiss. [3] According to Ben Richs memoir, an engineer jokingly showed up to work one day wearing a Civil Defense gas mask. Humorously enough, many states tried to claim ownership to the little town (Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc. With John Hodiak in the title role, the Li'l Abner radio serial ran weekdays on NBC from Chicago, from November 20, 1939, to December 6, 1940. The once informal nickname is now theregistered trademarkof the company: Skunk Works. Comic dialects were also devised for offbeat British characters like H'Inspector Blugstone of Scotland Yard (who had a Cockney accent) and Sir Cecil Cesspool (whose speech was a clipped, uppercrust King's English). Skunk Works meaning and philosophy explained. Her most familiar phrase, however, is "Good is better than evil becuz it's nicer!" Everybody almost dead.. [6] Early in the strip's history, Abner's primary goal in the storyline was evading the marital designs of Daisy Mae Scragg, the virtuous, voluptuous, barefoot Dogpatch damsel and scion of the Yokums' blood feud enemies the Scraggs, who were her character's bloodthirsty kinfolk. In America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1997), comics historian Richard Marschall analyzed the overtly misanthropic subtext of Li'l Abner: Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. As utterly wretched as existence was in Dogpatch, there was one place even worse. 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. He also briefly filled-in for radio journalist Drew Pearson, participated in a March 2, 1948 America's Town Meeting of the Air debate on ABC, and hosted his own syndicated, 500-station radio show.). [9], In 2009, the Skunk Works was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The first topper was Washable Jones, a weekly continuity about a four-year-old hillbilly boy who goes fishing and accidentally hooks a ghost, which he pulls from the water. However, due to its enormous popularity and the numerous fan letters he received, Capp made it a tradition in the strip every November, lasting four decades. Several years later, the U.S. Air Force became interested in the design, and it ordered the SR-71 Blackbird, a two-seater version of the A-12. Of the 552 public libraries in Texas, only 73 received this award in 2022. To comment on the smell and the secrecy the project entailed, another engineer, Irv Culver, referred to the facility as "Skonk Works". compiling a monograph on the life and career of Al Capp. I am proud to see the classic logo - my father worked for more than 30 years at Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Projects, known as Skunk Works. as well as some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's imagination: Exceeding every burlesque stereotype of Appalachia, the impoverished backwater of Dogpatch consisted mostly of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, "tarnip" fields, pine trees and "hawg" wallows. In mid-1939[12] when Lockheed was expanding rapidly, the YP-38 project was moved a few blocks away to the newly purchased 3G Distillery, also known as Three G or GGG Distillery. 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. Mind Works is dedicated to excellence in psychology and counseling. Capp was also caricatured as an ill-mannered, boozy cartoonist (Capp was a teetotaler in real life) named "Hal Rapp" in the comic strip Mary Worth by Allen Saunders and Ken Ernst. 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. In the comic, there was a hidden place deep in the woods called the "skonk works" which was where they brewed a strong alcoholic beverage. Women and girls take the initiative in inviting the man or boy of their choice out on a date almost unheard of before 1937 typically to a dance attended by other bachelors and their assertive dates. 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. [5] Secretly, a number of advanced features were being incorporated into the new fighter including a significant structural revolution in which the aluminum skin of the aircraft was joggled, fitted and flush-riveted, a design innovation not called for in the army's specification but one that would yield less aerodynamic drag and give greater strength with lower mass. 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. Culver answered the phone in his trademark fashion of the time, by picking up the phone and stating "Skonk Works, inside man Culver". Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. . [5] Abner had no visible means of support, although his character earned his livelihood as a "crescent cutter" for the Little Wonder Privy Company and later "mattress tester" for the Stunned Ox Mattress Company. Li'l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of a comic strip ever published. 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. John Updike, calling Li'l Abner a "hillbilly Candide", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean. It didnt really matter, since he was firing me about twice a day anyways. During the late 1990s when designing Pixar's building, Edwin Catmull and Steve Jobs visited a Skunkworks Building which influenced Steve's design. She is 100% "Hammus Alabammus" an adorable species of pig, and the last female known in existence. In his essay "The Decline of the Comics", (Canadian Forum, January 1954) literary critic Hugh MacLean classified American comic strips into four types: daily gag, adventure, soap opera, and "an almost lost comic ideal: the disinterested comment on life's pattern and meaning." 2023 Flyer Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from, Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 05:42. Hours: Monday - Friday: 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Comic strips typically dealt with northern urban experiences before Capp introduced Li'l Abner, the first strip based in the South. Lockheed Martin claimed the company registered the domain in order to disrupt its business and that consumer confusion might result. It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994. Customer Care. More recently, Dark Horse Comics reprinted the limited series Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, in four full-color volumes covering the Sunday pages from 1954 to 1961. Taking action to help you protect what matters most. Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire by Arthur Asa Berger (Twayne, 1969) contained serious analyses of Capp's narrative technique, his use of dialogue, self-caricature and grotesquerie, the strip's overall place in American satire, and the significance of social criticism and the graphic image. The Creator of Li'l Abner Tells Why His Hero Is (SOB!) 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. Unusual looking and aerodynamically challenged, the Nighthawk wasnt pretty, but it did what no aircraft had done before. Among the original TV characters were "Mr. Ditto", "Harris Tweed" (a disembodied suit of clothes), "Swenn Golly" (a Svengali-like mesmerist), counterfeiters "Max Millions" and "Minton Mooney", "Frank N. Stein", "Batula", "Match Head" (a pyromaniac), "Sen-Sen O'Toole", "Shmoozer" and "Herman the Ape Man". For 18 years of the run of the strip, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's marital crosshairs time and time again. One day, when the Department of the Navy was trying to reach the Lockheed management for the P-80 project, the call was accidentally transferred to Culvers desk. They also released an archive hardcover reprint of the complete Shmoo Comics in 2009, followed by a second Shmoo volume of complete newspaper strips in 2011. This project marked the birth of what would become the Skunk Works, with founder Kelly Johnson at its helm. [4] The Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. A derivative hillbilly feature called Looie Lazybones, an out-and-out imitation (drawn by a young Frank Frazetta) ran in several issues of Standard's Thrilling Comics in the late 1940s. Fosdick's duty, as he sees it, is not so much to maintain safety as to destroy crime, and it's too much to ask any law-enforcement officer to do both, I suppose." The first overflight took place on July 4 1956. [7] Some of the group of independent-minded engineers were later involved with the XP-80 project, the prototype of the P-80 Shooting Star. The U-2 was tested at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert, and the Flight Test Engineer in charge was Joseph F. Ware, Jr. [66] The storylines and villains were mostly separate from the comic strip and unique to the show. Kelly Johnson's elite engineering group was originally housed in a rented circus tent adjacent to a smelly plastics factory.

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