Film Fun

[biffo]

Hi gang !

I used to have a annual of a old comic from before even MY time (gasp !) called 'Film Fun' - given to me by an old neighbour having a clear out

it featured comic strip adventures of USA & British stars

Yanks were: Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Joe E. Brown, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Red Skelton, etc....

British were: a young Frankie Howerd, George Formby, Ronald Shiner, etc.....

the strips were really funny...superbly drawn caricatures of the well known stars of screen & radio days...quite absurd & surreal - for example Frankie Howerd's greedy Uncle Silas & Cousin Egbert post themselves to him for Xmas in a big crate, then proceed to eat him out of house & home until Frankie gets the better of the pair...

Stan Laurel is snapped by a press guy eating peas with a knife (!) at a restaurant...it's front page news & Ollie is horrified at the bad manners and sees it as the end of their popularity as all keep pointing them out....& thus they end up going into hiding & growing beards to disguse themselves....on finally emerging they find EVERYONE is now eating peas with their knives....they have started a new trend !

the wide grinning Joe E. Brown is working in a posh Dept store - his arch enemy 'Warwick Wiseguy' is determined to cut our Joe out with the chief girl assistant (the Boss' daughter) - Warwick swaps the presents Joe has bought her & her mother....

'something for your face' Joe tells the mother (instead of the powder puff it's a funny face mask !)
.....'and to go with your beauty' Joe tells his girl (instead of perfume...it's a massive FULL set of 'grinning' false teeth !)

Joe, needless to say gets his revenge on 'Warwick Wiseguy' & gets the girl at the end...duly exposing Wiseguy as the fraudster he really is...

the strips were full of funny named caddish foes like 'Warwick Wiseguy', 'Vernon Vainsort', 'Humprey Hoggit', etc...who our comic heroes did battle with and outsmarted.......

also there were colour photos of film stars both comedy & straight (John Wayne in 'The Conquerer' etc)...one was Richard Attenborough & Bill Owen (later 'Compo') in 'The Ship That Died of Shame' back then these were new films on at the cinema....

I wish I still had that annual as it was a time capsule of a bygone age of film & radio era comedy...with both a zany humour plus a strong sense of good triumphing over bad as a lesson for kids...sadly it must have been given away or thrown our as I could never find it later.

If you ever see one in a charity shop, car boot sale, or jumble sale grab it as they are very rare now....

[Silver Age Fan]

Hi Biffo and welcome to the forum. Sure you know who I am!

Heard of this title, but, like you, it's before my time. It is one of those titles I hope to come across at a car boot one day. Who knows?

Was Bruce Forsyth featured in the title, do you know?

Today, some characters, such as Alan Sugar and Elton John, appear in the Viz. I'm sure you can guess the types of stories they feature in!

[MacNimon]

Bruce Forsyth was one of the last covers stars of the title, as you'll see on the covers below. Also, a bit more background information I found on the Comics UK forum on an interesting thread celebrating Film Fun's 90th Anniversary...

www.comicsuk.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3321

As this week sees the 90th anniversary of the publication of the first issue of that grand old comic Film Fun I thought I'd celebrate the fact with a few details about the paper.
1) First issue published with cover date 17th Jan 1920.
2) Last issue published with cover date 8th Sept 1962. At this point it merged with Buster and continued to appear as part of this combined title until issue dated 29th Jun 1963.
3) Free gift in issue No1 was a photo (plate) of Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle. It would be the first of 88 free gift issues published throughout the titles 42 year run.
4) Film Fun spawned 24 Film Fun annuals published between 1938 and 1961.
5) During its life Film Fun absorbed five other papers -
Picture Fun in 1920 ( although it may sound like it this title had nothing to do with the movies)
Kinema Comic in 1932 (Film Fun's slightly archaic sounding stablemate that had also been launched in 1920 to further cash in on the mania for movies).
Film Picture Stories in 1935 ( A cinema title too far which nonetheless, thanks to its early issues being entirely devoted to adventure strips based on movie themes, is still cited as the first all picture strip comic title).
Chips in 1953 ( This amalgamation was nothing more than a way to get readers of the 63 year old title to switch to Film Fun as nothing from the old 'pink penn'orth' survived the merger).
Top Spot in 1960 ( Comic cum lads' mag that on merger did Film Fun few favours)
6) The format of Film Fun altered little in the first 37 b/w years of its life. Only with issue No 1954 in Jun 1957 did it add a coloured border to its front and back cover
and then subsequently add a secondary colour (orange) to its cover strips with issue No 2009 (19/7/58).
7) The final issue of Film Fun to be numbered was No 2052 (16/5/59).
8) There is a legend that perpetutates that Film Fun ran for a total of 2225 issues. This is not the case. Denis Gifford, who I'm certain first put forward this figure, simply arrived at this total by calculating the number of weeks between Jan 1920 and Sept 1962 which does give a total of 2225. However this does not take into account those combined issues or those issues that simply failed to appear over the years. Taking these occurences into account the final figure would seem to be 2211 and not 2225.
Film Fun's early stars

Fame is a fickle mistress and nowhere is this more evidently displayed than in the cast list of stars who graced the pages of the first issue of Film Fun. The odd legend lingers in the memory of the devoted film buff but as for the rest....

Harold Lloyd (1893-1971)
Certainly the most lastingly famous of all the stars that graced the first issue Harold Lloyd initially went under the name 'Winkle' in the comic's pages, a reference to a role he had played in the 1919 comedy 'On the Fire'. Lloyd had early success as the moustachioed character Lonesome Luke before he settled on his bespectacled 'boy' character for his later triumphs which would include his masterpiece 'Safety Last'.

Larry Semon (1889-1928)
Pasty-faced pratfall expert who invariably wore a bowler hat and frequently overalls.
In the 1920's he was one of the wealthiest of all stars until his excess spending, often on elaborate set-pieces, saw him spiral into debt in movies which he not only starred in but produced himself. He died in a sanitorium in 1928 of complications from tuberculosis.

Mack Swain (1876-1935)
If he is remembered at all now Mack Swain is recalled as the walrus-moustached heavy in the movies of others rather than for the comedy-shorts in which he was fleetingly the star. A fine example of this being his role as the starving prospector in the boot eating scene in Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush.

Ben Turpin (1874-1940) and Charlie Conklin (1880-1959)
Of the two perpetually cross-eyed Ben Turpin is by far the better remembered if only for his striking appearence. In fact the editorial staff on Film Fun seem to have had difficulty in pinning down Charlie Conklin to being one actor as they had Ben Turpin teamed with not only Charlie Conklin and Charlie Lynn which was fine as they were one and the same person but also Chester Conklin who was different performer altogether. All three being depicted as the same character however


Slim (George) Summerville (1892-1946)
Lanky US character actor who began his career in the Mack Sennett Keystone comedies. In later years cornered the market in playing saturnine, 'hick' characters although his most famous role was probably that of the disillusioned and ultimately doomed volunteer Tjaden in All Quiet on the Western Front, a seminal movie depicting life in the trenches during the Great War from the German perspective.

Earle Montgomery and Joseph Rock (1891-1984)
The top-hatted toffs down on their luck in a series of Vitagraph comedies. In fact their career as a duo was over before they ever appeared in the pages of Film Fun and while Earle Montgomery faded into obscurity Joe Rock turned film producer and in 1930 came to Britain where he set up an independent production company at Elstree.

James Aubrey (1887-1983)
Jimmy Aubrey is of significance as he was the only British born star to appear in the pages of the first issue of Film Fun, all the rest being American. Like Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel he arrived in Hollywood via membership of Fred Karno's touring troupe and indeed his screen persona was that of a more robust, less sentimental version of Chaplin's 'Little Tramp' character.

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (1887-1933)
The ageless fat boy of US silent comedy who was the star of a text series in Film Fun's first year in which he purportedly personally told the story of his own schooldays. The series being quickly rejigged in 1921 to feature Larry Semon when Arbuckle's career crashed and burned when it took three trials to see him acquitted
of the manslaughter of failed movie starlet Virginia Rappe in a hotel room.

Baby Marie Osborne
Born Helen Alice Myres Baby Marie made 29 films between 1915 and 1920 (the most successful being Little Mary Sunshine in 1916) and was one of the most successful of the 'little cutie' brigade, as they were dubbed, who made a bid for stardom during the silent era. Also, remarkably, given that it is 90 years since it appeared, Baby Marie is the only star of the first issue of Film Fun who is still alive. She having celebrated her 98th birthday in November.

[MacNimon]

[llllllll]

Those early ones look great fun, not sure why anyone would want to read a Bruce Forsyth strip though (I guess he was known for other things back then).