Al Capp: Hubris and Chutzpah (Was Cartoonist Al Capp Framed On Rape Charge?)

rcharvey.com ^ | October 3, 2003 | PJ-Comix

[PJ-Comix]

In the 1960s, his target was often student protest against the Vietnam War: in the strip, college youths were all members of S.W.I.N.E., “Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything.” Touring college campuses as a speaker, Capp seemingly delighted at the outrage he provoked among the students in his audience. But he was roundly criticized by his traditional constituency of liberals for the unyielding rigor of his attacks on the New Left. It was assumed that Capp had defected and gone over to the Right.  But Capp’s objective as a satirist remained constant:  the fanaticism of the New Left was no less a human folly in his eyes than the rigidity of the Right in seeking to preserve the conventions of its social order.  Capp took folly where he found it and unceremoniously ripped the veils of self-righteousness away, roaring with Rabelaisian laughter all the while. 

            “The strip was about the way the powerful use power—and abuse the powerless,” Capp once said. And in the 1960s, the power changed hands, passing from the establishment to the anti-establishment. So Capp changed targets.

            “I’ve always been for those who are being shamed, disgraced, and ignored by other people,” Capp said. “Now it’s the poor bastard who works who is being denounced by the liberals. For chrissakes, these working stiffs are keeping the country afloat. They were denounced, and it got me damn mad. And one of the things I found was that when I was all for liberal attitudes—and I believed in them—the conservatives showed me only icy contempt. I never got a letter from them. They just hated me. When I began attacking the liberals, the conservatives maintained their icy silence, but the liberals began denouncing me by the thousands of letters every week.”

            Then in 1971, the merry-go-round stopped. On the campus of a Wisconsin university, a co-ed blew the whistle on Capp, accusing him of making indecent advances in a motel room to which she had, apparently, lured him for the purpose. Formal charges of indecent exposure and attempted sodomy were subsequently dropped when Capp agreed to plead guilty to attempted adultery.

            By this time, Capp’s womanizing was no longer secret. Goldie Hawn, for one, had told in Playboy (January 1985) of his propositioning her. His longtime friend Milton Caniff believed that Capp’s mistake had been approaching “amateurs.”

            “Al was down in New York every week and sometimes for weeks at a time, having his fun,” he told me. “He had some good lookin’ broads, believe me. They all flocked to him, thinking that he could do them some good in their careers. He seldom got caught because he didn’t have anything to do with amateurs: the women he squired around town here were obviously gals on the make—showgirl types, gals who wanted to be seen with celebrities. The old badger game he fell into in Wisconsin could have happened only in a place like Wisconsin—not around here.”

            As soon as he heard of the co-ed’s charges, Caniff fired off a telegram to his old friend. Just four words: “Who do we slug?”

            “It was just what he needed,” Caniff remembered. “He wrote me a long letter about that little telegram.”

            But the incident rocked Capp. And newspapers began canceling Li’l Abner, and Capp was no longer invited to speak at campuses or to appear on tv talk shows. Capp was also ill, suffering from emphysema, which was getting worse as he continued his daily cigarette consumption. By the fall of 1977, he knew he was no longer up to the task for doing a daily comic strip, and, rather than bequeath his burlesque bumpkin to “some kid” to ghost, he discontinued Li’l Abner on November 13, 1977. Almost exactly two years later, on November 5, Capp died after a long illness complicated by emphysema. It was sad, Caniff said; but he and his wife Bunny had also felt a sense of relief, he told me: the ordeal for Capp’s wife Catherine was now over.

[PJ-Comix]

Then in 1971, the merry-go-round stopped. On the campus of a Wisconsin university, a co-ed blew the whistle on Capp, accusing him of making indecent advances in a motel room to which she had, apparently, lured him for the purpose. Formal charges of indecent exposure and attempted sodomy were subsequently dropped when Capp agreed to plead guilty to attempted adultery.

I am doing a big research project on the life of Al Capp and I am now absolutely convinced that this rape charge was a frame-up. Look where it happened. At the University of Wisconsin campus, a hotbed of leftist radicalism back then (and now). I hope some investigator goes over this case again. This rape charge (note that he was accused of exposure, not actual violence) was a set up from the get go. Al Capp deserves a postage stamp to honor his career and I believe the main reason it has been denied was this phony rape charge (although his politics in the 60s plays a smaller part).

Right now I am researching Capp's life and it is beyond AMAZING!!! One of the fun things about the research is reading the collected Li'l Abner dailies from Kitchen Sink Press.

Anyway, I sure hope an investigator (Mark Furhmann?) takes another look at that rape charge against Capp.

[Support Free Republic]

LOOK! Another Freeper Just Gave To The Cause! WAY TO GO!
	We Salute Free Republic's Donors! Be one! Donate Here By Secure Server Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- It is in the breaking news sidebar!

[facedown]

bump

[Indianer]

Thanks for the report. Regardless of the UW incident and his guilt/innocence and degree of it either way, Capp remains beloved. I just saw a comment about Bill Watterson's"Spaceman Biff" and how this comic within a comic was unique to Waterson. How soon they forget good old Fearless Fosdick.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I've said many times its too bad Al Capp missed seeing his Dogpatch characters come to life for eight years in the White House.

[genefromjersey]

PJ, the word I saw was he was set up by the radical SDS -I think they actually bragged about it in print later.

I remember SWINE quite well-AND Joanie Phony, and the rest of the crowd.

Before that, he had a General Bulmoose: " What's good for General Bulmoose is good for America !"

[PJ-Comix]

PJ, the word I saw was he was set up by the radical SDS -I think they actually bragged about it in print later.

If you have info on this, please FreepMail me. I am sure he was set up because Capp toured many college campuses back then denouncing the counterculture. Notice that there were no allegations of violence. Only exposing himself. Yeah, Al Capp did fool around on the side but that is no crime. What probably happened is that a coed (working with the radicals) knew that Capp would invite her to his hotel room if she acted sweet on him. Then as soon as Capp lowered his trousers, she started screaming rape. I would like to see an investigator look into this case and check on the radical links of this coed. Remember, this incident happened while Capp was appearing at the University of Wisconsin, one of the most radical hotbeds in the country.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Capp agreed to plead guilty to attempted adultery.

This use to be a crime?

You learn something new every day!

[ntnychik]

I attended Al Capp's presentation at the first annual (I think) Penn State Colloquy around 1968. The purpose of the event was to allow students to hear voices from both ends of the spectrum (NOT). Capp was provocative all right. The lib student Master of Ceremonies interrupted him and rescinded the University honor that had been bestowed upon him. Capp left the stage sputtering that what he said was why they asked him to come. He'd been speaking at campuses nationwide. Any other PSU FReepers of a certain age remember this?

[bicycle thug]

I miss Al Capp. Thanks for your thoughts about the character assassination of him. Schmoo seem to be onto something here. ;-)

[PJ-Comix]

The lib student Master of Ceremonies interrupted him and rescinded the University honor that had been bestowed upon him. Capp left the stage sputtering that what he said was why they asked him to come.

Do you know where I can find documentation on this incident? So you are saying that they invited Capp just to humiliate him by rescinding the award they promised to give him?

[PJ-Comix]

The information I have dug up on Capp's life so far are beyond incredible. Capp definitely deserves a postage stamp to honor him but the rape charge is the big stumbling block. However, I am convinced the charge was a fraud. Hopefully, some investigator out there will look into those charges so the record can be corrected. Who was the coed and what were her links to radical organizations?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That was, "Phony Joanie," I think...

[PJ-Comix]

Correct. One problem is that most folks look at Capp's life thru the lense of his opposition to the 60s counterculture without appreciating the amazing achievements and events of his life before that time. Li'l Abner was by far the most popular cartoon strip ever. At the time that the population of the USA was about 180 million people in 1960, Li'l Abner had a daily readership of over 70 million. In fact, comic strips was often the first newspaper section people turned to back then. Also the comics page served as a gateway for young people to read the newspaper. Then in the early 70s the newspaper industry committed the DISASTROUS MISTAKE of reducing the size of the cartoon panels in order to squeeze more comics onto the comics page. The result was that the comics lost much of their important detail work and the popularity of comic strips declined steeply from that point on. Along with the decline of the comics strips went a decline in newspaper reading by young people.

[BlackElk]

Ping for later

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Kind of like the record industry. Album covers used to be works of art, and sometimes a good cover could make up in sales for poor promotion or weak performances. Now we have CD covers. Big deal.

Fearless Fosdick was hilarious. On of the least PC comics ever done.

[boxerblues]

I'll file this under all the things I need to know in life I learned on FR

[PJ-Comix]

Fearless Fosdick was hilarious. On of the least PC comics ever done.

Al Capp also did cartoon parodies on the Peanuts strip. Charles Schulz was NOT amused.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I recall seeing Al Capp on the Tonight Show with Jack Parr. I seem to recall he walked with a pronounced limp.
Did he lose a leg or have some other injury ?

[PJ-Comix]

I'll file this under all the things I need to know in life I learned on FR.

What was posted here about Capp is only a small fraction about his amazing career. For example, did you know that Capp and Ham Fisher (Capp's former employer) had an epic feud that lasted 20 years that ended in Fisher's suicide in 1955 after Fisher was caught forging Capp's artwork to make it look like he was drawing pornographic images?