BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Baltimore -- Geppi's Entertainment Museum -- 3. Extra! Extra! 1776-1927

MD -- Baltimore -- Geppi's Entertainment Museum -- 3. Extra! Extra! 1776-1927:

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Description of Pictures: EXTRA! EXTRA! 1776-1927
From 1776 to 1927, the Brownies, the Yellow Kid, Buster Brown, the Katzenjammer Kids and more gradually filled the newspaper pages as comic characters provided entertainment and social commentary for the whole family. Their popularity made them the perfect product pitchmen. The era ends as Charles Lindbergh makes his historic transatlantic flight and takes American pop culture into the stratosphere.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GEPPI3_131004_013.JPG: Food for Thought: The story of food product advertising in the United States closely follows the arrival of the merchant class from Europe, where advertising had already taken hold. Things began simply with a wide variety of black and white advertising cards and pictorial labels, many examples of which from the early 1800s still exist. With the development of lithographic printing in the mid-1870s, however, there was an increase in the variety and styles of material produced. After early advertising developed in chapbooks and handbills, one favorite means of conveying product information in the lithographic era was the trade card. Typically about three inches by five inches or smaller, these giveaway cards featured colorful scenes on one side, generally with a single color on the reverse and promotional text on one or both sides of the card. Although the cards were intended as advertisements, collecting and mounting them in albums was a popular hobby for many Americans. Many corporate names familiar today could be found on the trade cards of the 1870s-1890s, such as Borden's, Campbell's, Heinz and Swift. In 1896, the invention of the celluloid pinback button joined the ranks of preferred promotional items for the nation's food makers. Also at this time, the popularity of trademarked and comic strip characters and the endorsement of food products by these characters took hold. Many characters designed exclusively to promote food products became popular icons in their own right. Aunt Jemima promoted the pancake flour of the RT Davis Mill & Manufacturing Company. Other well-known food product trademark characters created prior to 1928 are the Campbell Kids (1904), Mr. Peanut (1916), Sailor Jack (Cracker Jack, 1916), and Green Giant (1925). In 1909, WK Kellogg was among the early cereal companies to offer kids a giveaway booklet. Funny Jungleland, hoping that children would influence their parents' purchasing choices. This marketing concept would blossom into the child-oriented premium industry of the early 1930s and beyond.
2. GEPPI3_131004_030.JPG: War of the Worlds: William Randolph Hearst, successful publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, arrived in New York City in mid-1895. Hearst admired Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, but wanted his own New York best seller. Hearst purchased the New York Journal and cut the price from two cents to one cents, filling the Journal with content similar to the World. Circulation jumped but was far short of the World's 500,000. Hearst's solution came swiftly; with huge pay raises, he simply hired the World's entire editorial staff and ordered a color press. Pulitzer, understandably furious, cut his paper's price to one cent but tried to maintain revenue by increasing advertising rates. His advertisers rebelled by slashing ad placements. The two newspapers became locked in competition for decades. In October 1896, Hearst struck again, hiring Pulitzer's star cartooning Richard Outcault, the creator of the immensely popular Yellow Kid. When the legal dust settled, Pulitzer kept the strip's name -- Hogan's Alley, now drawn by George Luks -- but Outcault owned the character name copyrighted as The Yellow Kid. In his book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, historian W. Joseph Campbell cut through decades of misconceptions about the origin of the term "yellow journalism" and its possible inspirations, citing the Yellow Kid himself, the unethical reporting practices of the Hearst and Pulitzer newspaper organizations, and even an alleged "Journal-Examiner Yellow Fellow Transcontinental Bicycle Relay" created by Hearst in September 1896. The tug of war over Outcault's creation almost certainly played a role in The New York Press editor Ervin Wardman's decision to coin the term "yellow kid journalism." The phrase is now synonymous with lurid, sensationalist and unscrupulous media tactics.
3. GEPPI3_131004_034.JPG: Funny Folks: The Yellow Kid proved to newspaper publishers that comics could build circulation and the floodgates opened as comic strips proliferated in the first quarter of the 20th century; a handful still run in papers today. One of these, The Katzenjammer Kids (1897), was the first regular American feature to consistently use sequential panels. Creator Rudolph Dirks based his rambunctious twins Hans and Fritz on the 19th century German storybook characters Max and Moritz, favorites of New Yokr Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst. Pioneering strips including Foxy Grandpa (1901); Buster Brown, Richard Outcault's second major success in 1902; Happy Hooligan (1902); and Little Nemo in Slumberland (1906). By 1907, when Bud Fisher created the first successful strip to appear in daily newspapers, Mutt & Jeff, the hallmarks of the comic strip were established -- a regular cast of characters, sequential panels and the use of word balloons. Famous strips of the 1910s-1920s include Krazy Kat (1910), Toonerville Folks (1915), Reg'lar Fellers (1917), The Gumps (1917), Bringing Up Father (1917), Barney Google (1919), Skeezix (1921), Just Kids (1923), Moon Mullins (1923) and Little Orphan Annie (1924). Syndicates such as King Features and the Chicago Tribune Syndicate were formed to distribute the strips to even the smallest newspapers throughout America. A farmer in Kansas and a bank teller in San Francisco could laugh at Irish tramp Happy Hooligan or prankster Buster Brown. Comic strip characters embodied the mass cultural experience we take for granted today. The most popular comic strip characters leapt off the newspaper pages and became three-dimensional toys and games, had their own specialized books, songs and sheet music, broke into the movies and crisscrossed America on the radio airwaves and in plays. The funny folks made a major impact on American pop culture and helped to create our national identity.
4. GEPPI3_131004_148.JPG: Musical Notes: Believe it or not, gathering around a piano to play and sing popular songs was once a major pastime for American families, in an era before film, television, and even radio. In fact, the turn of the 19th century is dubbed the Golden Age of the Piano. The sheet music employed in these social gatherings became accessible to many Americans as early as the 1820s. After the 1840s, covers with illustrations produced by lithography or chromolithography became economically feasible and made the music sheets graphically appealing. As the music varied widely in style and theme, so too did the sheet music. With the rising popularity of parlor music in the 1860s, music types expanded to include minstrel songs, protest songs, sentimental songs, patriotic songs, political songs and much more. By the 1890s, sheet music was so popular that it was frequently included as supplements to newspapers. Naturally, after 1895, comic strip characters became a major category for music publishers as the two met in newspapers and formed a perfect partnership. Many early newspaper comic strips and characters were adapted for production on the theatrical stage; examples include the Yellow Kid, Foxy Grandpa, Little Nemo, Bringing Up Father, and Mutt & Jeff. Every song in these stage productions could be published separately as an individual sheet music title. Much of America's music and sheet music from 1885 into the 1920s originated in Tin Pan Alley. This was an actual block of 28th Street between 5th Avenue and Broadway in New York City. The name is attributed to newspaperman Monroe Rosenfeld and referred to the noise of many pianos coming from a multitude of music publishers' offices lining the street. As the 20th century progressed, nearly every important event, person, movie star and comic character was dominated and beautifully illustrated on sheet music.
5. GEPPI3_131004_152.JPG: Spirit Soars: Orville Wright turned fantasy into reality by flying for 12 seconds in a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. His record lasted until later that afternoon, when brother Wilbur went aloft for 59 seconds. Additional aviation milestones followed quickly. In 1909, Lieutenant FE Humphreys, after instruction from Wilbur Wright, became the first Army officer to fly solo in the Army's first airplane. The following year, the first airplane took off from the deck of a US warship. In 1911, the first cross-country flight was achieved; the air time was 82 hours, but it took Calbraith R. Rogers from September 11 until November 5 to get from New York City to Long Beach, California. World War I inspired rapid advances in aviation technology, although American participation in the air war was largely limited to a few months in 1918. Captain "Eddie" Rickenbacker became the American "Ace of Aces," downing 26 German aircraft. Also in 1918, four experienced Army pilots and two recent pilot school graduates became the first group to fly air mail service between New York City and Washington, DC. In 1926, Richard E Byrd and Floyd Bennett made the first flight over the North Pole. This was a prelude to Byrd's historic exploration of Antarctica and the South Pole beginning in 1928. But of course, the paramount achievement in aviation during this era was accomplished by an unknown air mail pilot named Charles A. Lindbergh. His non-stop solo transatlantic flight from New York's Roosevelt Field to Orly airport outside Paris in his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, was acclaimed worldwide. The Age of Aviation had begun in earnest. Lindbergh's feat earned him superhero status throughout America and the world and inspired an entire generation's fascination with flying. "Lucky Lindy" and his amazing feat would shape the next two decades of pop culture as fictional flying heroes and superheroes took to the air.
6. GEPPI3_131004_211.JPG: Hully Gee! Immigrants poured into America during the 1890s. The streets of New York became a microcosm of the world, and the cartoons and illustrations of the city's newspapers provided a common language. The Yellow Kid was a child of these streets. Richard F Outcault, his creator, dated the character's origin as 1892 and wrote, "I was drawing 'kid' pictures then, groups of street gamins of all sorts, and one day the Yellow Kid crept into one of those groups..." Outcault sold his earliest "kid" cartoons to Truth, a weekly cartoon magazine in 1893. While still publishing in Truth, Outcault also began selling cartoons to Joseph Pulitzer's New York World newspaper in 1894. Little by little in 1894-1895, the bald-headed kid in the nightshirt emerged from the crowd in Outcault's Hogan's Alley panel cartoons. The Yellow Kid's first appearance as a fully realized character, looking out at readers with his jug ears, prominent front teeth and yellow nightshirt was January 5, 1896 in the New York World panel cartoon, Golf -- The Great Society Sport As Played in Hogan's Alley. On March 15, 1896, Outcault left the World for much higher pay at William Randolph Heart's New York Journal. Outcault's Yellow Kid was as much a social commentator as a comic character. Subjects ranged from sandlot baseball games to the 1896 presidential campaign. While many of the cartoons were large single panels, Outcault also drew cartoons with multiple panels and dialogue in word balloons, thereby claiming fame as the first true newspaper comic strip. The Yellow Kid's appeal to adults resulted in brand name cigars, cigarettes and whiskey. For the children there were dolls, target games, cap bombs and chewing gum.
7. GEPPI3_131004_241.JPG: Time Machines: The term "science fiction" hadn't been invented when authors like Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs crafted fanciful adventure tales laced with intriguing speculation about Man's relationship with nature and technology. At the end of the 19th century, they were scientific romances, speculative fiction, and "scientifiction." Whatever the label, this literary genre blended fantasy, adventure and social commentary, capturing the imigration of American readers both young and old. Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is considered the first modern science fiction novel, a macabre tale of one inquisitive scientist delving too deeply into the secrets of life and death; lesser known is another Shelley work, The Last Man (1826), a post-apocalyptic story. Verne wrote extraordinary voyages that took readers on a Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869). Wells offered tales of The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). And in 1912, Burroughs introduced an English lord turned primal jungle adventurer -- Tarzan of the Apes; he also took another hero, John Carter, on a whirlwind trip to the red planet in Under the Moons of Mars (1912). American science fiction found a home in anthology magazines like Amazing Stories, founded in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. The August 1928 issue featured a man in a flying suit on the cover and the first Buck Rogers story inside, inspiring a generation of future authors and comic book creators. By the time Gernsback actually coined the term science fiction in 1929 in the pages of his next magazine, Science Wonder Stories, the visionaries named above had already provided readers with their own personal time machines, giving them a tantalizing glimpse of things to come and inspiring the architects of science fiction's golden age, including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein.
8. GEPPI3_131004_264.JPG: Silver Spring: Thomas Edison's New Jersey movie studio -- the Black Maria -- made over 75 twenty-second films in 1894. Kinetoscope parlors sprang up nationwide. The first American audience to see a screen-projected movie fathered at Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New York on April 23, 1896, and a medium was official born. In 1903, director Edwin S. Porter pioneered movie story-telling with The Great Train Robbery, considered the first real movie as well as the first cowboy movie. By 1908, there were 8-10,000 nickelodeons, named for the 5-cent admission. They were often just a store front with one-reel movies projected on a bed sheet; daily attendance was about 200,000. The first two-reel feature film was DW Griffith's Enock Arden in 1911. Cliffhanger serials began in 1912 and palatial movie theaters appeared in 1913. The silent movie era's leading stars including comedians Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, leading ladies Mary Pickford and Clara Bow, leading men Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Rudolph Valentino, "Man of 1,000 Faces" Lon Chaney, and cowboy Tom Mix, star of 300 films from 1910-1935. While live-action movies flourished, animated movies made a slowed but determined start. Winsor McKay's Gertie the Dinosaur enthralled 1914 audiences. Felix the Cat hit the screen in 1919 and reigned supreme among animated characters until a certain mouse took over in 1928. Walt Disney entered the animation field with Alice's Wonderland in 1924 and followed with a rabbit named Oswald in 1927. Three landmark events occurred in 1927. Wings, with spectacular WWI aerial dogfight scenes, became the first feature film to win an Academy Award in 1929. At the same ceremony, Warner Bros. head Darryl Zanuck was presented a special Oscar "for producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry." That same year, the release of Fritz Lang's Metropolis inaugurated the science fiction film genre.
9. GEPPI3_131004_278.JPG: Wheels and Waves: During the decade of the 1890s, around 10 million people made the safely bicycle their mode of personal transportation. With wheels of equal size, the safety bicycle could be balanced and ridden by anybody. In 1896, some 300 US factories enjoyed a $60 million dollar bicycle business. Immense change, however, was just around the corner. On June 11, 1895, Charles Duryea received the first US patent for a gasoline driven car. A few months later, his brother Frank won the first US motor car race, 54 miles from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois and back. From 8,000 registered cars in 1900 and only 150 miles of paved road, car ownership by 1916 -- aided by price decreases made possible by assembly line methods -- stood at 3.5 million. By 1927, Henry Ford had produced his 15 millionth Model T. On the oceans, massive steamships brought millions of immigrants to America's shores. The Lusitania, the largest ship in the world, made her maiden voyage in 1907 and set the record of 4 days, 18 hours, 40 minutes between Ireland and New York City. Panama Canal construction began in earnest in 1907 but the project wasn't completed until August 1914. A catastrophe that would resonate for decades occurred in 1912 when the White Star Line's Titanic struck on iceberg and sank, with over 1,500 people losing their lives. Three years later, the Lusitania was struck by a German submarine torpedo with some loss of American lives. The US tried to remain neutral and didn't enter World War I until April 6, 1917. Real cars and steamships inspired toy makers to produce elaborate and detailed replicas for children. Early on, the best quality tinplate toys came from Germany and England, but US toy makers quickly joined the market, broadening the materials used, the variety of replicas produced, and matching prices to the budgets of most parents anxious to provide their children with toys that replicated the adult world.
10. GEPPI3_131004_304.JPG: Extra! Extra! "Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more interesting." -- William Randolph Hearst Americans in the late 1890s anticipated the next century with optimism. By 1900, only 35 years after the Civil War, America was transformed from a farm economy to fourth among industrialized nations. Rich resources, mass production and immigrant labor made prosperity not just expected but inevitable. However, one of eight Americans lived in poverty, child labor was rampant and corporations exploited with few consequences. For many, the nation's economic rise meant more disposable income. Motion pictures and radio established a nationally shared popular culture. Newspapers introduced comic strips that educated as well as entertained and were easily shared between parents and children. Childhood was recognized as a special phase of life separate from adulthood, and parents acknowledged the educational role toys play in teaching kids about the adult world. Toys with comic characters had more sales appeal than those without them. In transportation, 15 million Motel Ts had been manufactured by 1927. Giant steamships transported wealthy Americans to Europe and returned with millions of immigrants paying $10 (in 1904) for a new life. And following Orville Wright's 12-second 1903 test flight, one era ended and another dawned on May 20th, 1927, when Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic, inspiring a generation and launching a national obsession with fictional flying heroes and superheroes.
11. GEPPI3_131004_336.JPG: Hey Buster! Richard Outcault's Yellow Kid was a child of the New York streets, but Outcault's next comic sensation, Buster Brown, was much the opposite. Buster was a child of wealth and privilege, sporting a pageboy hair style and decked out in fancy clothes. With sister Mary Jane and pet terrier Tige, Buster provided Sunday comic readers with plenty of mischief and pranks. His "amusing capers" and "latest frolics" caused mayhem, but not dire consequences. Outcault's Buster was also approved by parents who a few years earlier considered the Yellow Kid unsuitable for children. Much of Buster's acceptance came from his "resolution panel" that concluded each strip; time after time, Buster apologized and "resolves" to improve his behavior. Buster Brown first appeared in the New York Herald in 1902. His rise to national fame followed the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, attended by Outcault to license the use of the Buster Brown image on products. Buster endorsed everything from bread to stoves to cigars. Most notably, he became the trademark character for aline of shoes by the Brown Shoe Company -- named for its founder, George W. Brown, not Buster. Promotions included a touring troupe of midgets appearing as Buster that visited theaters, fairs and department stores from 1904 into the 1920s. Like the most popular characters, Buster soon expanded beyond the newspapers. His Sunday comics were among the earliest to be printed on better quality paper, bound in stiff cardboard illustrated covers and issued as tabloid-sized books -- forerunners of the comic magazines of the 1930s. Buster had his own comic title distributed free by Buster Brown Shoes. Movie short subjects were released in the 1920s, and The Buster Brown Gang with Smilin' Ed McConnell and Froggy the Gremlin could be heard on radio and seen on TV from 1943 through 1954. Today, Buster Brown shoes still outfit infants to grade-schoolers.
Wikipedia Description: Geppi's Entertainment Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geppi's Entertainment Museum is a 16,000-square-foot (1,500 m2) privately owned pop culture museum located at historic Camden Station at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland. The museum chronicles the history of pop culture in America from the 17th century to today as made popular in newspapers, magazines, comic books, movies, television, radio and video games. It features a large and varied collection of nearly 6,0000 pop culture artifacts, including magazines, movie posters, toys, buttons, badges, cereal boxes, trading cards, dolls, figurines - and memorabilia of every conceivable category!. Geppi’s Entertainment Museum is located in downtown Baltimore's historic Camden Station at Camden Yards, directly above the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards and adjacent to Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Background

The museum is owned by Stephen A. Geppi, President and CEO of Diamond Comics Distributors, and The majority of the artifacts come from Geppi's private collection. In 2007, Geppi's daughter Melissa "Missy" Geppi-Bowersox became the Executive Vice-President of the Geppi’s Entertainment Museum; in 2012, Melissa Geppi-Bowersox was promoted to President.

The museum's founding curator was Dr. Arnold T. Blumberg, former editor at Gemstone Publishing. In 2011 Andy Hershberger was promoted to Associate Curator/Registrar, and has since worked with Melissa Geppi-Bowersox in the creation of a curatorial advisory committee.

In 2012, the museum store was renamed Geppi's Comic World (formerly: Flashbacks) in honor of Geppi’s former comic chain. Zachary Winland is the current manager of Geppi's Comic World.

Exhibits

The museum is composed of several galleries devoted to different eras of pop culture, as well as a temporary exhibit space for rotating exhibits. The standing galleries are:

* A Story in Four Colors displays a large collection of comic books to the Golden Age to the Modern Era. The gallery also includes an extensive collection of pulp magazines and Big Little Books.
* Pioneer Spirit: Baltimore Heroes looks at personalities, businesses and events that have made Baltimore City and the surrounding suburbs so awesome.
* Extra, Extra: 1776-1927 features characters made popular in newspapers, books, movies and radio broadcasts of the era.
* When Heroes Unite: 1928-1945 displays character collectibles from the Great Depression until World War II, including Mickey Mouse ,Popeye, Superman, Captain Marvel, Dick Tracy, Tom Mix, Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger and more.
* America Tunes In: 1946-1960 features artifacts from era, including Howdy Doody, Davy Crockett, I Love Lucy, sports heroes, space and western shows and rock and roll.
* Revolution: 1961 to 1970 contains relics from one of the most influential decades of the 20th century. James Bond, The Flintstones, Batman, The Green Hornet, Star Trek, The Beatles, Barbie and G.I. Joe are just a few of the characters that are represented here.
* Expanding Universe: 1971-1990 highlights video games, fast food tie-ins, Saturday morning cartoons, TV celebrities and Star Wars
* Going Global: 1991-Present displays artifacts from the last decade of the 20th century to the present, and includes representation of Jack Sparrow, MC Hammer, Hanna Montana and the Toy Story franchise.

Special Edition: Temporary Exhibits

Geppi’s Entertainment Museum has been host to a wide range of rotating exhibits from Star Wars, to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide to previews of upcoming toys. Currently the museum is hosting Colorforms�: 60 Years of Creative Storytelling an exhibit commemorating the 60th anniversary of Colorforms�, one of America’s most beloved toys.

Coming in August of 2013, Geppi’s Entertainment Museum will host Milestones: African Americans in Comics, Pop Culture and Beyond, a major special exhibit developed and curated by Michael Davis, co-founder of Milestone Media.
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