Thursday, August 11, 2011

 

Obscurity of the Day: Tenderfoot Tim



Vic Forsythe was doing great as one of the more prolific cartoonists on the staff of Pulitzer's New York Evening World when, in 1913, he was invited to try his hand at a Sunday color strip for the flagship Morning World. Apparently feeling a little homesick for his boyhood haunts in the deserts of eastern California, Vic came up with a strip about some namby-pamby Easterner named Tim who comes out west to live the cowboy life. He finds himself on a ranch with a pair of practical jokers who are determined to put him in his place.

Surprisingly, a very democratically-minded Vic makes Tenderfoot Tim a worthy opponent for Wilde and Wooly, the two ranch-hands -- Tim often gets the upper hand in the strip and turns the tables on the prankster pair. I wonder how the home-folks felt about Vic being such a Benedict Arnold?

The strip was apparently well-received, though it rarely if ever got full-page cover play in the Sunday World. It ran steadily from October 20 1912 to March 15 1914.

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Comments:
Thanks Allan. I've posted to you previously about Vic Forythe's Jimmy and the Tiger. He is one of my favorites. Very much appreciate seeing these, as I have never seen any examples of this strip. Victor Clyde Forsythe needs a short bio that encompasses his Newspaper work, early silent New York film script writing and acting, his various strips, his WWI posters, and his friendship's with James
Swinnerton and Norman Rockwell. He founded a fine art Gallery in California and is a noted Desert Painter. Well into the 1950's he was writing articles for Desert Magazine. In the early 60's Desert Magazine produced four fine prints of his Gold Rush series of painting, that show the same desert location over time from early Rush propectors arrival, through two paintings showing the rise of a bustling town, and finally in the final painting a deserted ghost town. A framed copy of the last one is hanging on the wall next to me as I write. I have pieced together my limited knowledge of the man over the last 5 years, but it has been a tough slog. I've only seen a few photo's, all from a late age. I think that I read on your site that he may have suffered from a breakdown, but it appears that he was very productive in the later parts of his life. Thanks again for the post.
 
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