We mentioned last time how much Sweetspot enjoys following a line of research based on a CSR reader's recollection of a spanking. This time his search met with only partial success but the results are still quite interesting, so let's take a look at how it all came about and what he found.
It all started back in the very early days of the CSR Bulletin Board in 2009. JimC asked if anyone could recall any spankings in The Jackson Twins. Tanner then remembered some more about the strip after Jim and I had run a poll as to which comic strip female CSR readers would most like to see spanked (the Jackson twins came in second place behind Brenda Starr).
Here are Sweetspot's comments on the search:
"Never turned up anything on the birthday spanking. I need more information. Most of the time the words "spank," "spanking," "spanked" don't appear in the strip on the same day the spanking is shown. That means if I'm fortunate a discussion about the potential of an approaching spanking will be mentioned or a past spanking will be mentioned on another day. I tried keying the words birthday and party to the Jackson Twins search but no luck."But Sweetspot did come up with one swat for Jan, plus a strip in which both twins appear headed for stern maternal discipline:
Jan Jackson gets one swat with a rolled-up newspaper from her father after pretending that a boy named "Wiffie" of innocent intentions wants to marry her twin sister Jill. Written and drawn by Dick Brooks. Publication date March 15, 1970. Scan by Sweetspot. Posted by the Web-Ed on 06/30/2017 (click to increase in size). © McNaught Syndicate
A maternal spanking (with a switch!) looks like a sure thing when the Jackson twins forget they were supposed to help their mother clean the attic. Written and drawn by Dick Brooks. Publication date October 8, 1967. Scan by Sweetspot. (click to increase in size). © McNaught Syndicate
The Jackson Twins date back to their appearances (under a different name) in Dick Brooks' strip Elmer Squee (1946-48). When Brooks moved from King Features to McNaught, he took the girls with him but of course had to change their names (to "Jackson") for their debut in their own strip on Nov. 27, 1950. The strip lasted all the way until March 24, 1979, which is an almost thirty-year run and incidentally pre-dates The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), something we wondered about as soon as we knew of the identical twin premise. It wouldn't surprise us if creators Sidney Sheldon and William Asher came up with idea for a TV series about "identical cousins" from having seen The Jackson Twins in the newspaper.
Now, identical twins offer obvious opportunities for some good spanking scenes. One example would be "identical" birthday spankings which would take place on the same day. And since twins have often succumbed to the temptation of taking each other's places, another plot would be to have them switch to fool their dates, who then find out about the deception and spank the girls thoroughly! But as we've seen, Sweetspot has not yet been able to locate any birthday spankings for Jill and Jan. As for The Patty Duke Show, while we remember an episode in which Patty and Cathy are nearly spanked (William Schallert asks them which one wants to go first), Goodguff did some research and found that Patty Duke actually had a "no spanking" clause in her contract! An interesting reminder that back in the 60's, TV actresses were in definite "danger" of being spanked on-screen.
Dick Brooks at his drawing board with Jan and Jill Jackson in the background. Photo © Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Dick Brooks does not appear to have had any great degree of formal art training - only one year before entering the U.S. Navy - but it seems likly he honed his skills while in the Navy since he created the aforementioned strip Elmer Squee during that time. We don't see any one particular influence on Brooks in his style, which features clean lines and an overall wholsomeness in his character drawings, both fairly characteristic of the period.
Given the long run of The Jackson Twins and the prevalence of spanking during those years, we believe it's highly likely that there is a birthday or other spanking scene out there. All it would take to find it is one or two small clues that gives Sweetspot something more to work with (or a lucky break during one of my non-archive searches, which are few in number these days). We'll keep our eyes open...
