Proper Identification for Kerry Drake #1

[Sweetspot]

hollywood_johnny.jpg (80.89 KiB) Viewed 2763 times

Since 2008 the above panel has been identified at CSR as being Kerry Drake #1. It's pretty obvious why that's the case since the words ERRY DRAKE appear just below the panel and there's nothing about the scene that would immediately disqualify it as being from the Drake strip. I wasn't suspicious that something was wrong the first several times I looked at the panel and read the supplemental material. But after spending some time tooling around the Drake strip including recently grabbing a spanking mention from 1947 this "Johnnie" panel being K.D. just didn't feel right. The title, although sometimes a title is placed below the strip, just didn't seem right - low and out of place. Additionally, I had never seen these characters and the artwork wasn't in-line with anything I'd seen in a Drake strip.

I wanted to find the source, date, authorship, context but still assuming it was a K.D. strip I used all manner of search words plus Kerry Drake but came up empty-handed. Being suspicious this wasn't a Drake at all I set out on an all-in Kerry Drake search starting, wisely as it turned out, from the first Drake strip I had from 1945. Why look at K.D. if I was becoming convinced it wasn't Kerry Drake? I wanted to get a look at strips that appeared above Kerry Drake. Well I got as far along as May 9, 1946 and found the following:

HollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay9,1946.png (42.91 KiB) Viewed 2763 times

Before I say anything else let's take a look at this panel's, probably not shared since 1946, companion strip from the previous day:

HollywoodJohnniesyracuseHeraldJournalMay8,1946.png (42.16 KiB) Viewed 2763 times

Hollywood Johnnie was the post-war creation of writer Renny McEvoy and artist Jim Pabian. McEvoy was the son [one source says step-son] of novelist and Dixie Dugan creator Joseph Patrick McEvoy. By the mid 1940s Renny, born in Cleveland and a graduate of Miami of Ohio, had taken over the scripting of Dixie Dugan from his father and was also a working actor in Hollywood. Pabian also held employment as an animator whose work included Tom and Jerry cartoons. He also worked for Dell comics in the '40s and '50s.
Our main character is one "Hollywood" Johnnie Wolfe an "actor's agent" an occupation that sometimes carried the undignified moniker of "flesh peddler".

[Sweetspot]

HollywoodJohnnieFleshPeddlerNov28,1945.png (50.28 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

The dialogue from the second spanking panel certainly makes more sense when we understand the context of McEvoy's word-play. So Johnnie Wolfe, actor's agent and ex-actor himself, is 25 years old and is said to know everyone in Hollywood but is the loneliest guy in town because of his lack of self-assurance. He is also a veteran of WWII and fought in the Pacific. On April 7, 1947 Hollywood Johnnie suddenly morphed into Screen Girl about a would-be actress from Ohio. I can't say for sure if Johnnie ever appeared in the new strip but I know that several of his co-characters did. Let's run through some of the more pertinent panels that lead up to the spanking...

hollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay1,1946.png (42.75 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

Here we have Johnnie first contemplating spanking the young and beautiful pickle heiress.Gherkin1) a small pickle & 2) A vine (Cucumis anguria) native to Africa and widely cultivated especially in the West Indies, having prickly fruit often harvested when immature for pickling.

HollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay2,1946.png (42.21 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

I wonder if the O'Dills' are related to the Turkles? I think J.W. says her complex is not B-1. Mother O'Dill said she, herself, always wanted to be a movie star and is very up front (in more ways than one as you'll see) when it comes to insisting her daughter pursue a career in film.

[Sweetspot]

We find our spankee's first name is Harriett, O'Dill offers Johnnie another pickle and mom starts to threaten her daughter but is interrupted.

HollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay3,1946.png (42.32 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

A fight breaks out much to the pleasure of the gloriously well-endowed Mrs. O'Dill, Harriett has no-nose and we continue to see a bothersome streak running down the page of the Syracuse Herald Journal [a result of their archiving process I would guess] that will continue for days to follow.

HollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay4,1946.png (41.9 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

There's no continuity with the Sunday strip which is simply called Hollywood so we continue with the story on Monday May 6, 1946. The fight was a publicity stunt, Harriett is so outraged that her tantrum runs off all the guests including people important to Johnnie's career. One guest suggests Harriett needs a poke. I don't understand the response of the other female guest as she leaves?

HollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay6,1946.png (42.17 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

[Sweetspot]

Harriett seemingly has ruined her career before it gets started and disgraced the family name!
Johnnie gets a jump on the Razzies by saying that Harriett deserves an Oscar booby prize. Once again mother O'Dill threatens her daughter but is again interrupted.

HollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay7,1946.png (45.01 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

So it turns out as we look at the May 10th panels:

HollywoodJohnnieSyracuseHeraldJournalMay10,1946.png (40.67 KiB) Viewed 2762 times

"I apologize, I've behaved terribly Johnnie."
Harriett isn't particularly interested in being a movie star. However she is interested in a young man who works for her father at the pickle plant. He is a writer...Johnnie gets the young man's story sold to a Hollywood studio...the couple gets married...yada, yada, yada.

[web-ed]

Wow, Phil, you've done it again, O Chief of Strip Research! I haven't looked back at that "Kerry Drake" spanking in a long time, although I kept it in mind whenever I found a Kerry Drake reprint in a four-color comic book. None of us ever really suspected anything was wrong, although there were two obvious clues as you noted. This is an example of something that has occurred many times to my frustration: somebody posts a spanking panel somewhere on the internet without properly identifying it, or giving its context. That, in fact, is why I'd held on to this week's "Oaky Doaks Spanks Mimi" panel for so long - I had no details until you recently dug them up. Same thing with Venus #2, etc.

I'm grateful to the usually-anonymous folks who put a spanking panel out there we otherwise would never suspect existed, but many times I have wished they gave us a little more information which logically should have been in their possession. I suppose in a few cases a spanko cut out the spanking scenes from the newspaper and forgot to record the details.

Anyway, this is an excellent find and I will, of course, have to update the page and the Data Base with this information and these scans. Perhaps I can do this in June along with another "Kerry Drake" spanking that you discovered, and that presently only we two know about (and the strip from which it truly came). I'd do it sooner but I've become taken with the idea of featuring Don Flowers during the month of May (flowers, in a double-sense - some word-play worthy of McEvoy, perhaps ).

Speaking I am sure for everyone here, thanks once again for undertaking this latest research project !

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

YES!! THANKS

[willjohn]

From memory Drake was a pipe smoker. His delivery truck driving pal Mike Nomad was more like Broadway Johnny.

[jimc]

Yes willjohn Kerry Drake did smoke a pipe, but Mike Nomad was in another strip called Steve Roper. Mike Nomad was a spanker in his own rite. Although i cannot remember who the artists were (i will leave that to web-ed and Sweetspot) i did think their styles were similar. Thanks for posting and have a great day,
Jim

[web-ed]

I finally did update the main site with Sweetspot's new scans: Hollywood Johnnie

As to the other questions: Kerry Drake was drawn by Alfred Andriola and a number of assistants, notably Sururi Gumen; Steve Roper we're less sure about (it could be Elmer Woggon, Bill Woggon, or very likely Pete Hoffman, who as we mentioned in this week's Jeff Cobb Spanking, ghosted the strip for a while).