Thanks for the history lesson. Al Jolson was prior to my “entertainment memory window,” but I knew who he was.I used read Li’l Abner occasionally as a child in the 1960’s (my father’s absolute FAV comic strip), but I didn’t catch many of Capp’s parody characters of real-life people. I thought most were just funny sounding, made-up names.Ahhh, but what a tangled web—indeed—did Al Capp weave; and probably a large reason for the strip’s popularity: those many, many real live people that he satirized. After reading up on Capp’s bio on Wiki I’m now a bit more “in tune” with his message(s).BTW, a few days back appeared the famous diplomat, Cecil Cesspool. Q: was he a parody of a living person at the time?
Thanks for the history lesson. Al Jolson was prior to my “entertainment memory window,” but I knew who he was.I used read Li’l Abner occasionally as a child in the 1960’s (my father’s absolute FAV comic strip), but I didn’t catch many of Capp’s parody characters of real-life people. I thought most were just funny sounding, made-up names.Ahhh, but what a tangled web—indeed—did Al Capp weave; and probably a large reason for the strip’s popularity: those many, many real live people that he satirized. After reading up on Capp’s bio on Wiki I’m now a bit more “in tune” with his message(s).BTW, a few days back appeared the famous diplomat, Cecil Cesspool. Q: was he a parody of a living person at the time?