title: Mains electricity

text: A distinction should be made between the voltage at the point of supply (nominal voltage at the point of interconnection between the electrical utility and the user) and the voltage rating of the equipment (utilization or load voltage). Typically the utilization voltage is 3% to 5% lower than the nominal system voltage; for example, a nominal 208 V supply system will be connected to motors with "200 V" on their nameplates. This allows for the voltage drop between equipment and supply. Voltages in this article are the nominal supply voltages and equipment used on these systems will carry slightly lower nameplate voltages. Power distribution system voltage is nearly sinusoidal in nature. Voltages are expressed as root mean square (RMS) voltage. Voltage tolerances are for steady-state operation. Momentary heavy loads, or switching operations in the power distribution network, may cause short-term deviations out of the tolerance band and storms and other unusual conditions may cause even larger transient variations. In general, power supplies derived from large networks with many sources are more stable than those supplied to an isolated community with perhaps only a single generator.


title: Mains electricity

text: The choice of supply voltage is due more to historical reasons than optimization of the electric power distribution system—once a voltage is in use and equipment using this voltage is widespread, changing voltage is a drastic and expensive measure. A 230 V distribution system will use less conductor material than a 120 V system to deliver a given amount of power because the current, and consequently the resistive loss, is lower. While large heating appliances can use smaller conductors at 230 V for the same output rating, few household appliances use anything like the full capacity of the outlet to which they are connected. Minimum wire size for hand-held or portable equipment is usually restricted by the mechanical strength of the conductors.


title: Mains electricity

text: Many areas, such as the US, which use (nominally) 120 V, make use of three-wire, split-phase 240 V systems to supply large appliances. In this system a 240 V supply has a centre-tapped neutral to give two 120 V supplies which can also supply 240 V to loads connected between the two line wires. Three-phase systems can be connected to give various combinations of voltage, suitable for use by different classes of equipment. Where both single-phase and three-phase loads are served by an electrical system, the system may be labelled with both voltages such as 120/208 or 230/400 V, to show the line-to-neutral voltage and the line-to-line voltage. Large loads are connected for the higher voltage. Other three-phase voltages, up to 830 volts, are occasionally used for special-purpose systems such as oil well pumps. Large industrial motors (say, more than 250 hp or 150 kW) may operate on medium voltage. On 60 Hz systems a standard for medium voltage equipment is 2,400/4,160 V whereas 3,300 V is the common standard for 50 Hz systems.


title: Mains electricity

text: Until 1987, mains voltage in large parts of Europe, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, was formula_1 while the UK used formula_2. Standard ISO IEC 60038:1983 defined the new standard European voltage to be formula_3.


title: Mains electricity

text: From 1987 onwards, a step-wise shift towards formula_4 was implemented. From 2009 on, the voltage is permitted to be formula_3. No change in voltage was required by either the Central European or the UK system, as both 220 V and 240 V fall within the lower 230 V tolerance bands (230 V ±6%). Some areas of the UK still have 250 volts for legacy reasons, but these also fall within the 10% tolerance band of 230 volts. In practice, this allowed countries to have supplied the same voltage (220 or 240 V), at least until existing supply transformers are replaced. Equipment (with the exception of filament bulbs) used in these countries is designed to accept any voltage within the specified range. In the United States and Canada, national standards specify that the nominal voltage at the source should be 120 V and allow a range of 114 V to 126 V (RMS) (−5% to +5%). Historically 110 V, 115 V and 117 V have been used at different times and places in North America. Mains power is sometimes spoken of as 110 V; however, 120 V is the nominal voltage.


title: Mains electricity

text: In 2000, Australia converted to 230 V as the nominal standard with a tolerance of +10%/−6%, this superseding the old 240 V standard, AS2926-1987. As in the UK, 240 V is within the allowable limits and "240 volt" is a synonym for mains in Australian and British English. In Japan, the electrical power supply to households is at 100 and 200 V. Eastern and northern parts of Honshū (including Tokyo) and Hokkaidō have a frequency of 50 Hz, whereas western Honshū (including Nagoya, Osaka, and Hiroshima), Shikoku, Kyūshū and Okinawa operate at 60 Hz. The boundary between the two regions contains four back-to-back high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) substations which interconnect the power between the two grid systems; these are Shin Shinano, Sakuma Dam, Minami-Fukumitsu, and the Higashi-Shimizu Frequency Converter. To accommodate the difference, frequency-sensitive appliances marketed in Japan can often be switched between the two frequencies.


title: Mains electricity

text: The world's first public electricity supply was a water wheel driven system constructed in the small English town of Godalming in 1881. It was an alternating current (AC) system using a Siemens alternator supplying power for both street lights and consumers at two voltages, 250 V for arc lamps, and 40 V for incandescent lamps.


title: Mains electricity

text: The world's first large scale central plant—Thomas Edison's steam powered station at Holborn Viaduct in London—started operation in January 1882, providing direct current (DC) at 110 V. The Holborn Viaduct station was used as a proof of concept for the construction of the much larger Pearl Street Station in Manhattan, the world's first permanent commercial central power plant. The Pearl Street Station also provided DC at 110 V, considered to be a "safe" voltage for consumers, beginning 4 September 1882.


title: Mains electricity

text: AC systems started appearing in the US in the mid-1880s, using higher distribution voltage stepped down via transformers to the same 110 V customer utilization voltage that Edison used. In 1883 Edison patented a three–wire distribution system to allow DC generation plants to serve a wider radius of customers to save on copper costs. By connecting two groups of 110 V lamps in series more load could be served by the same size conductors run with 220 V between them; a neutral conductor carried any imbalance of current between the two sub-circuits. AC circuits adopted the same form during the war of the currents, allowing lamps to be run at around 110 V and major appliances to be connected to 220 V. Nominal voltages gradually crept upward to 112 V and 115 V, or even 117 V. After World War II the standard voltage in the U.S. became 117 V, but many areas lagged behind even into the 1960s. In 1954, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) published C84.1 “American National Standard for Electric Power Systems and Equipment – Voltage Ratings (60 Hertz)”. This standard established 120 volt nominal system and two ranges for service voltage and utilization voltage variations. Today, virtually all American homes and businesses have access to 120 and 240 V at 60 Hz. Both voltages are available on the three wires (two "hot" legs of opposite phase and one "neutral" leg).


title: Mains electricity

text: In 1899, the Berliner Elektrizitäts-Werke (BEW), a Berlin electrical utility, decided to greatly increase its distribution capacity by switching to 220 V nominal distribution, taking advantage of the higher voltage capability of newly developed metal filament lamps. The company was able to offset the cost of converting the customer's equipment by the resulting saving in distribution conductors cost. This became the model for electrical distribution in Germany and the rest of Europe and the 220 V system became common. North American practice remained with voltages near 110 V for lamps.


title: Mains electricity

text: In the first decade after the introduction of alternating current in the US (from the early 1880s to about 1893) a variety of different frequencies were used, with each electric provider setting their own, so that no single one prevailed. The most common frequency was 133⅓ Hz. The rotation speed of induction generators and motors, the efficiency of transformers, and flickering of carbon arc lamps all played a role in frequency setting. Around 1893 the Westinghouse Electric Company in the United States and AEG in Germany decided to standardize their generation equipment on 60 Hz and 50 Hz respectively, eventually leading to most of the world being supplied at one of these two frequencies. Today most 60 Hz systems deliver nominal 120/240 V, and most 50 Hz nominally 230 V. The significant exceptions are in Brazil, which has a synchronized 60 Hz grid with both 127 V and 220 V as standard voltages in different regions, and Japan, which has two frequencies: 50 Hz for East Japan and 60 Hz for West Japan.


title: Mains electricity

text: To maintain the voltage at the customer's service within the acceptable range, electrical distribution utilities use regulating equipment at electrical substations or along the distribution line. At a substation, the step-down transformer will have an automatic on-load tap changer, allowing the ratio between transmission voltage and distribution voltage to be adjusted in steps. For long (several kilometres) rural distribution circuits, automatic voltage regulators may be mounted on poles of the distribution line. These are autotransformers, again, with on-load tap changers to adjust the ratio depending on the observed voltage changes. At each customer's service, the step-down transformer has up to five taps to allow some range of adjustment, usually ±5% of the nominal voltage. Since these taps are not automatically controlled, they are used only to adjust the long-term average voltage at the service and not to regulate the voltage seen by the utility customer.


title: Mains electricity

text: The stability of the voltage and frequency supplied to customers varies among countries and regions. "Power quality" is a term describing the degree of deviation from the nominal supply voltage and frequency. Short-term surges and drop-outs affect sensitive electronic equipment such as computers and flat panel displays. Longer-term power outages, brown-outs and black outs and low reliability of supply generally increase costs to customers, who may have to invest in uninterruptible power supply or stand-by generator sets to provide power when the utility supply is unavailable or unusable. Erratic power supply may be a severe economic handicap to businesses and public services which rely on electrical machinery, illumination, climate control and computers. Even the best quality power system may have breakdowns or require servicing. As such, companies, governments and other organizations sometimes have backup generators at sensitive facilities, to ensure that power will be available even in the event of a power outage or black out.


title: Mains electricity

text: Power quality can also be affected by distortions of the current or voltage waveform in the form of harmonics of the fundamental (supply) frequency, or non-harmonic (inter)modulation distortion such as that caused by RFI or EMI interference. In contrast, harmonic distortion is usually caused by conditions of the load or generator. In multi-phase power, phase shift distortions caused by imbalanced loads can occur.


title: National Assembly (Hungary)

text: The National Assembly () is the parliament of Hungary. The unicameral body consists of 199 (386 between 1990 and 2014) members elected to 4-year terms. Election of members is done using a semi-proportional representation: a mixed-member majoritarian representation with partial compensation via transfer votes and mixed single vote; involving single-member districts and one list vote; parties must win at least 5% of the popular vote in order to gain list seats assembly. The Assembly includes 25 standing committees to debate and report on introduced bills and to supervise the activities of the ministers. The Constitutional Court of Hungary has the right to challenge legislation on the grounds of constitutionality. The assembly has met in the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest since 1902.


title: National Assembly (Hungary)

text: The Diet of Hungary () was a legislative institution in the medieval kingdom of Hungary from the 1290s, and in its successor states, Royal Hungary and the Habsburg kingdom of Hungary throughout the Early Modern period. The name of the legislative body was originally "Parlamentum" during the Middle Ages, the "Diet" expression gained mostly in the Early Modern period. It convened at regular intervals with interruptions during the period of 1527 to 1918, and again until 1946.


title: National Assembly (Hungary)

text: The articles of the 1790 diet set out that the diet should meet at least once every 3 years, but, since the diet was called by the Habsburg monarchy, this promise was not kept on several occasions thereafter. As a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, it was reconstituted in 1867.


title: National Assembly (Hungary)

text: The Latin term "Natio Hungarica" ("Hungarian nation") was used to designate the political elite which had participation in the diet, consisting of the nobility, the Catholic clergy, and a few enfranchised burghers, regardless of language or ethnicity. Natio Hungarica was a geographic, institutional and juridico-political category.


title: National Assembly (Hungary)

text: The democratic character of the Hungarian parliament was reestablished with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the communist dictatorship in 1989. Today's parliament is still called the "Országgyűlés," as in royal times, but is called the 'National Assembly' to distance itself from the historical royal diet.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: Jaime Margaret Winstone (born 6 May 1985) is an English actress. She is best known for her roles in "Kidulthood", "Dead Set", "After Hours" and her portrayal of Barbara Windsor in "Babs".


title: Jaime Winstone

text: Winstone was born on 6 May 1985 in Camden, North London. She is the daughter of actor Ray Winstone and his wife Elaine McCausland. She has two sisters, Lois (born 1982), who is a singer and sometime actress, and Ellie (born 2001). Jaime grew up in Enfield, North London, where she occasionally attended Enfield County School, a local state school.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: Her family later moved to Roydon, Essex where she attended Burnt Mill School in Harlow, Essex before going on to study for a BTEC National Diploma in Performing Arts at the performing arts department of Harlow College, Essex. She studied briefly at drama school, before dropping out to pursue her acting career in movies such as "Anuvahood" and "Kidulthood."


title: Jaime Winstone

text: Winstone's credits include the films "Bullet Boy" (2004), "Daddy's Girl", "Kidulthood" (both 2006) and "Donkey Punch" (2008), the television series "Murder Investigation Team", "Vincent" (alongside her father), "Totally Frank", "Goldplated" and "Dead Set" and a short film called "Love Letters". She was cast in the BBC pilot "Phoo Action", but a planned series was cancelled just as filming was about to start.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: Winstone sings backing vocals for her sister Lois' band. As an actress, she has appeared in the music video for The Streets' single "When You Wasn't Famous", The Twang's single "Two Lovers", and Hercules and Love Affair's single "Blind". In April 2009, she co-starred with then-boyfriend Alfie Allen in the music video for the Madness single "Dust Devil".


title: Jaime Winstone

text: Winstone made her catwalk modelling debut in 2008 for Vivienne Westwood, and in February 2009 she appeared on the front cover of "Arena". She made her stage debut in a Hampstead Theatre revival of "The Fastest Clock in the Universe" which also played at the Curve theatre, Leicester.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: In March 2010, she was announced as a new patron of the East End Film Festival. Winstone stars in the Stealth Media Group-produced thriller film "Manor Hunt Ball" and based on the novel "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: The spring of 2010 also saw Winstone portray Anneli Alderton, one of five women murdered in Ipswich 2006, in the BBC drama "Five Daughters". Alderton was the third girl to go missing in December 2006. In the summer of 2014, she filmed the lead role Lauren in Sky 1 comedy drama "After Hours".


title: Jaime Winstone

text: In 2013, Winstone appeared in the BBC series "Mad Dogs" alongside John Simm, Max Beesley, Philip Glenister and Marc Warren.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: In May 2017, Winstone starred as Barbara Windsor in the BBC biopic, "Babs." On preparing for the role, Winstone told "The Independent": "As soon as I sat down with Barbara, I got to analyse her, to see how she moved - and I instantly related to this wonderful woman. She is so generous and easy to talk to and connect with [...] the pressure just faded away as I talked to this amazing woman. These roles don’t come along that often. It was an honour."


title: Jaime Winstone

text: In January 2022, Winstone appeared on the third series of "The Masked Singer" as "Firework". She was sixth to be unmasked.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: In September 2022, Winstone appeared in "EastEnders" as Peggy Mitchell in a flashback episode set in 1979.


title: Jaime Winstone

text: Winstone has been in a relationship with actor James Suckling since March 2015 and engaged to him since June 2022. They have one child together, a son born in February 2016.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared in many newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. Written and drawn by Al Capp (1909–1979), the strip ran for 43 years – from August 13, 1934, through November 13, 1977. The Sunday page debuted six months after the daily, on February 24, 1935. It was originally distributed by United Feature Syndicate and, later by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Comic strips typically dealt with northern urban experiences before Capp introduced Li'l Abner, the first strip based in the South. The comic strip had 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers in 28 countries. Capp "had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South."


title: Li'l Abner

text: Li'l Abner Yokum: Abner's character was tall and perpetually 19 years old. He was portrayed as a naive, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly. He lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his pint-sized parents. Capp derived the family name "Yokum" as a combination of "yokel" and "hokum". (Although it is also the approximate Northern European pronunciation of the name "Joachim".) In Capp's satirical and often complex plots, Abner was a country bumpkin Candide—a paragon of innocence in a sardonically dark and cynical world. Abner had no visible means of support, although his character earned his livelihood as a "crescent cutter" for the Little Wonder Privy Company and later "mattress tester" for the Stunned Ox Mattress Company. During World War II, the Abner character was drafted into the role as mascot emblem of the Patrol Boat Squadron 29. In one post-World War II storyline, Abner became a US Air Force bodyguard of Steve Cantor (a parody of Steve Canyon) against the evil bald female spy Jewell Brynner (a parody of actor Yul Brynner). Early in the strip's history, Abner's primary goal in the storyline was evading the marital designs of Daisy Mae Scragg, the virtuous, voluptuous, barefoot Dogpatch damsel and scion of the Yokums' blood feud enemies — the Scraggs, who were her character's bloodthirsty kinfolk. For 18 years of the run of the strip, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's marital crosshairs time and time again. When Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to tie the knot, it was a major media event. It even made the cover of "Life" magazine on March 31, 1952 — illustrating an article by Capp titled "It's Hideously True!! The Creator of "Li'l Abner" Tells Why His Hero Is "(SOB!)" Wed!!"


title: Li'l Abner

text: Daisy Mae Yokum (née Scragg): Beautiful Daisy Mae's character was hopelessly in love with Dogpatch's most prominent resident throughout the entire 43-year run of Al Capp's comic strip. During most of the epic, the impossibly dense Abner exhibited little romantic interest in her voluptuous charms (much of it visible daily thanks to her famous polka-dot peasant blouse and cropped skirt). In 1952, Abner reluctantly proposed to Daisy to emulate the engagement of his comic strip "ideel", "Fearless Fosdick". Fosdick's own wedding to longtime fiancée Prudence Pimpleton turned out to be a dream — but Abner and Daisy's ceremony, performed by Marryin' Sam, was permanent. Abner and Daisy Mae's nuptials were a major source of media attention, landing them on the aforementioned cover of "Life" magazine's March 31, 1952, issue. Once married, Abner became relatively domesticated. Like Mammy Yokum and the other "wimmenfolk" in Dogpatch, Daisy Mae did all the work, domestic and otherwise — while the menfolk generally did nothing whatsoever.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Mammy Yokum: Born Pansy Hunks, Mammy was the scrawny, highly principled "sassiety" leader and bare knuckle "champeen" of the town of Dogpatch. She had married the inconsequential Pappy Yokum in 1902; they produced two strapping sons twice their own size. Mammy dominated the Yokum clan through the force of her personality, and dominated everyone else with her fearsome right uppercut (sometimes known as her "Goodnight, Irene" punch), which helped her uphold law, order and decency. She is consistently the toughest character throughout "Li'l Abner." A superhuman dynamo, Mammy did all the household chores — and provided her charges with no fewer than eight meals a day of "po'k chops" and "tarnips" (as well as local Dogpatch delicacies like "candied catfish eyeballs" and "trashbean soup"). Her authority was unquestioned, and her characteristic phrase, "Ah has "spoken!"", signaled the end of all further discussion. Her most familiar phrase, however, is "Good is better than evil becuz it's "nicer!"" (Upon his retirement in 1977, Capp declared Mammy to be his personal favorite of all his characters.) Li'l Abner's mom is the only character in the Dogpatch universe capable of defeating him in hand-to-hand combat.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Pappy Yokum: Born Lucifer Ornamental Yokum, pint-sized Pappy had the misfortune of being the patriarch in a family that didn't have one. Pappy was so lazy and ineffectual, he didn't even bathe himself. Mammy was regularly seen scrubbing Pappy in an outdoor oak tub ("Once a month, rain or shine"). Ironing Pappy's trousers fell under her wifely duties as well, although she didn't bother with preliminaries — like waiting for Pappy to remove them first. Pappy is dull-witted and gullible (in one storyline after he is conned by Marryin' Sam into buying Vanishing cream because he thinks it makes him "invisible" when he picks a fight with his nemesis Earthquake McGoon), but not completely without guile. He had an unfortunate predilection for snitching "preserved turnips" and smoking corn silk behind the woodshed — much to his chagrin when Mammy caught him. Pappy Yokum wasn't always feckless, however. After his lower wisdom teeth grew so long that they squeezed his cerebral Goodness Gland and emerged as forehead horns, he proved himself capable of evil. Mammy solved the problem with a tooth extraction and ended the episode with her most famous dictum.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Honest Abe Yokum: Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae's little boy was born in 1953 "after a pregnancy that ambled on so long that readers began sending me medical books", wrote Capp. Initially known as "Mysterious Yokum" (there was even an Ideal doll marketed under this name) due to a debate regarding his gender (he was stuck in a pants-shaped stovepipe for the first six weeks), he was renamed "Honest Abe" (after President Abraham Lincoln) to thwart his early tendency to steal. His first words were "po'k chop", and that remained his favorite food. Though his uncle Tiny was perpetually frozen at 15 "y'ars" old, Honest Abe gradually grew from infant to grade school age, and became a dead ringer for Washable Jones — the star of Capp's early "topper" strip. He would eventually acquire a couple of supporting character friends for his own semi-regularly featured adventures in the strip. In one storyline, he lives up to his nickname when during a nationwide search for a pair of socks sewn by Betsy Ross; after finding that his father was the current owner and preparing to trade them for the reward (a handshake from the President of the United States), he confesses at the last second that they were not his to give.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Tiny Yokum: "Tiny" was a misnomer; Li'l Abner's kid brother remained perpetually innocent and 15 "y'ars" old — despite the fact that he was an imposing, tall behemoth. Tiny was unknown to the strip until September 1954, when a relative who had been raising him reminded Mammy that she'd given birth to a second "chile" while visiting her 15 years earlier. (The relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) Capp introduced Tiny to fill the bachelor role played reliably for nearly two decades by Li'l Abner himself, until his fateful 1952 marriage threw the carefully orchestrated dynamic of the strip out of whack for a period. Pursued by local lovelies Hopeful Mudd and Boyless Bailey, Tiny was even dumber and more awkward than Abner, if that can be imagined. Tiny initially sported a bulbous nose like both of his parents, but eventually, (through a plot contrivance) he was given a nose job, and his shaggy blond hair was buzz cut to make him more appealing.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Salomey: The Yokums' beloved pet pig. Cute, lovable and intelligent (arguably smarter than Abner, Tiny or Pappy), she was accepted as part of the family ("the youngest", as Mammy invariably introduces her). She is 100% "Hammus Alabammus" — an adorable species of pig, and the last female known in existence. A plump, juicy "Hammus Alabammus" is the rarest and most vital ingredient of "ecstasy sauce", an indescribably delicious gourmet delicacy. Consequently, Salomey is frequently targeted by unscrupulous sportsmen, hog breeders and gourmands (like J.R. Fangsley and Bounder J. Roundheels), as well as unsavory wild boars with improper intentions (such as Boar Scarloff and Porknoy). Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome.


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Li'l Abner" also featured a comic strip-within-the-strip: "Fearless Fosdick" was a parody of Chester Gould's plainclothes detective, "Dick Tracy". It first appeared in 1942 and proved so popular that it ran intermittently in "Li'l Abner" over the next 35 years. Gould was also personally parodied in the series as cartoonist Lester Gooch — the diminutive, much-harassed and occasionally deranged "creator" of "Fearless Fosdick". The style of the "Fosdick" sequences closely mimicked "Tracy", including the urban setting, the outrageous villains, the galloping mortality rate, the crosshatched shadows, and the lettering style — even Gould's familiar signature was parodied in "Fearless Fosdick". Fosdick battled a succession of archenemies with absurdly unlikely names like Rattop, Anyface, Bombface, Boldfinger, the Atom Bum, the Chippendale Chair, and Sidney the Crooked Parrot, as well as his own criminal mastermind father, "Fearful" Fosdick (aka "The Original"). The razor-jawed title character (Li'l Abner's "ideel") was perpetually ventilated by flying bullets until he resembled a slice of Swiss cheese. The impervious Fosdick considered the gaping, smoking holes "mere scratches", however, and always reported back in one piece to his corrupt superior "The Chief" for duty the next day.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Besides being fearless, Fosdick was "pure, underpaid and purposeful", according to his creator. He also had notoriously bad aim — often leaving a trail of collateral damage (in the form of bullet-riddled pedestrians) in his wake. "When Fosdick is after a lawbreaker, there is no escape for the miscreant", Capp wrote in 1956. "There is, however, a fighting chance to escape for hundreds of innocent bystanders who happen to be in the neighborhood — but "only" a fighting chance. Fosdick's duty, as he sees it, is not so much to maintain safety as to destroy crime, and it's too much to ask any law-enforcement officer to do both, I suppose." Fosdick lived in squalor at the dilapidated boarding house run by his mercenary landlady, Mrs. Flintnose. He never married his own long-suffering fiancée Prudence Pimpleton (despite an engagement of 17 years), but Fosdick was directly responsible for the unwitting marriage of his biggest fan, Li'l Abner, to Daisy Mae in 1952. The bumbling detective became the star of his own NBC-TV puppet show that same year. Fosdick also achieved considerable exposure as the long-running advertising spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil, a popular men's hair product of the postwar period.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Although ostensibly set in the Kentucky mountains, situations often took the characters to different destinations — including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, the South American Amazon, tropical islands, the Moon, Mars, etc. — as well as some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's imagination:


title: Li'l Abner

text: Exceeding every burlesque stereotype of Appalachia, the impoverished backwater of Dogpatch consisted mostly of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, "tarnip" fields, pine trees and "hawg" wallows. Most Dogpatchers were shiftless and ignorant; the remainder were scoundrels and thieves. The menfolk were too lazy to work, yet Dogpatch gals were desperate enough to chase them (see Sadie Hawkins Day). Those who farmed their turnip fields watched "turnip termites" swarm by the billions every year, locust-like, to devour Dogpatch's only crop (along with their homes, their livestock and all their clothing).


title: Li'l Abner

text: The local geography was fluid and vividly complex; Capp continually changed it to suit either his whims or the current storyline. Natural landmarks included (at various times) Teeterin' Rock, Onneccessary Mountain, Bottomless Canyon, and Kissin' Rock (handy to Suicide Cliff). Local attractions that reappeared in the strip included the West Po'k Chop Railroad; the "Skonk Works", a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch; and the General Jubilation T. Cornpone memorial statue.


title: Li'l Abner

text: In one storyline Dogpatch's "Cannonball Express" train, after 1,563 tries, finally delivers its "cargo" to Dogpatch citizens on October 12, 1946, Receiving a 13-year stack of newspapers, Li'l Abner's family realizes that the Great Depression is on and that banks should close; they race to take their money out of the bank before realizing they have no money to begin with. Other news is the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president on March 4, 1933 (although Mammy Yokum thinks the President is Teddy Roosevelt), and a picture of Germany's "new leader" Adolf Hitler who claims to love peace while reviewing 20,000 new planes (April 21, 1933).


title: Li'l Abner

text: In the midst of the Great Depression, the hardscrabble residents of lowly Dogpatch allowed suffering Americans to laugh at yokels even worse off than themselves. In Al Capp's own words, Dogpatch was "an average stone-age community nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere." Early in the continuity Capp a few times referred to Dogpatch being in Kentucky, but he was careful afterward to keep its location generic, probably to avoid cancellations from offended Kentucky newspapers. From then on, he referred to it as Dogpatch, USA, and did not give any specific location as to exactly where it was supposed to be located. Humorously enough, many states tried to claim ownership to the little town (Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc.), yet Capp would not budge. He left it at Dogpatch USA so there would be no headaches and problems. Like the Coconino County depicted in George Herriman's "Krazy Kat" and the Okefenokee Swamp of Walt Kelly's "Pogo", and, most recently and famously, "The Simpsons"' "Springfield", Dogpatch's distinctive cartoon landscape became as identified with the strip as any of its characters. Later, Capp licensed and was part-owner of an $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas.


title: Li'l Abner

text: As utterly wretched as existence was in Dogpatch, there was one place even worse. Frigid, faraway Lower Slobbovia was fashioned as a pointedly political satire of backward nations and foreign diplomacy, and remains a contemporary reference. Its hapless residents were perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hung from almost every frostbitten nose. The favorite dish of the starving natives was raw polar bear (and vice versa). Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Slobbovia is an iceberg, which (as real icebergs do) continually capsizes as its lower portions melt. This dunks Upper Slobbovia into Lower Slobbovia, and raises the latter into the former—a classic example of a literal revolution.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Lower Slobbovia and Dogpatch are both comic examples of modern dystopian satire. Conceptually based on Siberia, or perhaps specifically on Birobidzhan, Capp's icy hellhole made its first appearance in "Li'l Abner" in April 1946. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians were even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. Their monetary unit was the "rasbucknik", of which one was worth nothing and a large quantity was worth a lot less, due to the trouble of carrying them around. The local children were read harrowing tales from "Ice-sop's Fables", which were parodies of classic Aesop Fables, but with a darkly sardonic bent (and titles like "Coldilocks and the Three Bares").


title: Li'l Abner

text: Other fictional locales included Skonk Hollow, El Passionato, Kigmyland, the Republic of Crumbumbo, Lo Kunning, Faminostan, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, Pineapple Junction and, most notably, the Valley of the Shmoon.


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Li'l Abner" featured a whole menagerie of allegorical animals over the years — each one was designed to satirically showcase another disturbing aspect of human nature. They included:


title: Li'l Abner

text: Al Capp, a native northeasterner, wrote all the final dialogue in "Li'l Abner" using his approximation of a mock-southern dialect (including phonetic sounds, eye dialect (nonstandard spelling for speech to draw attention to pronunciation), nonstop "creative" spelling and deliberate malapropisms). He constantly interspersed boldface type, and included prompt words in parentheses ("chuckle!, sob!, gasp!, shudder!, smack!, drool!, cackle!, snort!, gulp!, blush!, ugh!," etc.) as asides, to bolster the effect of the printed speech balloons. Almost every line was followed by "two" exclamation marks for added emphasis.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Outside Dogpatch, characters used a variety of stock Vaudevillian dialects. Mobsters and criminal-types invariably spoke slangy Brooklynese, and residents of Lower Slobbovia spoke pidgin-Russian, with a smattering of Yinglish. Comic dialects were also devised for offbeat British characters — like H'Inspector Blugstone of Scotland Yard (who had a Cockney accent) and Sir Cecil Cesspool (whose speech was a clipped, uppercrust King's English). Various Asian, Latin, Native American and European characters spoke in a wide range of specific, broadly caricatured dialects as well. Capp has credited his inspiration for vividly stylized language to early literary influences like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon, as well as Old-time radio and the Burlesque stage.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Comics historian Don Markstein commented that Capp's "use of language was both unique and universally appealing; and his clean, bold cartooning style provided a perfect vehicle for his creations."


title: Li'l Abner

text: The Sunday page debuted six months into the run of the strip. The first topper was "Washable Jones", a weekly continuity about a four-year-old hillbilly boy who goes fishing and accidentally hooks a ghost, which he pulls from the water. After four months of fantasy adventure, Capp ended the strip with Washable's mother waking him up; the story was a dream. After this, Capp simply expanded "Li'l Abner" by another row, and filled the rest of the space with a page-wide title panel and a small panel called "Advice fo' Chillun". Washable Jones later appeared in the strip in a Shmoo-related storyline in 1949, and he appeared with the Shmoos in two one-shot comics – "Al Capp's Shmoo in Washable Jones' Travels" (1950, a premium for Oxydol laundry detergent) and "Washable Jones and the Shmoo" #1 (1953, published by the Capp-owned publisher Toby Press).


title: Li'l Abner

text: Al Capp was a master of the arts of marketing and promotion. Publicity campaigns were devised to boost circulation and increase public visibility of "Li'l Abner", often coordinating with national magazines, radio and television. In 1946 Capp persuaded six of the most popular radio personalities (Frank Sinatra, Kate Smith, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope, Fred Waring and Smilin' Jack Smith) to broadcast a song he'd written for Daisy Mae: "(Li'l Abner) Don't Marry That Girl!!" Other promotional tie-ins included the Lena the Hyena Contest (1946), the Name the Shmoo Contest (1949), the Nancy O. Contest (1951), the Roger the Lodger Contest (1964) and many others.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Capp also excelled at product endorsement, and "Li'l Abner" characters were often featured in mid-century American advertising campaigns. Dogpatch characters pitched consumer products as varied as Grape-Nuts cereal, Kraft caramels, Ivory soap, Oxydol, Duz and Dreft detergents, Fruit of the Loom, Orange Crush, Nestlé's cocoa, Cheney neckties, Pedigree pencils, Strunk chainsaws, U.S. Royal tires, Head & Shoulders shampoo and General Electric light bulbs. There were even Dogpatch-themed family restaurants called "Li'l Abner's" in Louisville, Kentucky, Morton Grove, Illinois, and Seattle, Washington.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. A lifelong chain-smoker, he happily plugged Chesterfield cigarettes; he appeared in Schaeffer fountain pen ads with his friends Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly; pitched the Famous Artists School (in which he had a financial interest) along with Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Virgil Partch, Willard Mullin and Whitney Darrow, Jr; and, though a professed teetotaler, he personally endorsed Rheingold Beer, among other products.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp "very possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature — to media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life." John Updike, calling Li'l Abner a "hillbilly Candide", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean." Capp has been compared, at various times, to Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne, and Rabelais. "Journalism Quarterly" and "Time" have both called him "the Mark Twain of cartoonists". Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes and (reportedly) even Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of "Li'l Abner".


title: Li'l Abner

text: In his seminal book "Understanding Media", Marshall McLuhan considered "Li'l Abner's" Dogpatch "a paradigm of the human situation". Comparing Capp to other contemporary humorists, McLuhan once wrote: "Arno, Nash, and Thurber are brittle, wistful little "précieux" beside Capp!" In his essay "The Decline of the Comics", ("Canadian Forum", January 1954) literary critic Hugh MacLean classified American comic strips into four types: daily gag, adventure, soap opera, and "an almost lost comic ideal: the disinterested comment on life's pattern and meaning." In the fourth type, according to MacLean, there were only two: "Pogo" and "Li'l Abner". In 2002 the "Chicago Tribune", in a review of "The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo", noted: "The wry, ornery, brilliantly perceptive satirist will go down as one of the Great American Humorists." In "America's Great Comic Strip Artists" (1997), comics historian Richard Marschall analyzed the overtly misanthropic subtext of "Li'l Abner:"


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Li'l Abner" was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of a comic strip ever published. "Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire" by Arthur Asa Berger (Twayne, 1969) contained serious analyses of Capp's narrative technique, his use of dialogue, self-caricature and grotesquerie, the strip's overall place in American satire, and the significance of social criticism and the graphic image. "One of the few strips ever taken seriously by students of American culture," wrote Professor Berger, ""Li'l Abner" is worth studying...because of Capp's imagination and artistry, and because of the strip's very obvious social relevance." It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Al Capp's life and career are the subjects of a new life-sized mural commemorating his 100th birthday, displayed in downtown Amesbury, Massachusetts. According to the "Boston Globe" (as reported on May 18, 2010), the town has renamed its amphitheater in the artist's honor, and is looking to develop an Al Capp Museum. Capp is also the subject of an upcoming PBS "American Masters" documentary produced by his granddaughter, independent filmmaker Caitlin Manning.


title: Li'l Abner

text: An American folk event, Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday entirely created within the strip. It made its debut in "Li'l Abner" on November 15, 1937. Capp originally created it as a comic plot device, but in 1939, only two years after its inauguration, a double-page spread in "Life" proclaimed, "On Sadie Hawkins Day Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges". By the early 1940s the comic strip event had swept the nation's imagination and acquired a life of its own. By 1952, the event was reportedly celebrated at 40,000 known venues. It became a woman-empowering rite at high schools and college campuses, long before the modern feminist movement gained prominence.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Outside the comic strip, the practical basis of a Sadie Hawkins dance is simply one of gender role-reversal. Women and girls take the initiative in inviting the man or boy of their choice out on a date — almost unheard of before 1937 — typically to a dance attended by other bachelors and their assertive dates. When Capp created the event, it wasn't his intention to have it occur annually on a specific date, because it inhibited his freewheeling plotting. However, due to its enormous popularity and the numerous fan letters he received, Capp made it a tradition in the strip every November, lasting four decades. In many localities, the tradition continues.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Al Capp ended his comic strip with the final gesture of setting a date for Sadie Hawkins Day. In his November 5, 1977 strip, Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae make a final visit to Capp, and Daisy insisted the Capp settle on a date. Capp suggests November 26, and Daisy rewarded him with a kiss.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. Others include double whammy, skunk works and Lower Slobbovia. The term "shmoo" has also entered the lexicon — used in defining highly technical concepts in no fewer than "four" separate fields of science.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Capp has also been credited with popularizing many terms, such as "natcherly", schmooze, druthers, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. (In his book "The American Language", H.L. Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning — not with beatnik or Sputnik, but earlier — in the pages of "Li'l Abner".)


title: Li'l Abner

text: In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. "Capp was an aggressive and fearless businessman," according to publisher Denis Kitchen. "Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, "not" the strips' creators. And virtually all cartoonists remain content with their diluted share of any merchandising revenue their syndicates arrange. When the starving and broke Capp first sold "Li'l Abner" in 1934, he gladly accepted the syndicate's standard onerous contract. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in "Li'l Abner", and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."


title: Li'l Abner

text: In October 1947, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Syndicate, a thinly veiled dig at UFS. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!!", was a devastating satire of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's notorious exploitation by DC Comics over "Superman" (see above excerpt). It was later reprinted in "The World of Li'l Abner" (1953).


title: Li'l Abner

text: In 1964, Capp left United Features and took "Li'l Abner" to the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Al Capp was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. The NCS had originally disallowed female members into its ranks. In 1949, when the all-male club refused membership to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip "Teena", Capp temporarily resigned in protest. "Capp had always advocated a more activist agenda for the Society, and he had begun in December 1949 to make his case in the Newsletter as well as at the meetings," wrote comics historian R. C. Harvey. According to Tom Roberts, author of "Alex Raymond: His Life and Art" (2007), Capp authored a stirring monologue that was instrumental in changing the restrictive rules the following year. Hilda Terry was the first woman cartoonist to break the gender barrier when the NCS finally permitted female members in 1950.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Through "Li'l Abner", the American comic strip achieved unprecedented relevance in the postwar years, attracting new readers who were more intellectual, more informed on current events, and less likely to read the comics (according to Coulton Waugh, author of "The Comics", 1947). "When "Li'l Abner" made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into "Li'l Abner"," wrote comics historian Rick Marschall in "America's Great Comic Strip Artists" (1989). With adult readers far outnumbering juveniles, "Li'l Abner" forever cleared away the concept that humor strips were solely the domain of adolescents and children. "Li'l Abner" provided a whole new template for contemporary satire and personal expression in comics, paving the way for "Pogo", "Feiffer", "Doonesbury" and "MAD".


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Fearless Fosdick" and other "Li'l Abner" comic strip parodies, such as "Jack Jawbreaker!" (1947) and "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952), were almost certainly an inspiration to Harvey Kurtzman when he created his irreverent "Mad", which began in 1952 as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in the same subversive manner. By the time EC Comics published "Mad #1", Capp had been doing "Fearless Fosdick" for nearly a decade. Similarities between "Li'l Abner" and the early "Mad" include the incongruous use of mock-Yiddish slang terms, the nose-thumbing disdain for pop culture icons, the rampant black humor, the dearth of sentiment and the broad visual styling. Even the trademark comic "signs" that clutter the backgrounds of Will Elder's panels had a precedent in "Li'l Abner", in the residence of Dogpatch "entrepreneur" Available Jones, though they're also reminiscent of Bill Holman's "Smokey Stover". Tellingly, Kurtzman resisted doing feature parodies of either "Li'l Abner" or "Dick Tracy" in the comic book "Mad", despite their prominence.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Al Capp once told one of his assistants that he knew "Li'l Abner" had finally "arrived" when it was first pirated as a pornographic Tijuana bible parody in the mid-1930s. "Li'l Abner" was also parodied in 1954 (as "Li'l Melvin" by "Ol' Hatt") in the pages of EC Comics' humor comic, "Panic", edited by Al Feldstein. Kurtzman eventually "did" spoof "Li'l Abner" (as "Li'l Ab'r") in 1957, in his short-lived humor magazine, "Trump". Both the "Trump" and "Panic" parodies were drawn by EC legend, Will Elder. In 1947, Will Eisner's "The Spirit" satirized the comic strip business in general, as a denizen of Central City tries to murder cartoonist "Al Slapp", creator of "Li'l Adam". Capp was also caricatured as an ill-mannered, boozy cartoonist (Capp was a teetotaler in real life) named "Hal Rapp" in the comic strip "Mary Worth" by Allen Saunders and Ken Ernst. Supposedly done in retaliation for Capp's "Mary Worm" parody in "Li'l Abner" (1956), a media-fed "feud" commenced briefly between the rival strips. It all turned out to be a collaborative hoax, however — cooked up by Capp and his longtime pal Saunders as an elaborate publicity stunt.


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Li'l Abner"'s success also sparked a handful of comic strip imitators. "Jasper Jooks" by Jess "Baldy" Benton (1948–'49), "Ozark Ike" (1945–'53) and "Cotton Woods" (1955–'58), both by Ray Gotto, were clearly inspired by Capp's strip. Boody Rogers' "Babe" was a peculiar series of comic books about a beautiful hillbilly girl who lived with her kin in the Ozarks — with many similarities to "Li'l Abner". A derivative hillbilly feature called "Looie Lazybones", an out-and-out imitation (drawn by a young Frank Frazetta) ran in several issues of Standard's "Thrilling Comics" in the late 1940s. Charlton published the short-lived "Hillbilly Comics" by Art Gates in 1955, featuring "Gumbo Galahad", who was a dead ringer for Li'l Abner, as was "Pokey Oakey" by Don Dean, which ran in MLJ's "Top-Notch Laugh" and "Pep Comics". Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, "The Beverly Hillbillies" (1962–'71) as owing much of its inspiration to "Li'l Abner", prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 "Playboy" interview.


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Li'l Abner" made its debut on August 13, 1934, in eight North American newspapers, including the "New York Mirror." Initially owned and syndicated through United Feature Syndicate, a division of the E.W. Scripps Company, it was an immediate success. According to publisher Denis Kitchen, Capp's "hapless Dogpatchers hit a nerve in Depression-era America. Within three years "Abner's" circulation climbed to 253 newspapers, reaching over 15,000,000 readers. Before long he was in hundreds more, with a total readership exceeding 60,000,000." At its peak, the strip was read daily by 70 million Americans (when the U.S. population was only 180 million), with a circulation of more than 900 newspapers in North America and Europe.


title: Li'l Abner

text: During the extended peak of the strip, the workload grew to include advertising, merchandising, promotional work, comic book adaptations, public service material and other specialty work — in addition to the regular six dailies and one Sunday strip per week. Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years, who worked under his direct supervision. They included Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson and, notably, a young Frank Frazetta, who penciled the Sunday continuity from studio roughs from 1954 to the end of 1961 — before his fame as a fantasy artist.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Sensitive to his own experience working on "Joe Palooka", Capp frequently drew attention to his assistants in interviews and publicity pieces. A 1950 cover story in "Time" even included photos of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. Ironically, this highly irregular policy has led to the misconception that his strip was "ghosted" by other hands. The production of "Li'l Abner" has been well documented, however. In point of fact, Capp maintained creative control over every stage of production for virtually the entire run of the strip. Capp himself originated the stories, wrote the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and drew and inked the faces and hands of the characters. "He had "the touch,"" Frazetta said of Capp in 2008. "He knew how to take an otherwise ordinary drawing and really make it "pop". I'll never knock his talent."


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Li'l Abner" lasted until November 13, 1977, when Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the recently declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to advancing illness. "If you have any sense of humor about your strip — and I had a sense of humor about mine — you knew that for three or four years "Abner" was wrong. Oh hell, it's like a fighter retiring. I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted. "When he retired "Li'l Abner", newspapers ran expansive articles and television commentators talked about the passing of an era. "People" magazine ran a substantial feature, and even the comics-free "New York Times" devoted nearly a full page to the event," according to publisher Denis Kitchen. Capp, a lifelong chain smoker, died from emphysema two years later at age 70, at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire, on November 5, 1979.


title: Li'l Abner

text: In 1988 and 1989 many newspapers ran reruns of "Li'l Abner" episodes, mostly from the 1940s run, distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association and Capp Enterprises. Following the 1989 revival of the "Pogo" comic strip, a revival of "Li'l Abner" was also planned in 1990. Drawn by cartoonist Steve Stiles, the new "Abner" was approved by Capp's widow, and brother Elliott Caplin, but Al Capp's daughter, Julie Capp, objected at the last minute and permission was withdrawn.


title: Li'l Abner

text: With John Hodiak in the title role, the "Li'l Abner" radio serial ran weekdays on NBC from Chicago, from November 20, 1939, to December 6, 1940. Rounding out the cast were soap opera star Laurette Fillbrandt as Daisy Mae, Hazel Dopheide as Mammy Yokum, and Clarence Hartzell (who was also a prominent actor on "Vic and Sade") as Pappy. Durward Kirby was the announcer. The radio show was not written by Al Capp — but by Charles Gussman. However, Gussman consulted closely with Capp on the storylines. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, "Monitor." He also briefly filled-in for radio journalist Drew Pearson, participated in a March 2, 1948 "America's Town Meeting of the Air" debate on ABC, and hosted his own syndicated, 500-station radio show.)


title: Li'l Abner

text: Selections from the "Li'l Abner" musical score have been recorded by everyone from Percy Faith and Mario Lanza to André Previn and Shelly Manne. Over the years, "Li'l Abner" characters have inspired diverse compositions in pop, jazz, country and even rock 'n' roll:


title: Li'l Abner

text: No comprehensive reprint of the series had been attempted until Kitchen Sink Press began publishing the "Li'l Abner Dailies" in hardcover and paperback, one year per volume, in 1988. The demise of KSP in 1999 stopped the reprint series at Volume 27 (1961). More recently, Dark Horse Comics reprinted the limited series "Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years," in four full-color volumes covering the Sunday pages from 1954 to 1961. They also released an archive hardcover reprint of the complete "Shmoo Comics" in 2009, followed by a second Shmoo volume of complete newspaper strips in 2011.


title: Li'l Abner

text: At the San Diego Comic Con in July 2009, IDW and The Library of American Comics announced the upcoming publication of "Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays: Vol. 1 (1934–1936)". The comprehensive series titled "", is planned to be a reprinting of the complete 43-year history of "Li'l Abner" spanning a projected 20 volumes, began on April 7, 2010.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies and charitable or non-profit organizations, spanning several decades. The following titles are all single-issue, educational comic books and pamphlets produced for various public services:


title: Li'l Abner

text: In addition, Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the U.S. Treasury, the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Sister Kenny Foundation, the Boy Scouts of America, Community Chest, the National Reading Council, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, Christmas Seals, the National Amputation Foundation and Disabled American Veterans, among others.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Beginning in 1944, "Li'l Abner" was adapted into a series of color theatrical cartoons by Screen Gems for Columbia Pictures, directed by Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham and Howard Swift. The five titles were: "Amoozin But Confoozin", "Sadie Hawkins Day", "A Peekoolyar Sitcheeyshun", "Porkuliar Piggy" and "Kickapoo Juice". Al Capp was reportedly not pleased with the results, and the series was discontinued after five shorts. The character was voiced by Frank Graham.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Evil-Eye Fleegle and his "whammy" make an animated cameo appearance in the U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project training film, "Self Preservation in an Atomic Attack" (1950). Lena the Hyena makes a brief animated appearance in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988).


title: Li'l Abner

text: In 1952, "Fearless Fosdick" proved popular enough to be incorporated into a short-lived TV series. The ambitious puppet show was created and directed by puppeteer Mary Chase, written by Everett Crosby and voiced by John Griggs, Gilbert Mack and Jean Carson. "Fearless Fosdick" premiered on Sunday afternoons on NBC; 13 episodes featuring the Mary Chase marionettes were produced. The storylines and villains were mostly separate from the comic strip and unique to the show. Among the original TV characters were "Mr. Ditto", "Harris Tweed" (a disembodied suit of clothes), "Swenn Golly" (a Svengali-like mesmerist), counterfeiters "Max Millions" and "Minton Mooney", "Frank N. Stein", "Batula", "Match Head" (a pyromaniac), "Sen-Sen O'Toole", "Shmoozer" and "Herman the Ape Man".


title: Li'l Abner

text: Shmoos were originally meant to be included in the 1956 Broadway "Li'l Abner" musical, employing stage puppetry. The idea was reportedly abandoned in the development stage by the producers, however, for reasons of practicality. After Capp's death, the Shmoo was used in two Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning cartoon series for TV. First in the 1979 "The New Shmoo" (later incorporated into "Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo"), and again from 1980 to 1981 in the "Flintstone Comedy Show", in the "Bedrock Cops" segments.


title: Li'l Abner

text: The first "Li'l Abner" movie was made at RKO Radio Pictures in 1940, starring Jeff York (credited as Granville Owen), Martha O'Driscoll, Mona Ray and Johnnie Morris. Although it lacks the political satire and Broadway polish of the 1959 version, this film gives a fairly accurate portrayal of the various Dogpatch characters up until that time. Of particular note is the appearance of Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat, and a title song with lyrics by Milton Berle. Other familiar silent comedy veterans in the cast include Bud Jamison, Lucien Littlefield, Johnny Arthur, Mickey Daniels, and ex-Keystone Cops Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy and Al St. John. The story concerns Daisy Mae's efforts to catch Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. Since this movie predates their comic strip marriage, Abner makes a last-minute escape (natcherly!)


title: Li'l Abner

text: A much more successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip, also entitled "Li'l Abner", opened on Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956, and had a long run of 693 performances, followed by a nationwide tour. Among the actors originally considered for the title role were Dick Shawn and Andy Griffith. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with an original score by Nelson Riddle. Starring Peter Palmer, Leslie Parrish, Julie Newmar, Stella Stevens, Stubby Kaye, Billie Hayes, Howard St. John, Joe E. Marks, Carmen Alvarez, William Lanteau and Bern Hoffman, with cameos by Jerry Lewis, Robert Strauss, Ted Thurston, Alan Carney, Valerie Harper and Donna Douglas. Three members of the original Broadway cast did "not" appear in the film version: Charlotte Rae (who was replaced by Billie Hayes early in the stage production), Edie Adams (who was pregnant during the filming) and Tina Louise. The musical has since become a perennial favorite of high school and amateur productions, due to its popular appeal and modest production requirements.


title: Li'l Abner

text: "Li'l Abner" never sold as a TV series despite several attempts (including an unsold pilot that aired once on NBC on September 5, 1967), but Al Capp was a familiar face on television for twenty years. No other cartoonist to date has come close to Capp's televised exposure. Capp appeared as a regular on "The Author Meets the Critics". He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's "Who Said That?" Capp has appeared as himself on "The Ed Sullivan Show", Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows", "The Today Show", "The Red Skelton Show", "The Merv Griffin Show", "The Mike Douglas Show", and on "This Is Your Life" on February 12, 1961, with host Ralph Edwards and honoree Peter Palmer. He hosted at least "five" television programs between 1952 and 1972 — three different talk shows called "The Al Capp Show" (twice), "Al Capp", "Al Capp's America" (a live "chalk talk", with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons), and a game show called "Anyone Can Win". In addition, Capp was a frequent celebrity guest. His appearances on NBC's "The Tonight Show" spanned three emcees; Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.


title: Li'l Abner

text: Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies. Underground cartoonist and "Li'l Abner" expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as a consultant on nearly all of them. Kitchen is currently compiling a monograph on the life and career of Al Capp.


title: Madison De La Garza

text: Madison Lee De La Garza (born December 28, 2001) is an American actress. De La Garza is known for playing Juanita Solis on "Desperate Housewives". She is the younger half-sister of singer Demi Lovato.


title: Madison De La Garza

text: Madison Lee De La Garza was born to Ford dealership manager James Edward "Eddie" De La Garza and former country singer and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Dianna De La Garza (born Dianna Hart on August 8, 1962). Eddie is of Mexican descent. She has two older half siblings through Dianna's first marriage to Patrick Martin Lovato (1960–2013), Dallas Lovato (born February 4, 1988) and Demi Lovato (born August 20, 1992).


title: Madison De La Garza

text: De La Garza's most prominent role was Juanita Solis on "Desperate Housewives". Additionally, she played a younger version of her half-sibling Demi Lovato's character Sonny Munroe in "Cookie Monsters", an episode of "Sonny with a Chance".


title: Madison De La Garza

text: De Le Garza has also played on "Bad Teacher" as Kelsey, a recurring role in the series. She co-directed "Pink Elephant", a short film, and directed the short "Subject 16". She appeared on the "Millennial Hollywood" podcast to discuss "Subject 16". De La Garza has a YouTube channel.


title: Madison De La Garza

text: In July 2021, "Variety" reported De La Garza was slated to direct "Surprise", a "mystery thriller about a surprise Zoom party that turns tense when the birthday girl's friends appear to know something she doesn't." The film was to star other YouTube influencers and personalities.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: The Chevrolet Captiva is a compact crossover SUV marketed by General Motors under their Chevrolet marque. The first generation was developed by GM Korea, based on the GM Theta platform and derived from the S3X concept car revealed in 2004. Released in 2006, it was sold internationally as Chevrolet Captiva, in Australia and New Zealand as Holden Captiva and in South Korea as Daewoo Winstorm until 2011, when the international name was adopted. The vehicle shares much its underpinnings with the similarly-styled Opel/Vauxhall Antara / second-generation Saturn Vue, with the Captiva offering optional third-row seating.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: In 2018, Chevrolet ended production of the first-generation Captiva and replacing it worldwide with the Equinox. The second-generation Captiva, which is a rebadged Baojun 530 produced in China by SAIC-GM-Wuling, was introduced in Colombia in November 2018 and Thailand in March 2019. The second-generation model is also offered in many Latin American markets, including Mexico since 2021.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: The Captiva is a front-wheel or all-wheel drive SUV; the engines were supplied by Holden in Australia, the Family II naturally aspirated four-cylinder petrol or the Alloytec Holden V6 built in Australia, and later a 2.0-L turbodiesel supplied by VM Motori in South Korea.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: Designated C100 by Daewoo and CG in Holden's terminology, the Captiva was launched in 2006. Styling of the Captiva was inspired by the 2004 Chevrolet S3X concept car. The S3X concept was developed by GM Daewoo's design center in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon and is based on the GM Theta platform. It premiered at 2004 Paris Motor Show. Another concept car, by Daewoo, the Chevrolet T2X premiered at the 2005 Seoul Motor Show with its design was based on the S3X, using a shortened platform. The T2X is referred to as a "sport utility coupe", accounting for its rear hinged doors, lack of conventional B-pillars, and shortened wheelbase—features that were first revealed on the "Daewoo Oto" (later renamed "Daewoo Scope") concept at the 2002 Seoul Motor Show. Production was slated for late 2006, but as of 2009 no further announcement has been made.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: For the Captiva, the production version of the S3X, both five- or seven-seat configurations are available. Standard safety features include: antilock brakes, electronic stability control (ESC), front seatbelt pretensioners and force limiters, and driver and front-passenger airbags. Side-curtain airbags are standard on higher luxury-level variants in some markets. In crash safety tests conducted by Euro NCAP, the Captiva was given a four out of five stars crash rating. The results from the test were helped by the use of high-strength steel used in the body shell which was designed to spread crash forces over distinct load channels, therefore ensuring the safety of the occupants within the safety cell. The vehicle's optional active all-wheel drive system is fully incorporated with the ESC and antilock braking systems, consequently improving car handling and control. When the vehicle detects a loss of traction, the all-wheel drive mode is activated automatically. In ordinary driving situations, only the vehicle's front wheels are used.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: A revised Captiva range was released in the second quarter of 2011. The facelifted Captiva featured a new front fascia reminiscent to that of the Chevrolet Aveo (T300). Other noticeable cosmetic differences included LED turn signals on the door-mounted mirrors, redesigned wheels, and revised side air vents. The new SIDI alloy V6 was supplied from Holden in Australia, with the petrol four-cylinder 2.4-L and VM Motori 2.2-L turbodiesel engines being made in South Korea.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: The new 2016 Chevrolet Captiva was unveiled at the Dubai International Motor Show 2015 on 10 November 2015. GM Thailand has also unveiled the facelifted Chevrolet Captiva at the 32nd annual Thailand International Motor Expo on 1 December 2015. A facelifted Holden Captiva was also unveiled a day later in Australia. The new Captiva has been updated with new LED headlamps, grille, bumper, and a redesigned dashboard, but retained its body and dashboard panels. The V6 engine was no longer sourced from Australia.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: The Captiva is powered by the Australian (Holden)-built 3.2-litre Alloytec V6 engine mated to a five-speed automatic transmission, featuring Active Select. This engine is also shared by the Captiva's Opel Antara derivative, which uses a different design, but shares the same underpinnings and powertrain components. A four-cylinder VCDi common rail turbo-diesel engine, co-developed with VM Motori, was introduced into the range. The Captiva introduced and VCDi versions, offering respecively.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: South Korean cars were branded Daewoo Winstorm from 2006. From 2006 until early 2011, the Opel Antara became available in the Winstorm range, as the "Daewoo Winstorm MaXX". As part of GM's strategy to phase out the "Daewoo" brand worldwide, since early 2011, the Winstorm has been marketed under the global Chevrolet Captiva name in South Korea. This rebranding came after the March 2011 renaming of GM Daewoo to GM Korea. At the same time, the Winstorm MaXX disappeared without a Chevrolet-badged equivalent (except Latin America and South America, which was sold outside of South Korea).


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: The Chevrolet Captiva was launched in Vietnam during 2006. The Captiva in Vietnam was manufactured in complete knock-down form by Vidamco (GM Vietnam), with 20% local parts content. From 2006 to July 2009, 8,500 Captivas have been sold in Vietnam.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: In Thailand, Captivas have been produced at the GM facility in Rayong between 2006 and 2018. Chevrolet Thailand offered the Captiva in LS and LT variants, with engines comprising either the 2.4-L petrol or 2.0-L diesel units. Captiva also featured the availability of self-levelling rear suspension, ESC, automatic headlamps, and rain-sensing wipers. Late in 2010, Chevrolet expanded the diesel line-up to include a mid-range LSX and flagship LTZ model. At the same time, Captivas fitted with the 2.4-L petrol engine benefitted from E20 ethanol support and increased power to . On 23 June 2011, Chevrolet Thailand unveiled the updated the Captiva using the new 2.4-L petrol engine with support of E85 ethanol fuel. New features include an electric parking brake, climate control commands on the steering wheel; and later, the updated 2.0-L diesel engine rated at .


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: The Captiva entered the Chinese market in early November 2007. The only available engine was the 2.4-L Ecotec inline-four engine mated to a six-speed automatic. Production ended in 2017.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: In the Philippines, the Captiva was launched in 2008. Engines offered were the 2.4L D-TEC mated to a 5-speed automatic transmission with Tiptronic or the 2.0L turbo diesel exclusively mated to a 5-speed automatic transmission.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: In Japan, the Captiva was launched on 30 July 2011, the first GM model to be released there since the company's chapter 11 reorganisation in June 2009.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: Holden in Australia and New Zealand have sold the vehicle under the "Holden Captiva" name between November 2006 and 2017, after announcing the model the previous September. The Captiva launched with the 3.2-L V6 and five-speed automatic transmission, but March 2007 had the addition of the 2.0-L diesel engine with five-speed manual or optional automatic. While initially manufactured in South Korea, production was temporarily shifted to Thailand from September 2007 until early 2008 while GM Daewoo upgraded its production facilities in South Korea to cope with global demand.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: Specification levels were SX, CX, and LX, with a range-topping Captiva MaXX variant offered, although this was a rebadge of the closely related Opel Antara. The Antara-derived MaXX remained on sale in Australia until 2008, with New Zealand sales continuing on until the end of 2009. When Holden resurrected the Antara-based model as a price-leading five-seater "Captiva 5" in December 2009, the seven-seat only Chevrolet-based models were renamed "Captiva 7".


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: Revisions to the Captiva 7 range were announced in February 2011, designated "Series II", with a March on-sale date. Changes included the adoption of the facelifted front-end fascia, as applied to Chevrolet versions, but with a Holden-specific grille and air intake. New design alloy wheels, "Altezza" tail lamps, and other trimmings feature, as does a revised interior centre console. Equipment-wise, the revised centre console houses a new 7-inch multifunction display in LX trim, which incorporates satellite navigation and a rear-view camera. Revised powertrains also feature on the Series II. The base setup is the SX trim with the 2.4-L petrol using front-wheel drive; the 2.2-L diesel was optional. The CX and LX variants add all-wheel drive and offer the 3.0-L V6 as standard, with the 2.2-L diesel remaining optional. All three engines are paired with a six-speed automatic.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: Holden announced a minor model year update in July 2012, the centrepiece of which was the addition of flex-fuel capability for both petrol engines, thus allowing them to accept E85 ethanol fuel. A cut in the official combined fuel consumption of the 3.0-L by 10% has also been achieved, with smaller gains for the 2.4-L petrol and 2.2-L diesel engines. At the same time, the base SX received standard rear parking sensors and the range-topping LX came additionally equipped with heated front seats and front park assist.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: In the Middle East, the Captiva launched with two basic trims: one with the 2.4-L gasoline engine and another with the 3.0-L V6. Both trims are seven-seaters and offer front-wheel drive.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: On 13 September 2018, Chevrolet announced that it is ending production on the first generation Captiva and will phase it out globally in favor of expanding the Equinox. The move had been in the works since 2017, when GM began replacing the Captiva in Australia with the Equinox for the Holden lineup, followed by South Korea in August 2018, with GM's Uzbekistan plant ceasing production on 12 September 2018.


title: Chevrolet Captiva

text: The second-generation Captiva is a rebadged version of Baojun 530. The model is developed and produced by SAIC-GM-Wuling and exported to several emerging markets. It was introduced in Colombia in November 2018 and Thailand in March 2019. It was launched in select South American markets starting from April 2019, in Thailand in September 2019, Middle East in May 2020, and Mexico in March 2021. The left-hand drive Captiva for the Latin American and Middle Eastern market are imported from China and it is positioned between the Tracker/Trax and Equinox. The right-hand drive Captiva offered in Thailand, Brunei and Fiji were produced in Indonesia until 2020.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Jacques Tati (; born Jacques Tatischeff, ; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982) was a French mime, film-maker, actor and screenwriter. In an "Entertainment Weekly" poll of the Greatest Movie Directors, he was voted the 46th greatest of all time (out of 50), although he directed only six feature-length films.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati's "Playtime" (1967) ranked 43rd in the 2012 "Sight & Sound" critics' poll of the greatest films ever made.


title: Jacques Tati

text: As David Bellos puts it, "Tati, from "l'Ecole des facteurs" to "Playtime", is the epitome of what an "auteur" is (in film theory) supposed to be: the controlling mind behind a vision of the world on film".


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati was of Russian, Dutch, and Italian ancestry. His father, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff (1875-1957), was born in Paris, the son of Dmitry Tatishcheff (Дмитрий Татищев; also spelled Tatishchev), General of the Imperial Russian Army and military attaché to the Russian embassy in Paris. The Tatischeffs were a Russian noble family of patrilineal Rurikid descent. Whilst stationed in Paris, Dmitri Tatischeff married a French woman, Rose Anathalie Alinquant. (Russian sources indicate that Alinquant was a circus performer and that the couple were never actually married.)


title: Jacques Tati

text: Dmitri Tatischeff died under suspicious circumstances from injuries sustained in a horse-riding accident, shortly after the birth of Georges-Emmanuel. As a child, Georges-Emmanuel experienced turbulent times, such as being forcibly removed from France and taken to live in Russia. In 1883, his mother brought him back to France, where they settled on the estate of Le Pecq, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on the outskirts of Paris. In 1903, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff married the Dutch-Italian Marcelle Claire van Hoof (d. 1968). Together, they had two children, Natalie (b. 1905) and Jacques. Claire's Dutch father, a friend of van Gogh, whose clients included Toulouse-Lautrec, was the owner of a prestigious picture-framing company near the Place Vendôme in Paris, and he brought Georges-Emmanuel into the family business. Subsequently, Georges-Emmanuel became the director of the company Cadres Van Hoof, and the Tatischeff family enjoyed a relatively high standard of living.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati seems to have been an indifferent student, yet excelled in tennis and horse riding. He left school in 1923, at the age of 16, and his grandfather trained him as a picture framer in the family business. Between 1927 and 1928, he completed his national military service at Saint-Germain-en-Laye with the Cavalry's 16th Regiment of Dragoons. On leaving the military, he took on an apprenticeship in London, where he was first introduced to rugby. Returning to Paris, he joined the semi-professional rugby team Racing Club de France, captained by Alfred Sauvy, and whose supporters included Tristan Bernard. It was there that he first discovered his comic talents, entertaining his teammates during intervals with impersonations of their sporting endeavours. He also first met Jacques Broido, with whom he became lifelong friends.


title: Jacques Tati

text: The global economic crisis reached France in 1931–32. Tati left both the Racing Club de France, and to his family's disapproval, his apprenticeship at Cadres Van Hoof. Giving up a relatively comfortable middle-class lifestyle to be a struggling performing artist during hard economic times, he developed a collection of highly physical mime routines that would become his "Impressions Sportives" ("Sporting Impressions"). Each year from 1931 to 1934, he participated in an amateur show organised by Alfred Sauvy.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Although he had likely played music hall engagements before, his act was first mentioned in 1935, when he performed at the gala for the newspaper "Le Journal", celebrating the French victory in setting the transatlantic crossing record from Normandy. Among the honourable spectators was the influential writer Colette. Tati's act also caught the attention of Max Trebor, who offered him an engagement at the Theatre-Michel, where he quickly became the star act. After his success there, Tati tried to make it in London, playing a short season at the Finsbury Park Empire in March 1936. Upon his return to Paris in the same year, he was immediately hired as top billing at the ABC Théâtre, alongside the singer Marie Dubas, where he would work uninterrupted until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was for Tati's performances of his now-finely tuned "Impressions Sportives" at the ABC that the previously impressed Colette wrote,


title: Jacques Tati

text: "From now on no celebration, no artistic or acrobatic spectacle can do without this amazing performer, who has invented something quite his own ... His act is partly ballet and partly sport, partly satire and partly a charade. He has devised a way of being both the player, the ball and the tennis racquet, of being simultaneously the football and the goalkeeper, the boxer and his opponent, the bicycle and the cyclist. Without any props, he conjures up his accessories and his partners. He has suggestive powers of all great artists. How gratifying it was to see the audience's warm reaction! Tati's success says a lot about the sophistication of the allegedly "uncouth" public, about its taste for novelty and its appreciation of style. Jacques Tati, the horse and rider conjured, will show all of Paris the living image of that legendary creature, the centaur."


title: Jacques Tati

text: In September 1939, Tati was conscripted back into his 16th Regiment of Dragoons, which was then incorporated into the 3rd Division Legere de Cavalerie (DLC). He saw action in the Battle of Sedan in May 1940, when the German Army marched through the Ardennes into northern France. The 3rd DLC retreated from Meuse to Mussidan, in the Dordogne, where the division was demobilised after the Armistice was declared on 22 June 1940.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Returning to Paris, Tati resumed his civilian profession as a cabaret performer, finding employment at Léon Volterra's Lido de Paris, where he performed his "Sporting Impressions" from 1940 to 1942.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Considered as a possible substitute for Jean-Louis Barrault in "Les Enfants du Paradis", Tati played the ghost in "Sylvie and the Ghost", alongside Odette Joyeux as Sylvie, and also appeared as The Devil in the same film. Here, he met Fred Orain, studio director of St. Maurice and the Victorine in Nice.


title: Jacques Tati

text: In early 1946, Jacques Tati and Fred Orain founded the production company Cady-Films, which would produce Tati's first three films.


title: Jacques Tati

text: With the exception of his first and last films, Tati played the gauche and socially inept lead character, Monsieur Hulot. With his trademark raincoat, umbrella and pipe, Hulot is among the most memorable comic characters in cinema. Several themes recur in Tati's work, most notably in "Mon Oncle", "Playtime", and "Trafic". They include Western society's obsession with material goods, particularly American-style consumerism, the pressure-cooker environment of modern society, the superficiality of relationships among France's various social classes, and the cold and often impractical nature of space-age technology and design.


title: Jacques Tati

text: René Clément was first approached to direct "L'École des facteurs" (1947), but as he was preoccupied directing "La Bataille du rail" (1946), directing duties fell to Tati, who also starred in this short comedy about rural life. Encouragingly, "L'École des facteurs" was enthusiastically well-received upon release, winning the Max Linder Prize for film comedy in 1947.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati's first major feature, "Jour de fête" ("The Big Day"), is about an inept rural village postman who interrupts his duties to inspect the traveling fair that has come to town. Influenced by too much wine and a documentary on the rapidity of the American postal service, he goes to hilarious lengths to speed his mail deliveries aboard his bicycle. Tati filmed it in 1947 in the village of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre, where he had found refuge during the war. Due to the reluctance of French distributors, "Jour de fête" was first successfully released in London in March 1949, before obtaining a French release on 4 July 1949, where it became a great public success, receiving the 1950 Le Grand prix du cinéma français. The film was intended to be the first French feature film shot in colour; Tati simultaneously shot the film in black and white as an insurance policy. The newly developed Thomson colour system proved impractical, as it could not deliver colour prints. "Jour de fête" was therefore released only in black and white. Unlike his later films, it has many scenes with dialogue, and offers a droll, affectionate view of life in rural France. The colour version was restored by his younger daughter, film editor and director Sophie Tatischeff, and released in 1995. The film won the Prize for Best Original Script at the Venice Film Festival.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati's second film, "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot" ("Monsieur Hulot's Holiday"), was released in 1953. "Les Vacances" introduced the character of Mr. Hulot and follows his adventures in France during the mandatory August vacation at a beach resort, lampooning several hidebound elements of French political and social classes. It was shot almost entirely in the tiny west coast seaside village of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, in the Loire Atlantique region. The hotel in which Mr. Hulot stays (l'Hôtel de la Plage) is still there, and a statue memorialising the director has been erected on the beach. Tati had fallen in love with the coast while staying in nearby Port Charlotte with his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Lemoine, before the war, and resolved to return one day to make a film there. The film was widely praised by critics, and earned Tati an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, which was shared with Henri Marquet. Production of the movie also reintroduced Jacques Lagrange into Tati's life, beginning a lifelong working partnership with the painter, who would become his set designer. "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot" remains one of the best-loved French films of that period. The film's comic influence has extended well beyond France and can be found as recently as 2007 in the Rowan Atkinson comic vehicle "Mr. Bean's Holiday".


title: Jacques Tati

text: André Bazin, founder of the influential journal "Cahiers du cinéma", wrote in his 1957 essay, "Fifteen Years of French Cinema":


title: Jacques Tati

text: "Tati could easily have made lots of money with sequels featuring his comic character of the little rural mailman. He chose instead to wait for four years, and, after much reflection, he revised his formula completely. The result this time was an extraordinary masterpiece about which one can say, I think, that it is the most radical innovation in comic cinema since the Marx Brothers: I am referring, of course, to "Les Vacances de M. Hulot"."


title: Jacques Tati

text: Various problems delayed the release of Tati's follow-up to his international hit. In 1955, he suffered a serious car accident that physically impaired his left hand. Then, a dispute with Fred Orain ensued, and Tati broke away from Cady Films to create his own production company, Spectra Films, in 1956.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati's next film, 1958's "Mon Oncle" ("My Uncle"), was his first film to be released in colour. The plot centers on Mr. Hulot's comedic, quixotic, and childlike struggle with postwar France's obsession with modernity and American-style consumerism, entwined with the relationship he has with his nine-year-old nephew, Gérard. "Mon Oncle" quickly became an international success, and won that year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Special Prize at Cannes, as well as the New York Film Critics Award. In Place de la Pelouse (Saint-Maur-des-Fossés), there stands a bronze statue of Tati as Monsieur Hulot talking to a boy, in a pose echoing the movie's poster, which was designed by Pierre Étaix.


title: Jacques Tati

text: On receiving his Oscar, Tati was offered any treat that the Academy could bestow on him. To their surprise, Tati simply requested the opportunity to visit Stan Laurel, Mack Sennett, and Buster Keaton. Keaton reportedly said that Tati's work with sound had carried on the true tradition of silent cinema.


title: Jacques Tati

text: As guest artistic director at AFI Fest 2010, David Lynch selected Tati's "Mon Oncle", alongside "Hour of the Wolf" (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1968), "Lolita" (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1962), "Rear Window" (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) and "Sunset Boulevard" (dir. Billy Wilder, 1950) to be screened in his sidebar program, explaining:


title: Jacques Tati

text: "I picked these particular films because they are the ones that have inspired me most. I think each is a masterpiece."


title: Jacques Tati

text: Considered by many his masterpiece, "Playtime" (1967), shot in 70mm, was to be the most ambitious yet risky and expensive work of Tati's career.


title: Jacques Tati

text: "Playtime" took nine years to make, and Tati had to borrow heavily from his own resources to complete the picture. At the time of its making, "Playtime" (1967) was the most expensive film in French history. Of the film, Tati said: ""Play Time" [sic] is the big leap, the big screen. I'm putting myself on the line. Either it comes off or it doesn't. There's no safety net." Tati famously built an entire glass and steel mini-city (nicknamed Tativille) on the outskirts of Paris for the film, which took years to build and left him mired in debt.


title: Jacques Tati

text: In the film, Hulot and a group of American tourists lose themselves in the futuristic glass and steel of the commercially globalised modern Parisian suburbs, where only human nature and a few reflective views of the old city of Paris itself still emerge to breathe life into the sterile new metropolis. "Playtime" had even less of a plot than Tati's earlier films, and he endeavored to make his characters, including Hulot, almost incidental to his portrayal of a modernist and robotic Paris.


title: Jacques Tati

text: "Playtime" was originally 155 minutes in length, but Tati soon released an edited version of 126 minutes; this is the version that was generally released to theatres in 1967. Later versions appeared in 35mm format. In 1979, a copy of the film was revised again to 108 minutes, and this re-edited version was released on VHS video in 1984. Though "Playtime" was a critical success (François Truffaut praised it as "a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently"), it was a massive and expensive commercial failure, eventually resulting in Tati's bankruptcy.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati biographer David Bellos noted that Tati had approached everybody from Darryl F. Zanuck to French prime minister Georges Pompidou in a bid to get the film completed. "His personal overdrafts began to mount, and long before "Play Time" was finished, Tati was in substantial debt to the least forgiving of all creditors, the Collectors of Taxes." When Tati failed to pay off his loans, his films were impounded by the banks. Tati was forced to sell the family house of Saint-Germain shortly after the death of his mother, Claire van Hoof, and move back into Paris. Spectra Films was placed into administration, concluding in the liquidation of the company in 1974, with an auction of all film rights held by the company for little more than 120,000 francs.


title: Jacques Tati

text: In 1969, with reduced means, Tati created a new production company, CEPEC, to oversee his opportunities in film and TV production.


title: Jacques Tati

text: While on the set of "Playtime", Tati made a short film about his comedic and cinematic technique, "Cours du soir" ("Evening Classes", 1967), in which he gives a lesson in the art of comedy to a class of would-be actors.


title: Jacques Tati

text: In 1971, Tati made an advertisement for England's Lloyds Bank, in which he depicted a dehumanized bank of the future, with money dispensed by a computerized counter. "The message of the advert was that however modern Lloyds are, technology isn't everything and you'll always be able to speak to a "friendly member of staff or understanding manager" in their branches".


title: Jacques Tati

text: In August 2012, the British Film Institute polled 846 critics, programmers, academics, and distributors to find "The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time"; "Playtime" was voted 42nd. In the corresponding "Directors Poll" by the BFI, "Playtime" was awarded the accolade of being seen as the 37th greatest film of all time by his fellow directors.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Steven Spielberg has said he was paying a "very slight homage" to "Playtime" in his 2004 film "The Terminal", adding, "I thought of two directors when I made ["The Terminal"]. I thought this was a tribute to Frank Capra and his honest sentiment, and it was a tribute to Jacques Tati and the way he allowed his scenes to go on and on and on. The character he played in "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday" and "Mon Oncle" was all about resourcefulness and using what's around him to make us laugh".


title: Jacques Tati

text: The Dutch-funded "Trafic" ("Traffic"), although originally designed to be a TV film, received a theatrical release in 1971, and placed Monsieur Hulot back at the centre of the action. It was the last Hulot film, and followed the vein of earlier works that lampooned modern society. In the film, Hulot is a bumbling automobile inventor, who is traveling to an exhibition in a gadget-filled recreational vehicle.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati's last completed film, "Parade", a film produced for Swedish television in 1973, is more or less a filmed circus performance, featuring Tati's mime acts and other performers.


title: Jacques Tati

text: In 1978, Tati began filming "Forza Bastia", a short documentary focusing on a football match between the Corsican team SC Bastia and the Dutch team PSV Eindhoven during the UEFA Cup Final, which he did not complete. Tati undertook the project at the request of his friend Gilberto Trigano, who was the president of the Bastia club at the time. His younger daughter, Sophie Tatischeff, later edited the remaining footage, which was posthumously released in 2002; Sophie died of lung cancer in 2001.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati had plans for at least one more film. "Confusion", a planned collaboration with pop duo Sparks, was a story about a futuristic Paris where activity is centered around television, communication, advertising, and modern society's infatuation with visual imagery.


title: Jacques Tati

text: In the original script, an aging Mr. Hulot was slated to be accidentally killed on-air. Ron Mael and Russell Mael would have played two American TV studio employees brought in by a rural French TV company to help them out with some American technical expertise and input into how TV is really done. While the script still exists, "Confusion" was never filmed. What would have been its title track, "Confusion", appears on Sparks' 1976 "Big Beat" album, with the internal sleeve of its 2006 re-mastered CD featuring a letter announcing the pending collaboration, as well as a photo of the Mael brothers in conversation with Tati.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Catalogued in the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie) archives under the title 'Film Tati Nº 4', and written in the late 1950s, the treatment was to have been the follow-up to Tati's internationally successful "Mon Oncle". It tells the bittersweet tale of a modestly talented magician – referred to only as the Illusionist – who, during a tour of decaying music halls in Eastern Europe, protectively takes an impoverished young woman under his wing.


title: Jacques Tati

text: The semi-autobiographical script that Tati wrote in 1956 was released internationally as an animated film, "The Illusionist", in 2010. Directed by Sylvain Chomet, known for "The Triplets of Belleville", the main character is an animated caricature of Tati himself.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Controversy dogged the release of Chomet's version of "The Illusionist", "with The Guardian" reporting:


title: Jacques Tati

text: In 2000, the screenplay was handed over to Chomet by Tati's daughter, Sophie, two years before her death. Now, however, the family of Tati's illegitimate and estranged eldest child, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel, who lives in the north-east of England, are calling for the French director to give her credit as the true inspiration for the film. The script of "L'illusionniste", they say, was Tati's response to the shame of having abandoned his first child [Schiel] and it remains the only public recognition of her existence. They accuse Chomet of attempting to airbrush out their painful family legacy again.


title: Jacques Tati

text: Tati's grandson, Richard Tatischeff Schiel McDonald, wrote a long letter to the film critic Roger Ebert in 2010, openly criticising the production's interpretation of Tati's intent for the script and explaining the family's understanding of its origins with respect to Tati's having abandoned his eldest child.


title: Jacques Tati

text: At the Lido de Paris, Tati met and fell in love with the young Czech-Austrian dancer Herta Schiel, who had fled Vienna with her sister Molly at the time of the Anschluss. In the summer of 1942, Herta gave birth to their daughter, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel. Tati refused to recognise the child, reportedly due to pressure from his sister, Nathalie. As a result, he was forced by Leon Volterra to depart from the Lido at the end of the 1942 season.