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Barney Google

Snuffy Smith and Barney Google
Snuffy Smith and Barney Google

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Barney Google, is a long-running American comic strip created in 1919 by Billy De Beck. The strip inspired the popular 1920s song, "Barney Google (With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)," with lyrics by Billy Rose.

When the strip began, its title character, a little fellow with big eyes, was a sportsman involved in horse racing and boxing. In 1922, the strip took a huge turn in popularity with the addition of a race horse named Spark Plug, a nag who seldom raced and was typically seen almost totally covered by his horse blanket. In 1934, an even greater change took place when Barney and the horse visited the North Carolina mountains and met a moonshiner named Snuffy Smith. The strip increasingly focused on stereotypical humor about the hillbillies of southern Appalachia, with Snuffy as the main character. Locals in the strip are extremely suspicious of any outsiders, referred to as "flatlanders," or, even worse, "revenooers" (federal revenue agents). Snuffy was so popular that his name was added to the strip's title in the late 1930s, and Barney Google himself virtually disappeared after the 1950s.

The strip first appeared in the sports section of the Chicago Herald and Examiner as Take Barney Google, F'rinstance. By October 1919, the strip was syndicated by King Features and was published in newspapers across the country. Fred Lasswell, DeBeck's lifelong assistant, took over Barney Google in 1942. Lasswell drew the strip until his death on March 3, 2001. John Rose, who inked the strip for Lasswell, draws the comic today.

In 1963 Lasswell won both the National Cartoonist Society Humor Comic Strip Award and Reuben Award.

Barney Google appears in 21 countries and 11 languages. It is credited with introducing several slang phrases, including "sweet mama," "horsefeathers," "heebie-jeebies" and "hotsy-totsy" (meaning just right, perfect). In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US postage stamps.

From Spark Plug to search engine

The strip was not the inspiration for the name of the popular Google search engine (which was so labeled after the similar word googol). However, when the mathematician and Columbia University professor Edward Kasner was told in the late 1930s to devise a name for a very large number, he asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, if he had any suggestions. The youth then spoke the name of the comic strip when it was at a peak of popularity, and Kasner introduced the word "Googol" in his book, Mathematics and the Imagination (1940). Milton Sirotta died in 1981.

Barney Google (February 5, 1931)
Barney Google (February 5, 1931)

Films

1920s

Beginning, with Horsefeathers (1928), Barney Hellum portrayed Barney Google in a series of live-action short films, featuring Philip Davis as Spark Plug. There were at least 11 films in the series, ending with Slide, Sparky, Slide (1929).

1930s

There was an animated version of Barney Google in the 1930s, produced by the Charles Mintz Screen Gems Studio. They made only four Google cartoons, two of which were released in 1935 and two in 1936.

1940s

Two live-action feature films with actor Bud Duncan portraying Snuffy Smith were made in 1942: Private Snuffy Smith and Hillbilly Blitzkrieg. Cliff Nazarro appeared as Barney in Hillbilly Blitzkrieg. [1]

1960s

In 1963-64 Paramount created 50 six-minute episodes of Snuffy Smith and Barney Google based on the Barney Google and Snuffy Smith comic strip.

DVD

In 2006 BCI Ecplise released 20 episodes of the 1963 cartoon as part of
Animated All Stars 2DVD BCI 46952

  • The Master
  • Snuffy Runs the Gamut
  • Pie in the Sky
  • Barney's Blarney
  • Barney Deals the Cars
  • The Country Club Smiths
  • Ain't it the Tooth
  • Jughaid the Magician
  • Glove thy Neighbor
  • Jughaid's Jumpin' Frog
  • Getting Snuffy's Goat
  • Rip Van Snuffy
  • Keeping up with the Joneses
  • Settin' and A-Frettin'
  • Jughaid for President
  • Little Red Jughaid
  • My Kingdom for a Horse
  • The Tourist Trap
  • It's Better to Give (Christmas Show)

References

  1. ↑ Don Mark's Toonopedia

External links

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Categories:
American comic strips
Comic strips started in the 1910s
Fictional hillbillies

History

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