[54] 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. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works - MilitaryLeak Mary G. Ross, the first Native American female engineer, was among the 40 founding engineers.[8]. 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. 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. The once informal nickname is now theregistered trademarkof the company: Skunk Works. 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. "Skonk Works", Culver repeated. 2023 Lockheed Martin Corporation. He never married his own long-suffering fiance 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. [36] After four months of fantasy adventure, Capp ended the strip with Washable's mother waking him up; the story was a dream. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, Monitor. "He had the touch," Frazetta said of Capp in 2008. It didnt really matter, since he was firing me about twice a day anyways. [4] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. Li'l Abner Gets a Job Part 2, script and art by Al Capp; Abner takes a job at the skunk works. 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. City of Schertz. 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. 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. 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. This project marked the birth of what would become the Skunk Works, with founder Kelly Johnson at its helm. 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. In 1976, the Skunk Works began production on a pair of stealth technology demonstrators for the U.S. Air Force named Have Blue in Building 82 at Burbank. The first overflight took place on July 4 1956. Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays - Wikipedia A team engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capps comic strip, Lil Abner, in which there was a running joke about a mysterious place deep in the forest called the Skonk Works. There, a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. Of the 552 public libraries in Texas, only 73 received this award in 2022. One main building still remains at 2777 Ontario Street in Burbank (near San Fernando Road), now used as an office building for digital film post-production and sound mixing. Kellys 14 Rules and Practices" are still in use today as evidenced by our small, empowered teams, streamlined processes and culture that values attempting to do things that havent been done before. Durward Kirby was the announcer. 4 Declassified Facts About Lockheed Martin's Legendary 'Skunk Works' I've never heard anyone mention this, but Capp is 100% responsible for inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad Magazine. The essential spirit of the division was captured perfectly on July 15, 1955, in an entry from Kelly Johnsons logbook, after a frantic race to ready the U-2 for its inaugural test flight: Airplane essentially completed. Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor. An American folk event, Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday entirely created within the strip. Everybody almost dead.. Comparing Capp to other contemporary humorists, McLuhan once wrote: "Arno, Nash, and Thurber are brittle, wistful little prcieux beside Capp!" [9] She is consistently the toughest character throughout Li'l Abner. And then they would deliver. On paper, the specifications read like works of pure fantasy: a spy plane capable of taking crystal-clear photographs from 70,000 feet. 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. Though lightning-fast, the Blackbird was not invisible. 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. Most notably, a majority of classified testing is thought to be conducted at sites such as the Nevada Test Site. Li'l Abner Yokum: Abner's character was 6feet 3inches (1.91m) tall and perpetually 19 years old. Shmoos were originally meant to be included in the 1956 Broadway Li'l Abner musical, employing stage puppetry. Missions Impossible: The Skunk Works Story | Lockheed Martin The manned A-12 and the drone were designated as M-21 and D-21 or "Mother" and "Daughter." Written and drawn by Al Capp (1909-1979), the strip ran for 43 years - from August 13, 1934, through November 13, 1977. One month after the ATSC and Lockheed meeting, the young engineer Clarence L. Kelly Johnson and other associate engineers hand delivered the initial XP-80 proposal to the ATSC. 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. 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. The secret facility was housed in a large tent at what is now Burbank Airport. [1][2][3] The Sunday page debuted six months after the daily, on February 24, 1935. Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. The U-2 ceased overflights when Francis Gary Powers was shot down during a mission on May 1, 1960, while over Russia. Li'l Abner - Wikipedia Privacy Terms of Use EU and UK Data Protection Notice Cookies. This vital reconnaissance, unobtainable by other means, averted a war in Europe and a nuclear crisis in Cuba. 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. Fellow employees quickly adopted the name for their mysterious division of Lockheed and eventually "Skonk Works" became "Skunk Works.". Our Inspiration. Li'l Abner visits the corrupt Squeezeblood comic strip syndicate in a classic Sunday continuity from October 12, 1947. 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."[51]. The odor put out by Skonk Works was so hideous people avoided the area and the people who worked there. 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. Among the actors originally considered for the title role were Dick Shawn and Andy Griffith. [55] Kurtzman eventually did spoof Li'l Abner (as "Li'l Ab'r") in 1957, in his short-lived humor magazine, Trump. It has also developed. [6] 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. 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. as asides, to bolster the effect of the printed speech balloons. Li'l Abner also featured a comic strip-within-the-strip: Fearless Fosdick was a parody of Chester Gould's plainclothes detective, Dick Tracy. Without any formal office to spare, the group rented an old circus tent, "and on a handshake the project would begin, no contracts in place, no official submittal process." John Updike, calling Li'l Abner a "hillbilly Candide", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean. 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. From beginning to end, Capp was acid-tongued toward the targets of his wit, intolerant of hypocrisy, and always wickedly funny. "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. 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. Within three years Abner's circulation climbed to 253 newspapers, reaching over 15,000,000 readers. 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. A 1950 cover story in Time even included photos of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. After 1989, Lockheed reorganized its operations and relocated the Skunk Works to Site 10 at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, where it remains in operation today. Tiny Yokum: "Tiny" was a misnomer; Li'l Abner's kid brother remained perpetually innocent and 1512 "y'ars" old despite the fact that he was an imposing, 7-foot (2.1m) tall behemoth. Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years, who worked under his direct supervision. Ben Rich and "Kelly" Johnson set the origin as June 1943 in Burbank, California; they relate essentially the same chronology in their autobiographies. In 1949, when the all-male club refused membership to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip Teena, Capp temporarily resigned in protest. According to publisher Denis Kitchen, Capp's "hapless Dogpatchers hit a nerve in Depression-era America. Skunk Works was responsible for several innovative aircraft designs, beginning with the P-38 Lightning in 1939, followed by the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. FactSnippet No. Our Services. Four operational missions were conducted over China, but the camera packages were never successfully recovered. Origin of the name "Skunk Works" The name originated from cartoonist Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip, which featured an outdoor still called the "Skonk Works" in which "Kickapoo Joy Juice" was manufactured from old shoes and dead skunks. A rapidly growing German jet threat gave Lockheed an opportunity to develop an airframe around the most powerful jet engine that the allied forces had access to, the British Goblin. Besides being fearless, Fosdick was "pure, underpaid and purposeful", according to his creator. Publicity campaigns were devised to boost circulation and increase public visibility of Li'l Abner, often coordinating with national magazines, radio and television. He lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his pint-sized parents. Though his uncle Tiny was perpetually frozen at 15.mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}12 "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. The name "Skunk Works" was taken from the moonshine factory in the comic strip "Li'l Abner." Where it was originally spelled "Skonkworks" and their swill was made from old boots and dead skunks. 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. One day, Culvers phone rang and he answered it by saying Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking. The joke was not lost on his coworkers and soon the employees adopted the name for their mysterious part of Lockheed. 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. Natural landmarks included (at various times) Teeterin' Rock, Onneccessary Mountain, Bottomless Canyon, and Kissin' Rock (handy to Suicide Cliff). The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Lil Abner, which was immensely popular from 1935 through the 1950s. No one was to discuss the project outside the small organization, and team members were warned to be careful of how they answered the phones. Capp claimed that he found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with, "I didn't start this Mammy Yokum did." "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. 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). [46][47] 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. But where did the term come from? The NCS had originally disallowed female members into its ranks. The phrase "skunk works" originated from the aeronautics industry, and in that context it had a specific meaning (and still does). Several years later, the U.S. Air Force became interested in the design, and it ordered the SR-71 Blackbird, a two-seater version of the A-12. 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. Later, Capp licensed and was part-owner of an 800-acre (3.2km2) $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas. Skunk Works Wiki - everipedia.org Flying Mach 3.2 at 100,000 ft. , the SR-71 operated in hostile airspace with complete impunity. These scaled-down demonstrators, built in only 18 months, were a revolutionary step forward in aviation technology because of their extremely small radar cross-section. . Her authority was unquestioned, and her characteristic phrase, "Ah has spoken! Gary Herbert says 'tone' of fundraising will change amid criticism", "Dogpatch Confidential" by Dennis Drabelle (, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Li%27l_Abner&oldid=1141466385, Al Capp claimed that he always strove to give incidental characters in, "Ef Ah had mah druthers, Ah'd druther", "As any fool kin plainly see!" Aerospace research facility in the United States, "Skunk works" redirects here. 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. Schertz, Texas 78154. [27] 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. Over the years, the Skunk Works division in Palmdale, California, was given a more official moniker, Lockheeds Advanced Development Programs, but its mission remained unchanged: build the worlds most experimental aircraft and breakthrough technologies in abject secrecy at a pace impossible to rival. ), yet Capp would not budge. 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". The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!! In response to the question "Which side does Abner part his hair on? Initially owned and syndicated through United Feature Syndicate, a division of the E.W. The Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. One day, Culver's phone rang and he answered it by saying "Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking." Contest (1951), the Roger the Lodger Contest (1964) and many others. 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. Skunk Works meaning and philosophy explained. 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."[35]. 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. Conceived in 1943, the Skunk Works divisiona name inspired by a mysterious locale from the comic strip LiL Abnerwas formed by Johnson to build Americas first jet fighter. The name skunkworks came about by accident. Pappy Yokum utters this tagline when, thinking he is dreaming, actually commands a bottle genie to do his bidding. In the comic strip Li'l Abner, the "Skonk Works" makes oil from the ground up dead skunks for some unknown . Building on obscure research that showed radar beams could be diverted by angled triangular panels, the Skunk Works team designed the F-117 Nighthawk. Skunkworks Robotics - Our Inspiration - WildApricot Pappy Yokum: Born Lucifer Ornamental Yokum, pint-sized Pappy had the misfortune of being the patriarch in a family that didn't have one. The Schertz Public Library has received the 2022 Achievement of Library Excellence Award from the Texas Municipal Library Directors Association (TMLDA). 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. [10] 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. Outside the comic strip, the practical basis of a Sadie Hawkins dance is simply one of gender role-reversal. Frigid, faraway Lower Slobbovia was fashioned as a pointedly political satire of backward nations and foreign diplomacy, and remains a contemporary reference. (The relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) 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. 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. Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. This dunks Upper Slobbovia into Lower Slobbovia, and raises the latter into the formera classic example of a literal revolution. The Skunk Works had predicted that the U-2 would have a limited operational life over the Soviet Union. In his seminal book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan considered Li'l Abner's Dogpatch "a paradigm of the human situation". No other cartoonist to date has come close to Capp's televised exposure. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skunk_Works&oldid=1140117891, Lockheed Martin-associated military facilities, Research organizations in the United States, Research and development in the United States, Buildings and structures in Burbank, California, Buildings and structures in Palmdale, California, Science and technology in Greater Los Angeles, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 14:51.
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