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Come For the Palooka, Stay For the Farts! · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. This is a Pollukaville episode. A
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Speaker 1: big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: Remember Pellucaville. It wasn't that fancy at all. It was
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Speaker 2: like a burger hot dog kind of joint, very like
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Speaker 2: kind of monster themed. They were like, yeah, like I
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Speaker 2: don't know, like sci fi horror. It was this place
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Speaker 2: in the Avondale, State's neighborhood of Atlanta that Ben and
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Speaker 2: I both loved, like you know, chili suck aspe as
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Speaker 2: you stuck on a chili dog.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. They had great pork burgers.
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Speaker 1: They had way too many versions of milk shapes and
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Speaker 1: fruity drinks. That is none other than the legendary mister
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Speaker 1: Noel Brown.
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Speaker 2: And that's my friend Ben, who is not a Pelukah
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Speaker 2: I know.
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Speaker 1: Oh, we're gonna have fun with this one. We got
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Speaker 1: We've got big Friday energy thanks to our research associate Andrea,
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Speaker 1: who not too long ago was rewatching pulp fiction and
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Speaker 1: fell in love with a word. Now we're all etymology
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Speaker 1: nerds here and we've all been in that situation where
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Speaker 1: a word just catches you and you got to know
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Speaker 1: everything about it. Noel Andrew was telling us when she
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Speaker 1: was watching Pulp Fiction, an amazing film, there was a
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Speaker 1: one liner, a throwaway line where someone says you looking
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Speaker 1: at something, friends, and the response is.
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Speaker 2: You wait, my friend Poluca. Yeah, it's Vence talking to
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Speaker 2: Butch whose last name escapes me, played by John Travolta
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Speaker 2: and Bruce Willis, respectively. Bruce Willis is sort of a
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Speaker 2: a shamed boxer. He's meant he's known for taking dives.
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Speaker 2: Let's just say in the plot of the story, and
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Speaker 2: not to spoil a thirty year old movie at this point,
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Speaker 2: but three two to one spoiler, he doesn't take the
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Speaker 2: dive at one point, and he bets on himself. I think,
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Speaker 2: and he told I think he kills the guy actually,
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Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken, and that leads to him being
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Speaker 2: on the s h I T list of one Marsalis Wallace,
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Speaker 2: who's kind of the big bad in the film. When
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Speaker 2: John Travolta's character Vence Vega encounters him at a bar
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Speaker 2: and he says, you look into some friend, that's what
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Speaker 2: the boxer guy says, and to which Travoltzay's character respond,
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Speaker 2: you ain't my friend, Peluka, referencing the fact that he
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Speaker 2: was a shamed, disgraced boxer who was known for having
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Speaker 2: no moral character. I think that's how I always took it.
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Speaker 2: He even follows it up with calling him punchee, which
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Speaker 2: is another fun old timey term that we use a lot,
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Speaker 2: referring to being kind of having big Friday energy.
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Speaker 1: Right right exactly now. Immediately r pal Andrea says, what
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Speaker 1: the heck is a pelluca? And we're paraphrasing you there, Andrea, because.
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Speaker 2: It's a family show.
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Speaker 1: But she said something like that, and she realized she
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Speaker 1: had seen this word before in a comic strip, Brenda Starr.
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Speaker 1: And this is where in this comic strip, specifically, someone
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Speaker 1: calls a bank Robert who's using her as a hostage,
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Speaker 1: a big polluca.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, something you could hear set in almost like a
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Speaker 2: Jersey admitted atlantic y. Yeah, big yeah, big Polluka cocking
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Speaker 2: out something like that, yeah yeah.
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Speaker 1: Oh. And let me correct that Brenda Starr was a
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Speaker 1: we're talking specifically about the film adaptation.
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Speaker 2: Starrin Broke Shields.
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Speaker 1: Of the original comic strip. And so now we learn
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Speaker 1: that the literal definition of polluka is synonymous with lout. However,
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Speaker 1: learning the origin of the word takes us on a
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Speaker 1: strange and unexpected journey, NOL. How would we set this up?
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Speaker 1: I guess we got to mention Joe Pluka comics.
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Speaker 2: Joe Pluca comics not to be confused with Bazooka Joe,
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Speaker 2: which is a bubblegum brand that contained a comic right
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Speaker 2: considered to be very low quality comics within those bubblegum rappers.
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Speaker 2: But Joe Pluka is a comic strip that debuted in
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Speaker 2: newspaper syndication I believe in nineteen thirty, while Brenda Starr
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Speaker 2: came out a decade later in June of nineteen forty.
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Speaker 2: So it made a sense that Star be jumping off
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Speaker 2: of that popularized term. I'm considering that the forties setting
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Speaker 2: of the strip. It also makes sense that Vince Vega
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Speaker 2: in pulp fiction would use that term as an insult
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Speaker 2: to Butch, Like I said, who was a disgraced boxer,
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Speaker 2: Because there's history there.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Joe Peluka, just like Butch is a pugilist.
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Speaker 2: The words it's new for me a boxer, really, that's
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Speaker 2: what that but isn't pugilism also like a concept that's
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Speaker 2: more referring to being overly aggressive perhaps.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, pugilist is anyone who fights with their hands,
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Speaker 1: got it?
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Speaker 2: And pugilistic is an adjective that can refer to someone
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Speaker 2: who is can be more generalized as someone who is
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Speaker 2: like by nature aggressively belligerent and prone to fighting. Guard
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Speaker 2: dog to.
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Speaker 3: Jump in here real quick, because I want to see
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Speaker 3: if this is hot. Why Ben knows this one as well?
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Speaker 3: I only know that because of elder strolls.
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Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting.
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Speaker 3: There's there's like a there's I think it's a scar
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Speaker 3: on it, but it might be oblivion where there's there's
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Speaker 3: a there's a some like gonale that improved like on
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Speaker 3: on armed like damage or something like that.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, like a buff, Yeah, boxer's buff. And if you
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Speaker 2: do type in pugilistic and pugilism, it really does come
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Speaker 2: directly up as boxing. So you're one hundred percent never
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Speaker 2: heard that term used to refer to the actual sport.
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Speaker 2: So I learned something new today in addition to everything
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Speaker 2: else that we learned for today's least.
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Speaker 1: Oh and sadly you know the reason. Maybe pugilist is
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Speaker 1: not as well known, even though it's a great word.
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Speaker 1: Is possibly because after a certain amount of traumatic brain injury,
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Speaker 1: it's going to be tough for the boxers to remember
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Speaker 1: specific words.
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Speaker 2: And again the next insult that Vincent Lobbs is punchy,
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Speaker 2: which does refer to that condition that you're describing. Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: So let's go to a pre interesting conversation about this.
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Speaker 1: From an exchange on Reddit, someone asked, is it possible
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Speaker 1: that Peluka just meant a tough guy? But after the
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Speaker 1: creation of the character Joe Pluka, it took on the
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Speaker 1: meaning bad boxer. It seems that even even for pretty
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Speaker 1: determined researchers, the origin of peluka was mysterious.
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Speaker 2: That's right. The term did start appearing in print in
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Speaker 2: the early nineteen twenties and came to be used as
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Speaker 2: a stand in for a clumsy or unskilled boxer. Now,
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Speaker 2: Butcher and pulp Fiction isn't necessarily unskilled, but he is
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Speaker 2: one who has compromised his integrity as a sportsman in
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Speaker 2: favor of taking dives for organized criminals. And it's an
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Speaker 2: interesting kind of character arc because what sets off his
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Speaker 2: storyline in the film is him failing to do that
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Speaker 2: thing and in fact maybe being sick of it and
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Speaker 2: just you know, sick of being laying down, let's just say,
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Speaker 2: and he actually goes a bit too far and does
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Speaker 2: kill the guy, leading to one of the intersecting plot
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Speaker 2: lines of pulp fiction.
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Speaker 1: Like I was saying, mm hmm, yeah, and it's it's
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Speaker 1: always uh, I guess, heart wrenching to see someone whose
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Speaker 1: career is in decline.
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Speaker 2: And our guy.
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Speaker 1: Was always and also ran he was never going to
8:19
Speaker 1: be Muhammad Ali. Again, pulp Fiction is a great film
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Speaker 1: if you somehow have not seen it. Not all of
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Speaker 1: it aged super well, but there's there's high art to it.
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Speaker 1: So the idea of Joe Peluka in the comic strip
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Speaker 1: is that he is a champion boxer. He's really good.
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Speaker 1: Maybe the author thought it would be funny or cute
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Speaker 1: satirical to name a great to give a great boxer
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Speaker 1: a bad name, essentially Joe Klamzibasa, But maybe the word
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Speaker 1: had some other earlier meaning and it got transformed by
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Speaker 1: the popularity of this comic strip.
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Speaker 2: And just really quickly to add, speaking of clumsy boxers,
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Speaker 2: this is a story that I wasn't super familiar with
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Speaker 2: and maybe one for another day. But there was a
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Speaker 2: former boxer by the name of it so aptly named
9:14
Speaker 2: Eric Crumble, who is an American boxer former boxer who
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Speaker 2: is notable for his absolute horrific performance. He was considered,
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Speaker 2: at least in this bio that I'm reading, the most
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Speaker 2: prolific of American boxers in terms of consistent losses since
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Speaker 2: his debut in nineteen ninety. I love that his name
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Speaker 2: is Crumble. He just comes apart, right.
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Speaker 1: What a backhanded way to describe that he's prolific losses.
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Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, And there's some good info on this
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Speaker 2: dude out there if you want to read more, So
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Speaker 2: that would be a quintessential Peluca is mister Eric Crumble.
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Speaker 1: And Peluka gets further, He gets further embedded in the
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Speaker 1: zeitgeist with the creation of Popeye the sale Man.
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Speaker 2: Do check out our previous episode ONOS. We had a
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Speaker 2: good time and some big Friday energy on that one too.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this has the cartoon when it comes out,
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Speaker 1: adapting from the comic strip, has a theme song we
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Speaker 1: all know.
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Speaker 2: The oh yeah yeah.
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Speaker 1: The theme song has this line, I'm one tough gun
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Speaker 1: gush who hates shawsh.
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Speaker 2: He's pop by the sailor man. I think it's funny
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Speaker 2: that line. It kind of changes if I'm not mistake
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Speaker 2: is you know, of course I fights through the finish
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Speaker 2: because I eats finished. And then there's different ones. But
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Speaker 2: this is one that I did not recall. But boy,
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Speaker 2: has this been living rent free in my head. I'm
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Speaker 2: one tough Kazukas who hates all pe Lucas. It's kind
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Speaker 2: of poetically brilliant rhyme scheme if you ask me, Gazukas
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Speaker 2: and Pelucas. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: Also, we tried to figure out what a gazukas is.
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Speaker 2: Uh.
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Speaker 1: It is an unspecified.
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Speaker 2: Term like dad zooks, right, Like, it's sort of like
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Speaker 2: a non since word that gets its own kind of
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Speaker 2: various uses, right. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: In the nineteen twenties, apparently Gazuka's slangly meant an unspecified item,
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Speaker 1: a thingy or a gadget. So he's like, I'm one
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Speaker 1: tough do dad. Yeah, that hates Pelucas. Yeah that makes sense.
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Speaker 1: I get that as a stand in. Also, you know
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Speaker 1: what word is coming to mind from this era too
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Speaker 1: is galute.
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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, big galutes. That's say, right, a clumsy, foolish
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Speaker 2: or silly person. There's also a sense of also a galute,
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Speaker 2: perhaps being a bit borish and.
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Speaker 1: Large, Yeah, a bit brutish, maybe not the brightest crayon
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Speaker 1: in the box. This also taps into a long standing,
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Speaker 1: hopefully friendly rivalry that existed back then and exists in
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Speaker 1: the modern day. Popeye is a navy guy. He's a sailorman,
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Speaker 1: and of course he would hate Joe Peluca, who is
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Speaker 1: an army dude, an army boxer.
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Speaker 2: Okay, okay, So it did make our researcher, Andrea wonder
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Speaker 2: if the word had only become a term for an
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Speaker 2: apt boxer in response to people that didn't like the
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Speaker 2: way Joe was represented in the comic strip. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because Joe, like so many other comic strip characters,
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Speaker 1: reflected the era. He looked more and more like the
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Speaker 1: current heavyweight champ every time the comic strip was published,
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Speaker 1: and there was another heavyweight champ until Joe Lewis starts
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Speaker 1: to rise in the boxing ranks, the pugilism ranks, and
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Speaker 1: the artist of Joe Peluka said, oh, well, we have
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Speaker 1: to keep our pattern. We may need to turn Joe
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Speaker 1: Poluca into a black character white. It gets into a
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Speaker 1: little bit of cultural analysis, because white heavyweight champions represent
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Speaker 1: to a lot of people white male dominance at the time.
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Speaker 1: Peluca therefore a fictional representation of that. But then if
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Speaker 1: the world and culture recognizes there may soon be a
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Speaker 1: black heavyweight champ, they made the decision not to draw
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Speaker 1: Joe Poluca, not to transform him into a black character,
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Speaker 1: and so instead, maybe this is a speculation, the word
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Speaker 1: Peluca then became synonymous with not a champion boxer, but
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Speaker 1: a guy's not as.
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Speaker 2: Good because wait, just as backtrack real quick, because the
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Speaker 2: character of Joe Peluca was a badass, right originally Yeah,
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Speaker 2: see okay, So it wouldn't necessarily have been something that
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Speaker 2: was intended at that point, right to use it as
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Speaker 2: a negative, Like he was presented sort of as like
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Speaker 2: a champion.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and Joe Lewis is so good at what he
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Speaker 1: does in the ring that people started referring to his
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Speaker 1: opponents as the quote bum of the month. Everybody knew
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Speaker 1: they were going to get their bell rung. So the
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Speaker 1: simplest likelihood of Joe Poluka's effect on the word Poluka
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Speaker 1: as a phrase, which we're obviously all in love with
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Speaker 1: and bringing back it may have just been something where
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Speaker 1: new boxers entered the ring and people were trash talking, like,
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Speaker 1: look at this guy, who's he think he is the
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Speaker 1: next Joe Peluka.
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Speaker 2: Look at him in his goose suits. That's for another day.
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Speaker 2: It can't be you. You know why it can't be you?
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Speaker 2: You know why? For sure? Sure, So this leads us
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Speaker 2: to the perhaps simplest explanation, it's only a matter of
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Speaker 2: time before we get to our pals at the Oxford
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Speaker 2: English Dictionary, which references a book from nineteen twenty called
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Speaker 2: Character Glimpses by Australian Albert Oris Cooper. It's use in
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Speaker 2: there is unrelated to boxing, and instead just refers to
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Speaker 2: a more generally idiotic, stupid, buffoonish, clumsy, perhaps the worst
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Speaker 2: thing of all, mediocre person.
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Speaker 1: A stupid, clumsy, mediocre person. As you said, the specific
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Speaker 1: line you know we're referring to here is the following.
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Speaker 1: Alger just pen a ticket on that Peluca for parking again.
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Speaker 1: That fire plug that guy got increasingly southern in the south.
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Speaker 1: The quote right, so yeah, that's the quote that that
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Speaker 1: we're referencing. That first appears in prints, right Poluca, So
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Speaker 1: it also may have appeared in boxing publications in nineteen
15:34
Speaker 1: twenty three. As far as we know. Uh, there's a
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Speaker 1: quote we'd love to give you about boxing from Pennsylvania's
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Speaker 1: Altuna Tribune.
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Speaker 2: Boy oh boy. Peluca is a new word, much used
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Speaker 2: lately to describe what was formerly called a hit out,
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Speaker 2: a setup, a sucker, a bowhunk, a pushover. All of
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Speaker 2: these words mean a very poor fighter. The origin of poluca, however,
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Speaker 2: is unknown unknown.
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Speaker 1: Uh so, okay, the author of that first attestation, that's
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Speaker 1: what we call it, the first time a word emerges
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Speaker 1: in print. The Australian guy that you mentioned earlier, Noel
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Speaker 1: Albert Horace Cooper, was a military man who was in
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Speaker 1: the service from nineteen sixteen to nineteen twenty. He came
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Speaker 1: back at the end of his service in London and
16:22
Speaker 1: he was stationed in Bonn as part of the first
16:26
Speaker 1: Infantry Division for about two years at the end of
16:30
Speaker 1: the war. There may therefore be a military origin to
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Speaker 1: the use of poluca. So we know it had a
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Speaker 1: prior meaning, but it did not have necessarily the meaning
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Speaker 1: tough guy, so much as it had the meaning of
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Speaker 1: this guy thinks he's you know, hot hot potatoes, exactly
16:52
Speaker 1: fresh beans.
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Speaker 2: He thinks he's.
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Speaker 1: Fresh beans this guy, so it was probably used in
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Speaker 1: boxing before the creator of the character Joe Peluca.
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Speaker 2: Well, that would make sense. Yeah, I mean, it's not like,
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Speaker 2: you know, the dude that created that character just summoned
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Speaker 2: it from thin air. Comic strips, to your point, Ben,
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Speaker 2: were always meant to be a reflection of the zeitgeist
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Speaker 2: and of you know, what was going on at the time,
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Speaker 2: So he would have pulled from what he knew, I
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Speaker 2: would conjecture, Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, So Vincent Vega, therefore, is not not just pulling
17:26
Speaker 1: dumb insults out of thin air. He is referring directly
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Speaker 1: to pugilism, because Vega is that there's always this like
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Speaker 1: subtext in pulp fiction that Vega is smarter than he presents.
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Speaker 2: And also he's he drives a classic car. He addresses
17:45
Speaker 2: of that era. He you know, obviously this is Quentin
17:48
Speaker 2: Tarantino writing, and this dude's into all this stuff. But
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Speaker 2: Vincent Vega's character, in particular, his use of this word
17:56
Speaker 2: kind of represents that old timey sensibility that he yes.
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Speaker 3: If I could jump in here real quick. Actually, my
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Speaker 3: counter will always be what happens to Vincent Vega later
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Speaker 3: in the movie when he interacts with Bruce Willis, which
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Speaker 3: is probably the dumbest thing he could possibly do. And
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Speaker 3: I'll leave it at that, so I don't spoil it.
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Speaker 3: But I do also want to point at the whole
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Speaker 3: fact that I compared Pull Fiction to Finnigan's Wake just
18:18
Speaker 3: to watch.
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Speaker 2: Ben get angry. I haven't read finnigans Wake.
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Speaker 3: Wake infamously starts out in the same place.
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Speaker 1: Right, That's excellent an observation, Max. But we'll let me
18:27
Speaker 1: save you some time.
18:29
Speaker 2: I remember you got a bone to pick with the shit.
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Speaker 1: I don't think Jeans Joyce read Finnigan's way. That's fair
18:34
Speaker 1: if we're being honest, all right, Sorry James.
18:37
Speaker 2: Anyway, some of the guy that was really into farting, yes, yeah,
18:41
Speaker 2: took out that episode on James Joyce. That one's PG. Eighteen.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we're very friendly, inclusive people in
18:50
Speaker 1: real life. We don't joy keep shaming, but boy he
18:54
Speaker 1: was on one.
18:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, king shaming, but like just the letters, boy,
18:58
Speaker 2: oh boy, and make a sailor blush.
19:00
Speaker 3: We beaped every profanity in that episode, but we have
19:03
Speaker 3: an internal like rating that we use here. iHeart our service.
19:06
Speaker 3: That just kind of says like you know, flag stuff
19:08
Speaker 3: like you know, when we talk about like wars and
19:10
Speaker 3: stuff like that will flag like you know, meetings like that.
19:12
Speaker 3: Sexual content was like highest level possible for that episode.
19:17
Speaker 1: We may have set a deep record for that one. Anyway,
19:20
Speaker 1: we just want to we just want to do the
19:22
Speaker 1: one line while we're here because we have such.
19:24
Speaker 2: A bone to pick. Give it to us.
19:27
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. We took some time, all fair just
19:31
Speaker 1: to find this. We're not going to give you the
19:33
Speaker 1: whole thing. You're gonna have to listen to the episode.
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Speaker 1: But he does say things like, and he's talking to
19:39
Speaker 1: the love of his life.
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Speaker 2: He says, you.
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Speaker 1: Had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and
19:43
Speaker 1: I have fed them out of you. Big fat fellows,
19:46
Speaker 1: long windy ones, quick little Mary cracks, a lot of tidy,
19:52
Speaker 1: naughty little fartings. Indeed, in a long gush from your hole.
19:57
Speaker 2: You've made this episode. Our race is now now the
20:00
Speaker 2: children can't enjoy. It's for literal I know it.
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Speaker 1: It is from literagure, come from the Peluka, get tricked
20:07
Speaker 1: into the farts.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Uh, it's crazy though, what we're saying, what we're talking
20:12
Speaker 1: about now again, I love falling for one specific word.
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Speaker 1: Why are people familiar with some comic characters of Yesteryear
20:23
Speaker 1: but not Joe Peluca. Apparently it comes down to a
20:29
Speaker 1: feud between two creators. The creator of Joe Peluka is
20:33
Speaker 1: a guy. I know you love this name. No Hammond, ham.
20:37
Speaker 2: Fisher, ham Fisher, ham Fisher. It's good. I think I
20:40
Speaker 2: said off area. That was one of the most like
20:42
Speaker 2: thirties forties names. Ever. It's me ham Fisher. I can
20:46
Speaker 2: just imagine them like roasting a bean the train yard.
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Speaker 1: I'm picturing, yeah, I love it, with a stick and bindle.
20:52
Speaker 1: I'm also picturing, like the the weirdest job in a
20:58
Speaker 1: foregone age.
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Speaker 2: I'm a Fisherman of Ham, Fisher of Ham. Yes, this
21:04
Speaker 2: was my.
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Speaker 1: Father, my father's father before him.
21:09
Speaker 2: Weather rivers overflow with steamed hams.
21:12
Speaker 1: Yes, steamed hams. Al Cap is the guy who beefs
21:17
Speaker 1: up with ham Fisher. Al Cap created the comic strip
21:21
Speaker 1: Oh beefs Up? I didn't.
21:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, al Cap beats up with Ham beating up with Ham.
21:25
Speaker 2: That should be the name of the book about There
21:29
Speaker 2: should be a book.
21:30
Speaker 1: Al Cap is the creator of another comic strip called
21:33
Speaker 1: Lil Abner.
21:34
Speaker 2: You've heard of that one. I mean that is a
21:36
Speaker 2: lot of times used as a general stand in. What's
21:40
Speaker 2: that term ben for old timey comic strip?
21:43
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like metotomy for it. Right. Yeah,
21:47
Speaker 1: So we we know that at the peak of their
21:51
Speaker 1: careers in the nineteen fifties, these guys are legit superstars.
21:56
Speaker 1: Ol cap is read by ninety million reader. He makes
22:01
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand US dollars a year. Can we do
22:04
Speaker 1: an inflation calculator on that?
22:07
Speaker 2: We must. That's a b preak there and boob dude.
22:13
Speaker 1: So five hundred thousand dollars in the nineteen fifties is
22:18
Speaker 1: equivalent to four million US dollars today. Inflation is just crazy, man,
22:25
Speaker 1: This guy is a serious artist. He is known as
22:28
Speaker 1: is his work at least is known. This may not
22:30
Speaker 1: well have been the age of like celebrity creators quite
22:33
Speaker 1: as much. You know, he probably wasn't as known, but
22:36
Speaker 1: his characters certainly were. Yeah, now, help out our buddy
22:40
Speaker 1: the hemman. Yes, ham Fisher, that's right. Well, you know what,
22:44
Speaker 1: let's just hear from an expert R. C. Harvey of
22:47
Speaker 1: the Comics Journal, who tells the delightful meet cute story
22:51
Speaker 1: one version of it anyway, we're going to get to
22:53
Speaker 1: that here. How the two matt was a story they
22:56
Speaker 1: both agreed on.
22:57
Speaker 2: Caps swung his left leg out sideways, almost dragging it
23:01
Speaker 2: forward for each step, and his stride had a practiced rhythm,
23:04
Speaker 2: a rolling gait punctuated by a profound dip every time
23:07
Speaker 2: he transferred his weight to his left leg, the wooden one.
23:11
Speaker 1: This just got interesting, by the way.
23:13
Speaker 2: That's all right. Yeah, it is a little bit of
23:15
Speaker 2: a pimpwalk, and you want to keep on, keep it,
23:17
Speaker 2: keep it wrong. Yeah.
23:18
Speaker 1: But it wasn't the lurch that attracted the attention of
23:21
Speaker 1: the man in the limousines so much as it was
23:24
Speaker 1: the sheaf of paper in a blue wrapper that the
23:27
Speaker 1: tottering stroller had tucked under his arm.
23:31
Speaker 2: Good stuff. The man in his limousine was a cartoonist,
23:34
Speaker 2: and he thought he recognized the blue wrapping paper it was,
23:37
Speaker 2: he believed, the paper his syndicate used to wrap rejected
23:40
Speaker 2: artwork in when returning it to hapless supplicants.
23:45
Speaker 1: Pull up alongside that fellow, the man said to his chauffeur,
23:49
Speaker 1: And he turned to the woman seated next to him
23:51
Speaker 1: and said, I bet that guy is a cartoonist.
23:54
Speaker 2: The subject of this wager. The young man rolling along
23:57
Speaker 2: the sidewalk on Eighth Avenue near Columbus Circle was a
24:00
Speaker 2: somewhat shabby specimen who, despite the chill of the spring day,
24:04
Speaker 2: was hatless and nearly coatless. But he didn't need a hat.
24:07
Speaker 2: He had a shaggy mop of thick black hair. He
24:12
Speaker 2: had only been in New York for a few weeks,
24:14
Speaker 2: and the six dollars he'd arrived with had long since evaporated.
24:19
Speaker 2: If it had not been for the kindness of his landlady,
24:22
Speaker 2: who's boundless faith in her tenant's artistic skill prompted her
24:26
Speaker 2: to stake him to his assault on the citadels of
24:29
Speaker 2: the mass media, he would have been back in his
24:32
Speaker 2: native Boston. Basically paraphrasing, his landlord let him stay in
24:37
Speaker 2: her attic without paying rent, and sometimes she would give
24:40
Speaker 2: him some pocket money so he could eat one hundred percent.
24:43
Speaker 2: And this is such beautiful language, but it goes on
24:46
Speaker 2: a bit, So why don't we just kind of sum
24:48
Speaker 2: up what happened? This is essentially a somewhat hyperbolic kind
24:53
Speaker 2: of myth making kind of stuff. In this particular version
24:57
Speaker 2: of the story, ham Fisher is kind of painted as
24:59
Speaker 2: the saviors of young al Cap and offers him a job.
25:04
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, not known as al Cap yet.
25:08
Speaker 2: This kid is Alfred G. Kaplan.
25:10
Speaker 1: And when this fancy pants dude says hey like a guy,
25:16
Speaker 1: stops his limousine and says, I bet my sister, you're
25:19
Speaker 1: a cartoonist?
25:20
Speaker 2: Are you hell? What day is in Christmas Day? Set? Exactly?
25:25
Speaker 1: Fish me the finest time in all of Harlem. So
25:30
Speaker 1: he had sold a few cartoons our buddy Alfred in
25:33
Speaker 1: New York and Boston, but he wasn't doing it full time.
25:37
Speaker 1: It was kind of catches catch can where you still
25:39
Speaker 1: have to have a day job.
25:41
Speaker 2: Ben Can I just say you got pretty close Nail
25:43
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood. We're in the Upper West Side, which
25:47
Speaker 2: is you know, the little past Harlem. Thank you, sir,
25:50
Speaker 2: we know that.
25:52
Speaker 1: A year prior to this, I love what you said
25:55
Speaker 1: about it being a meek you. A year prior to
25:57
Speaker 1: this moment, al had been in New York and he
26:01
Speaker 1: was he got one of the golden geese of a
26:04
Speaker 1: cartoonist at the time, a syndicated cartoon feature There's about
26:08
Speaker 1: a pompous young jerk, a blowhard. But he didn't love it.
26:13
Speaker 1: A real galute, a real poluca, a real peluca.
26:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
26:16
Speaker 1: So he gave it up and he went back to Boston.
26:20
Speaker 1: And it's a good thing he did, because he had
26:23
Speaker 1: just gotten married and that's not the ideal long distance relationship.
26:28
Speaker 2: Visit, that's right. So six months later he gets back
26:30
Speaker 2: to the Big Apple to give it another go. At
26:33
Speaker 2: this point, we are squarely in the midst of the
26:36
Speaker 2: Great Depression. They didn't call it that at the time.
26:38
Speaker 2: As you point out Off and Ben, fourteen million folks
26:42
Speaker 2: were out of work in New York City. There were breadlines,
26:45
Speaker 2: nearly a million jobless, with twenty nine New Yorkers potentially
26:49
Speaker 2: dying of starvation every single year. But this fancy pants,
26:54
Speaker 2: this high falutin character, riding around isolated from the horrors
26:59
Speaker 2: of of New York City life behind the you know,
27:03
Speaker 2: the protective glass of his limo, offered this hapless young
27:07
Speaker 2: fellow ten dollars to do some drawings for him and
27:11
Speaker 2: Kaplan or al CAPPIs he would later sign himself. Agreed,
27:15
Speaker 2: of course.
27:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's such a flex Hello from my limousine,
27:20
Speaker 1: you pull cartoonist, here's a tetta.
27:24
Speaker 2: It was a big deal when he realized who it
27:25
Speaker 2: was because this is a guy that was known, Like
27:28
Speaker 2: to my point, earlier, the average comic strip reader might
27:31
Speaker 2: not have known who this guy was. But this dude
27:33
Speaker 2: is a comic writer artist. He knows who the big
27:37
Speaker 2: players are, and when he realizes this, it's a big
27:41
Speaker 2: revelation for him.
27:42
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah. So, initially they have a pretty
27:47
Speaker 1: good relationship, you could even say mentor mentee. But by
27:52
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties they have been feuding for quite some time.
27:57
Speaker 1: They had their own versions of the meeting story, and
28:02
Speaker 1: these two versions began to increasingly diverge. McLean's magazine was
28:08
Speaker 1: very interested in this, and on April first, nineteen fifty
28:13
Speaker 1: they published both cartoonist version of the story.
28:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, they sure knew. The version that we ever counted
28:21
Speaker 2: as far is a little bit of a combo deal, right, Yeah,
28:25
Speaker 2: so Ham says from his account, Ham Fisher says exactly
28:31
Speaker 2: what we had described earlier.
28:32
Speaker 1: He agrees with the loose order of operations, but he
28:37
Speaker 1: also says he also embellishes a bit on his own behalf.
28:44
Speaker 1: He says, Look, I invited him for lunch in my limo.
28:48
Speaker 1: I didn't tell him my name. I asked him what's
28:50
Speaker 1: your favorite comic strip? And he said Joe Peluka. And
28:56
Speaker 1: then eventually, when they went back to his place for lunch,
29:00
Speaker 1: Cap sees a portrait inscribed to Ham and he goes,
29:05
Speaker 1: why it's you. You are Ham Fisher. He begged me
29:09
Speaker 1: for a job. I had an assistant. I didn't know
29:11
Speaker 1: if I could afford another wink, very self aggrandized.
29:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, come give.
29:16
Speaker 1: Us just like a few more details.
29:18
Speaker 2: On this guy seems to think quite highly of himself.
29:21
Speaker 2: Let's see, I took pity on him and gave him
29:23
Speaker 2: a job lettering and inking. Many months later, I was
29:26
Speaker 2: going on a week's vacation. Cap came up just as
29:29
Speaker 2: I was leaving and demanded a fifty dollars a week raise.
29:32
Speaker 2: I sneered that I wouldn't be able to go away
29:34
Speaker 2: if he refused to work. I blew up. I fired
29:37
Speaker 2: him and took the work with me.
29:39
Speaker 1: And then he says, you know, he gets back from
29:41
Speaker 1: vacation and he says, and Cap just kept calling me
29:46
Speaker 1: begging for his job back. I got him a job
29:51
Speaker 1: with the United Feature Syndicate and he started some kind
29:55
Speaker 1: of hillbilly' strip called loel Abner. It was so similar
29:59
Speaker 1: to the hill Billies I created in Joe Peluka. I
30:03
Speaker 1: protested to the syndicate. Cap apologized and said he would
30:07
Speaker 1: change it, and he never did.
30:09
Speaker 2: Basically, I mean, to be fair, you can't really own
30:14
Speaker 2: Hillbillies as a concept. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, and
30:18
Speaker 2: you give the people what they are. If the Hillbilly
30:20
Speaker 2: strips are doing well, you give them Hillbillies.
30:24
Speaker 1: And so we go to Again. It's wild that this
30:27
Speaker 1: is published at the same time in the same magazine.
30:31
Speaker 2: It's confusing though, too, because like later we see another
30:33
Speaker 2: statement from Fisher where he kind of contradicts what was
30:36
Speaker 2: purported to be a statement from him in the first place,
30:39
Speaker 2: Like it wasn't it him meant to have said that
30:41
Speaker 2: he took six weeks vacation. I'm confused because then he
30:44
Speaker 2: later has to say, I never took six weeks vacation
30:47
Speaker 2: in my life. Yeah, it's it's like that.
30:50
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, it's it's like that interview with Rick James
30:54
Speaker 1: in The Chappelle Show where he says he never messed
30:57
Speaker 1: with the couch and then he immediately he says, yeah,
31:00
Speaker 1: messed up his couch to keep him lying. Yeah, there
31:04
Speaker 1: is some self contradiction. Absolutely, Cap Fire's back, and he says, look,
31:10
Speaker 1: Cam Fisher's story about picking me up in his car
31:13
Speaker 1: after accosting me in New York.
31:16
Speaker 2: Street is truthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. He is absolutely
31:23
Speaker 2: galled by the implication that he was hired as a letturer,
31:27
Speaker 2: because that was what considered I think, a more lowly position,
31:30
Speaker 2: or like an entry level position, and he said, no,
31:32
Speaker 2: I was hired as an artist. I was just as
31:34
Speaker 2: skilled as anyone else, you know, working for the publication. Uh,
31:37
Speaker 2: and that is what I was brought in to do.
31:40
Speaker 2: He then gets real personal, saying that Fisher is himself
31:45
Speaker 2: a fraud. He's not an artist at all. He's an
31:48
Speaker 2: idea man and he cannot draw it all these except
31:50
Speaker 2: for a few simple chalk talk So I love that tricks.
31:54
Speaker 2: So when he says he took the drawings with him,
31:57
Speaker 2: it's a pathetic claim. I never told him Joe Peluka
32:01
Speaker 2: was my favorite strip. It's the kind of strip I deplore,
32:05
Speaker 2: the glorification of punches and brutishness. Wow, what a they're
32:11
Speaker 2: so bad?
32:19
Speaker 1: He says, I was making nineteen bucks a week, and
32:22
Speaker 1: then later I'll set the record that too, Yeah, twenty
32:24
Speaker 1: two bucks a week, while I was working for Fisher,
32:27
Speaker 1: and he says, I drew all of his Sunday pages.
32:31
Speaker 1: I created all of the characters. I wrote every line.
32:36
Speaker 1: And that time he told you guys, he went on
32:39
Speaker 1: a vacation. He wasn't gone for one week, he was
32:41
Speaker 1: gone for six. He didn't leave me any money. We
32:44
Speaker 1: had to live on what my wife was making, and
32:47
Speaker 1: so I whipped up Lil Abner with my free time. Basically,
32:52
Speaker 1: I sold the cartoon to United Features Syndicate. And that
32:55
Speaker 1: part where he says he got me a job with
32:57
Speaker 1: United is the part I am most bitter about. When
33:00
Speaker 1: he found out I was with United, he threatened to
33:03
Speaker 1: sue for three years. He tried everything to get me fired.
33:07
Speaker 1: These guys hate.
33:08
Speaker 2: Each other, they really do at this point. Yeah, it's
33:11
Speaker 2: kind of a I mean rip by the way Brian
33:13
Speaker 2: Wilson with the Beach Boys such of who I think
33:15
Speaker 2: we all love and respect and meyer everything he brought
33:19
Speaker 2: to music production, you know, songwriting, an absolute legend of
33:25
Speaker 2: an individual who beefed openly with Mike Love of the
33:29
Speaker 2: Beach Boys, who claimed that they wrote a lot of
33:31
Speaker 2: those songs together. They suit each other. It was a
33:34
Speaker 2: very similar rivalry with a lot of he said. He said, potential,
33:39
Speaker 2: you know, revisionist history. There. I am team Brian Wilson
33:43
Speaker 2: all the way. Mike Love I find to be insufferable.
33:45
Speaker 2: Even when he was asked about Brian's passing, he made
33:48
Speaker 2: it about him and immediately said, all these brilliant songs
33:51
Speaker 2: we co created, no thanks.
33:54
Speaker 1: I mean, Brian Wilson just was a prophet in the world.
34:01
Speaker 2: Music, out of the universe. I mean, I can't unbelievable,
34:04
Speaker 2: especially with the hormone. We should do an episode on Brian.
34:07
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, and there is I don't typically like biopics,
34:10
Speaker 2: but there is a film called I Believe, Love and
34:13
Speaker 2: Mercy that is about Brian Wilson and it shows two
34:16
Speaker 2: eras of his life. It's played by John Cusack and
34:18
Speaker 2: the older and oh gosh, the kid who plays the
34:21
Speaker 2: Preacher and there will be blood whose name is totally
34:24
Speaker 2: escaping me. Paul Dana plays the younger Brian Wilson, and
34:28
Speaker 2: I really love it. It's very artistically done and not
34:30
Speaker 2: just like kind of a glaze fest like some of
34:33
Speaker 2: these other biopics.
34:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of glaze fest and being wankish. Being wakish,
34:42
Speaker 1: Fisher fires back and says, I've never had six weeks
34:45
Speaker 1: vacation in my life.
34:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's the weirdest part because he the way it's
34:50
Speaker 2: attributed in the publication, it made it sound like he
34:53
Speaker 2: was saying while I was away on vacation, this stuff transpired.
34:57
Speaker 2: So it may well be some creative license on the
35:00
Speaker 2: part of the folks were counting these stories as well,
35:03
Speaker 2: I think is getting Yeah.
35:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so Hamm is saying, look, when this al
35:07
Speaker 1: guy worked for me, I never had more than a
35:11
Speaker 1: week of vacation. He says, I'm amazed at caps effrontry.
35:15
Speaker 1: His entire statement is false, and he says he's grossly
35:18
Speaker 1: exaggerating this stuff, saying that I sued him, I made
35:22
Speaker 1: a complaint because he was spreading this lie that he
35:26
Speaker 1: created some of the Joe Peluca sequences. And he says
35:31
Speaker 1: ultimately that company apologized to him when he when he
35:36
Speaker 1: launched that complaint. And Noel, we were talking a little
35:40
Speaker 1: bit about this offline. There there's a lot of back
35:43
Speaker 1: and forth. We've given you sort of the broad strokes
35:46
Speaker 1: of what happens. But speaking of strokes, there's there's a
35:51
Speaker 1: saucy that we just have to share true scandal and
35:56
Speaker 1: I think it's a real good way to Cap to
35:58
Speaker 1: al Cap. This one nice.
36:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it involves I don't know, man, it reminds
36:04
Speaker 2: me of or at least in the conspiracy angle of
36:08
Speaker 2: the what we're gonna get to in the discussion of
36:09
Speaker 2: what actually happened those rogue Disney artists that like snuck
36:13
Speaker 2: penises and the like Loyal made arts and like some
36:16
Speaker 2: of those like you know, things that are real by
36:18
Speaker 2: the way that they have been removed from a lot
36:20
Speaker 2: of the reissue versions, streaming versions, But there definitely were
36:24
Speaker 2: some naughty bits hidden in some Disney animations, and this
36:29
Speaker 2: story involves some very naughty bits printed uh in the
36:33
Speaker 2: lit l Abner cartoon.
36:34
Speaker 1: That Disney stuff is an excellent comparison, all right. You
36:38
Speaker 1: need to know that these guys are taking shots at
36:42
Speaker 1: each other in their work. They are mocking each other
36:47
Speaker 1: through the characters that they create and through the situations
36:51
Speaker 1: those characters find themselves in. So they are again like
36:56
Speaker 1: much slightly petty stuff getting hardcore dude fish relating Fisher
37:01
Speaker 1: gets plastic surgery, and so Cap makes fun of him
37:05
Speaker 1: in his comic, and they're constantly just just taking shots
37:11
Speaker 1: at the bow of each other, and Fisher will not
37:15
Speaker 1: stop talking trash. This is where we go to an
37:19
Speaker 1: excellent observation by Morris Weiss, or Weiss who was interviewed
37:25
Speaker 1: in the Comic Journal we mentioned earlier.
37:27
Speaker 2: Fisher won't stop going on about the potential plagiarism, the
37:32
Speaker 2: idea that Cap stole his characters. He just got real
37:36
Speaker 2: personal and mudslingy and raving about, according to Weiss, Caps
37:42
Speaker 2: being a sex maniac. Right, and this notion he put
37:47
Speaker 2: out there in the public that he was hiding pornographic
37:51
Speaker 2: images and plain sight in his little Abner cartoons. And
37:55
Speaker 2: so now we've got a full blown like censorship witch hunt, right,
38:00
Speaker 2: I mean truly a moral panic, which wouldn't you say
38:02
Speaker 2: to a degree one hundred percent?
38:05
Speaker 1: Man, this is the He is trying so hard to
38:10
Speaker 1: come off as the wronged party, but he sounds increasingly deluded. Yeah, yeah,
38:17
Speaker 1: he said, great things are happening to me now. The
38:20
Speaker 1: detective that al Cap had following me to get dirt
38:23
Speaker 1: on me, well, that detective is now working for me.
38:27
Speaker 2: What And there's a cover story in Time magazine that
38:30
Speaker 2: blows the lid off of this whole thing. They said
38:33
Speaker 2: that Fisher had certain panels of Little Labner enlarged and
38:36
Speaker 2: zoomed in on circled graphic details in red that he
38:40
Speaker 2: believed were hidden or believed whatever, or was just being
38:43
Speaker 2: a crazy person pornographic subliminal messages. I'm not just the
38:48
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's just he's like, look at the nose. Really,
38:51
Speaker 2: think about the note, Think about what else looks like
38:54
Speaker 2: you nose, y'all. And he distributed to editors of the
38:57
Speaker 2: newspapers that were carrying the strips like he is on
38:59
Speaker 2: a slow and burn, scorched earth campaign against this dude.
39:04
Speaker 2: And he is saying that there's subliminal pornography designed to
39:07
Speaker 2: undermine the youth of the nation and urges the newspaper
39:11
Speaker 2: editors to drop caps cartoon entirely.
39:14
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, even though he may be behaving
39:17
Speaker 1: a bit irrationally, he is a big deal himself. He's
39:20
Speaker 1: not just some guy writing to these papers. And in
39:24
Speaker 1: the strip examples that he provides and disseminates, he says, quote,
39:28
Speaker 1: this insane perverted pornography is from Little Abner. Yes, this
39:33
Speaker 1: is what al capp has perpetrated for fifteen years. Are
39:37
Speaker 1: the unsuspecting editors of American newspapers. Now normally right in
39:44
Speaker 1: an attempt to create a moral panic, people will generally
39:49
Speaker 1: ignore a lot of this stuff. But because we're in
39:53
Speaker 1: the dawn of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, and because
39:58
Speaker 1: comic books are increased seemly targets of criticism, and as
40:02
Speaker 1: you said, all the safety of the children, this is assigned.
40:08
Speaker 1: This problem is assigned to the Joint Committee on Comics.
40:12
Speaker 1: They're the folks who decide whether or not to censor comics.
40:15
Speaker 1: And so now the idea is that ham Fisher has
40:21
Speaker 1: escalated this Poluka argument so much so that he's not
40:25
Speaker 1: just attacking his former protegee al Capp, he may have
40:29
Speaker 1: consequences for the entire industry of comics.
40:33
Speaker 2: Well, I mean he he. There's a committee assembled, the
40:37
Speaker 2: Joint Joint Committee from I believe the Cartoonist Society, that
40:41
Speaker 2: investigates this stuff and determines that the images that were
40:46
Speaker 2: being submitted to them had been doctored or it's implied.
40:49
Speaker 2: It's very much. It says here in the in the
40:53
Speaker 2: findings of the report from Raymond. Alex Raymond, the president
40:58
Speaker 2: at the time of the Cartoon Society, I am convinced
41:01
Speaker 2: after seeing the photostats reproduced in the report of the
41:04
Speaker 2: Joint Committee, compared with the original drawings of Lil Abner
41:07
Speaker 2: from which the photostats were made. That someone distorted, cropped, faked,
41:11
Speaker 2: wrongfully emphasized, and twisted your material during the process of
41:15
Speaker 2: reproduction to make it appear pornographic. Such machinations could cause
41:19
Speaker 2: the work of any contemporary artist to appear erotic, but
41:22
Speaker 2: Fisher never copped to it. So make of that what
41:28
Speaker 2: you will. But it sure seems like this dude was
41:30
Speaker 2: getting increasingly unhinged and bitter, and it's exactly the kind
41:34
Speaker 2: of thing someone would do in that state, right.
41:38
Speaker 1: Right, exactly, And this is where we see you know,
41:42
Speaker 1: we see echoes even now today with famous celebrity beefs. Right.
41:47
Speaker 1: And the story goes on that we know that Fisher
41:52
Speaker 1: never admits to doctoring the illustrations, even though everybody else
41:57
Speaker 1: thinks he did.
41:58
Speaker 2: He won't let it die either, He keeps bringing it
42:01
Speaker 2: back up, and then eventually there's some consequences for the guy.
42:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Kep has always denied that he had drawn
42:08
Speaker 1: these offensive examples of what we call it subliminal pornography,
42:13
Speaker 1: so he still became somewhat toxic in this environment. Right,
42:18
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to work with people in his ordinarily
42:23
Speaker 1: routine ways, and he kept appealing over and over again
42:27
Speaker 1: to that thing. We just mentioned the Cartoonist Society to say, Hey,
42:31
Speaker 1: this Fisher guy is crazy.
42:34
Speaker 2: He is he trying to ruin me. Please do something.
42:38
Speaker 1: Take it to the ethics committee, which is a real
42:40
Speaker 1: thing the Cartoonist had there, and they said, all right,
42:43
Speaker 1: we're going to call Fisher to account for his behavior.
42:47
Speaker 1: We cannot prove that he made the forgeries, but we
42:51
Speaker 1: definitely know he circulated them. We also we think he's
42:58
Speaker 1: up to something hinky because they found handwritten comments in
43:03
Speaker 1: the borders of these alleged pornographic depictions, and it was
43:07
Speaker 1: definitely ham Fisher's handwriting. So he gets his he gets
43:12
Speaker 1: yelled at, essentially, right, the Cartoonist, the Society's board of Governor's.
43:17
Speaker 2: Censures him more. There we go, Yeah, that's the right word. However, again,
43:22
Speaker 2: maybe because he wouldn't let it go, it keeps coming
43:26
Speaker 2: back up, and then there are more investigations that look
43:29
Speaker 2: into it and do ultimately rule that he doctored these.
43:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this doesn't have the happiest of endings. We're
43:39
Speaker 1: on a real strange journey from just falling in love
43:42
Speaker 1: with the word Peluka. But I would argue, knoweled that
43:45
Speaker 1: there is a possibility of mental instability that may have
43:50
Speaker 1: launched him on this strange crusade.
43:53
Speaker 2: Absolutely right, Yeah, yeah, crusade. I mean, that's a great
43:57
Speaker 2: way of putting it. And on January twenty fourth, nineteen
43:59
Speaker 2: fifty five, Fisher gets summoned to a special meeting of
44:02
Speaker 2: the Society, the Cartoon Society's Board of Governors to hear
44:05
Speaker 2: charges presented by the Ethics Committee, who charged Fisher with
44:10
Speaker 2: doctoring the drawings and circulating the forgeries in a blatant
44:14
Speaker 2: attempt to discredit and ruin CAP acts which were determined
44:19
Speaker 2: to endanger the creative well being of not only CAP
44:25
Speaker 2: but every cartoon. This is the stuff that has farther
44:28
Speaker 2: reaching implications. It has to be nipped in the butt
44:30
Speaker 2: here or else someone else could use these same tactics
44:33
Speaker 2: to ruin others in the industry just because they have
44:36
Speaker 2: a personal vendetta.
44:38
Speaker 1: It's kind of like deep fakes at the time. Absolutely yes,
44:43
Speaker 1: And they're also saying, look, don't don't make us appear
44:47
Speaker 1: to be a bunch of purved out James Joyce's that's it,
44:50
Speaker 1: I promise it's so. Here is why we think there
44:55
Speaker 1: may have been some sort of mental issues involved. On
44:59
Speaker 1: December twenty seventh, nineteen fifty five, Ham and Ham, Fisher
45:05
Speaker 1: purposely overdoses on pills and he dies as a result.
45:10
Speaker 1: And this is the only time. This is how the
45:13
Speaker 1: feud ends, because Fisher takes it to his grave. The
45:17
Speaker 1: story of Joe Peluka continues a little bit afterwards. For
45:21
Speaker 1: four years after Fisher expired, one of his assistants, mo
45:26
Speaker 1: lef drew the strip, and he had been doing the
45:30
Speaker 1: cartoonist version of ghost writing since the late nineteen thirties.
45:36
Speaker 2: Well, let's also recall that Fisher was accused right, not
45:40
Speaker 2: really being able to draw that well in the first place.
45:43
Speaker 1: And that is the strange, fascinating and disturbing story behind
45:51
Speaker 1: the Great Peluca feud.
45:54
Speaker 2: I really went some places, man, unexpected. Yeah, very much, Mike,
45:58
Speaker 2: no doubt it. Really us have similar intersecting kind of
46:03
Speaker 2: threads there. So huge thanks to research associate extraordinary Andrea
46:09
Speaker 2: for this one. This was a real whot.
46:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, big, big thanks to our super producer Max Peluka Williams.
46:15
Speaker 2: Big thanks to A. J.
46:16
Speaker 1: Bahamas, Jacobs and of course uh Jonathan. Strictly I was
46:22
Speaker 1: gonna do a joke aka the Quist, but I'm not.
46:25
Speaker 2: I'm not in a bit of a peluca. No, No,
46:29
Speaker 2: he's not big enough to be a pooch. There we go.
46:33
Speaker 2: He's a Kazukas. He's a Kazukas. Definitely a gazuka.
46:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, big, thanks to the roup. Dude's a ridiculous crime.
46:40
Speaker 1: Thank you, folks so much for tuning in. Join us
46:43
Speaker 1: in the future. We have, as always, some fresh baked
46:47
Speaker 1: ridiculous history coming to you. No, Noel, can we bring
46:52
Speaker 1: back the phrase poluca? Do you think we can just
46:54
Speaker 1: start deploying it in like work calls and stuff.
46:57
Speaker 2: I think we should. We'll see a next time, folks.
47:07
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
47:10
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.