Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot of EC
Publications' Mad magazine. The face had drifted through American pictography for
decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it on
the bulletin board in the office of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff, later
a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
History
Since his debut in Mad, Neuman's likeness, distinguished by jug ears, a missing front tooth, and one eye disquietingly
lower than the other, has graced the cover of all but a handful of the magazine's 450+ issues. His face does not translate well
to profile, and thus he has almost always been shown in full frontal view or in silhouette.
The first use of this face by Kurtzman came November 1954 on the back cover of Ballantine's The Mad Reader, a
paperback collection of reprints from the first two years of Mad. The character's first appearance in the comic book was
on the cover of Mad 21 (March 1955), barely visible as part of a mock ad: a rubber mask bearing his likeness with "idiot"
written underneath was offered for $1.29. Kurtzman began to introduce other running gags at this time, notably the word
Potrzebie.
Mad's official black-and-white version of Alfred.
His third appearance was in the border of the first magazine version of Mad 24 (July 1955) with his now-familiar
signature phrase "What, me worry?" written underneath. Initially, the phrase was rendered "What? Me worry?". This border would be
used on the cover of every issue up until Mad 30 (December 1956) and thereafter appear on the table of contents page of
the reprint series More Trash from Mad from 1958 to 1960 and The Worst from Mad from 1958 to 1961. Neuman also
appeared, by name only, in an early Don Martin feature, "Alfred E. Neuman Answers Your
Questions." In it, Neuman answered a letter from a suicidal reader by giving "expert advice" on the best technique for tying a
hangman's knot.
The character was also briefly known as Mel Haney. In Mad 25, the face and name were brought together as Alfred
E. Neuman, but in that same issue, the face appears with the name Mel Haney.
In late 1956, Neuman's identity became fixed, when he appeared on the cover of Mad #30 as a write-in candidate for the
Presidency. His features, which had first been rendered in black-and-white by Bill Elder,
were fine-tuned and recreated in color by Norman Mingo. It was this image that appeared on
the cover of issue 30, and which became the character's defining portrait. Beginning with issue 30, and continuing to the present
day, Neuman has appeared on the cover of every issue of Mad and its spinoffs, in one form or another, with the exception
of a small handful of issues. One such exception was Mad 233 (September 1982) which replaced Neuman's image with that of
Pac-Man.
Mingo painted seven more Neuman covers through 1957 and later became the magazine's signature cover artist throughout the
1960s and 1970s, although Kelly Freas rendered Neuman for Mad from 1958 to
1962. A female version of Alfred, named Moxie Cowznofski and occasionally described in editorial text as Alfred's "girlfriend,"
appeared briefly during the late 1950s. Alfred and Moxie were sometimes depicted side-by-side, defeating any speculation that
Moxie was possibly Alfred in female guise. Her name was inspired by Moxie, a soft drink
manufactured in Portland, Maine which was sold nationwide in the '50s and mentioned almost obsessively (usually as the butt of a
joke) in early issues of Mad.
Mad routinely combines Neuman with another character for its cover images. Neuman has appeared in a slew of guises,
including Santa Claus, Darth Vader, George Washington, King Kong, Baby New Year, Lawrence of Arabia, Batman, Robin, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Rosemary's Baby,
George S. Patton, the Fiddler on the Roof,
Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Barbra
Streisand, Mr. T, Indiana Jones, Radar O'Reilly, Bruce Springsteen, Mr.
Spock, Pee Wee Herman, Michael Jackson, a
California Raisin, Don King, Robin Hood, Abraham Lincoln, Guns N'
Roses' Slash, the Man in the Moon, an
Oscar statuette, Jabba the Hutt, Wolverine, Gollum, Spongebob
Squarepants, Agent Smith from The
Matrix,Kurt Cobain Shrek, Dr. Octopus, The Incredibles' Jack-Jack, George W. Bush, Justin Timberlake, Harry Potter, Barry Bonds, the Mona Lisa, and Uncle
Sam ("Who Needs You?") among many other familiar faces. Since his unsuccessful run in 1956, he has periodically been
re-offered as a candidate for President with the slogan, "You could do
worse... and always have!"
Considering Neuman's ubiquity as a cover boy, it is perhaps ironic that the single highest-selling issue of Mad
depicted only his feet. The cover image, spoofing the 1973 film The Poseidon
Adventure, showed Neuman floating upside-down inside a life preserver.
Along with his face, Mad also includes a short humorous quotation credited to Neuman with every issue's table of
contents. Some of these quotations were collected in the book, Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman (Warner
Treasures, 1997), illustrated by Sergio Aragonés.
Neuman is now used exclusively as a mascot and iconic symbol of the magazine, but before this status was codified, he was
referenced in several early articles. In one, he gave "advice" to supposed letters; in one of his replies, a suicidal reader was
instructed on the best way to tie a knot. Other articles featured the school newspaper of "Neuman High School," and a bulletin
from "Alfred E. Neuman University." An article entitled "Alfred E. Neuman's Family Tree" depicted historical versions of Neuman
from various eras. Since then, Neuman has appeared only occasionally inside the magazine's articles. A recurring feature titled
"Poor Alfred's Almanac" showed his face atop the page, but otherwise the character had no involvement. In an issue in
1968, Alfred's face was assembled, feature by feature, from parts of photographs of well-known
politicos, including then-President Lyndon B.
Johnson (left ear), Richard Nixon (nose), Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield
(eyes), and Ronald Reagan (hair). The gap in his teeth (using the grin of Dwight D. Eisenhower,) came from "The 'Credibility Gap' Created by Practically All
Politicians."
Neuman's famous catch phrase is the intellectually uncurious "What, me worry?" This was
changed for one issue to "Yes, me worry!" after the Three Mile
Island nuclear meltdown in 1979. On the cover of current printings of the
paperback The Ides of MAD, as rendered by long-time cover artist Norman Mingo, Alfred is portrayed as a Roman bust with his catch phrase engraved on the base, rendered, of course, into Latin-- Quid, Me Vexari?
Over the decades, Neuman has often appeared in political cartoons as a shorthand for unquestioning stupidity. In recent years,
Alfred E. Neuman's features have frequently been merged with those of George W. Bush by editorial cartoonists such as
Mike Luckovich and Tom Tomorrow. The image has also
appeared on magazine covers, notably The Nation, [1]) and in numerous Photoshop images and
GIF files in which Neuman's face morphs into Bush's. A large Bush/Neuman poster was part of the
Washington protests that accompanied Bush's 2001 inauguration. The alleged resemblance between the two has been noted more than
once by Hillary Clinton. On July 10,
2005, speaking at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival, she said, "I sometimes feel that Alfred E.
Neuman is in charge in Washington," referring to Bush's purported "What, me worry?" attitude. [2] Neuman's features have also been compared to others in the public eye, including
Prince Charles, Ted Koppel,
Oliver North and David Letterman.
Alfred E. Neuman's surname is very frequently misspelled as "Newman."
Genesis
Neuman's origins are shrouded in mystery and may never be fully known. It is possible that he was inspired, at least in part,
by 19th-century medical pictures of people with deficiency
diseases or hormone imbalances. Of note, many medical doctors describe a striking
similarity to the face of patients with Williams syndrome. Similar faces also turned
up in advertising for "painless" dentistry. A face virtually identical to Neuman's appears in the 1923 edition of the University
of Minnesota humor magazine "The Guffer," above the caption "Medic After Passing Con Exam in P. Chem."
Neuman's image has also been used negatively, as a "supporter" of rival political candidates, with the idea that only an idiot
would vote for them; in some of these instances, there was also the implication that the "idiot" was in fact a Jewish caricature. An almost-identical image appeared as "nose art" on an
American World War II bomber, where it was sometimes referred to as "The Jolly Boy". Mad has published a photo of a World War II
bomber's nose bearing a painted image almost identical to the modern Alfred E. Neuman, over the motto "Who Me Worry" (not "What,
Me Worry?", Alfred's modern catchphrase).
When Mad was sued for copyright infringement by a woman claiming to hold the rights to the image, one defense it used
was that it had copied the picture from materials dating back to 1911. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and the boy's face is now
permanently associated with Mad.
Since the EC editors had grown up listening to radio, this was frequently reflected in their stories, names and references.
The name "Alfred E. Neuman" derived from comedian Henry Morgan's "Here's Morgan"
radio series on Mutual, ABC and NBC. One character on his show had a name that was an obvious reference to composer
Alfred Newman (1901-70), who scored many films and also composed the familiar fanfare that
accompanies 20th Century Fox's opening film logo. The possible inspiration for Henry Morgan was that Laird Cregar portrayed Sir
Henry Morgan in The Black Swan (1942) with Tyrone Power, and the Oscar-nominated score for that film was by Newman.
Listening to the sarcastic Morgan's brash broadcasts, the Mad staff took note and reworked the name into Alfred E.
Neuman, as later recalled by Kurtzman:
- The name Alfred E. Neuman was picked up from Alfred Newman, the music arranger from back in the 1950s and 1940s. Actually, we
borrowed the name indirectly through The Henry Morgan Show. He was using the name Alfred Newman for an innocuous character
that you'd forget in five minutes. So we started using the name Alfred Neuman. The readers insisted on putting the name and the
face together, and they would call the "What, Me Worry?" face Alfred Neuman.
Morgan later became a Mad contributor, with "The Truth about Cowboys" in issue #33.
Carl Djerassi's autobiography claims that in Vienna
after the Anschluss, he saw posters with a similar face and the caption Tod den Juden
("Death to Jews" or "the Death of the Jews"). A few years later, in 1940, those opposing Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third-term reelection bid distributed postcards with a similar
caricature.
The definitive research on Alfred E. Neuman can be found in Maria Reidelbach's
comprehensive bestseller, Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine (Little, Brown, 1991), since Mad
publisher Bill Gaines gave her total access to the magazine's own files, including the collection of Neuman-related images
assembled for legal purposes at the time of the Neuman lawsuit.
The missing tooth restored
Alfred E. Neuman's most prominent feature is his gap-toothed grin, which has appeared on nearly every issue of Mad. A
notable exception was the November 2001 issue, the first to be produced following the 9-11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The cover showed a close up of Neuman's mouth,
but his gap was now filled with a red, white and blue tooth in the pattern of an American flag.
In 1983, Neuman was featured with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The cover
showed E.T. preparing to board his spaceship, using his famous "healing finger" to touch Alfred E. Neuman's mouth and make a new
32nd tooth appear, giving him a full smile.
In 1986 #263 Alfred's missing tooth shows up behind the bar-code with the text: "NEVER BEFORE REVEALED! A CLOSE-UP PHOTOGRAPH
OF ALFRFED E. NEUMAN'S MISSING TOOTH"
Neuman also appeared as himself in a political cartoon, after Newsweek had been criticized
for using computer graphics to retouch the teeth of the mother of the McCaughey
septuplets. The cartoon had a split-screen comparison, where Alfred E. Neuman was featured on the cover of Mad with
his usual gap-toothed grin, then also featured on the cover of Newsweek, but with a perfect smile.
Appearances outside of Mad
- In an extended sequence of the comic strip Peanuts from 1973 (and later recreated in
the TV special, It's An Adventure, Charlie Brown in 1983), Charlie Brown becomes so
obsessed with baseball that everything round starts looking like a baseball to him. Soon his own round head develops a pattern
that makes the back of his skull look like a baseball, and he starts wearing a paper bag on his head to hide it. Ironically,
while hidden from view, his popularity and respect increase. (In the TV special, he is suggested to go away to camp for about a
week as well. While there he is referred to by the other campers as Mr. Sack, but is also voted camp president and is admired
very much by the others.) The pattern eventually fades from his head, but Charlie Brown still fears that the next round thing he
expects to see-- a sunrise-- may continue to look like a baseball. When the sun does rise, it instead looks like Alfred E.
Neuman, with a halo reading: 'What! Me Worry?'.
- In the Simpsons episode Marge in
Chains, Marge meets Tattoo Annie who has a fold-in tattoo that reveals Alfred E.
Neuman with the text: "What me Worry?". The original phrase was "What kind of slime would I marry?"
- In the Simpsons episode The City of New York vs. Homer
Simpson, Bart comes into contact with Alfred E. Neuman during a visit to the
Mad offices. Neuman demands to see "Kaputnik and Fonebone" (which are references to late long-time Mad artists
Dave Berg and Don Martin, respectively) for their work on 'New Kids on the
Blecch' (which would later become the title of another episode), and requests some "fershlugginer pastrami sandwiches". An awestruck Bart announces that he'll "never wash these eyes again."
- In the Simpsons episode New Kids on the Blecch, Bart's boy band is
booked to play a gig on an aircraft carrier, but their band manager plots to use the craft's weaponry to destroy the Mad
offices when he discovers the magazine plans to publish a defaming article about the band. Mad's New York headquarters
were depicted as an office building with a giant three-dimensional replica of Alfred's head mounted on the roof.
- In Oliver Stone's 1986 Vietnam film Platoon, a doodle of Alfred along with the
catchphrase, "What, me worry?", can be seen on the helmet of Lt. Wolfe, played by actor Mark Moses.
- The August 1971 cover of National Lampoon merged Neuman's features with those of
the court-martialed Vietnam War murderer William
Calley, complete with the catch phrase, 'What, My Lai?"[3]
- In Daffy Duck's Quackbusters episode "The Night of the Living Duck" among the
freakish nightclub "patrons" (such as Dracula) is Alfred E. Neuman.
- Episode #602 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 features
Invasion U.S.A., which was directed by Alfred E. Green. Upon
seeing Green's name in the film's opening credits, Crow T. Robot, in a slightly idiotic
tone, riffs "What? Me direct?"
- In Episode #818 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, featuring Devil Doll, Tom
Servo remarks that the living ventriloquist dummy Hugo looks like "Alfalfa E. Neuman."
- Alfred E. Neuman is referenced by the Beastie Boys on their song "Shadrach," featured on their second studio album, Paul's
Boutique.
- Alfred E. Neuman - misspelled as Newman - is used as a reference to Prince
Charles's looks in the webcomic Least I Could
Do.
- A live-action version of Alfred E. Neuman -- an uncredited actor wearing a mask -- appears briefly in the 1980 film
Up the Academy which was originally released to theaters as Mad Magazine
Presents Up the Academy. Mad later pulled its support from the film and all footage of the Neuman character was
excised from North American home video and television releases, alhough it was reinstated for the 2006 DVD release.
- "Al Freddy Newham" was depicted on the cover of the April, 1967 issue of the amateur radio enthusiast's 73 Magazine, preparing to solder the frayed cord of a soldering gun with the same damaged gun.[4]
Listen to
See also
References
- ^ The Nation
- ^ DeFrank,
Thomas M. New York Daily News: "Party's gotta fight back sez Hillary"
- ^ http://www.marksverylarge.com/issues/7108.html
- ^ http://home.wi.rr.com/n9oo/73mag/73_6.html
External links
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