Random Stuff

Ok, last week’s post of cartoons with a fencing theme was very popular and I’m not above giving the people what they want – at least, once in awhile.  I mean, it’s not scoresheets from the 1953 Chula Vista Sabre Invitational, but not everyone has my tolerance for obscure portions of historical minutiae.  But I know we can all agree on cartoons!

As an aside, one of these days I want to put together a collection of all my favorite animated cartoons that have fencing themes.  It starts to thin out pretty quickly after Tom & Jerry’s classic, “Touché, Pussycat!”  Feel free to chime in.  Maybe we can have a movie night in Berkeley.

For this week, I return again to the very useful and entertaining pages of the Halberstadt scrapbooks for a selection of cartoons, this batch dating from 1949 to 1951.

A couple of fun notes.  The fifth one, let’s call it “The Proud Fisherman”, is from the pages of the New Yorker and the original art of that comic is part of the West Coast Fencing Archive’s permanent collection.  So there’s that.  The last one in this series, Ferd’nand by Mik, holds a special place in my childhood memories.  My parents taught elementary school for a year or two in the desert of Southern California near the town of Indio.  (Think Palm Springs, but no shopping.) One of their students was a child of the comic artist, Mik, who drew Ferd’nand, and my parents had a small stack of books filled with Ferd’nand comics, given to them by the artist, that I would ‘read’ endlessly.  Ferd’nand never says anything in any of the comics – no word balloons anywhere, so they were highly enjoyable to my non-reading young self.  Anyway, that one’s at the bottom of this small stack of cartoon enjoyment.

This is the one for which the original art is part of the WCFA collection, acquired from John McDougall.  Thanks John!

This one has been personalized to reflect some personalities of the times.  On the door, someone typed in “Holloway” above ‘Fencing School’.  One of Hans Halberstadt’s paying gig was teaching that the Elizabeth Holloway School of the Theater in San Francisco.

The Ferd’nand also has some writing on it that seems to put names to the characters, but unfortunately I can’t really decipher it.

How prevalent in the world of cartooning is the subject of fencing today?  I’ve recently seen more television ads and print ads featuring my favorite sport, but the classic humor or editorial cartoon?  Maybe I read the wrong magazines.  That’s certainly a plausible answer.  The New Yorker seems to still print cartoons in the way they always have and I really don’t see it very often these days.  And, really, newspapers?  I confess, my wife has us subscribed to the Sunday NY Times, but I seldom read it with any conviction and never hunt through it for editorial cartoons.  Maybe I’m missing a resurgence of cartoons that reference fencing in a more (or less) humorous tone.

What I can do to get my fencing cartoon entertainment value maximized is return to the pages of the Halberstadt Scrapbooks.  I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to lend a hand to the Halberstadt Fencers Club, taking on the task of scanning every page of the four volumes that were started by Hans Halberstadt in the 1940’s and salvaged from water damage in the early 1980’s.  Just under 1,300 individual scans.  The heart of the collection goes from about 1948 until just before Hans passed away in 1966, so almost 20 years of tournament programs, flyers, news clippings, photos, obituaries and cartoons.  I don’t know the number of how many newspapers Hans subscribed to, but it must have been quite a few.  Also possible is that his students would find something and bring it to him, giving Hans the opportunity to preserve it in his own scrapbook.  However the collection was amassed, it’s impressive.  There are a LOT of cartoons scattered throughout the scrapbooks.

The handful I’ve selected for today’s post are not advertisements, although Hans certainly collected a lot of those as well.  These are humorous cartoons for the sake of humor.  They won’t sell you anything, but they might give you a chuckle.  I thought that might be a fun diversion for all of us.  I can’t effectively credit these, as I don’t know from what newspaper or magazine they were cut out from.  Some contain the signature of the artist, some don’t – or at least, the signature didn’t make it into the scrapbook.  I hope no one gets angry at me putting them up here for personal enjoyment.  These are all well into their middle age; they’re even older than me!

I was thrilled to receive an email back in December from Archive reader and Friend of the Archive Kevin Murakoshi who, while perusing Ebay, came across a selection of papers and books that were related to John McKee and the Cavaliers Fencing Club that was in existence in Los Angeles from 1935 until sometime in the late 1980’s or early 90’s.

McKee’s Cavaliers were a very strong club for a long period and McKee himself is credited with training numerous excellent fencers, foremost of which has to be 1952 Olympic finalist and 4-time US National Champion Maxine Mitchell.

The only picture I have of McKee so far, thanks to Andy Shaw of the Museum of American Fencing. McKee in black, standing far left presenting a large plaque.  Maxine Mitchell is 3^rd from the right.

Kevin was kind enough to scan some of the loose documents he acquired and share them with me.  I’m still going through all of them to dig out interesting details, but I thought it would be fun to share two stories in McKee’s own words that were part of a larger document he wrote about the history of his Cavaliers club.  Because what’s better than fencers telling fencing stories to other fencers?

Here are the transcriptions, with pictures I’ve added to enhance the story!

THE GERMAN CHALLENGE

This happened at the Pasadena Y during the War. A young man came to class and asked to see the Master.  Bill Lundeberg broke into my lesson with Maxine and told me I had a visitor.

I introduced myself and asked if I could help him?

“Yes”, he said, “I would like to challenge you to a saber bout.  You may use your own judges and director and if I win, you are to acknowledge, here in your Salle, that Adolf Hitler and his soldiers are better than the Americans!”

I was utterly astounded.  My first thought was how did this Nazi escape our concentration camps.  My second thought was that we were dealing with a nut.  He stared at me waiting for me to make up my mind.  I thought I hit upon a solution.

I called George Seibert over and told him about the challenge.  I could see he thought the same as I did.  I said, “This is most unusual, you know, but I will accept on one condition.”

“And what is that?”, he asked.

“That you acknowledge before the entire class that Hitler and the Third Reich are a bunch of madmen, if you lose!” I replied.

He looked us over for a moment and said, “That seems fair.  I’ll be back next week with my equipment and we can have the bout.”  With this he turned on his heel and left.  Needless to say, the class was disrupted for the rest of the evening.  All the rest of the week I received calls from my students and some of our opponents.  Was I really gong to do this?  Yes, I was!

The night arrived and I never saw so many students show up at once.  There was a reporter from the Pasadena paper.  I picked Seibert to direct and Bill Lundberg, Maxine, Moreene and Todd Ryder to judge.

He never came back!  We didn’t know his name or where he lived or anything about him.  We all agreed on one thing.  He was deadly serious when he made the challenge.  We figured that he couldn’t take a chance on losing.  Or maybe he had been picked up by the police.  Anyway, the excitement was over!

THE ENGINEER’S CHALLENGE

This happened during the war also.  One night at our Long Beach Y class, a young man (about 30 years old) came to class followed by about ten of his students.  He was an engineer at the local airplane plant and conducted classes in saber at his home.  He was of Hungarian descent and fencing was in his blood.  So he told us.

He wanted to challenge our best saber man to a bout.  He had promised his students that he would show them some action. I asked Pat Lowery, our reigning saber champion, to oblige him.  Our challenger had a saber, a mask, and a sweatshirt for a jacket, and no glove.  I told him that he couldn’t fence in this outfit and that we would have to lend him the proper attire.  He became irate at this and stated that he always used this sweatshirt and didn’t use a glove.  He seemed quite desperate about being allowed to fence this way that I assumed he had bragged about this to his students and not to do so would ruin his Macho image in their eyes.

I consented and told Pat privately, that he as to go lightly on him and to avoid hitting his hand.  We squared away and they fenced ten touches.  It was obvious from the start that this Engineer had had only two saber lessons.  Possibly three.  He did not know how to move.  Pat hit him at will simply reaching out and hitting.  Mercifully, Pat got it over with as quickly as possible and I didn’t think he had done much damage.

When the engineer took off his sweatshirt to put on a slip-over sweater, his torso was red with light red welts.  All over.  Front and back.  Across the back of his hand was another one and it was starting to bleed.  I expressed apologies for allowing him to continue when I could see that he knew nothing about it but he would have none of it.  His students thought he was a hero.  They ooohed and aaawed over his welts and the girls looked upon him as a hero.  I guess he had accomplished what he came for. Pat and I were the victims.  They looked at Pat as though they could kill him.  God help him (the Hungarian challenger -ed) had I turned Armand on him.  There was an aftermath!

Several years later I became head of Engineering Research at the same company he worked.  He didn’t work for me in a sense but was under my management.  I called him into my office one day and asked him to sit down.  I gave him some coffee and asked point blank why he had done it?

“Why did I do it?”, he asked.  “I had to.  I had been telling my class about saber as the Hungarians do it.  How brave they are and how you steel yourself to take the blows.  It was the only way I could get any of them to do saber. Then I read about your class and an idea came to me.  I would challenge one of your students to a bout and show them that I wasn’t afraid and would even wear a sweatshirt and use no glove.  This they had to see, so we all came to your class.”

I laughed and said, “Did it work?”

He also laughed and said, “No, it didn’t.  Shortly after that they all quit.  They were afraid I was doing to ask them to go through the same thing.  I guess, in a way, it backfired. I know now that it was a very poor idea and I am glad that my opponent took it easy on me.”

“Yes he did”, I replied, “for awhile I was tempted to turn you over to one of our better hitters.”

He grinned, “Thank you for sparing me that!”

I looked at him for a moment and said, “Pardon me for asking, but where did you learn to fence?”

He replied, “From a book.  Wasn’t that obvious?”

I mercifully dropped the subject.