The New England Life of Cartoonist Bob Montana: Beyond the Archie Comic Strip
160
The New England Life of Cartoonist Bob Montana: Beyond the Archie Comic Strip
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609497866 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2013 |
| Pages: | 160 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Montana the Cowboy Banjoist
He walks out upon the stage in pure white buckskin, silk, broadcloth and silver trappings.
— Metronome, 1926
To fully comprehend the genius, personality and extraordinary talents of cartoonist Bob Montana, it is essential to examine the depth of brilliance that existed within his family. An overabundance of creativity and independence went hand in hand with the Montana name. In addition to possessing a natural artistic talent, it was Bob's childhood experiences that molded his sense of humor. Those unique circumstances sharpened his ability to keenly observe and later record the humorous side of human behavior.
Bob's father, Raymond William Coleman, was born on July 31, 1880, in Emporium, Pennsylvania. By the time the young lad turned ten, his family had moved east and settled on a farm in New Hampshire. Raymond showed an intense interest and talent for music early in life, and as fate would prescribe, the young would-be musician was given a banjo by a friend of the family. That gift started a life-long love affair with the instrument and the romance of music. Later in life, he reflected on the adventure of receiving his first banjo in an article he wrote for Metronome in 1926:
As Grimes would say, a long time ago, one sunny day a carriage load of friends drove up to our front gate of the farm where I lived near Rochester, NH. Among them was a gentleman (I say gentleman because at that time I did not know he played a banjo), who was an attorney and who had learned to play the banjo while at college. He had an old banjo at home that he did not use anymore ... and if I could learn to play a tune on it before he came up again, he would give it to me.
At last the banjo came, an old Stewart — no head, no keys, no strings, just the rim and a neck on it. Brass top hoop and brackets tarnished black. However, I went to work on the task of making something out of it and then learning to play something on it. I whittled keys out of hickory. I carved out a tailpiece and a bridge. The drummer in the town band gave me a broken drumhead which was large enough to make a head for the banjo. I soaked the head and put it on the banjo and of money I had saved by trap shooting received a set of new banjo strings from Rochester. This completed the reconstruction, and the next thing was to learn how to tune it.
About fifteen miles from our farm lived an old maid who, it was said, played a banjo. I wrote her, and in a week or so, I had an answer stating that she could give me lessons for fifty cents each. So, one day, I started for her home on our best horse with the banjo in an old wheat sack. I arrived there about noon, and they were very kind to me. They put the horse in the barn and fed him and took me right into the house for dinner. After dinner, we got out the banjo, and I received the first and only lesson I ever had.
In this lesson, I learned to tune the instrument and played one chord, the first chord in C. I guess the lesson lasted about two hours, and then after the teacher had played all she knew for me, I started for home after paying her the fifty cents for the lesson, the dinner and having the horse taken care of. When I had covered about half the distance to my home, it became dark, and the moon came out. And as I rode along thinking of the banjo, I began to worry about the system for tuning and thought I had forgotten how to tune the banjo.
I had the system for tuning written on a little slip of paper, and so I dismounted, tied the horse to the fence and sat there in the moonlight on the fence and practiced for an hour. From the way that horse pricked up his ears and looked at me, he must have thought I was plum crazy. Maybe I was, but I just kept on getting more crazy over the banjo, and before long, I was playing with an old-time fiddler for country dances, and that was the beginning of my greatest venture.
That was indeed the beginning of something great; music had taken a firm hold of him — it became his life's passion and gnawed at him when he wasn't performing. As he grew up on the family farm, he played the banjo during idle moments and worked incessantly to improve his musical techniques. During the summer season of his last two years of high school, he labored as a cowboy on his uncle's ranch not far from Fort Benton, Montana. It was there that he perfected what would become his well-known plectrum style of playing, with which he could make one banjo sound like two. While relaxing around the campfire after a full day's work, Raymond and a fellow cowboy would play banjo together for hours. Those two seasons spent in Montana had a profound effect on him and would forever guide the direction of his life.
By the time his days in school drew to a close, he was almost eighteen, and the Spanish-American War had become his focus. He quickly volunteered to become a soldier, and by June 1898, he had reached Cuba and was ready to fight. Combat was not in the cards for this soldier. Instead, a fall off of a transport wagon caused him to break both arms, and he returned home after never firing a shot.
Nearly a year later, during the spring, Raymond was anxious to travel and perform, so he joined the C.S. Shaw Overland Circus for one season. Showing the ease with which he could play different instruments, he played the trombone for the circus and saved his expertise on the banjo for the variety concert held after the show.
Once the season was finished, Raymond made an earnest attempt to study law at Cornell University that fall. He remained there as a serious student for two long years. With constant thoughts of taking his banjo show on the road, the bright young man found it difficult to concentrate on his studies. Being true to himself and his talents, he chose to forego the almost-guaranteed financial stability of a lawyer's life in favor of becoming a musician and a performer. His promising career as a lawyer ended; he left school, never to return.
No longer feeling like his wings were clipped, Raymond immediately joined the Willy West Minstrels and then moved to the vaudeville circuits, Keith and Pantages. Combining his love for the state of Montana and for his passion for the banjo, he called himself Montana the Cowboy Banjoist. There was nothing that could stop this young musician from pursuing his dream, and it was clear that he had made the right choice. Not only was his career as a banjoist skyrocketing, but he also met the love of his life while on tour. A beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed dancer in the Ziegfeld road show of the HMS Pinafore caught his eye — and his fancy. The lovely young lady was Roberta Georgina Pandolfini, but while touring, she was known as Bobby Gerald. Roberta was undeniably regal. Her grace and elegance easily gave away her secret that she was of a noble Italian bloodline; her grandmother was Countess Pandolfini of Florence.
Raymond and Roberta were married on October 21, 1916, in New York, where they lived when not on the road. One year later — almost to the day — their first child, Ruth, was born on October 22, 1917. The threesome stayed in New York, but as the 1919–20 touring season approached, Raymond decided to again join the circuit. As was the custom for young children traveling with their vaudeville parents, Ruth's crib was a pillow placed in the drawer of a dresser.
Raymond was the top banjoist in the country and was reported to have been the world's highest-paid banjo player. He strongly believed in self-discipline and practiced over five hours a day. His hard work paid off, as can be seen in the words written by the editor of Metronome when describing Raymond's onstage presence:
Everyone knows Montana, the celebrated cowboy banjoist. Montana is called "the white cowboy" throughout the country. He has an ideal personality for vaudeville and motion picture theatre work, owing to his splendid presence and the fact that he is considered the most richly dressed man in the whole show game. He is a great performer on the banjo and has played practically every big theatre circuit throughout the whole world.
By the spring of 1920, another little Coleman was on the way. When the tour ended for the season, the family looked forward to settling down and rented a small cottage in Stockton, California. It was in that cottage, reportedly delivered by an Indian squaw, that Robert William Coleman was born on October 23, 1920. October, with all its celebrations, had become a truly special month for the family. Raymond and Roberta were thankful to have been blessed with a healthy little boy; however, what they didn't know was that their newborn baby boy would someday grow up to be one of the world's greatest cartoonists.
CHAPTER 2Dust Off the Trunk
Hailed as the world's greatest banjoist, Montana strummed his way into the hearts of his listeners Monday, offering a varied selection and climaxing his program with the introduction of his small daughter and still smaller son. The two children proved just as great a hit as their father and wound up the act in fine fashion.
— Seattle Union Record, March 28, 1926
With the birth of Bobby Coleman, Raymond and Roberta decided it would be best to stay in one place for several years. All traveling stopped, and Raymond formed a jazz band locally in order to satisfy his desire to play music. However, early in 1923, when the children were old enough to travel, he began to hanker for the days of old when he toured as a performer. He proclaimed it was time for the family to dust off the trunk, create a new vaudeville routine and rejoin the circuit. This time, they were known simply as the Montanas, and when traveling, it was little Bobby who used the dresser drawer as a crib. Ruth gladly gave up the drawer in favor of a small cot.
Raymond's banjo routine was still in high demand, and the Pantages theaters of the West eagerly added the Montanas to their rosters in September 1923. The circuit worked its way eastward, ending the season in New England the following June. When the family was not performing, using the last name of Coleman seemed to continually clash with the well-known name they used on stage. Thoughts of an official name change began to swirl through their minds; however, it would be another few years before the Colemans would pursue changing the family name permanently.
During their summer break in 1924, the Colemans stayed with vaudeville friends who vacationed each year in New Hampshire. It was then that Raymond and Roberta discovered the small but beautiful town of Meredith, which overlooks the spectacular Lake Winnipesaukee, the state's largest. In an instant, they felt a connection to the town and fell in love with it.
It was easy to be enchanted with Meredith; the history of it holds its own charm. The community's first settlers were farmers drawn to the area by some of the most fertile soil in the state. Farming there was easy, but the town's village had notable water sites, making it the focus of cotton and linen manufacturers, and Meredith quickly became known for its mills.
When the Colemans arrived, the shorelines of all five of the lakes located in town saw seasonal waterfront cottages being built one after another, and the town focused on catering to periodic tourists. It was the farming portion of the town's history that fascinated Raymond the most, and he insisted on purchasing a small farm for the family to utilize during their vacations. Within a few weeks, they had located a house with approximately ten acres of land on Meredith Neck, and their little paradise became known as Montana Gardens. The purchase of a thirty- five-foot boat to be used to sail the waters of Lake Winnipesaukee was the icing on the cake for the Coleman family. They appropriately named her the Banjo Queen.
The following summer, in 1925, Ruth and Bobby were old enough for Roberta to teach them a short, easy dance routine, and Raymond gave them instruction on how to properly harmonize. When the family returned to vaudeville in September, the children became the grand finishing touch to Raymond's act, and they were an instant hit with adoring audiences everywhere. Being young performers, the siblings were taught that when in public, any anger or frustration was always kept private. Bob later recalled how difficult this sometimes was, saying, "I even had to smile while my sister twisted my arm behind my back. She did this quite often if I didn't behave or do what she wanted."
Those early years were happy and busy times. The days and months were filled with performing, traveling and mingling with large numbers of people, the latter providing endless entertainment for young Bobby. One of his favorite things to do when not performing was to sit backstage, watch and listen to the comedy routines of some of the most brilliant performers of vaudeville. Undoubtedly, this had a great influence on his sense of humor and his ability to find the comical side to every situation in life.
By the time Bobby turned six in 1926, Raymond had purchased his son a lariat and taught him rope tricks. Yet he would always gravitate back to what he liked best: his drawing pads and pencils. Bobby, like his father before him, had already decided what he wanted to do with his life at an early age. He declared that he wanted to be a cartoonist. His desire and ability to draw comics did not go unnoticed. When the renowned cartoonist Fay King saw some of his drawings, she predicted that the young lad would someday become a great artist.
In July 1927, the family set sail for England aboard the USS President Roosevelt after Raymond had secured a tour overseas. But first, the family agreed that this was an opportune time to have their name change legalized in order to avoid any confusion between their stage name and the name that appeared on their passports. The Coleman name was left behind forever, and Montana became the name they carried into the future.
Once in England, Raymond played in numerous theaters, beginning at the Holborn Empire Theater in London. At the end of August, the tour drew to a close at Scotland's Glasgow Pavilion. The summer tour had been an enormous success and was the crowning glory of Raymond's musical career. As for Bobby, he had been so taken by the luxurious ship they traveled on that it became his most memorable part of the trip.
In the late 1920s, America's economy was careening out of control, and the carefree and exciting lifestyle of the Montanas was about to undergo abrupt and startling changes. Vaudeville was dying, and the Roaring Twenties were coming to an end. Advances in technology were underway, and the public had become fascinated with the new talking pictures. After the crash of the stock market in 1929, vaudeville was gone forever and became only a page in America's history.
Raymond suddenly went from being a superstar to a man without steady employment. In 1930, the family headed for Meredith to live and work on their farm. Assisted by their gardener, they grew all their own produce and sold the excess in town. To supplement their income, Raymond jumped at the chance to perform at larger theaters that still wanted or could afford vaudeville-type acts. There was one big difference: his routine was scheduled after the main event — the movie.
Back home, Ruth and Bobby adjusted well to living in one place even though their new lifestyle was far different than the one they had known previously. The Montana children had been world travelers, and by the time Bobby turned eight, the family had visited all forty-eight states, as well as England and Scotland. Their education was a family affair, with Roberta and Raymond taking time to teach them their lessons in between traveling and performing. That fall, the Montana children did something they had never done before: they attended their first full year in a public school.
In 1931, the nation's economic woes continued, and the Montanas had even less money. Yet Raymond and Roberta opened a restaurant in town called Montana's. Roberta was a talented cook and skillfully used the food they produced on their farm to cook up delicious meals and desserts. Ruth was old enough to be a waitress and called upon her friend Hazel Bickford to work with her. Raymond felt fortunate to have found another outlet for his banjo playing. When he wasn't handling the business end of the restaurant, he was out among the patrons entertaining them.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The New England Life of Cartoonist Bob Montana"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Carol Lee Anderson.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Dr. Bruce Heald 7
Acknowledgements 9
Introduction 13
1 Montana the Cowboy Banjoist
2 Dust Off the Trunk 23
3 I Want to Be an Artist 31
4 We Call Him Archie Montana 37
5 OMIGOSH! 46
6 The Love of Family 52
7 Meredith Village Players 60
8 The Close Shave 68
9 Boy Girl…Girl, Boy?? 75
10 A' Traveling We Will Go 82
11 To England…and Back 92
12 In and About Meredith 98
13 Artists of Distinction 109
14 Two Hundred Years and Counting 116
15 Ask a Busy Person 123
16 Life's Reflections 130
17 A Lasting Legacy 141
Notes 151
Bibliography 157
About the Author 159