Our Boarding House

In 1921, Gene Ahern created the comic strip Crazy Quilt, starring the Nut Brothers, Ches and Wal. That same year, NEA General Manager Frank Rostock suggested to Ahern that he use a boarding house for a setting. Ahern initially used his own experiences as a boarder while a Chicago, Illinois, art student as grist for his comic mill, and featured the picaresque peccadilloes and bickering of its residents, presided over by the no-nonsense Martha Hoople. Our Boarding House began September 16, 1921, scoring success with readers after the January 1922 arrival of the fustian, blustery Major Amos B. Hoople, Martha's husband, who'd returned after some long sojourn. at The Comic Strip Project, before Bill Freyse (the father of the American actress Lynn Borden) took over the art for Our Boarding House from 1939 until his death in 1969. Writer Bill Braucher scripted from 1939 to 1958, followed by Tom McCormick on the daily from 1959 on. Freyse's 1960s assistant, Jim Branagan, drew the strip from 1969 to 1971, succeeded then by Les Carroll. The Sunday strip came to an end on March 29, 1981, and the comic continued as a daily feature until December 22, 1984, when Carroll and writer Tom McCormick retired. Others who worked on the strip included writers Wood Cowan in 1946, Tom Peoples on the Sunday strip circa 1968, and Phil Pastoret on the Sunday strip from 1977 on. The finale had Hoople finally striking it rich: a multimillion-dollar project needed a minor patent that he had obtained many years ago. In the last strip, Hoople and Martha embarked upon their new lives of wealth. Ahern once revealed the origin of Major Hoople: ==Reprints==

's Our Boarding House Jumbo Book (1940) There were comic book reprints in Whitman's Crackajack Funnies and a single issue of Standard Comics' Major Hoople Comics (1943). In 2005, Leonard G. Lee's Algrove Publishing reprinted Ahern's cartoons in Our Boarding House, 1927 as part of its Classic Reprint Series. ==In other media==

Radio The Major Hoople radio series began on NBC's Blue Network on June 22, 1942. With Arthur Q. Bryan in the title role, the 30-minute program aired on Mondays at 4:05 p.m. on the American West Coast and 7:05 p.m. on the East Coast. The series was written by Jerry Cady (1903–1948). Patsy Moran had the role of Hoople's wife, Martha. Conrad Binyon and Frank Bresee portrayed Hoople's "precocious little nephew", Little Alvin. Mel Blanc played the star boarder, Tiffany Twiggs. The radio series ended April 26, 1943. No recordings of the Major Hoople radio program are known to exist. Music In 1975, the Kitchener, Ontario, pop band known as Major Hoople's Boarding House charted a top-30 Canadian radio hit with the song "I'm Running After You". Their songs "You Girl" reached #80 in 1976, and "Someone" was #89 in 1980. ==Cultural legacy==

The first recording of the term "hooplehead" appears in 1980, in Dennis Smith's Glitter and Ash ("The old man said, 'Speakin' of Maureen, you know she's been acting like a real hooplehead lately, like a kid they let out of Creedmoor [Psychiatric Center] by mistake.'"). "Hooplehead", as used by the character Al Swearengen on the HBO Old West television series Deadwood, is an anachronism as it was "probably derive[d]" from Major Hoople. One etymologist, without giving citation, said, "The producer and head of the scriptwriting team, David Milch, has been reported as saying in essence that he picked something out of the air to serve as a suitable insult without great concern for its etymology. It seems he must have heard it somewhere and it came conveniently back to mind while writing the scripts. The name "Martha Hoople" was the basis of the title Mott the Hoople, a novel by Willard Manus, and Manus's novel's title in turn inspired the name of the British rock band Mott The Hoople. ==See also==