Pendergast T., Pendergast S. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Volume 1: A-D
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Hugh Harmon. Some of the titles in the ‘‘Alice Series’’ included
Alice’s Wild West Show (1924), Alice’s Egg Plant (1925), and Alice
Chops the Suey (1925). These shorts were innovative in that they
integrated the real and animated action, showing a live girl jumping
out of an animated ink well or blowing animated smoke rings or being
splattered with cartoon eggs. Yet, at the speed that the small studio
was required to turn them out (approximately one every two weeks),
they couldn’t experiment with too many ideas and the novelty began
to wear off.
Disney quickly introduced a new character and series—‘‘Oswald
the Lucky Rabbit.’’ These cartoons reflected a higher quality of
animation and experimented with a variety of visual effects, particu-
larly the manipulation of light and shadow, not seen in the Alice
series. In addition, the use of an animated central character as opposed
to a live figure made a certain reality defying flexibility possible. In
one adventure, Oswald attempts to kiss a medieval maiden’s hand and
arm and keeps pulling more and more arm out of her sleeve until he
has a seemingly endless expanse of arm to kiss. In another cartoon, his
car expands and contracts to fit a variety of continuously changing
road conditions.
Like the cartoons themselves, the planning sessions for them
were equally flexible. Instead of formal scripts, the stories were
conceived at what amounted to corporate bull sessions consisting of
Disney and four other animators. Ideas were tossed into the ring until
a basic plot evolved. Disney would then divide the elements into four
sequences with each animator responsible for his own area of the
cartoon’s action. Each animator could then freely improvise within
his own area subject to Disney’s approval.
The Oswald series was so fresh and innovative that it made
Disney’s company a modest success. Yet, when he approached his
current distributor Charles Mintz who had taken over the Winkler
Company for larger production budgets, Mintz refused and took both
Oswald and all of the key animators who participated in the project
away from Disney. Only Iwerks remained. The experience made the
Disney brothers determined to own all of their own films and
copyrights in the future.
In 1928, Disney and Iwerks fashioned another animal character
to replace Oswald. However, Mickey Mouse who made his debut in
Plane Crazy followed by Galloping Gaucho was not an immediate
success. Although the animation and story ideas were good, the
character itself looked like Oswald with shorter ears and a longer
nose. There was nothing intrinsically interesting about the character
to separate it from the multitudes of other animals cavorting on the
screen. It took the invention of sound in 1928 to make Mickey Mouse
a superstar. While the first live action sound films such as The Jazz
Singer (1928) put the sound in somewhat gratuitously counting on the
technology to thrill the audience, Disney created an integrated film in
which sound and images worked together. When Steamboat Willie
was released at the end of the year, audiences were captivated by the
idea that a character plainly drawn with pen and ink could actually
sing and dance in rhythm. The secret was that Disney began with song
and music first and then drew the characters and backgrounds to
reflect the sounds.
Disney built on the success of Steamboat Willie by working with
his musical director Carl Stallings to create animated cartoons based
on specific musical pieces. The first of these was Skeleton Dance
(1928), a non-character cartoon that demonstrated animation’s ability
to evoke mood and atmosphere. Suddenly cartoons were no longer the
poor relative of live action feature films but works of art in them-
selves. In the years that followed, Disney created the Silly Symphonies
series of music-based animation and introduced new characters
including Pluto (1930), Minnie Mouse (1933), and Donald Duck
(1934). In 1932, he switched to the new medium of Technicolor for
Flowers and Trees and won the Academy Award for ‘‘Best Short
Subject.’’ After that, the young company maintained an exclusive
agreement with Technicolor for all of their animated productions.
But, cartoon shorts could only evolve so far. Disney became
determined to create a feature length animated film. Although con-
ventional Hollywood wisdom dictated that an animated cartoon could
not hold audience interest beyond seven minutes, Disney envisioned a
fairly simple structure, which would allow one sequence to flow into
another and in which musical numbers would evolve from and add to
character development, as a viable formula for such a film. In Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), he created seven distinctly
individual personalities in addition to his main characters, a feat
which never before had been accomplished in animation. To accom-
plish such distinction, Disney crafted the characters, particularly
Snow White, in such a degree of detail that they could convey human
emotions in a believable manner. Audiences reacted to Snow White as
if the characters were real, showing a variety of emotions ranging
from horror at the sight of the queen’s transformation into a witch to
happiness as Snow White frolics with the dwarves and charms the
woodland animals.
Following Snow White came a steady flow of animated features,
each one expanding the techniques of animation. By the beginning of
the 1940s, the company geared up to produce a steady stream of
animated features and literally become an animation factory employ-
ing hundreds of artists and technical personnel even though the studio
had not gained ‘‘major’’ status as a full production/distribution entity
on a par with Warner Brothers or Columbia. Pinocchio and Fantasia
appeared in 1940, blazing a trail for such other notable productions as
Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty
(1959), and 101 Dalmations (1961). Interspersed with these animated
features were documentary and live action productions, including The
Living Desert (1953), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), and
Mary Poppins (1964). During the early 1950s, Disney founded his
own distribution company, Buena Vista, to release these films thus
freeing him from his reliance on RKO and other larger companies to
determine the venues for his products.
But Disney did not confine himself to one medium. In 1954, he
made the jump to the new medium of television with a weekly series
called Disneyland which would be followed by an afternoon child-
ren’s series the Mickey Mouse Club. In 1955, he fulfilled his personal
vision by creating an escapist world in Anaheim, California, in which
reality dare not intrude. The Disneyland theme park featured a
nostalgic Main Street USA and four thematically constructed ‘‘lands’’:
Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland. Each
of these lands reflected motifs first delineated in Disney films or
television programs. It was a ‘‘first’’ for the entertainment industry in
that for the first time, viewers could actually enter the world of their
favorite Disney films and interact with fictional characters. The
company also led the way in creating spin-off products from the films
and theme parks with lines of toys, clothing, records, and similar
merchandise. By the end of the 1950s, Walt Disney was America’s
undisputed king of family entertainment.
After its founder’s death in 1966, the company coasted along for
a number of years turning out acceptable products and fulfilling
several of Disney’s unrealized dreams, notably an updated East Coast
version of Disneyland, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in
1971, and the futuristic Epcot Center several years later. Under the
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730
management of Disney’s successor E. Cardon Walker, the company
was faced by a defection of a number of its leading animators led by
Don Bluth, who felt that the company’s standards had deteriorated
after Walt’s death. Yet, after venturing out on their own, they quickly
discovered that while they could duplicate the legendary Disney
animation, they could not capture the elusive Disney touch which
transformed drawings into real characters capable of expressing
human emotions within innovative storylines.
Walker’s successor Ron Miller, faced with declining film reve-
nues created a new division called Touchstone in 1984 to turn out
more adult products than the Disney image would allow. This
prompted Roy Disney, still a major shareholder in the company to
resign from the board of directors, initiating a management struggle
for control of the company which by the mid-1980s was producing
only four films a year and was reliant on the theme parks for the bulk
of its revenue (nearly 83 percent in 1983 alone).
Miller resigned under pressure in September 1984 just as Touch-
stone’s first release, Splash, boosted the film division’s earnings to
record highs, and became the highest grossing film in Disney history
while making a star of Tom Hanks. His successor, Michael Eisner,
lured from Paramount Pictures, appeared cut from the Disney mold.
He followed up on the success of Splash with two more non-
traditional features Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1985) and Three
Men and a Baby (1987). These would be followed by the worldwide
mega-hit Pretty Woman (1990), a story of a romance between a
prostitute and a millionaire which took the old Cinderella story in a
modern direction that Walt probably would not have approved of.
With chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, Eisner effected a renaissance of
the animated feature at a time when conventional wisdom had
declared it moribund. Beginning with the critically acclaimed The
Black Cauldron in 1985, Eisner started a new golden age of animation
which surpassed the box-office successes of the 1930s and 1940s.
Yet, the formula was very much the same: realistic characters that
tugged at the viewers emotions, superb animation, and memorable
music. Such films as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast
(1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994) generated grosses
in the hundreds of millions prompting many of Hollywood’s major
studios to jump into animation in order to compete. Beauty and the
Beast became the first animated feature to be nominated for an
Academy Award.
By the mid-1990s, production at Disney had risen from the four
films per year of a decade earlier to more than 20 per anum. Eisner’s
strategy of producing tightly budgeted films pairing ‘‘low cost name
talent’’ such as Richard Dryfuss and Bette Midler who were in
temporary career lulls with widely appealing stories paid major
dividends. Films such as the aforementioned Pretty Woman, Sister
Act, Stakeout, and Honey I Shrunk the Kids achieved grosses that
greatly exceeded their small (by Hollywood standards) production
budgets. The success of these features prompted the studio to open a
third production entity, Hollywood Pictures, in 1990.
Disney had at last acquired major studio status by the 1990s. It’s
distribution company Buena Vista was regularly in the top one or two
in film grosses and it was out-producing all of the studios in
Hollywood in sheer number of films. With its ownership of a cable
TV channel, a successful video distribution empire, and the ability to
distribute its product worldwide via satellite, Disney became one of
the earliest studios to realize the financial value of a large library. In
1996, the company purchased the ABC television network for $19
billion, giving it a national outlet for its product as well as an all
encompassing venue for plugging its upcoming films. While the
network has not regained the top spot it held in the 1970s, it
nonetheless presents some of the more innovative new shows on
television and is a leader in sports and news programming.
Eisner also took major steps to revitalize the theme park side of
the ledger by creating EuroDisney outside of Paris in 1992, a wild
animal theme park in Florida in 1997 and by starting a project to
expand the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The ancillary
markets for Disney product were expanded as well. The company
refurbished the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood as a showcase for its
new releases and added promotional stage acts as well as a place to
buy the company’s products in the lobby.
On the opposite coast, Disney refurbished a Broadway theater
and began to turn its film hits, including Beauty and the Beast and The
Lion King, into musical plays with new numbers and scenes added to
make them successful on the stage. Similarly, several of the animated
productions were turned into ice extravaganzas which toured the
country blending the traditional stories and songs with fancy skating
numbers arranged specifically for the frozen medium.
Yet, the ultimate spin-off of a motion picture concept occurred in
the early 1990s when Eisner bought an Anaheim NHL hockey
franchise and named it after a moderately successful live action
feature The Mighty Ducks. The company purchased the Anaheim
Angels baseball team and the highly popular cable TV station
Entertainment and Sports Network (ESPN). After these purchases,
Disney had only two rivals in the sports arena: Rupert Murdoch with
his Fox Sports Cable Channel on the Fox Network; and the ownership
of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Angels’ chief rival for the L.A.
sports dollar.
By the end of the twentieth century, The Walt Disney Company
had grown from the small Hollywood studio of 1923 to a recreational
empire. With holdings so expansive, the nostalgic Disney vision has
been applied beyond mere entertainment. The company’s theme-
oriented steamship line (floating Disneylands), Disney Stores, inno-
vative theme parks, music, video and television endeavors, have
allowed the company unprecedented power to shape the perceptions
of consumers, offering people the chance to see, experience, and
purchase Disney-styled versions of Americana.
—Steve Hanson
F
URTHER READING:
Bailey, Adrian. Walt Disney’s World of Fantasy. New York, Everest
House, 1982.
Coleman, Todd. ‘‘Mouse Trap.’’ The Hollywood Reporter. Novem-
ber 25, 1996, 29+.
Hanson, Steve. ‘‘The Mouse That Roared.’’ Stills, October 1984, 24-27.
Koepp, Stephen, ‘‘Do You Believe in Magic? Starring in its own
Cinderella Story, Disney Transforms Itself.’’ Time. April 25,
1988, 66-75.
Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animat-
ed Cartoons. New York, The New American Library, 1980.
Schickel, Richard. The Disney Version. New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1968.
Smith, Dave. Disney A to Z: The Official Encyclopedia. New York,
Hyperion, 1996.
Solomon, Charles. The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art
From Five Decades of Unproduced Animation. New York,
Hyperion, 1995.
DIVINEENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
731
Taylor, John. Storming the Magic Kingdom: Wall Street, the Raiders
and the Battle for Disney. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
West, John G., Jr. The Disney Live Action Productions. Milton,
Washington, Hawthorne & Peabody, 1994.
Ditka, Mike (1939—)
Football player-turned-football coach ‘‘Iron’’ Mike Ditka is
described in his Football Hall of Fame enshrinee data as a ‘‘fast,
rugged, outstanding blocker [and a] great competitor.’’ In 1960, he
was a consensus All-American at the University of Pittsburgh, and
became the Chicago Bears’ number one draft pick the following year.
From 1961 through 1972, Ditka was a hard-nosed tight end for the
Bears, Philadelphia Eagles, and Dallas Cowboys. He was the NFL
rookie of the year in 1961, starred on the Bears’ 1963 NFL title squad,
and scored the final touchdown for the Cowboys in Super Bowl VI.
During his career, he caught 427 passes for 5,812 yards and 43
touchdowns. He made all-NFL four times, played in five straight Pro
Bowls, was named to the NFL 75th Anniversary Team, and in 1988
became the first tight end to enter the Hall of Fame.
Despite Ditka’s eminence as a player, he is best known today as
an NFL head coach. He worked as an assistant under Tom Landry in
Dallas from 1973 through 1981, and was hired to lead the Bears in
1982. While Ditka has willingly parodied his in-your-face, bullying,
drill-instructor coaching style on television shows and particularly in
TV commercials, he is all business when it comes to winning football
games. During eleven seasons coaching the Bears, he led the team to
six NFC Central crowns, three trips to the NFC Championship game,
and a 46-10 whipping of the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX.
After retiring from the Bears in 1992 and working as an NBC sports
broadcaster, he was lured back onto the field in 1997 as coach of the
New Orleans Saints.
—Rob Edelman
F
URTHER READING:
Ditka, Mike, and Jim Stamborski. Don’t Get Me Wrong: Mike Ditka’s
Insights, Outbursts, Kudos and Comebacks. Chicago, Chicago
Review Press, 1988.
Ditka, Mike, with Don Pierson. Ditka: An Autobiography. Chicago,
Bonus Books, 1986.
Keteyian, Armen. Ditka: Monster of the Midway. New York, Pocket
Books, 1992.
Divine (1945-1988)
The obese transvestite character-actor Divine personified self-
consciously campy underground films and ushered in a new threshold
of bad taste in cinema. Starring mainly in the films of offbeat director
John Waters, Divine cultivated an outrageous drag queen image, with
gaudy makeup, a blonde mane the texture of cotton candy, and tight
dresses on his more-than-300-pound frame. In the majority of his
films, he played female characters and dressed in women’s garb
during his short-lived career as a singer. Though Divine was poised to
break through into mainstream film and television at the end of his
Divine (right) with Grace Jones.
life, most of his appearances were in films with shocking subject
matter. He will likely remain famous for his role as the Filthiest
Person Alive’’ in the 1972 Waters film Pink Flamingos, especially
due to the notorious scene at the end in which he consumes freshly
excreted poodle dung.’’
Divine was born Harris Glenn Milstead on October 19, 1945,
and raised in an upper-middle-class home in a suburb of Baltimore,
Maryland, the city that provided the backdrop for the bulk of his films.
His parents ran a successful nursery and regularly attended a local
Baptist church. As a teen, Divine was active in school plays, and
began associating with Waters, who lived nearby. They were both
outcasts, and Divine noted in Waters’ book Shock Value that he
required a daily police escort to and from school to avoid constant
beatings by other students. After high school, Divine graduated from
beauty school and became known as an excellent stylist. His parents
even bought him his own salon, but he became bored with it. He later
opened a fashion boutique in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Mean-
while, he also began acting in Waters’ independent movies. His first
role was in Roman Candles (1966), a home movie of Waters’ friends
stealing and then modeling dresses. It was at this time that Waters
recognized the actor’s potential and renamed his friend ‘‘Divine.’’
After that unceremonious induction into film, Divine starred in
Eat Your Makeup (1968), in which he played the part of Jacqueline
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732
Kennedy in the movie’s central scene re-enacting President John
Kennedy’s assassination. Subsequently, Waters made another film of
questionable taste that is rarely noted in official sources, The Diane
Linkletter Story, named after Art Linkletter’s daughter, who commit-
ted suicide allegedly after taking large amounts of hallucinogenic
drugs. In 1969, Waters and his troupe, known as the Dreamlanders,
made Mondo Trasho, which established Divine’s bizarre look. In Not
Simply Divine, Bernard Jay quoted Divine as saying that his new
image was based on Waters’ concept of a blend of ‘‘the wicked
stepmother in Cinderella, the evil queen of Snow White, and the bad
witch in The Wizard of Oz,’’ combined with a touch of Jayne
Mansfield. Continuing down a slippery slope of poor taste, Mondo
Trasho was followed by Multiple Maniacs in 1970, which professed
that Divine was the actual killer in what were later dubbed the Manson
Family murders. It also featured Divine being raped by a 15-foot-
tall lobster.
After Multiple Maniacs, Divine and Waters garnered a good deal
of attention from underground publications. Their next collaboration,
though, dwarfed their previous efforts. Pink Flamingos was the tale of
a battle for the title of ‘‘Filthiest Person Alive,’’ and featured a couple
who kidnaps women, impregnates them, and sells the babies to
lesbians on the black market in order to raise money for their
elementary school heroin ring. They want to take the distinction away
from Divine, an incestuous, trailer-dwelling matriarch who firmly
maintains her disgusting reputation with the dog excrement scene.
Pink Flamingos generated a flurry of attention and became one of the
premier cult films of all time.
Divine had acted in stage plays in San Francisco in the early
1970s, and after Pink Flamingos, began appearing off-Broadway in
productions such as Women Behind Bars (1976) and The Neon
Woman (1978). He also launched a disco singing career. In fact, he
often attended the legendary Studio 54 disco in full drag and mingled
with other icons of the day. Divine made a number of other films with
Waters throughout the years, including Female Trouble (1975),
Polyester (1981), and Lust in the Dust (1985), as well as a few on his
own. Though Divine made his mark as the garish caricature of himself
that people usually saw, he grew weary of dressing in drag and
yearned to be accepted as a talented character actor. Finally, in 1988
he was noticed for his dual role in Waters’ Hairspray as both proud
stage mother Edna Turnblad and bigoted television executive Arvin
Hodgepile. After that, he was slated to appear on the popular
television program Married . . . With Children, and was eager to line
up other work as well. Just as he seemed on the verge of making an
entrance into the mainstream, however, Divine died of a heart attack
in a hotel room in Los Angeles on March 7, 1988. Almost a decade
after his death, Pink Flamingos stirred a new wave of publicity with
its 25 year anniversary release, padded with new footage and com-
mentary by Waters.
—Geri Speace
F
URTHER READING:
Clark, John. ‘‘Ready for the Return of ’Flamingos’?’’ Los Angeles
Times, April 10, 1997, 8.
Jay, Bernard. Not Simply Divine. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Waters, John K. Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste. New
York, Dell Publishing, 1981.
Divorce
Marriage, the legally sanctioned and structured pairing of het-
erosexual couples, has long been an established practice in human
civilization all over the world. Divorce, the dissolution of a marriage
agreement, is as old as marriage itself. Since the 1960s, rapidly rising
divorce rates have placed the ending of marriage among the most
common rituals of modern society. In the late 1990s, almost half of all
marriages ended in divorce, and the prevalence of divorce has
changed not only the nature of marriage, but the definition of
family as well.
Early cultures often permitted divorce with relative ease. Roman
law allowed couples to divorce simply by mutual consent, while
Jewish Talmudic law granted divorce on a variety of grounds,
including adultery and desertion. Greek, Germanic, and Frankish law
also recognized couples’ right to divorce, as did Islam and the
Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic Church became one of the
first institutions to outlaw divorce, claiming marriage as a sacrament
of the church. Dissolution of marriage could only be granted by the
church under special circumstances, such as an annulment if one’s
spouse was a close relative, or a ‘‘judicial separation,’’ where
husband and wife were permitted to live apart without remarrying.
Repercussions of the attitudes of the Catholic church about divorce
were felt into future centuries and in lands as far apart as Ireland, Latin
America, and parts of the American South.
The Protestant Reformation brought with it new perspectives on
marriage. While Catholics had viewed it as a sacred sacrament, taken
for life, Protestants saw marriage as a contract, changeable if it no
longer met the needs of the contracted parties. Likewise, while
Catholics had primarily defined the purpose of marriage as procrea-
tion, Protestants included in it such functions as companionship,
support, and sexual pleasure, inspiring radical Protestants, such as
poet John Milton, to argue that divorce should be allowed for
simple incompatibility.
In the United States, from colonial times to the present, divorce
was widely permitted but frowned upon socially. By the time of the
Civil War, divorces were granted in most parts of the country on
grounds of cruelty, abandonment, drunkenness, nonsupport, or verbal
threats or insults. As legal divorces became easier to obtain, the
divorce rate began to climb steadily. By the early 1900s the United
States was granting the most divorces of any Western country, six
times as many as France, in second place. The number had risen
dramatically, from 7,380 divorces nationwide in 1860 to 83,045 in 1910.
In the 1950s, divorce dropped somewhat with that decade’s
glorification of the nuclear family. Women who worked as homemak-
ers, supported by their husbands, found themselves unprepared to
support themselves and their children should they divorce. In con-
trast, the 1960s and 1970s saw more women graduating from college
with career aspirations and the skills to achieve them. The divorce rate
shot up, as these women no longer felt forced to remain in
unhappy marriages.
Though more and more marriages ended in divorce each decade,
divorce was still largely stigmatized by society and pathologized by
experts who defined divorced people as neurotic and sought cures for
their ills. This perception finally began to change in the 1970s when
feminism and the sexual revolution combined to give divorce a
positive new image of liberation and independence. In the 1980s,
rates dipped once again as the threat of AIDS encouraged monogamy.
In addition, married baby boomers of the 1980s began to find
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733
financial reasons to stay together, since two incomes were needed to
support their lifestyles. These factors, coupled with the 1980s politi-
cal conservatism and backlash against feminism, caused more cou-
ples to seek counseling to save their marriages. The divorce lull did
not last, however. Rates continue to climb as, approaching the twenty-
first century, generation Xers, many the children of divorce them-
selves, attempt to determine the boundaries of commitment. Divorce
is such a commonplace that while many couples still use lawyers to
work out their disputes, others now go to mediators and many more
execute their own divorces quite amicably. Along with divorcing
couples, there are now numerous cases of children divorcing their
parents and vice versa.
Until fairly recently, wives were considered little more than the
property of their husbands, and the treatment of women in the divorce
process has reflected this attitude. Though many women have been
unhappy in the marital roles assigned them, women have always had
more to lose financially from divorce. Less valued in the marketplace
than men, women often lose further ground by removing themselves
from the work force while working as mothers and homemakers.
When a woman divorces, the standard of living for her and her
children falls an average of 73 percent, often placing them below
poverty level. Men, by contrast, released from familial obligations,
are free to put more energy into their existing jobs. After divorce, a
man’s average standard of living rises 42 percent. The devaluing of
women’s role in the home has also contributed to unfair distribution
of assets after divorce. Except in ‘‘community property’’ states,
where any property acquired by either partner during the marriage is
divided equally, a woman may receive little or none of the family
resources, which may be in the husband’s name.
Beginning with the so-called ‘‘tender years’’ legislation of the
nineteenth century, custody of young children has traditionally been
awarded to the mother in divorce settlements. Courts may also choose
to award child support and alimony, or spousal support payments,
which also traditionally were paid by the husband as the primary
earner. In recent years, courts have begun to change assumptions
about gender roles, sometimes awarding custody and even spousal
support to the husband if he is judged to be the better parent or the wife
has greater earning power. ‘‘No-fault’’ divorce, a concept developed
in the 1980s, has further eroded the system of spousal support by
removing the factor of blame and responsibility for the end of the
marriage. While many applaud these changes, they often have result-
ed in even worse conditions for women following divorce.
Another product of the rising divorce rate has been the pre-
nuptial agreement, wherein couples plan for the possibility of divorce
before they are married and agree upon future division of property.
Originated by the lawyers of wealthy people who felt they had lost an
unfair amount in a divorce, the ‘‘pre-nup’’ is now as much a part of an
upper-class wedding as the wedding cake.
Social attitudes toward men and women surrounding divorce
have tended to be quite different, especially prior to the 1970s.
Divorced men have often been viewed as roguish or even slightly
dangerous, not undesirable qualities in a male. Also, the addition of
another available man to the social pool is generally looked upon as a
good thing. Divorced women, on the other hand, have been seen
traditionally as promiscuous, and the addition of an unattached
woman to society is usually viewed as threatening to other women.
Images of divorce in the media have contributed to these
perceptions. Entertainers have always lived by their own rules, and
even in decades when divorce was most stigmatized in ordinary
society, the public avidly followed the marital adventures of the
movie stars. Even in the repressive 1950s, actors such as Elizabeth
Taylor and Mickey Rooney set records for numbers of marriages that
are still impressive today. Fascinated fans reacted with outrage when
divorcee Taylor broke up the ‘‘idyllic’’ marriage of Eddie Fisher and
Debbie Reynolds. In the mid-1970s they formed strong opinions
about the so-called ‘‘palimony’’ suit following the breakup of long-
term unmarried lovers Lee Marvin and Michelle Triola when Triola
insisted that she was entitled to spousal support after their six-year
relationship ended.
Films tended to both reflect and mold social attitudes. In 1934,
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced their way through lightheart-
ed marital misunderstandings in The Gay Divorcee. In the early
1960s, anti-divorce attitudes won out in The Parent Trap, when twin
daughters (played by Hayley Mills) of a divorced couple managed to
reunite their parents, whose breakup was clearly ill-advised. The
1980s backlash was represented nowhere better than in the Oscar
winner for best picture Kramer vs. Kramer, in which Dustin Hoffman
and Meryl Streep played divorcing parents. Both were motivated by
their own selfishness, but in the end it was the husband who was
redeemed by learning the joys of familyhood and was rewarded with
custody of the couple’s son.
By the 1990s, divorce was so common that it had lost much of its
social stigma and much of its value as scandal. Fans still followed the
love lives of the stars, but it took an exceptionally short marriage or
brutal breakup to arouse much public interest. Celebrity-watchers felt
vindicated when superstar Julia Roberts walked away from unlikely
spouse Lyle Lovett after only a few months, and they cheered for
beloved icon Carol Channing when she left her forty-one-year
marriage at age seventy-seven, citing lack of sex as one of the reasons.
Film portrayals tended to show divorce as a positive solution to a bad
situation. The 1989 film The War of the Roses was a disturbing
comedy about violent breakup where neither partner was presented in
a positive light, while The First Wives Club (1996) was a sort of
revenge comedy where the mistreated wives took action against their
boorish ex-husbands.
In past centuries, marriage was a pragmatic agreement and the
family an economic unit, whether industrial or agricultural. Members
each had a unique function and derived stability and protection from
their place in the unit, which was most often an extended family
comprising elders, adults, and children. Marriage and the creation of a
family was part of survival. As American society evolved, the nuclear
family replaced the extended family as the major social unit, and its
function has more and more become that of emotional support and
physical caretaking rather than working together. As partners enter
marriage, they have higher expectations of happiness and satisfaction.
Some sociologists cite these rising expectations as the reason for
rising rates of divorce, while others contend that since marriage and
family are no longer a necessity of physical survival, it is natural that
couples tend to drift apart.
As divorce becomes more prevalent, the image of the family
continues to change. Though political and religious conservatives
have tried to restore a more traditional concept of the nuclear family,
they have not been able to stop these changes. While many bemoan
the ill-effects of divorce on children, most modern studies show that
children do not benefit from growing up in a traditional nuclear
family where the parents are unhappy together. The definition of
family is now broadening to include not only nuclear families, but
also unmarried heterosexuals and gays living together, single-parent
families, stepfamilies, foster and adoptive families, childlessness,
nonmonogamous relationships, and multiple-adult households. Family
DIXIELAND ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
734
is not only biological, but also chosen, a complex network of
economic support and affection that is no longer easily catalogued.
Even Madison Avenue has begun to understand and speak to these
changes, as companies such as Hallmark Greeting Cards and John
Hancock Insurance develop advertising campaigns directed at the
families of divorce and other nontraditional units. A Rite-Aid Drug
ad, first screened in 1998, shows two girls helping their mother get
ready for her first (postdivorce) date, while a 1991 MCI Communica-
tions ad shows a workaholic father sadly explaining how his personal
toll-free number helps him keep in touch with the son who now lives
with his mother far away. These images show how the reality of
divorce has been incorporated into American culture, and, indeed,
culture worldwide.
—Tina Gianoulis
F
URTHER READING:
Basch, Norma. Framing American Divorce: From the Revoltionary
Generation to the Victorians. Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1999.
Chused, Richard H. Private Acts in Public Places: A Social History of
Divorce in the Formative Era of American Family Law. Philadel-
phia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
DiFonzo, J. Herbie. Beneath the Fault Line: The Popular and Legal
Culture of Divorce in Twentieth-Century America. Charlottes-
ville, University Press of Virginia, 1997.
Ganong, Lawrence H. Changing Families, Changing Responsibili-
ties: Family Obligations following Divorce and Remarriage.
Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999.
May, Elaine Tyler. Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce
in Post-Victorian America. Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1980.
Phillips, Roderick. Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western
Society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Riley, Glenda. Divorce: An American Tradition. New York, Oxford
University Press, 1991.
Talbot, Margaret. ‘‘Love, American Style: What the Alarmists about
Divorce Don’t Get about Idealism in America.’’ The New Repub-
lic. April 14, 1997, 30.
Dixieland
Dixieland jazz is a style that blends New Orleans jazz and classic
jazz—also called ‘‘Chicago jazz’’—of the 1920s. The music is
generally thought of as a collective improvisation during the chorus-
es, with individual solos that include riffing by the horns, and a two- to
four-bar call and response tag game between the drummer and the full
group at the closing of the song. While almost any song can be played
in the dixieland style, the music is most often associated with about
forty songs, including ‘‘That’s a Plenty’’ and ‘‘Tin Roof Blues.’’
Most dixieland bands are comprised of a trumpet or cornet, a
harmonizing trombone, a clarinet, and a piano, string bass, or tuba.
Occasionally a guitar or banjo is also included. The style has enjoyed
many revivals throughout the years and ‘‘dixieland’’ has become a
blanket term for the earliest blending of New Orleans and Chicago
jazz between 1917 and 1923, as well as the many revivals of the style.
Despite the wide use of the term, some confine the definition of
dixieland jazz to New Orleans music played by white New Orleans
performers or in their style. Others limit the definition to the earliest
white players in Chicago. Some of the most important albums of the
dixieland style include Louis Armstrong’s 1927 Hot Fives and
Sevens, Vol. 3, Eddie Condon’s 1939 Dixieland All-Stars, Kid Ory’s
Creole Jazz Band’s 1955 Legendary Kid, and Pete Fountain’s 1965
Standing Room Only.
Despite the controversy surrounding how the term should be
used, many musicians have been labeled and identified as playing
dixieland music. The white Chicago musicians usually included as
dixieland musicians are Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, and Frank
Teschemacher. These musicians first heard the white New Orleans
bands of the 1920s associated with Nick LaRocca in the Original
Dixieland Jass (later Jazz) Band which began recording in 1917, and
with Paul Mares in the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (originally the
Friar’s Society Orchestra), which recorded between 1922 and 1923.
This ‘‘white’’ style had a great influence on the development of jazz
and was not too far removed from the style of the great black pioneers.
White New Orleans bands and their dixieland followers drew less on
ragtime and ethnic African sources than did the black pioneers. They
also drew quite heavily on European sources. One of the most
inspirational musicians of the dixieland sound of the 1920s was Louis
Armstrong, who noted opera as a strong influence on his style.
The popularization of jazz beyond the New Orleans area and the
development of dixieland can be traced to the U.S. Navy’s 1917
closure of the Storyville base near New Orleans’ red light district. The
closure put many musicians out of work. Seeking work, musicians
relocated to Chicago, Illinois. Joe ‘‘King’’ Oliver was the hottest
cornetist in New Orleans in 1917 and by 1918 he had moved to
Chicago. Jelly Roll Morton, jazz’s first noted composer and innova-
tive pianist, had moved to Chicago at the turn of the century. Many of
New Orleans’ best musicians followed and played for a time in
Chicago. Others moved elsewhere: from 1919-1924 Kid Ory worked
in Los Angeles and Sidney Bechet, the fine clarinetist and soprano
saxophonist, played in London. As the musicians moved, the music
they played changed and dixieland became a discernable style.
The carefree style of dixieland music soon lost favor to swing,
especially after the stock market crash in 1929, but it did not
disappear. From 1945 through 1960 dixieland actually became one of
the more popular forms of jazz. The revival of dixieland in the 1940s
can be traced to Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band out of San
Francisco. Much of the music was based on King Oliver’s Creole Jazz
Band, but Watters’ developed his own style, sometimes called San
Francisco Jazz. Eddie Condon was also influential in the revival of
dixieland; he featured a dixieland band on his weekly half-hour radio
broadcast Town Hall Concerts from 1944 to 1945 and led a band at his
Chicago nightclub for a few decades. And though there were many
styles of jazz at the time, Louis Armstrong disbanded his big band in
1947 and led his All-Stars as a dixieland style sextet for the rest of his
career. Despite the overwhelming popularity of rock ’n’ roll after the
1950s, Armstrong proved dixieland’s lasting appeal in 1964 with the
success of his ‘‘Hello Dolly.’’
The success of the dixieland style in the mid-1940s ignited the
release of a flurry of hasty and uninspired imitations of the music. By
the 1950s dixieland was often associated with the embarrassingly
garish groups who played amateurishly and donned straw hats and
wore vintage clothing. Nevertheless, serious and competent musi-
cians still played dixieland music. In 1974 the first Sacramento
Dixieland Jubilee was held, the success of which inspired other such
DOBIE GILLISENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
735
events. By the end of the twentieth century, jazz festivals that feature
dixieland along with other styles could be found throughout the year
and many record labels such as Stomp Off, GHB, and Jazzology
continued to release dixieland music. Many of the greatest players
and innovators of dixieland are dead, but younger musicians like
Winston Marsalis and Jim Cullum continue to incorporate the dixie-
land style into their music.
—Frank A. Salamone
F
URTHER READING:
Condon, Eddie, and Thomas Sugrue. We Called It Music. New York,
Da Capo Press, 1947.
Deffaa, Chip. Voices of the Jazz Age: Profiles of Eight Vintage
Jazzmen. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Gottleib, Bill. ‘‘Dixieland Nowhere, Says Dave Tough.’’ Down Beat.
September 23, 1946.
Griffiths, David. Hot Jazz: From Harlem to Storyville. Lanham,
Maryland, Scarecrow Press, 1998.
Hadlock, Richard. Jazz Masters of the Twenties. 1965. Reprint, with
new introduction by author, New York, Da Capo, 1988.
Hennessey, Thomas J. From Jazz to Swing: Afro-American Jazz
Musicians and Their Music, 1890-1935. Detroit, Wayne State
University Press, 1994.
Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development.
1968. Reprint, New York, Oxford University Press, 1986.
Wilber, Bob, and Derek Webster. Music Was Not Enough. New York,
Oxford University Press, 1987.
Do the Right Thing
As many film scholars have noted, the Hollywood film indus-
try’s construction of race has been problematic, reflecting the racial
divisions of the wider culture. While whites have been considered as
representing the ‘‘norm,’’ people of color have been rendered invis-
ible, stereotyped, and denigrated in every decade and in every genre.
A major shift occurred in the 1980s, when an unprecedented number
of studio-backed films written and directed by African-American
filmmakers were released. This movement was led by Spike Lee,
whose arthouse success, She’s Gotta Have It, opened doors previous-
ly closed to black filmmakers. Able to control the images presented,
Lee and the African-American directors who followed brought to the
screen issues and concerns so often ignored by Hollywood. One such
film, Do the Right Thing, written and directed by Lee and released in
1989, is a postmodern masterpiece and a controversial film about
issues of race, gender, class, and politics.
The film is set in the predominantly African-American neigh-
borhood of Bedford Stuyvesant, located in Brooklyn, New York. It
covers twenty-four hours of the hottest day of the year, which is
communicated well by the award winning cinematography of Ernest
Dickerson, with its use of highly saturated reds and orange. Featuring
an ensemble cast—Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito,
Rosie Perez, Danny Aiello, John Turturro, Bill Nunn, Robin Harris,
Roger Guenveur Smith, and Lee himself—the film presents a tense
atmosphere of varied characters with differing political outlooks. Full
of numerous confrontations, the main conflict concerns the decor of
the local pizzeria, Sal’s, owned by an Italian American. Buggin Out,
who wants the ‘‘wall of fame’’ to display pictures of African
Americans rather than Italian Americans, tries to organize the com-
munity in a boycott. Incensed, he enters the pizzeria with Radio
Raheem, who carries with him a portable stereo blaring the anthem
‘‘Fight the Power’’ by hip hop artists Public Enemy. Radio Raheem
engages in a physical dispute with Sal and, in the midst of the
struggle, is killed by a policeman’s stranglehold. A riot ensues and
Sal’s Pizzeria is burned to the ground.
As noted above, the film created a controversy in both critical
and popular circles. What is the right thing? Does the film advocate
violence? Some panned the film because it did not make use of well-
rounded, complex characters, did not support productive collective
action, and presented less-than-positive images of women. Yet the
film brought forth a dialogue about one of the most ingrained aspects
of American culture—racism. It presents the issue as complex and
multi-faceted, while at the same time questioning the ideologies
represented by the numerous characters.
—Frances Gateward
F
URTHER READING:
Lee, Spike, Lisa Jones, and David Lee. Do the Right Thing: The New
Spike Lee Joint. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Reid, Mark, editor. Spike Lee’s ‘‘Do the Right Thing.’’ Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Dobie Gillis
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is a classic sitcom of the late
1950s. If on the surface the show seems unassuming and standard
early sitcom fare, just below the surface is a show that breaks new
ground in television. Two significant aspects set it apart from the
other shows of that era and make it watchable and influential well into
the 1990s. First is the show’s focus on teenagers. Second is the
addition of a new type of character in the form of Maynard G. Krebs,
the outsider.
Dobie Gillis is a teenager in small-town America; the plot
revolves around Dobie’s life and thoughts. In the course of the show
Dobie graduates from high school, briefly joins the army, and returns
to the same town to attend college. The show was adapted from Max
Shulman’s short stories of the 1930s and was updated for the
teenagers of the 1950s. It premiered in September of 1959 and ran
until 1963. The main characters were Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hickman),
the forever-girl-chasing and money-short lead; his best friend and
side-kick Maynard (Bob Denver) the cool jazz beatnik; Dobie’s hard-
working father Herbert T. Gillis (Frank Faylen); and Zelda Gilroy
(Sheila James), who was determined to marry Dobie one day.
Before Dobie there had been teenagers in television shows but
always in secondary roles and usually within the confines of a very
structured family—e.g., The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and
Father Knows Best. While there were occasional episodes dealing
with teenage issues, they were usually reserved for comic relief or
family homilies. Dobie Gillis offered an entirely different way of
viewing the subject. Although most of the stories deal with the basic
trials and tribulations of teenage life—getting a date, getting money,
and getting out of work—they are taken seriously; each show starts
and ends with Dobie speaking to us from a pose near a replica of the
DOBY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
736
A publicity shot for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
Rodin sculpture known as ‘‘The Thinker.’’ In this way, we are told
that the problems of money, girls, and work are important to the youth.
Dobie’s world includes several recurring characters who provide
the basic themes for the show. His father runs the Gillis Grocery Store
and cannot understand his son (he continually tries to instill in him the
need for hard work), while his mother (Florida Friebus) attempts to
mediate between father and son. In the beginning of the series
Tuesday Weld plays Thalia Meninger, Dobie’s dream girl whom he
hesitates to pursue because he does not have money. As one might
expect, there are several rivals who do have money—Milton Armitage
(Warren Beatty), followed by Chatsworth Osborne Jr. (Stephen
Franken). It is their presence that generates many of the show’s conflicts.
As the series unfolds a more striking character also takes form,
that of Maynard. Maynard is the classical beatnik: he has the goatee,
the ripped sweatshirt, the love of jazz, and the ‘‘like’’ vocabulary. He
seems out of place in this little town, and that is the point. Maynard
(played by Bob Denver, later of Gilligan’s Island) is Dobie’s ‘‘good
buddy’’ and he is loyal to him to the end. While Dobie dreams of
money so that he can get the girls, Maynard has no need for either. His
mannerisms and clothes make him stand out from everyone, and his
simple ways and shuddering at the thought of work seem to hold him
apart from the suburban dream. Maynard sets a standard for every
other outsider with a message in shows to come.
Despite the concentration on themes of money and dating, or
perhaps because of it, the show occasionally slides into uncharted
areas. Dobie tends to think and speak about life in terms of big
questions or, more accurately, he tends to make whatever he is
thinking about seem big. Dobie, like many teenagers, is in search of
many things, including an understanding of himself and the world in
which he lives.
The impact of this show extends far beyond the 1950s. Shows
that centered on teens and tried to gather the baby-boomer-market
would be a staple from the 1960s on. The outsider beatnik character
could easily metamorphose into to the hippie of the 1960s or even to
‘‘The Fonz’’ of Happy Days. Dobie has since resurfaced in two
sequels; a 30-minute pilot for a revival of the show in 1977 named
What Ever happened to Dobie Gillis?, and a reunion movie in 1988
called Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis.
—Frank E. Clark
F
URTHER READING:
Denver, Bob. Gilligan, Maynard & Me. New York, Citadel Press, 1993.
Hickman, Dwayne, and Joan Roberts Hickman. Forever Dobie: The
Many Lives of Dwayne Hickman. New York, Birch Lane Press, 1994.
Marschall, Rick. The Golden Age of Television. New York, Bison
Books, 1987.
McNeil, Alex. Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Pro-
gramming from 1948 to the Present. New York, Penguin
Books, 1991.
Putterman, Barry. On Television and Comedy: Essays on Style,
Theme, Performer and Writer. Jefferson, North Carolina,
McFarland, 1995.
Doby, Larry (1923—)
African-American baseball player Larry Doby was an unlikely
Civil Rights pioneer. Unlike Major League Baseball’s first Black
player, Jackie Robinson, Doby was ‘‘shy, quiet, and unassuming’’;
he’d grown up in integrated Patterson, New Jersey, attended predomi-
nantly white Long Island University and lived a life far more sheltered
from the stings and arrows of racial prejudice than the vast majority of
African Americans. Yet it was Doby, even more than Jackie Robin-
son, whose courage and determination helped transform Major League
Baseball into a national pastime for people of all races. In 1947, Doby
became the first African-American player in the American League; he
was also the first player to jump straight from the Negro Leagues to
the majors. He later integrated Japanese baseball in 1962 and went on
to become the sport’s second Black manager and one of its first
African-American executives. However it was in his role as the
second Black player in baseball that Doby had his most significant
impact on professional athletics. His Major League debut demonstrat-
ed to the American public that Jackie Robinson’s entrance into white
baseball was not a publicity stunt and that Black players were destined
to become permanent fixtures in Major League Baseball.
When integration-minded Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck
sought to sign a Black player in 1947, the Newark Eagle’s Doby
appeared to be the obvious choice. The twenty-two year old Doby, a
former high school football and basketball star, led the Negro
National League with a batting average of .458 and thirteen home
DOC MARTENSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
737
Larry Doby
runs. He was the top Black prospect who had not already signed a
contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers (After Jackie Robinson’s suc-
cessful debut, the Dodgers had acquired several other talented Afri-
can Americans for their minor league clubs). Veeck, unlike the
Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey, was determined to inte-
grate his organization from the top down. On July 5, 1947, he
purchased Doby’s contract from the Eagles for $10,000. Three hours
later, he sent the surprised young athlete onto the field as a pinch hitter
against the Chicago White Sox. This courageous decision, coming
without warning, drew 20,000 letters of protest from irate fans.
Doby’s sudden entrance into the majors relieved much of the
pressure on the Dodgers’ Robinson. Both men faced extraordinary
pressures that first season, including open hostility from teammates
and opposition players, and they formed a close relationship that
endured through their lifetimes. Upon Doby signing, Robinson stated,
‘‘I no longer have the feeling that if I don’t make good, it will kill the
chances of other Negro players.’’ Doby’s debut opened the way for
three more Blacks to enter the majors within a month and made it clear
that baseball was on a permanent course toward integration. His
presence on the Indians also contributed to the more general cause of
Civil Rights for African Americans when Washington’s exclusive
Hotel Statler, formerly whites-only, permitted Doby to room with
his team.
After a rough first season in which he batted only .156 in a
limited thirty at-bats, Doby found his stride and became one of the
game’s marquee figures. In 1948, he batted an impressive .301 with
14 homeruns and 65 runs batted in. He led the Indians to a victory over
the Boston Braves in the World Series, becoming the first African
American to play on a World Series Champion team. He later led the
American league in home runs in 1952 and again in 1954. When he
retired after thirteen seasons with the Indians, White Sox, and Detroit
Tigers, he had a formidable career batting average of .283 and 253
lifetime homeruns. For these achievements, he was elected to Base-
ball’s Hall of Fame in 1998.
Long after Major League baseball had fully integrated, Doby
continued to be a pioneer among Black athletes. In 1962, he became
one of the first Blacks to play professional baseball in Japan. He
returned to the United States and served in several administrative jobs
with the Montreal Expos, Indians, and White Sox. He became the
Indians’ manager in 1978—after Frank Robinson, the second African
American ever to manager a Major League club. He later returned to
executive duties as a special assistant to Dr. Gene Budig, the President
of the America League. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s—when
Blacks were welcome on the baseball field and in the stands but not in
the front office—Doby continued to push for expanded opportunities
for African Americans.
After Jackie Robinson’s death, the ‘‘Silk City Slugger’’ became
a living symbol of the early Civil Rights movement. He is indisput-
ably the most popular player in the history of the Cleveland Indians
and, along with later Black stars Willie Mays and Hank Aaron,
continues to be one of baseball’s chief attractions at special events and
Old Timers’ games.
—Jacob M. Appel
F
URTHER READING:
Boundreau, Lou, with Ed Fitzgerald. Player-Manager. Boston, Little
Brown, 1952.
Frommer, Harvey. Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke
Baseball’s Color Barrier. New York, Macmillan, 1960.
Moore, Joseph Thomas. Pride Against Prejudice: The Biography of
Larry Doby. New York, Greenwood Press, 1988.
Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment. New York, Oxford, 1997.
Veeck, Bill. Veeck—As in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck.
New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962
Young, Andrew ‘‘Doc.’’ Great Negro Baseball Stars and How They
Made The Major Leagues. New York, A. S. Barnes, 1953.
Doc Martens
More than just functional footwear, Doc Martens shoes and
boots have become a staple among decades of style-conscious subcul-
tures and eventually emerged as a fashion phenomenon. Once syn-
onymous with angry British youth, Doc Martens, like their sturdy
leather uppers, have mellowed with age. Bavarian physician Claus
Maerten designed the clunky, cushiony, thick-soled boot out of old
tires in 1945 after a skiing accident necessitated more comfortable
footgear. Bunion-plagued customers became converts until the 1960s,
DOC SAVAGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
738
when fascist skinheads appropriated the boots. Rock stars soon
followed the trend, and after punk rockers in the 1970s began painting
on their own designs, the company came out with wildly colored and
patterned models. The brand was a must-have for the young and hip
throughout the 1980s, from hip-hop to grunge fans. By the late 1990s,
women accounted for seventy percent of the fast-growing market,
picking up the pairs at upscale department stores.
—Geri Speace
F
URTHER READING:
Morais, Richard C. ‘‘What’s Up, Doc?’’ Forbes. January 16,
1995, p. 42.
Doc Savage
During the 16-year run of Doc Savage Magazine, Clark Savage,
Jr. (better known as Doc) was one of the most exciting and popular
pulp magazine characters. The appeal of Doc Savage is succinctly
stated in the promotional blurb that appears on the back of the Bantam
paperback editions that reprint his pulp adventures: ‘‘To his fans he is
the greatest adventure hero of all time, whose fantastic exploits are
unequaled for hair-raising thrills, breathtaking escapes, and bloodcur-
dling excitement.’’ Doc is a transitional hero who unites the intellect
Ron Ely stands beside a painting of the pulp fiction character Doc Savage,
who he played on screen in 1975.
of Sherlock Holmes and the physical prowess of Tarzan with the best
gadgets imagined by the new genre of science fiction. In bringing
together all of these elements, Doc Savage served as a model for the
superheroes that followed.
Doc Savage was the creation of Street and Smith business
manager Henry Ralston and editor John Nanovic, who hoped to
duplicate the success of the company’s first single-character pulp
magazine, The Shadow. While Ralston and Nanovic created the
concept, the characters, and even many of the colorful details, it was a
young writer named Lester Dent who brought Doc Savage to life. The
house byline used was Kenneth Robeson, and there were six different
authors who contributed Doc Savage stories under that byline. Lester
Dent, however, wrote the vast majority of the Doc tales and edited, or
at least approved, the work of the writers who ghosted for him. It was
also Lester Dent, following his ‘‘master plot’’ outline and hammering
out his pithy prose, who established the distinctive style of the Doc
Savage adventures.
Doc Savage appeared in 181 fantastic pulp magazine adventures
from 1933 to 1949. In October of 1964, Bantam Books began
paperback reprints of every one of the pulp stories, plus one previous-
ly unpublished Doc manuscript by Lester Dent (The Red Spider). In
1991 Bantam began publishing original Doc Savage material. Escape
from Loki was written by long-time Doc aficionado Philip Jose
Farmer. Doc Savage fan and scholar Will Murray wrote seven books
based on Lester Dent story fragments and outlines. There was a Doc
Savage radio show in the 1930s, a Doc Savage movie in the 1970s,
another radio show in the 1980s, and Doc Savage comic books from at
least six different publishers, but the true Doc Savage adventures are
the 182 stories written for the pulps.
Doc Savage is a hero of mythic proportions. Clark Savage, Jr.,
was born one stormy night aboard a tiny schooner anchored off
Andros island in the infamous Bermuda Triangle. Doc dwells far
above ordinary humans on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State
Building. Both his strength and intellect are herculean. At the age of
14 months he began his strenuous and life-long training. Even after
Doc reaches adulthood and begins traveling the globe to right wrongs
and help the oppressed, he adheres faithfully to a two-hour routine of
intensive exercises for his muscles, senses, and mind. Though he
excels in virtually every endeavor, Doc displays his most prodigious
talent in the practice of medicine. By the time he was 30, Doc Savage
was the world’s most brilliant surgeon. In fact, he ‘‘rehabilitates’’
criminals using an intricate brain surgery procedure only he has the
skill to perform.
When Doc first appears in 1933 he is six feet tall and weighs 200
pounds. In later tales Doc is usually described as somewhat larger—
around six feet eight inches and weighing 270 pounds. Yet, his build
has such symmetry and proportion that he does not look big unless he
is standing next to someone. Beneath his sun-bronzed skin, his
muscles are ‘‘like cables’’ or ‘‘bundles of piano wire.’’ When he
flexes those great muscles he often rips his shirt and coat. His hair is
combed straight back and resembles a metal skullcap. Doc’s most
riveting characteristic is the gently swirling flakes of gold in his eyes.
Thanks to the dynamic covers painted by James Bama for the Bantam
reprints, a virtual costume was established for Doc. On most paper-
back covers Doc wore boots, aviator pants, and a very precisely
ripped shirt.
The first Doc Savage story, The Man of Bronze, establishes that
the men who compose Doc’s amazing crew are ‘‘the five greatest
brains to ever assemble in one group.’’ They include: ‘‘Long Tom,’’
the frail-looking wizard of electricity who is a wildcat in a fight;