Toonerville Folks

Toonerville Folks (a.k.a. The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains) is a newspaper comic strip feature by Fontaine Fox, which ran from 1908 to 1955. It began in 1908 in the Chicago Post, and by 1913, it was syndicated nationally by the Wheeler Syndicate. From the 1930s on, it was distributed by the McNaught Syndicate.

The single-panel gag cartoon (with longer-form comics on Sunday) is a daily look at Toonerville, situated in what are now called the suburbs. Central to the strip is the rickety little trolley called the "Toonerville Trolley that meets all the trains", driven in a frenzy by the grizzly old Skipper to meet each commuter train as it arrives in town. The many richly-formed characters include Suitcase Simpson, Mickey McGuire, the Powerful Katrinka, the Terrible Tempered Mr. Bang, Aunt Eppie Hogg, Little Woo-Woo Wortle, The Little Scorpions, and "Stinky" Davis.

Fox described the inspiration for the cartoon series in an article he wrote for The Saturday Evening Post titled "A Queer Way to Make a Living" (February 11, 1928, page six):

After years of gestation, the idea for the Toonerville Trolley was born one day up in Westchester County when my wife and I had left New York City to visit Charlie Voight, the cartoonist, in the Pelhams. At the station, we saw a rattletrap of a streetcar, which had as its crew and skipper a wistful old codger with an Airedale beard. He showed as much concern in the performance of his job as you might expect from Captain Hartley when docking the Leviathan.

Between 1920 and 1922, 17 Toonerville silent film comedy adaptations were scripted by Fox for Philadelphia's Betzwood Film Company. These starred Dan Mason as the Skipper with Wilna Hervey as Katrinka. Only seven of those 17 shorts survive today. Four are preserved in the Betzwood Film Archive at Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

1920

1921

1922