Almost every line was followed by two exclamation marks for added emphasis. One month after the ATSC and Lockheed meeting, the young engineer Clarence L. Kelly Johnson and other associate engineers hand delivered the initial XP-80 proposal to the ATSC. Several years later, the U.S. Air Force became interested in the design, and it ordered the SR-71 Blackbird, a two-seater version of the A-12. Kelly Johnson headed the Skunk Works until 1975. This was followed by a heated conversation among the adults who advised her that Flower was too bashful to go into space, and it couldnt be Pepe Le Pew, another famous cartoon skunk, because he wasnt serious enough to be in the space program. Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor. In one storyline Dogpatch's "Cannonball Express" train, after 1,563 tries, finally delivers its "cargo" to Dogpatch citizens on October 12, 1946, Receiving a 13-year stack of newspapers, Li'l Abner's family realizes that the Great Depression is on and that banks should close; they race to take their money out of the bank before realizing they have no money to begin with. Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared across multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. Just four years later, amidst growing fears over a potential Soviet missile attack on the United States, Skunk Works engineerswho often worked ten hours a day, six days a weekcreated the U-2, the worlds first dedicated spy plane. In the midst of the Great Depression, the hardscrabble residents of lowly Dogpatch allowed suffering Americans to laugh at yokels even worse off than themselves. Initially known as "Mysterious Yokum" (there was even an Ideal doll marketed under this name) due to a debate regarding his gender (he was stuck in a pants-shaped stovepipe for the first six weeks), he was renamed "Honest Abe" (after President Abraham Lincoln) to thwart his early tendency to steal. [5] Abner had no visible means of support, although his character earned his livelihood as a "crescent cutter" for the Little Wonder Privy Company and later "mattress tester" for the Stunned Ox Mattress Company. Our Multi-Domain Operations/Joint All-Domain Operations solutions provide a complete picture of the battlespace and empowers warfighters to quickly make decisions that drive action. Maverick Mach 10 - As Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell reaches Mach 10 in the Darkstara piloted jet powered by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Workscheck out the Lockheed Martin Skunk logo on the tail of the plane in the movie .. The name was adapted by the Lockheed Corporation, the predecessor of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, more than 50 years ago. He would eventually acquire a couple of supporting character friends for his own semi-regularly featured adventures in the strip. The secret facility was housed in a large tent at what is now Burbank Airport. I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted. The Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. The story is explained as well in the Wikipedia: " [] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. [14], During the development of the P-80 Shooting Star, Johnson's engineering team was located adjacent to a malodorous plastics factory. Humorously enough, many states tried to claim ownership to the little town (Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was immensely popular in the 1940s and '50s. In 1988 and 1989 many newspapers ran reruns of Li'l Abner episodes, mostly from the 1940s run, distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association and Capp Enterprises. The F-117 Nighthawk was developed in response to theurgent national needfor a jet fighter that could operate completely undetected by the enemy. The story concerns Daisy Mae's efforts to catch Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. The concept came in the wake of the Gary Powers incident. [1] In November 1941, Kelsey gave the unofficial nod to Johnson and the P-38 team to engineer a drop tank system to extend range for the fighter, and they completed the initial research and development without a contract. As utterly wretched as existence was in Dogpatch, there was one place even worse. Shortly after, the go-ahead was given for Lockheed to start developing the United States' first jet fighter. One day, Culver's phone rang and he answered it by saying "Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking." But Lockheeds chief engineer, Clarence Kelly Johnson, simply fielded all requests and relayed to his handpicked band of Skunk Works employees what needed to be done. All Rights Reserved. Pappy was so lazy and ineffectual, he didn't even bathe himself. These scaled-down demonstrators, built in only 18 months, were a revolutionary step forward in aviation technology because of their extremely small radar cross-section. Kitchen is currently[when?] Fellow employees quickly adopted the name for their mysterious division of Lockheed and eventually "Skonk Works" became "Skunk Works.". Shmoos were originally meant to be included in the 1956 Broadway Li'l Abner musical, employing stage puppetry. He was a fan of the Lil' Abner comic strip. It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994. . The name stuck. The meaning of the phrase has evolved, and today it means something broader outside of aeronautics; that causes confusion, which further fosters poor managerial decisions. (In his book The American Language, H.L. Some of the Skunk Works' most notable aircraft have received the prestigious trophy, which bears the name of the past publisher and early president of the Aero Club of America, Robert J. Collier. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with an original score by Nelson Riddle. or even Little Annie Fanny. 1 (19341936). Origin of the name "Skunk Works" The name originated from cartoonist Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip, which featured an outdoor still called the "Skonk Works" in which "Kickapoo Joy Juice" was manufactured from old shoes and dead skunks. The smell at the site is credited with being the basis for the Skunk Works name. The comic derivation is true, said Dianne Knippel, director of communications for Lockheed Martin Co. She directed us to LockheedMartin.com, where we learned that the name came about during World War II when engineer Kelly Johnson brought together a select team to develop new aircraft. The Lightning team was temporarily moved to the 3G Distillery, a smelly former bourbon works where the first YP-38 (constructor's number 2202) was built. Learn how we are strengthening the economies, industries and communities of our global partner nations. Local attractions that reappeared in the strip included the West Po'k Chop Railroad; the "Skonk Works", a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch; and the General Jubilation T. Cornpone memorial statue. "The Comics on the Couch" by Gerald Clarke, "Gallery of vintage ads featuring Li'l Abner as spokesman", Filmmakers host premiere for Dogpatch USA documentary. Aerospace research facility in the United States, "Skunk works" redirects here. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, Monitor. Mammy Yokum: Born Pansy Hunks, Mammy was the scrawny, highly principled "sassiety" leader and bare knuckle "champeen" of the town of Dogpatch. [4] The Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. Tellingly, Kurtzman resisted doing feature parodies of either Li'l Abner or Dick Tracy in the comic book Mad, despite their prominence. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians were even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. 2023 Flyer Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Schertz, Texas 78154. Tiny was unknown to the strip until September 1954, when a relative who had been raising him reminded Mammy that she'd given birth to a second "chile" while visiting her 15 years earlier. Mammy was regularly seen scrubbing Pappy in an outdoor oak tub ("Once a month, rain or shine"). Capp introduced Tiny to fill the bachelor role played reliably for nearly two decades by Li'l Abner himself, until his fateful 1952 marriage threw the carefully orchestrated dynamic of the strip out of whack for a period. Mind Works integrates the most recent advances in psychology with time-tested treatment approaches. Other news is the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president on March 4, 1933 (although Mammy Yokum thinks the President is Teddy Roosevelt), and a picture of Germany's "new leader" Adolf Hitler who claims to love peace while reviewing 20,000 new planes (April 21, 1933). After a fatal mid-air collision on the fourth launch, the drones were re-built as D-21Bs, and launched with a rocket booster from B-52s. The F-104 Starfighter, the first Mach 2 aircraft, was developed to compete against Soviet MiGs in the early 1950s. In the same neighborhood was a plastic factory that produced a terrible odor that permeated the tent. Among the original TV characters were "Mr. Ditto", "Harris Tweed" (a disembodied suit of clothes), "Swenn Golly" (a Svengali-like mesmerist), counterfeiters "Max Millions" and "Minton Mooney", "Frank N. Stein", "Batula", "Match Head" (a pyromaniac), "Sen-Sen O'Toole", "Shmoozer" and "Herman the Ape Man". Zugang! With John Hodiak in the title role, the Li'l Abner radio serial ran weekdays on NBC from Chicago, from November 20, 1939, to December 6, 1940. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. During September 2015 the proposed aircraft was deemed to have developed into more of a tactical reconnaissance aircraft, instead of strategic reconnaissance.[11]. This would prove to be a common practice within the Skunk Works. FactSnippet No. Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp "very possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature to media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life." Unusual looking and aerodynamically challenged, the Nighthawk wasnt pretty, but it did what no aircraft had done before. [36] After four months of fantasy adventure, Capp ended the strip with Washable's mother waking him up; the story was a dream. Everybody almost dead.. Others include double whammy, skunk works and Lower Slobbovia. [66] The storylines and villains were mostly separate from the comic strip and unique to the show. Today, the Skunk Works appears to be working on another unconventional project to build a (likely unmanned) hypersonic spy/bomber jet unofficially dubbed the SR-72. Kelly Johnson and his team designed and built the XP-80 in only 143 days, seven less than was required. It was Kellys unconventional organizational approach that allowed the Skunk Works to streamline work and operate with unparalleled efficiency. Privacy Policy. White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel, eds. In one storyline, he lives up to his nickname when during a nationwide search for a pair of socks sewn by Betsy Ross; after finding that his father was the current owner and preparing to trade them for the reward (a handshake from the President of the United States), he confesses at the last second that they were not his to give. The next comic frame says: HIDE FRIED, "Neither the strip's shifting political leanings nor the slide of its final few years had any bearing on its status as a classic; and in 1995, it was recognized as such by the, "ABNER" was the name given to the first codebreaking computer used by the, The original Dogpatch is a historical part of San Francisco dating back to the 1860s that escaped the, Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae, Wolf Gal, Earthquake McGoon, Lonesome Polecat, Hairless Joe, Sadie Hawkins, Silent Yokum and Fearless Fosdick all found their way onto the, Al Capp always claimed to have effectively created the, Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. Today's column maps the scope of change. The name "Skunk Works" and the skunk design are now registered trademarks of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. City Building Map Kurtzman carried that forward and passed it down to a whole new crop of cartoonists, myself included. Engineers from Skunk Works subsequently developed the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 . We have invested in developing and demonstrating hypersonic technology for over 30 years. (Response: ", "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for, "Th' ideel o' ev'ry one hunnerd percent, red-blooded American boy! In America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1997), comics historian Richard Marschall analyzed the overtly misanthropic subtext of Li'l Abner: Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. No one was to discuss the project outside the small organization, and team members were warned to be careful of how they answered the phones. Selections from the Li'l Abner musical score have been recorded by everyone from Percy Faith and Mario Lanza to Andr Previn and Shelly Manne. Natural landmarks included (at various times) Teeterin' Rock, Onneccessary Mountain, Bottomless Canyon, and Kissin' Rock (handy to Suicide Cliff). I've never heard anyone mention this, but Capp is 100% responsible for inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad Magazine. In 1955, the Skunk Works received a contract from the CIA to build a spyplane known as the U-2 with the intention of flying over the Soviet Union and photographing sites of strategic interest. Scripps Company, it was an immediate success. As with virtually all Skunk Works projects that followed, the mission was secretive and the deadline was remarkably tight. For the game featuring the. They included Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson and, notably, a young Frank Frazetta, who penciled the Sunday continuity from studio roughs from 1954 to the end of 1961 before his fame as a fantasy artist. The "Skonk Works" in Li'l Abner referred to a secretive brewery located in a forest, where a foul-smelling beverage was brewed from skunks. In the fourth type, according to MacLean, there were only two: Pogo and Li'l Abner. German jets had appeared over Europe. The phrase, used then as an informal nickname, comes from " Skonk Works" the Kickapoo Joy Juice bootleg brewing operation in Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic strip. Skunk Works is an official alias for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs ( ADP ), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. [13] The first YP-38 was built there before the team moved back to Lockheed's main factory a year later. And virtually all cartoonists remain content with their diluted share of any merchandising revenue their syndicates arrange. Building a Mach 3.0+ aircraft out of titanium posed enormous difficulties, and the first flight did not occur until 1962. Taking action to help you protect what matters most. [50], Capp has also been credited with popularizing many terms, such as "natcherly", schmooze, druthers, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. At one extreme, he displayed consistently devastating humor, while at the other, his mean-spiritedness came to the fore but which was which seems to depend on the commentator's own point of view. The first topper was Washable Jones, a weekly continuity about a four-year-old hillbilly boy who goes fishing and accidentally hooks a ghost, which he pulls from the water. Just look at Fearless Fosdick a brilliant parody of Dick Tracy with all those bullet holes and stuff. A team engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capps comic strip, Lil Abner, in which there was a running joke about a mysterious place deep in the forest called the Skonk Works. There, a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. Outside Dogpatch, characters used a variety of stock Vaudevillian dialects. Sign up here. [9], In 2009, the Skunk Works was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Lena the Hyena makes a brief animated appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). [11] His first words were "po'k chop", and that remained his favorite food. When Capp created the event, it wasn't his intention to have it occur annually on a specific date, because it inhibited his freewheeling plotting. "There is, however, a fighting chance to escape for hundreds of innocent bystanders who happen to be in the neighborhood but only a fighting chance. Fearless Fosdick premiered on Sunday afternoons on NBC; 13 episodes featuring the Mary Chase marionettes were produced. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li'l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."[51]. He left it at Dogpatch USA so there would be no headaches and problems. Its name was taken from the moonshine factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner . Beginning in 1944, Li'l Abner was adapted into a series of color theatrical cartoons by Screen Gems for Columbia Pictures, directed by Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham and Howard Swift. In 2002 the Chicago Tribune, in a review of The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo, noted: "The wry, ornery, brilliantly perceptive satirist will go down as one of the Great American Humorists." What sets the Skunk Works apart is its unique approach created by founder Kelly Johnson. ", signaled the end of all further discussion. By 1960, Soviet radar and surface-to-air missile technology had caught up with the U-2. 1,193,227 People also liked Fun Fact Skunk Works Blue Interesting Fact However, Gussman consulted closely with Capp on the storylines. Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962'71) as owing much of its inspiration to Li'l Abner, prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 Playboy interview. After about 40 years, however, Capp's interest in Abner waned, and this showed in the strip itself Li'l Abner lasted until November 13, 1977, when Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the recently declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to advancing illness. One day, Culvers phone rang and he answered it by saying Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking. The joke was not lost on his coworkers and soon the employees adopted the name for their mysterious part of Lockheed. The name skunkworks originates from a cartoon series called " Li'l Abner " by Al Capp. Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. The radio show was not written by Al Capp but by Charles Gussman. In October 1947, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Syndicate, a thinly veiled dig at UFS. Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies and charitable or non-profit organizations, spanning several decades. An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." In the comic, there was a running joke about a mysterious and malodorous place deep in the forest called the "Skonk Works," where a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. The F-22 is the worlds preeminent air dominance fighter and a proven strategic deterrent. 1,193,226 2. In his seminal book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan considered Li'l Abner's Dogpatch "a paradigm of the human situation". as asides, to bolster the effect of the printed speech balloons. Li'l Abner made its debut on August 13, 1934, in eight North American newspapers, including the New York Mirror. Capp has appeared as himself on The Ed Sullivan Show, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, The Today Show, The Red Skelton Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and on This Is Your Life on February 12, 1961, with host Ralph Edwards and honoree Peter Palmer. Four operational missions were conducted over China, but the camera packages were never successfully recovered. According to the strip, scores of locals were done in yearly by the toxic fumes of the concentrated "skonk oil", which was brewed and barreled daily by "Big Barnsmell" (known as the lonely "inside man" at the Skonk Works), by grinding dead skunks and worn shoes into a smoldering still, for some mysterious, unspecified purpose. Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome. He hosted at least five television programs between 1952 and 1972 three different talk shows called The Al Capp Show (twice), Al Capp, Al Capp's America (a live "chalk talk", with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons), and a game show called Anyone Can Win. For 18 years of the run of the strip, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's marital crosshairs time and time again. He also briefly filled-in for radio journalist Drew Pearson, participated in a March 2, 1948 America's Town Meeting of the Air debate on ABC, and hosted his own syndicated, 500-station radio show.). Various Asian, Latin, Native American and European characters spoke in a wide range of specific, broadly caricatured dialects as well. The respondent company argued that Lockheed "used its size, resources and financial position to employ 'bullyboy' tactics against a very small company. Most notably, a majority of classified testing is thought to be conducted at sites such as the Nevada Test Site. Hot Dogs! [38] Other promotional tie-ins included the Lena the Hyena Contest (1946), the Name the Shmoo Contest (1949), the Nancy O. A 1950 cover story in Time even included photos of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. Drawn by cartoonist Steve Stiles,[58] the new Abner was approved by Capp's widow, and brother Elliott Caplin, but Al Capp's daughter, Julie Capp, objected at the last minute and permission was withdrawn. A much more successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip, also entitled Li'l Abner, opened on Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956, and had a long run of 693 performances,[68] followed by a nationwide tour. He lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his pint-sized parents. Three members of the original Broadway cast did not appear in the film version: Charlotte Rae (who was replaced by Billie Hayes early in the stage production), Edie Adams (who was pregnant during the filming) and Tina Louise. The following is a partial list of characteristic expressions that reappeared often in Li'l Abner: Li'l Abner had several toppers on the Sunday page, including[4]. The staff was cautioned that they had to operate in strict secrecy. Fosdick also achieved considerable exposure as the long-running advertising spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil, a popular men's hair product of the postwar period. A plump, juicy Hammus Alabammus is the rarest and most vital ingredient of "ecstasy sauce", an indescribably delicious gourmet delicacy. [5] Secretly, a number of advanced features were being incorporated into the new fighter including a significant structural revolution in which the aluminum skin of the aircraft was joggled, fitted and flush-riveted, a design innovation not called for in the army's specification but one that would yield less aerodynamic drag and give greater strength with lower mass. The logo, which features a skunk standing on its hind feet with its front legs folded on his chest and smiling confidently, has generated some confusion for generations born well after LilAbner was pulled from the comic pages. The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. [4] It was originally distributed by United Feature Syndicate and, later by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. Mammy dominated the Yokum clan through the force of her personality, and dominated everyone else with her fearsome right uppercut (sometimes known as her "Goodnight, Irene" punch), which helped her uphold law, order and decency. I'll never knock his talent."[56]. [7] Some of the group of independent-minded engineers were later involved with the XP-80 project, the prototype of the P-80 Shooting Star.