Let me return today to two past column subjects: the Riverside County years of Carl Barks and Harpo Marx. Why pair Barks and Marx? Chalk it up as one of my larks.
Barks was the Disney cartoonist who wrote and drew immensely popular Walt Disney comic books while living in remote San Jacinto. Marx was one of the Marx Brothers, the movie comedy team, who spent his last decade in Rancho Mirage and, classical music being one of his passions, performed twice with the Riverside Symphony.
First, Barks.
I’ve learned a bit more about his time here by perusing the 30-volume Carl Barks Library hardcovers from the 1980s that reprinted his Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics along with analysis and biography.
When Barks quit the Disney animation studio in 1942, in part because of the air conditioning that aggravated his sinus problems, he and his then-wife moved “to the hot dry climate of San Jacinto,” scholar Thomas Andrae wrote. “He started raising chickens and toyed with the idea of developing his own human comic strip characters.”
Andrae continued: “Before this could happen, however, he heard that Western Publishing Company was looking for freelance artists to produce original Donald Duck material for the monthly Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories… .”
A second article, by E. Barbara Boatner, picked up the thread: “In his San Jacinto retreat on Ramona Boulevard, with its lovely view of purple mountains, Barks had the isolation and the latitude a freelancer needs to concentrate on drawing and scripting.”
After being given a 10-page script to draw, Barks so improved what he’d been handed “that from that time on Western gave him virtually free rein with his work,” Boatner wrote.
One of Barks’ best-loved stories is “Donald Duck in Old California.” In this historically flavored 1951 tale, Donald and his nephews seem to be transported back in time to the Alta California days. But first, there’s a stop in Riverside County.
As the story opens, Donald and his nephews pull their car off a crowded Southern California freeway to ramble over the back roads. As they pass a dilapidated 1840s house, Donald tells Huey, Dewey and Louie about California’s Spanish, Mexican and Native American past.
In one panel, Donald says, “And here’s a town where Ramona once lived!” One of the nephews replies, “Oh, boy! I’d a liked to have met her!” A sign by the road reads “Ramona Pageant Bowl” with a directional arrow.
Yes, that’s the very same pageant that just turned 100 in 2023. It wasn’t even 30 when Barks cited it.
A panel later, a small roadside sign gives directions to “Soboba Indian Reservation.” Distracted, Donald crashes into a boulder at a crossroads and he and his nephews wake up on the reservation, aided by the tribe. Believing themselves recovered, the foursome head off on foot and soon realize the landscape has changed around them.
They are in the 1840s! Their time travel adventure takes them to a cattle ranch, a fiesta, a stagecoach stop in the small settlement of Los Angeles and more. This adventure is all a result of concussions from the crash, if it matters to you.
More importantly: Hemet, San Jacinto and Soboba were all in a million-selling comic book. The mind boggles. And that was partly why Barks did it.
“I used references to the Ramona saga in ‘Old California,’” Barks wrote in a 1985 note for the reprint, “partly as an introductory stage prop to establish the locale and historical period of the main plot, and partly to amaze my San Jacinto neighbors, few of whom knew that the Duck comic books they saw on the newsstands originated in their little town.”
In fact, the crossroads where Donald wrecks his car may also have been recognizable to locals. It was the spot where Main Street and Soboba Road intersect.
More Barks
While we’re on the subject of Barks, Bill Linehan of Riverside emailed to tell me about once meeting him.
“In 1980, when I was a copy editor at The Press-Enterprise, I chanced upon his Temecula address,” Linehan said. “Being a Barks fan, I visited him and his wife, Garé, and wrote a story (‘The Lord of Quackly Hall is Alive and Still Hard at Work in Temecula’) for the Sidelight section.
“Surprisingly, what I remember most is that with Barks’ choice of words, cadence and delivery, he sounded a lot like how I had imagined the voices of Scrooge and Donald in those wonderful comic books so long ago.”
Now, Marx
Let’s turn our attention — at last! — to Harpo Marx.
The comic actor’s routine was that he pantomimed everything, honking a bulb horn (“honk honk honk”) rather than speaking. But he occasionally uttered a few words onstage, including at benefit concerts for the Riverside Symphony.
The first time, Nov. 3, 1961, after some very Harpo Marx-type sight gags in his stage costume, he broke character for a few remarks at the performance’s close. The second time, on March 20, 1964, in casual dress, he narrated “Peter and the Wolf.”
After my column appeared, reader Lois Tomlinson filled in one gap in the newspaper coverage I’d relied upon. She was in the audience at age 7.
“Many articles refer to the ‘upside-down cello gag’ but none seem to explain it,” Tomlinson told me. She offered a play-by-play.
Harpo was conducting. In the middle of the piece, he turned the concertmaster’s sheet music upside down. The violinist returned it to the proper orientation. Harpo next turned the principal cellist’s sheet music upside down. The cellist continued playing as if nothing had happened. The piece ended. Or did it?
After intermission, the piece resumed, with Harpo still conducting. Suddenly Harpo turned the cellist’s sheet music right-side up, back to its original position. The cellist, in response, turned his cello right-side up. As the audience quickly realized, he’d begun the concert’s second half by playing his instrument upside down.
Why did this make such an impression on young Lois Tomlinson? The principal cellist, who was also the symphony’s co-founder, was Bruce Tomlinson, her father.
Honk honk honk.
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and (honk!) Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
