SPEAKER_00: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica.
This month we're talking about comediennees, women throughout history who've made us laugh.
They transgressed societal norms through comedy and often spoke out about injustice using their sharp wit.
Today we're talking about a woman who used her knack for humorous social commentary to launch a syndicated cartoon empire.
She drew comics that appeared in hundreds of newspapers across the country and captured the sassy, fashionable lifestyle of the carefree flapper girl.
Let's talk about Ethel Hayes.
SPEAKER_00: Ethel Hayes was born in 1892 in Billings, Montana. She displayed her talent for art at an early age. In elementary school, Ethel would draw little caricatures of her teachers on the chalkboard to make her classmates laugh.
By high school, she was a staff illustrator on her school's newspaper. After graduation, most of her friends went off to finishing schools for young girls. Ethel went west to study at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design.
When Ethel arrived in LA, she wanted to be an illustrator. But soon her teachers convinced her to start painting. Her talent won her a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York.
So Ethel moved across the country again to continue pursuing her art career.
In the bustling city, Ethel had no shortage of subjects. She drew caricatures of people she passed on the street in her sketchbooks. And she was good at it.
But to Ethel, this was just a hobby. Her main goal was to become a serious artist.
To achieve that goal, she made plans to travel to Paris to study at the prestigious Academie Julien.
Then the First World War began, which meant Ethel couldn't go to Paris. She went home to Billings instead.
Ethel started working as a military chuckle girl, illustrating wartime pamphlets and posters with funny images. She also started teaching art to recovering soldiers at hospitals around the U.S.
In Tennessee, she taught an art class in a hospital full of veterans. On the first day, she asked them what they wanted to learn.
One of the men said he wanted to draw cartoons. His classmates agreed. Ethel had to break the news to them.
She didn't know how to teach that.
The next day, her class was empty.
So Ethel decided to learn how to draw cartoons.
Ethel signed up for cartooning classes through a correspondence school, and then taught her students what she learned.
Ethel's drawings were elegant and playful. She had a knack for capturing facial expressions. The man who ran Ethel's cartooning school was so impressed with her work that he passed it along to the editor of the Cleveland Press.
That editor offered Ethel a job.
At first Ethel was hesitant, but eventually she accepted and moved to Cleveland.
At the paper, she teamed up with a female reporter named Victoria Benham.
Victoria would write the features, and Ethel would draw cartoons illustrating their misadventures through the city.
The column was called Vic and Ethel.
It was a hilarious hit, but it didn't last long. Six months later, Victoria got married and quit, and the cartoon became known as just Ethel.
The comics were well received in Cleveland, and soon enough, they were syndicated in papers across the country.
Ethel also created another cartoon staple, Flapper Fanny Says.
The cartoon ran daily, and it usually featured Flapper Fanny in an amusing scenario with a caption beneath it.
In one cartoon, Flapper Fanny is dressed chicly, holding a man's wallet while he looks on anxiously. The caption reads, The modern fortune teller looks at a young man's bank book before telling him his fate.
Flapper Fanny was a celebration of the cosmopolitan independent single woman.
Ethel always drew her wearing the latest fashions, and reportedly, the silent screen star Clara Bow took cues from Fanny's outfits.
In the mid-1920s, Ethel married a man named William Sims.
William's job meant Ethel would have to move to Kansas City, Missouri.
But Ethel's editors didn't want her to quit her job. She was too beloved by the readers.
So Ethel moved and became an early 20th century remote worker.
Every morning, she would wake up and head to her office, a small studio in the backyard of her house.
She would work, usually from 8 to 5, and send her finished cartoons to her editors.
By the late 1930s, Ethel pivoted from drawing daily cartoons to illustrating children's books like Mother Goose, Raggedy Ann, and Andy, and The Night Before Christmas. She also illustrated paper doll cutout books.
By the 1950s, she had retired from commercial art completely. But she remained an artist her whole life.
Her last drawing was finished in 1979.
It was a pastel of her daughter.
Ethel Hayes died in 1989. She was 97 years old.
All month, we've been talking about comediennees. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Tune in on Monday for a brand new theme. Happy New Year!
