( Shmoos are usually portrayed as gender-neutral, although Capp sidesteps this issue to allow the comic plot twist.

Capp was just as likely to parody himself ; his self-caricature made frequent, tongue-in-cheek appearances in Li ' l Abner.

According to one anecdote ( from Al Capp Remembered, 1994 ), Capp and his brother Elliot ducked out of a dull party at Capp's home — leaving Walt Kelly alone to fend for himself entertaining a group of Argentine envoys who didn't speak English.

No matter how much help he had, Capp insisted on drawing and inking the characters ' faces and hands — especially of Abner and Daisy Mae — himself, and his distinctive touch is often discernible.

Capp himself originated the stories, wrote the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and drew and inked the hands and faces of the characters.

) 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.

Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads.

Capp himself originated the stories, wrote the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and drew and inked the faces and hands of the characters.

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.

Revealing an important key to the story, Al Capp himself wrote that the Shmoo metaphorically represented the limitless bounty of the earth in all its richness — in essence, Mother Nature herself.

Instead of drawing it himself, Capp recruited van Buren.

* People on Paper ( aka MGM Passing Parade # 55, 1945 ) ( cameo by Al Capp )

* This Is America: Funny Business ( 1948 ) RKO ( cameo by Al Capp )

* That Certain Feeling ( 1956 ) Paramount ( cameo by Al Capp )

* Imagine: John Lennon ( 1988 ) Warner Bros. ( cameo by Al Capp )

Since then he has gone on to become one of the highest-paid stars on British TV, mostly in comedies, appearing in shows such as Only When I Laugh ( as Roy Figgis ), The Beiderbecke Affair ( as Trevor Chaplin ), The Beiderbecke Tapes, Andy Capp ( in the title role ), The Beiderbecke Connection, Second Thoughts ( as Bill MacGregor ), Midsomer Murders, Pay and Display, Dalziel and Pascoe, Close and True, Born and Bred ( as Dr. Arthur Gilder ), and New Tricks ( as Jack Halford ).

In addition to creating Li ' l Abner, Capp also co-created two other newspaper strips: Abbie an ' Slats with magazine illustrator Raeburn van Buren in 1937, and Long Sam with cartoonist Bob Lubbers in 1954, as well as the Sunday " topper " strips Washable Jones, Small Fry ( aka Small Change ), and Advice fo ' Chillun.

* Long Sam by Al Capp and Bob Lubbers ( 1954 – 1962 )

In 1946 Capp persuaded six of the most popular radio personalities ( Frank Sinatra, Kate Smith, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope, Fred Waring and Smilin ' Jack Smith ) to broadcast a song he'd written for Daisy Mae: ( Li ' l Abner ) Don't Marry That Girl !!

— by " Irving Vermyn " Capp, Bob Lubbers & Dave Lambert ( 1956 ) General Music Publishing Co.

After Fisher underwent plastic surgery, Capp once included a racehorse in L ' il Abner named Ham's Nose Bob.

Capp named her after the carnival-themed horror film, Nightmare Alley ( 1947 ).

* The 1989 film I Want to Go Home ( Je Veux Rentrer a la Maison, screenplay by Jules Feiffer ) has a scene where the main character, a retired cartoonist played by Adolph Green, makes an unexpectedly emotional appeal for Al Capp and his legacy.

After several other writers and composers considered musicalizing the comic strip, Al Capp finally made a deal in 1955 with the eventual creators for a musical to be financed by Paramount Pictures, which wanted to follow the stage version with a film musical.

Alfred Gerald Caplin ( September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979 ), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li ' l Abner.

" The Caplins were dirt poor, and Capp later recalled stories of his mother going out in the night to sift through ash barrels for reusable bits of coal.

Attending three of them in rapid succession, the impoverished Capp was thrown out of each for nonpayment of tuition — the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Designers Art School in Boston — the latter before launching his amazing career.

Also during this period, Capp was working at night on samples for the strip that would eventually become Li ' l Abner.

" Yokum " was a combination of yokel and hokum, although Capp established a deeper meaning for the name during a series of visits around 1965 – 1970 with comics historians George E. Turner and Michael H. Price.

In response to the question “ Which side does Abner part his hair on ?," Capp would answer, “ Both .” Capp said he finally found the right " look " for Li ' l Abner with Henry Fonda's character Dave Tolliver, in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine ( 1936 ).

Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp " 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.

During World War II and for many years afterward, Capp worked tirelessly going to hospitals to entertain patients, especially to cheer recent amputees and explain to them that the loss of a limb did not mean an end to a happy and productive life.

Capp was also involved with the Sister Kenny Foundation, which pioneered new treatments for polio in the 1940s.

Serving in his capacity as honorary chairman, Capp made public appearances on its behalf for years, contributed free artwork for its annual fund-raising appeals, and entertained crippled and paraplegic children in children's hospitals with inspirational pep talks, humorous stories and sketches.

Capp received the National Cartoonists Society's Billy DeBeck Memorial Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year.

1956 saw the debut of the Bald Iggle, considered by some Abner enthusiasts to be the creative high point of the strip, as well as Mammy's revelatory encounter with the " Square Eyes " Family — Capp ’ s thinly-veiled appeal for racial tolerance.

" In 1950, Capp wrote a nasty article for The Atlantic entitled " I Remember Monster.

" The article recounted Capp's days working for an unnamed " benefactor " with a miserly, swinish personality, who Capp claimed was a never-ending source of inspiration when it came time to create a new unregenerate villain for his comic strip.

In 1954, when Capp was applying for a Boston television license, the Federal Communications Commission ( FCC ) received an anonymous packet of pornographic Li ' l Abner drawings.

The Capp-Saunders " feud " fooled both editors and readers, generated plenty of free publicity for both strips — and Capp and Saunders had a good laugh when all was revealed.

According to Capp, who loved to relate the story, Kelly's two perfectly logical reasons for doing so were: a. to cement diplomatic relations between Argentina and the United States, and b. " Because you can't play the piano, anyway!

In point of fact, Capp maintained creative control over every stage of production for virtually the entire run of the strip.

Capp detailed his approach to writing and drawing the stories in an instructional course book for the Famous Artists School, beginning in 1956.