One of the classics, having started in the San Francisco Chronicle almost 100 years ago. Mutt and Jeff has became part of our cultural vocabulary and the strip continues to attract audiences around the world who appreciate clean, straightforward humor that doesn't depend on local cultural awareness.
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Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher was born in Chicago in 1884.
In his first year of study at the University of Chicago, he left school to take a job at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he drew cartoons and did page layouts for the sports department . His comic strip debuted as "A. Mutt," the story of inept horserace gambler Augustus Mutt, in 1907. The next year, Mutt met the scheming Jeff in an insane asylum, and a partnership was born. In 1915 Fisher made it official by changing the name of the strip to "Mutt and Jeff."
"Mutt and Jeff" became a national hit in syndication and is recognized as the first successful daily comic strip, spinning off into comic books, animated shorts and merchandise. Fisher became a wealthy celebrity as the world's highest paid cartoonist during the 1920s and lived the high life, buying Rolls-Royces and racehorses, eventually moving to an apartment on New York's Park Avenue.
Following Fisher's death in 1954, Al Smith, Fisher's longtime assistant, continued the strip into the 1980s.
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Meet the Cast of Mutt & Jeff
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Augustus Mutt Mutt's a tall drink of water with about the same IQ as the glass. Ever eager to get rich quick, the genial, bumbling Mutt has moved beyond his first love, horserace gambling, to try any and all fly-by-night schemes to make money, with predictably lamentable results.
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Jeff After meeting Jeff in an insane asylum, Mutt discovers Jeff's love of horseracing and takes the poor guy home with him. It's a perfect match -- Jeff is as short as Mutt is tall, but he's every bit his partner's intellectual equal. A willing participant in Mutt's many adventures, Jeff is often the one who loses in the end.
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Mrs. Mutt Mutt's long-suffering wife is simply known as Mrs. Mutt.
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Cicero Mutt's son, Cicero, learns all the wrong lessons tagging along with his father.
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Julius Julius is Jeff's identical twin brother. The boys have been known to use their mistaken identities to their advantage.
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Friends Gus Geevem, Joe Spivis and Sir Sidney.
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