Li'l Abner's Gals

When I was a Kid, the great American beauties were the Gibson Girls on the printed page and the Ziegfeld Girls in the flesh. We adored them both but we never, in our wildest dreams, hoped for either. The chance of any ordinary red-blooded American male meeting, getting to know, etc., a living Ziegfeld Girl was as laughably remote as his chance of meeting a mythical Gibson Girl. That's because the American ideal of beauty in the early nineteen hundreds was an incredible, haughty, totally unattainable creature. Our fathers were content to give hopeless homage to queens, but today we want our girl drawers to draw girls as attainable as the girl at the drugstore where we buy our magazine. And today it is possible to meet the beauty you've just admired in a musical at a hamburger stand after the show if you have the price of the hamburger. And if you haven't, she may buy you one.

The girls I draw for Li'l Abner and the girls Mel Frank, Norman Panama and Michael Kidd selected to bring them to life in the musical, Li'l Abner, have the same basic necessities the Gibson Girls and Ziegfeld Girls had, plus something else, something new -- a sense of humor.

I have never drawn a truly haughty beauty for Li'l Abner. Mine are a little too haughty and they know they are and so, somewhere in them (indicated by a half smile, or a curl of a toe, or the flip of a hip), you know they are giggling at themselves and at anybody who thinks they are really haughty. The breathing, bouncing beauties picked for the Li'l Abner musical are, I think, the prettiest girls ever gathered for any Broadway show, but unlike the Ziegfeld Girl, there is nothing hopelessly unrealizable about them. They look a lot like the cute, merry girl you brought to the show, except that the cuteness and merriment have been multiplied several dozen times. The new, wonderful, breathless quality about today's pretty girl in the never-never lands of stage or comic page is that she could be and, if you look around you, really is!

Daisy Mae The fairest flower of Dogpatch, played by Edith Adams in ever-lovin' polka-dot blouse and saw-bottomed skirt, chases Li'l Abner (Peter Palmer) throughout the show and finally lands him in wild Sadie Hawkins Day climax. In addition to this local yokel boy-girl business, government brass, looking for the most miserable hunk of real estate in the country for A-Bomb tests, naturally decides on Dogpatch and orders the turnip chompin' citizens to pack up. Abner skedaddles to Washington and bungles his way through red tape, red dresses, nefarious schemes by General Bullmoose ("What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the country"), before saving the day. Drawings of Li'l Abner's most appetizing gals were done especially for Playboy by cartoonist Capp.

Daisy Mae The fairest flower of Dogpatch, played by Edith Adams in ever-lovin' polka-dot blouse and saw-bottomed skirt, chases Li'l Abner (Peter Palmer) throughout the show and finally lands him in wild Sadie Hawkins Day climax. In addition to this local yokel boy-girl business, government brass, looking for the most miserable hunk of real estate in the country for A-Bomb tests, naturally decides on Dogpatch and orders the turnip chompin' citizens to pack up. Abner skedaddles to Washington and bungles his way through red tape, red dresses, nefarious schemes by General Bullmoose ("What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the country"), before saving the day. Drawings of Li'l Abner's most appetizing gals were done especially for Playboy by cartoonist Capp.

Moonbeam McSwine Curvilinear Moonbeam, played with appropriate messy hair and smudgy thighs by Carmen Alvarez, talks mostly to hawgs. But on Sadie Hawkins Day, she drops her pork friends and joins the rest of Li I Abner's gals in a fast and furious ballet that is the high point of the fun. Arrows, clubs, bear-traps, whammies, mammies and shotguns enable each delectable Dogpatch damsel to bring home another sort of bacon -- namely, a man.

Moonbeam McSwine Curvilinear Moonbeam, played with appropriate messy hair and smudgy thighs by Carmen Alvarez, talks mostly to hawgs. But on Sadie Hawkins Day, she drops her pork friends and joins the rest of Li I Abner's gals in a fast and furious ballet that is the high point of the fun. Arrows, clubs, bear-traps, whammies, mammies and shotguns enable each delectable Dogpatch damsel to bring home another sort of bacon -- namely, a man.

Appassionata Van Climax Played bright-eyed and brassy by Tina Louise, Miss Van Climax does her bulging, big city best to beguile Abner. Typical six-foot-three, red-blooded, one hundred percent American boy that he is, Li'l Abner is having none of it and he turns unflinchingly toward the task of rescuing his beloved Dogpatch.

Appassionata Van Climax Played bright-eyed and brassy by Tina Louise, Miss van Climax does her bulging, big city best to beguile Abner. Typical six-foot-three, red-blooded, one hundred percent American boy that he is, Li'l Abner is having none of it and he turns unflinchingly toward the task of rescuing his beloved Dogpatch.

Stupefyin' Jones Joy-jointed Julie Newmar, whose damp, devilish lips utter not one word of dialogue during the show, plays the booby trap who struts, wriggles and, with the flick of a hip, actually stupefies any male.

Stupefyin' Jones Joy-jointed Julie Newmar, whose damp, devilish lips utter not one word of dialogue during the show, plays the booby trap who struts, wriggles and, with the flick of a hip, actually stupefies any male.