Alfred E. Neuman
 |
What, Me Worry? |
Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional
mascot of EC Publications'
Mad magazine. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by
Mad editor
Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it on the bulletin board in the office of Ballantine Books editor
Bernard Shir-Cliff, later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
Since his debut in
Mad, Neuman's likeness, distinguished by jug ears, a missing front tooth, and one eye disquietingly higher than the other, has graced the cover of all but a handful of the magazine's 450+ issues. His face does not translate well to profile, and thus he has almost always been shown in full frontal view or in silhouette.
He first appeared in November, 1954, on the cover of Ballantine's
The Mad Reader, a paperback collection of reprints from the first two years of
Mad. In 1956, Neuman's identity became fixed and his fine-tuned iconic image was first rendered in black-and-white by
Bill Elder and then in color by
Norman Mingo. Mingo became the magazine's signature cover artist through the 1960s and 1970s. Several 1950s Neuman covers were also painted by
Kelly Freas.
Mad routinely combines Neuman with another character on its cover images. Neuman has appeared in a slew of guises, such as
Santa Claus,
Darth Vader,
George Washington,
King Kong and
Uncle Sam ("Who Needs You?") and many other familiar faces. He is periodically offered as a candidate for
President with the slogan, "You could do worse... and always have!"
Along with his face,
Mad also includes a short humorous quotation credited to Neuman with every issue's table of contents. These quotations were collected in the book,
Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman (Warner Treasures, 1997), illustrated by Sergio Aragonés.
Neuman's famous
catch phrase is the intellectually uncurious "What, me worry?" This was changed for one issue to "Yes, me worry!" after the
Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in 1979.
Over the decades, Neuman has often appeared in political cartoons as a shorthand for unquestioning stupidity. In recent years, Alfred E. Neuman's features have frequently been merged with those of
George W. Bush by editorial cartoonists such as
Mike Luckovich and
Tom Tomorrow. The image has also appeared on magazine covers (notably
The Nation), and in numerous
Photoshop images and GIF files in which Neuman's face
morphs into Bush's. A large Bush/Neuman poster was part of the Washington protests that accompanied Bush's 2001 inauguration. The alleged resemblance between the two has been noted more than once by
Hillary Clinton. On
July 10,
2005, speaking at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival, she said, "I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Neuman is in charge in Washington," referring to Bush's purported "What, me worry?" attitude.
Neuman's features have also been compared to other unfortunates in the public eye, including
Prince Charles,
Ted Koppel and
David Letterman.
Neuman's origins are shrouded in mystery and may never be fully known. It is possible that he was inspired, at least in part, by 19th-century medical pictures of people with
deficiency diseases or
hormone imbalances. Similar faces also turned up in advertising for "painless" dentistry. The likeness of Neuman somewhat resembles the popular early 20th-century
newspaper comic strip The Yellow Kid.
Neuman's image has also been used negatively, as a "supporter" of rival political candidates (with the idea that only an idiot would vote for them) and even by the
Nazis for racial
propaganda as an example of a
Jew[
1]. An almost-identical image appeared as "
nose art" on an
American World War II bomber, where it was sometimes referred to as "The Jolly Boy".
When
Mad was sued for copyright infringement by a woman claiming to hold the rights to the image, one defense it used was that it had copied the picture from materials dating back to 1911. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and the boy's face is now permanently associated with
Mad. Since the EC editors had grown up listening to radio, this was frequently reflected in their stories, names and references. The name "Alfred E. Neuman" derived from comedian
Henry Morgan's "Here's Morgan" radio series on Mutual, ABC and NBC. One character on his show had a name that was an obvious reference to composer
Alfred Newman (1901-70), who scored many films and also composed the familiar fanfare that accompanies 20th Century Fox's opening film logo. The possible inspiration for Henry Morgan was that Laird Cregar portrayed Sir Henry Morgan in
The Black Swan (1942) with Tyrone Power, and the Oscar-nominated score for that film was by Newman.
Listening to the sarcastic Morgan's brash broadcasts, the
Mad staff took note and reworked the name into Alfred E. Neuman, as later recalled by Kurtzman::The name Alfred E. Neuman was picked up from Alfred Newman, the music arranger from back in the 1950s and 1940s. Actually, we borrowed the name indirectly through
The Henry Morgan Show. He was using the name Alfred Newman for an innocuous character that you'd forget in five minutes. So we started using the name Alfred Neuman. The readers insisted on putting the name and the face together, and they would call the "What, Me Worry?" face Alfred Neuman.
Morgan later became a
Mad contributor with "The Truth about Cowboys" in issue #33.
The definitive research on Alfred E. Neuman can be found in
Maria Reidelbach's comprehensive bestseller,
Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine (Little, Brown, 1991), since
Mad publisher Bill Gaines gave her total access to the magazine's own files, including the collection of Neuman-related images assembled for legal purposes at the time of the Neuman lawsuit.
* In
Daffy Duck's
Quackbusters episode "The Night of the Living Duck" among the freakish nightclub "patrons" (such as
Dracula) is Alfred E. Neuman.
* A female version of Alfred, named Moxie, appeared briefly during the late 1950s.
*
Mad Mumblings discussion forum*
Alfred E. Neuman Quotes*
Origins of Alfred E. Neuman*
New York Daily News: Senator Hillary Clinton compares President Bush with Alfred E. Neuman
