Alfred E. Neuman - Genesis

Genesis

Neuman's precise origin is shrouded in mystery and may never be fully known. Printed likenesses can be traced back to the 19th century, such as The Yellow Kid, the 1890s character from Richard F. Outcault's strip, Hogan's Alley. A very similar caricature in 1876 can be seen at http://www.leconcombre.com/concpost/us/postcard4/alfred_e_neuman_documents.html

Versions of the face were used as medical pictures of people with deficiency diseases or hormone imbalances; the faces of patients with Williams syndrome have been compared to Neuman. Similar faces turned up in advertising for "painless" dentistry. A face virtually identical to Neuman's appears in the 1923 issue of the University of Minnesota humor magazine The Guffer above the caption "Medic After Passing Con Exam in P. Chem." Another identical face shows up in the logo for Happy Jack Beverages, a soda drink produced by the A. B. Cook company in 1939. An almost-identical image appeared as "nose art" on an American World War II bomber, over the motto "Me Worry?" (this painted face was sometimes referred to as "The Jolly Boy"). Neuman's image was also used negatively, as a "supporter" of rival political candidates, with the idea that only an idiot would vote for them. In 1940, those opposing Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third-term reelection bid distributed postcards with a similar caricature bearing the caption, "Sure I'm for Roosevelt". In some instances, there was also the implication that the "idiot" was in fact a Jewish caricature. Carl Djerassi's autobiography claims that in Vienna after the Anschluss, he saw posters with a similar face and the caption Tod den Juden ("Kill the Jews").

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 a reference to composer Alfred Newman, 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 1940s and 1950s. 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.

When Mad was sued for copyright infringement by a woman claiming to hold the rights to the image, the magazine argued that it had copied the picture from various materials dating back to 1911 (which pre-dated the plaintiff's own claim). The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and the boy's face is now permanently associated with Mad - so much so, in fact, that according to Mad writer Frank Jacobs, the US Post Office once delivered a letter to the Mad offices bearing only a picture of Alfred E. Neuman, without any other address or identifying features.

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). Mad publisher Bill Gaines gave Reidelbach total access to the magazine's own files, including the collection of Neuman-related images that had been assembled for legal purposes at the time of the Neuman lawsuit. In 2008, Eastern Michigan University held an exhibit and symposium on the evolution of Neuman images, dating back to 1877.

In 2012, longtime editor Nick Meglin offered a streamlined, exasperated version of Neuman's origins:

"Oh, don't ask me about Alfred E. Neuman. That story is so old and so meaningless. Does the average Playboy reader care about where the rabbit came from? It's just a symbol that lets you know what's on the inside. It's just a name we made up. We had 20, and that's the one we settled on."