Artwork by Jack Sparling
In 1928, the New York State Hoover-for-President Committee was having difficulty convincing journalists to write feature stories on presidential candidate Herbert Hoover. They thus came up with the novel idea of creating a series of eighteen comic strips telling the life story of Hoover that were then published in over six thousand newspapers across the country.
Twenty years later, the Democratic National Committee likewise decided on a new type of campaign material for the presidential campaign of Harry Truman – a sixteen page comic book. Three million copies of the illustrated pamphlet were produced, which amounted to one-third of the total campaign literature distributed by the DNC during the last month of the campaign.
The Story of Harry S. Truman was the brainchild of Illinois-native Malcolm Ater. “Back in July 1946, he set up his own establishment to print colored booklets for industries and to serve as an art service for advertising agencies,” the Evening Sun explained in October 1950. “In 1948, Ater got the idea of using the same technique for political purposes. He tried to sell the Republicans first and was turned down. He then turned to the Democrats and the National Committee okayed the Truman book.”
Ater’s contact at the DNC was publicity director Jack Redding, who cowrote a summary of President Truman’s life with assistant Samuel Brightman. Ater then crafted the actual script and hired artist Jack Sparling to draw the pages.
According to Redding in his 1958 memoirs Inside the Democratic Party, the printing of the comic book was inevitably delayed due to financial problems at the Democratic National Committee. Republican Thomas Dewey was the projected frontrunner, stifling the fundraising efforts of the Truman campaign. As a result, Malcolm Ater refused to print the comic book until he was paid.
In October, the DNC held a meeting to determine the fate of The Story of Harry S. Truman. There were those present who were against allocating funds, believing the “very idea of a comic book about the President is undignified.” Although Jack Redding was able to brush off such charges, his primary argument was that the DNC already owed money for the artwork and preproduction costs. The actual printing would be minimal – “It wouldn’t be economical to waste the investments already made by failing to spend a little additional.”
Redding won the day and The Story of Harry S. Truman was published soon afterwards. The pushback against it, however, continued. “Some of the White House stalwarts who hadn’t been in on the preparation of the volume thought it should have been cleared with the President,” Redding wrote in Inside the Democratic Party. “They were crestfallen to learn that he had approved it some months before.” The final script, meanwhile, had been reviewed by White House press secretary Charlie Ross.
During an oral history interview conducted by the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in 1966, Samuel Brightman recalled that he took “the story board over to Charlie Ross, and awhile later it came back and there were a couple of – I wish I had saved it as a memoir – there were notations in Mr. Truman’s handwriting on the margin about inaccuracies, and so on.”
The media coverage for The Story of Harry S. Truman was a mixed bag. Syndicated columnist George Dixon was especially harsh, writing, “The comic book about President Truman is as fascinating as anything an immature mind could desire. As the theme for a comic strip our dear President is more engrossing than the crispiest, crunchiest, crackliest, breakfast food.”
Time magazine reproduced a handful of panels in its October 18, 1948, edition. “There is Truman the Bankrupt Businessman (‘You’d think the Republican Administration would do something to help small businessmen’), Truman the road-building county judge (‘Sure is honest’), Truman the Senator,” the accompanying write-up said. “Among the notable omissions: any mention of Truman’s unbroken fealty to the Kansas City machine bossed by his great & good friend, the late, great-bellied Tom J. Pendergrast.”
“Whatever the critics had to say concerning the book, the real test was in its reception by the public,” Jack Redding later countered. “This was tremendous. Workers at the precinct level reported it was the most effective piece of campaign material they had. Distributers of these books in city after city reported that ‘they always take them home. You never see them lying around the street after you pass them out.’”
He then added, “The most heartfelt approbation came in the form of criticism voiced by local organizations nationwide. ‘Why did we get them so late? It’s a shame we didn’t have them earlier, for the book is effective. People want them.’”
Republican Thomas Dewey was predicted to defeat President Truman in a landslide. On election day, however, Truman scored one of the greatest upsets in American political history. The victory was subsequently immortalized in a photograph of the president holding a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune’s early edition with the blaring headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Political pundits attempted to explain the upset afterwards, which contradicted the polls taken prior to election day. Separate analysists by the University of Michigan, Gallup, and Roper concluded that – in the words of historian William Manchester – “some 3,300,000 fence-sitters determined the outcome of the race in its closing days.”
The November 12, 1948, edition of the Redwood City Tribune offered a somewhat unconventional explanation for the last minute shift in votes. “If these pictorial booklets got into circulation at all, it was too late for their effectiveness to be reflected in the now discredited public opinion polls,” the California newspaper said of the Truman comic book. “They may, however, have been reflected in the ballots. Many facetious and partisan comments could be made on this point, but they would by-pass the significant fact that not all comic book addicts are minors; many of them vote.”
Although Harry Truman never mentions the 1948 comic book in his memoirs, he did note that his electoral college victory boiled down to two states. “The key states in the election had been Ohio and California, which had fluctuated throughout the night until the late counting of votes had put them in the Democratic column to stay. Without Ohio and California, I would have been assured of only 254 electoral votes, twelve less than the required 266.”
According to Jack Redding, California and Ohio were two of the four states that received the largest shipments of The Story of Harry S. Truman. “In southern California, Helen Gahagan Douglas, the liberal Congresswoman from Los Angeles, found the books particular effective,” he wrote in Inside the Democratic Party. “She was constantly on the telephone seeking additional shipments.”
It makes one wonder if the more appropriate headline from the 1948 presidential campaign – as opposed to “Dewey Defeats Truman” – should have been, “Truman Comic Book Defeats Dewey.”
Anthony Letizia