Also known as "Blondie and the Model Home."
This coming Monday marks the 95th anniversary of the Blondie comic strip, which was created by Chic Young and soon became the most popular comic strip in America. Murat Bernard Young (1901-1973) was nicknamed "chicken" in high school, thus his using the name "chic" to sign his work. His older brother Lyman drew the comic strip Tim Tyler's Luck, which ran from 1928-1996; both Lyman and Young's artist mother urged his to draw. Young's first comic strip was the short-lived The Affairs of Jane, which ran from 1921 to 1922. He then drew the even shorter-lived Beautiful Bab (1922), which provided the way to a job at King Features syndicate. In 1924, he created Dumb Dora, after six years, Young (who had married a few years earlier) asked for a raise and strip ownership, which led to Young dropping the strip and creating a new one. And so Blondie was born.
Blondie Boopadoop was a flapper who spent most of her time in dance halls with her boyfriend Dagwood Bumstead, a member of a wealthy industrial family. Dagwood wanted to marry blondie but his parents disapproved. The pair were married after Dagwood staged a hunger strike and his parents disinherited him. This sent the couple on a whole new storyline. The Bumsteads became a middle-class suburban family, Blondie morphed into the sensible head of the family while Dagwood became the comic foil. The couple soon had a child, known as 'Baby Dumpling" (now Alexander); later, their daughter Cookie was born. The other member of the household is Daisy, a dog.
Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake played Blondie and Dagwood in a series of 28 popular films from 1938 to 1950. To promote the first movie. Singleton and lake appeared as the Bumsteads on The Pepsodent Show, starring bob Hope, on December 20, 1938; this led to the creation of Blondie as a summer replacement for The Eddie Cantor Show on CBS Radio, beginning July 3, 1939. When Cantor did not return that fall, the program sponsors decided to stick with Blondie. The show switched networks and sponsors several times, finally ending on July 8, 1950. Lake played Dagwood for the entire run. Singleton left the show in 1949 to be briefly replaced by Ann Rutherford; Lake's real-life wife, Patricia Lake, took over the role beginning in October. Alice White also played Blondie on occasion. Lake would return to the role of Dagwood Bumstead in the 1957 television series Blondie, opposite Pamela Britton.
Lochinvar Stipple is an old bachelor with a barrel of money and romantic ideas about marriage and love and cozy bungalows and who wants "to play Cupid" by providing low-cost homes on easy terms for honeymoon couples. Dagwood's boss, J. C. Dithers of the Dithers Construction Company built and furnished a romantic bungalow in hopes of having Stipple being impressed enough to hire Dithers to provide a whole slew of such homes. What Dithers needs now is a honeymoon couple to occupy the bungalow in order to give Stippel of how great it would be for other couples. Dithers wants Dagwood and Blondie to occupy the bungalow, but Dagwood feels the Baby Dumpling would negate the appearance of a honeymoon couple; instead he proposed Blondie's Aunt Bessie and Uncle Gideon -- a real honeymoon couple. Dithers agrees but insists that Blondie and Dagwood occupy the bungalow first to ensure that every is order for the honeymoon couple.
Alas, Dithers forgot to turn on the electricity, gas, and phone. And the fireplace has green wood that is releasing a lot of smoke. Without electricity, Blondie had to light up an old, smelly, smoky oil lamp which barely provided any light. The bungalow provided anything but the warm, cozy atmosphere that Dithers was hoping to impress Stippel with. Then Aunt Bessie shows up without Uncle Gideon; it seems that had a major spat and she doesn't want anything to do with him. Things are just not going as planned...
Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zsOlyHwJEA&t=1s
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