Smokey Bear, A National Treasure!

In 1979 I was a movie usher for the Plitt Theatres in Richardson, Texas and one of the first shows I worked was the War/Comedy "1941" with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In this movie a Japanese sub is set to attack the coast of California and I thought at the time..."this could never happen" but apparently it did. I should have studied harder in my history class because in early 1942, an Imperial submarine did surface and shelled an oil field near the Los Padres National Forest. Although the overall attack failed, it did bring to light that our firefighters were away at war and we needed a civil defense program to fix this problem. So the the U.S. Forest Service, the Association of State Foresters, and the War Advertising Council joined forces to create the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention Program to figure out a solution. Later that year, Walt Disney Productions released Bambi and its phenomenal success prompted the CFFP to obtain the rights for a year to use the movie’s characters on a 1943 fire prevention poster. But after the year was up the CFFP needed a new symbol of their own. Starting out, they experimented with a squirrel as the mascot before landing on the idea of using a bear that could stand upright and demonstrate fire safety practices. So on August 9, 1944 Albert Staehle came up with the blue jean chubby bear wearing a ranger hat that became our beloved Smokey Bear. (Not Smokey THE Bear as people often mistakenly call him.) The Smokey Bear Wildfire Prevention campaign was an instant success, making it the longest-running public service advertising campaign in history. (Now in its 80th year.) 

But we all surely remember that 16 page comic "The True Story of Smokey Bear" (If not you can order 100 copies for $47 to teach fire safety to children in the classroom off Smokey's web site. He also has an Instagram and Twitter page.) It tells the story of a big 1950 forest fire in New Mexico’s Capitan Mountains where a rescued bear cub survived by climbing a tree, but suffered severe burns on his paws and hind legs. News about the little black bear quickly spread (like wildfire) throughout New Mexico and across the USA. So seeing a great opportunity, the U.S. Forest Service quickly “adopted” the cub, who was named Smokey and sent to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., as a living symbol of wildfire prevention. The real-life Smokey was such a huge hit with children, that all their letters made the post office give the bear his own zip code (20252). With his passing in 1976 the mascot was buried at the Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan, New Mexico. 

If you pull up Smokey Bear on eBay you get over 9400 items for sale! Smokey has appeared in print, radio, and television ads and on stamps, t-shirts, and just about everything else from ashtrays to Funko Pop toys. (Thanks to a 1952 Act of Congress that removed Smokey from the public domain, all licensing revenue is used for wildfire prevention education.) He has been featured in a radio play, songs, and even COMIC BOOKS. Most importantly, he has educated generations of children and adults about wildfire prevention. Hey, but you're thinking this should be about original art right? Well it looks like the first Smokey strip was appearing soon after the war as a one panel public service announcement illustrated by artist Harry Rossoll. I think these advisories were running at least into the 1970s if I'm not mistaken. Then the bear had an early appearance as Smokey the Fire-Preventing Bear Comes to the Rescue of Peter Porkchops, a one page public service announcement that was used in most of Nationals Periodical Publications books in 1949. The Forrest Service put out its own comic in 1950 called Forest Fire (Featuring Smokey the Bear) and was written by Malcolm Ater and illustrated by Jack Sparling and Rudy Wendelin. (Remember that last name.)  

Dell Comics jumped on the bandwagon in 1955 with their Four Color anthology series with issue #653 and had a handful of Smokey Bear comics until 1961. The writers and artist on the books set the stage for future media to follow. Smokey now had a kid, Little Smokey (Not the cocktail weenie), and there is also a raccoon, Specs (Not the liquor store rabbit), Lindy the flying squirrel, Hawkeye the hawk, Spike the porcupine, and Hammer-Head the woodpecker to round out the cast. Some interesting and often weird stories were produced for the anthropomorphic-funny animals acting out stories of carelessness and greed, including a story about two bears who are Communist spies! Morris Gollub did those wonderful painted covers but I could not exactly identify any of the interior artists.  

Next Smokey was picked up by Columbia Features who worked with various licensed properties in the 1950s and 60s. Their approach was to use the characters established by Dell in their Sunday and daily formats and copy the Mark Trail nature strip. They focused on light adventure stories involving ecology, forestry, and wildlife. The strip was credited to "Wes Wood" but I think Paul S. Newman did the scripts with Morris Gollub the artwork. Also a spin-off from the TV cartoon, Smokey Bear had a 13 issue run with Gold Key Comics in 1970 with art by Mike Roy and John Costanza that once again used the established characters from years before. I've also seen Spanish versions and I bet there are more stories of the famous bear in other languages. But really only one man is remembered today as Smokey's "caretaker" for over 30 years, Rudy Wendelin. He created a more human version with Smokey's solemn expression and now carrying his signature shovel. Government posters, postage stamps, first-day covers, television, magazines, and film were all part of Wendelin's Smokey Bear project. And the black bear still lives, as I recently saw him on a huge billboard driving down Interstate 35 in Austin...REMEMBER, ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT WILDFIRES!