The Beginning of the History
by Lee J. Ames
Below from a March 13, 2006 letter from Mr. Ames. Background: Bill Lignante set up a Long Island studio for Hanna Barbera in the 1960s.
Something you might want to sent to The Cartoon!st! [the NCS newsletter]
Enclosed, two calendar pages for January 1st, 5th, 7th & 10th in 1966 from Bill Lignante's ancient notes. [Bill] listed the people he thought appropriate for Hanna Barbera's request for talent to do layout work for them. Bill proposed Albert Micale, Creig Flessel, Andre LeBlanc, Lee Ames (sic), Frank Springer, Bernie Case, Jan Rosenthal, Werner Roth, Don Heck, George Tuska and Bruce Laughlin.
H&B selected, in addition to Lignante, Micale, Flessel, LeBlanc, moi and Springer. Thence we all met with Bob Singer, who came from the coast to Bill's house. Bob gave us some roughed out instructional specifics.
Hey, we got woik! We got right into it in Lignante's basement!
Down the line we chose to have lunch every last Thursday of the month at Finnegan's bar in Huntington. The luncheons attracted others. We grew and grew and thus, the beginning of our history!
Sincerely,
Lee J. Ames, BTG
Above: Bill Lignante's notes.
The above photo was sent in by Dan Danglo on April 14, 2006. Here's his description:
The attached photo was taken at Links restaurant dated January 1979 (hope it's good enough quality to use)....Cannot identify the person on the left end, but I'm standing next to him, and Andre LeBlanc is alongside of me...It looks like Creig Flessel standing in the back..then (?)Miller and of course Frank Springer...I guess Lee Ames was still inside eating.
The History of the Berndt Toast GangThe Berndt Toast Gang is the nickname for the National Cartoonists Society Long Island Chapter.
"We were a chapter before there were chapters," said Frank Springer. He remembered a 1960s phone conversation with Lee Ames. Lee suggested some of the local Long Island cartoonists get together once a month. It couldn't be a Wednesday, since that was "look day" for the magazine gag cartoonists, so it could maybe be a Thursday. It became tradition that the Gang meets the last Thursday of the month.
"How did the group became the Berndt Toast Gang and who is Berndt?" is a question I hear from time to time.
The Berndt is the great Walter Berndt. He is up there with Charles Schulz and Mort Walker; drawing his strip for over 50 years.
Walter Berndt, born in 1899, was, by age 14, working at the New York Journal as the art department office boy. While there he met Milt Gross, George Herriman and Winsor McCay. During his lunch hour, if he wasn't off fishing with his pal Elzie Segar, he was answering letters to the "Advice for the Lovelorn" column for the paper, "thus learning all the facts of life without benefit of birds and flowers," to quote Chuck Thorndike's The Business of Cartooning (1939).
After a stint drawing sports cartoons under T.A. "TAD" Dorgan (If you look at Walter Berndt's signature, you can see he draws his "T" just like TAD did.), he took over the And the Fun Begins panel from Milt Gross. By 1920 Berndt had left the Journal to start his own strip. The strip lasted a year. Then he worked at The New York World. But, within weeks, he was fired for insubordination. (I tried to find out more about this, but this is all I know.) Berndt was out of work and broke. So, with zany cartoonist timing, he got married! And then he began making the rounds with a new strip titled Billy the Office Boy.
It was 1922. The World Series was on. Big news, and so no one could get near the editors. Berndt couldn't get in to see anyone. Segar said there wasn't a World Series in Chicago and suggested he send the proposal to Captain Patterson. So Berndt mailed the strip to the Chicago Tribune. Patterson, opening a phone book for reference, renamed it Smitty and bought it at Berndt's high asking price. The strip became a mainstay, with the adventures of Smitty and Herbie continuing for over fifty years.
When he retired in 1973, the popular Smitty strip retired with him. He passed away at the age of 80 in 1979. And the Long Island chapter missed him.
Recently, Tim Lasiuta interviewed Lee Ames about the Berndt Toast Gang. Lee said:
When the Long Island group, Creig Flessel, Bill Ligante, Frank Springer, Al Micale, and I got together to work for Hanna Barbera [in the 1960s], we decided to have a Finnegan's (Bar) lunch every last Thursday of the month. During that period, Creig brought Walter Berndt to join us.
We fell in love with the cigar smoking old timer (look who's talking!), as he did with us. After a couple of years he passed away and left us grieving. Thereafter, whenever we convened on Thursdays, we'd raise a toast to Walter's memory. On one such, my big mouth opened and uttered, "Fellas, it's time for the Berndt toast!" I wasn't trying to be cute at the time but I'm not displeased that it stuck and we became the Berndt Toast Gang, one of the largest branches of the National Cartoonists Society.
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The above was culled from an address I gave at our May 2005 Berndt Toast Gang luncheon. At the get together, we had 2 large tables covered with over a dozen full page color 1930s Sunday sections of Smitty. Bunny Hoest took a framed Berndt original off her wall and brought it the lunch. Art Director Tony Cerezo (of "Don't Squeeze the Charmin" fame) put together a standing display with photos and artwork of the man that our chapter is named after. And us 21st century cartoonists talked about the old days of cartooning over Chinese food on a late spring day.
-- written by Mike Lynch