Napoleon Noodle by Jimmy Bancks - A Lost Newspaper Strip
Like any good cartoonist, Jimmy
Bancks didn’t throw all of his eggs into the one basket. Throughout his career he was always trying
new things and, considering the scope of his work, he became something of a
renaissance man. From when he first
became active in the late teens, he undertook a wide variety of tasks and
appeared to succeed in virtually all of them.
In the early 1920s he began to teach aspiring artists via correspondence
under the banner of the J.C. Bancks School of Sketching[i]. By the end of the 1920s Bancks was also
becoming active on stage, to the degree where he was showcased in London at the
Palladium, resulting in a potential clash with the Australian Cricket Board of
Control (as it was then known) when Bancks invited none other than Don Bradman
to share the stage with him for two such appearances in 1930[ii]. The Bradman connection was also obvious as
Bancks was very active as a cricketing identity, to the point where his 1930
trip to England was planned around the Ashes tour, indeed Bancks travelled with
the team upon their return, resulting in a page three story in the The Mail
(Adelaide) detailing both the return of the Australian cricket team (to much
pomp and ceremony) and the ‘Return of Mr Bancks’, who alighted from the same
ship, the Oronsay[iii]. Bancks, with his great friend cricketer
turned cartoonist Arthur Mailey, would travel frequently with the Australians,
visiting England often and accompanying the Australians on their early 1930s
trip to America.
Eventually Bancks progressed from
being a stage actor to being a playwright.
His 1934 play, Blue Mountain Melody, was staged in November and featured
costumes designed by his first wife, Jessie Tait[iv]. The fact that Jessie Tait was the daughter of
E.J. Tait, the managing director of J.C. Williamson, the largest theatrical
firm in Australia at the time, wouldn’t have hindered his chances. Sadly for Bancks, Jessie passed away in 1936,
due to complications giving birth[v] –
both Jessie and the baby were lost, a crushing double blow for Bancks. Bancks would remarry, in 1938, and was still
married at the time of his own passing in 1952.
Bancks also wrote for various newspapers on a variety of subjects and
became a much sought after speaker on the social and professional circuit. Clearly his enthusiasm and energy was
boundless.
By the time Ginger Meggs had become
a runaway success in the 1920s he had also experimented with other strips,
something that he would dabble in at different periods of his life. One such strip was the short-lived and now
largely forgotten Napoleon Noodle. Not
much has been recorded about Napoleon Noodle and most biographies of Bancks
tend to overlook it, along with other such strips. What is known is that the strip made it's debut in
mid 1932 and vanished in early 1933.
Napoleon Noodle centred on the main character, an eternal worrier who
always manages to misinterpret overheard conversations with a long suffering
wife and manages to find himself in unusual situations where his own unique wit
is challenged. Noodle was an ‘every-man’
character, adept at getting himself both in and out of situations with ease and
just as capable of overcoming a situation with his guile as he was at being
stymied and Bancks drew the strip with the same style and energy that he
invested into Ginger Meggs. Viewed today
the strip is dated, with references to events now largely forgotten, but is
still charming in its own right. It’s
easy to see why the strip never really caught on though, after a few readings
it becomes apparent that Bancks might well have struggled to keep the strip
fresh and it fell into a no-man land – too adult for children, and possibly
too cartoony for adults. When the strip
hit the mark it was as good as anything Bancks ever did – Bradman features,
although not the same Don Bradman that Ginger Meggs met. Bancks did his best to raise interest in
strip to the point of having Napoleon Noodle actually appear in Ginger Meggs,
one of, if not the only, time that he would cross characters over.
I’m not sure just how many Napoleon
Noodle strips Bancks did; perhaps the Bancks family would have a better idea,
but the strips I had uncovered certainly warrant a second viewing. Considering the historical value of Bancks in
the world of cartooning, and his place in Australian heritage, it would
probably now be a good idea to collect some of the more unique work that he did
and collect them into a volume for print.
Until then enjoy one of the genuine ‘lost’ strips of an Australian
giant, Jimmy Bancks and Napoleon Noodle!
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