Lil' Eightball

Lil' Eightball is a Walter Lantz character voiced by Mel Blanc, who made his first appearance in the cartoon "The Stubborn Mule" in 1939.[1] His final appearance was in 1939, in "A Haunting We Will Go". He is a caricature of an African-American child.

Lil' Eightball
Lil' Eightball, as seen in "A Haunting We Will Go" (art by Walter Lantz Studios).
Character information
first app.:"The Stubborn Mule" (1939)
last app.:"A Haunting We Will Go" (1939)
created by:Burt Gillett & Walt Lantz

"A Haunting We Will Go" is the first Walter Lantz cartoon made in three-strip Technicolor. From this point onward, all of the Lantz cartoons would be produced in color.

List of appearances:

  • "The Stubborn Mule" (07/03/1939)[2][3]
  • "Silly Superstition" (08/28/1939)[2][4]
  • "A Haunting We Will Go" (09/04/1939)[2][5]

Lil' Eightball appeared on the cover of Lantz's monthly anthology comic book New Funnies (published by Dell Comics), from at least issue #65 (July 1942).[6]

Responding in 1947 to a group of eight-year-old schoolchildren who had complained about Eight Ball, Dell's managing editor Oskar Lebeck wrote:

Dear Boys and Girls:

Aren't you a little unfair to imply that our editors discriminated against the colored people in our Li'l Eight Ball stories? I can assure all of you it was not our intention to make fun of the Negroes as you put it in your letter. If you were right, wouldn't we also discriminate against all the white children when we caricature boys and girls, such as in our Little Lulu strips or Henry or many others? Should we leave out the Irish cop or the funny Italian organ-grinder or the fat German delicatessen man, etc., etc.?

However, in order that there should be no doubt in anyone's mind, I have decided to discontinue the Li'l Eight Ball stories effective with the September issue. We certainly do not want, in these troubled times, to add anything which might cause friction and hamper the efforts to build a happy and peaceful world.[7]

The last appearance of the character was in issue #126, the August 1947 issue.[8]

See also

References
  1. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 98. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  2. The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia: 1939 Archived 2015-04-05 at the Wayback Machine
  3. "The Stubborn Mule". www.bcdb.com, April 13, 2012
  4. "Silly Superstition". www.bcdb.com, April 13, 2012
  5. "A Haunting We Will Go". www.bcdb.com, April 13, 2012
  6. "Cover gallery for New Funnies". ComicVine. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  7. Barrier, Michael (2014). Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books. University of California Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-0520283909.
  8. "New Funnies covers #100-149". CoverBrowser. Retrieved 23 July 2019.


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