Mr. & Mrs. Palooka

The engraved invitations looked like those in many another June mailbox. They read: "Mr. Ham Fisher requests the honour of your presence at the marriage of Ann Howe to Mr. Joe Palooka on the afternoon of June twenty-fourth in your favorite newspaper." Last week Ham Fisher had already received formal acceptances from Chief Justice Fred Vinson, General Omar Bradley, and Attorney General Tom Clark.

To several million other Palooka fans, who follow the daily adventures of their comic-strip hero in 665 U.S. newspapers and 125 foreign ones, Heavyweight Champion Palooka's wedding to Cheese Heiress Ann Howe will be the marriage of the year --after one of the longest engagements on record. For 18 years, Cartoonist Fisher has tantalized his readers by discovering new, insuperable obstacles to the Howe-Palooka nuptials every time the perfect lovers seem about to get hitched. This week he will bow to "popular demand" and draw the knot in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Fisher's home town. Says married & divorced Ham Fisher, who takes Palooka as seriously as his most ardent fan: "They're going to be the ideally happy couple."

No romance ever traveled a rockier road. Among the bumps: Joe's impulsive enlistment in the Foreign Legion (it took President Roosevelt's appearance in the strip to get him out), his six years as a private in the U.S. Army (which made Palooka the hero of numerous recruiting posters), Ann's airplane crash in Wyoming (40,000 fans flooded Fisher with anxious inquiries) and her subsequent amnesia.

No Dumbellelski. The story of Ann and Joe really started in 1921, when young Reporter-Cartoonist Hammond Edward Fisher met a Wilkes-Barre prizefighter named Joe, a Polish-American youngster with a fair left, a good right, a soft heart, and no grammar at all. An idea hit Fight Fan Fisher with the force of an uppercut. He rushed back to the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader's office and dashed off the first strip about a dumb, good-natured pug named Joe Dumbelletski.

It was a sensational flop. The Times-Leader did not want it; neither did any New York syndicate. On & off for nine years, while he worked for three Wilkes-Barre newspapers, Fisher tried without success to sell Dumbelletski, later renamed Palooka (a common prize ring term for a third rater). At last McNaught Syndicate offered Fisher a job, not as a cartoonist, but as a salesman. Hustling Ham sold McEvoy & Striebel's Dixie Dugan strip to 41 newspapers and promised that on his next trip he would bring the "most terrific cartoon of all time." With that buildup, he sold Palooka to 30 papers in 25 days, then sold it to McNaught.

No Youse. Readers admire Palooka because he is the kind of fellow a lot of them (including Cartoonist Fisher) would like to be. He is big, strong, good-looking and popular; his hefty right always triumphs, often over eye-gouging, foul-fighting opponents. He hobnobs with a lot of celebrities without getting stuck up. An inveterate name-dropper himself, stocky Cartoonist Fisher populates his strip with real people, e.g., Bing Crosby, Tom Clark, Jack Dempsey, and models many of his fictional characters on other celebrities. Humphrey Pennyworth, an engaging, potbellied giant, was inspired by Manhattan Restaurant-Man Toots Shor.

When Palooka first fell in love with Ann (she was 16, he was 17), he told her: "I certny wunt have youse marry me until I kin give youse ever'thing in the world." Today he talks almost as elegantly as Gene Tunney. In 19 years, Joe has also grown older (he is now 24), taller and heavier. But he is just as clean-living, unsophisticated, tolerant and red-blooded an American as ever, and as innocent as if he never had a man-to-man talk about life with Man-about-Manhattan Fisher. Palooka is still world's heavyweight champion, and with movies (26 so far), radio, testimonials, etc., is a champion moneymaker ($375,000 a year) for Cartoonist Fisher. Ham expects their friendship to continue for a long time. In due course, confided Fisher last week, he hopes to be godfather to "a little Joe Palooka."

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