Irvin S. Cobb

The Rise and Fall of an American Humorist

William E. Ellis

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780813173986
• eBook ISBN: 9780813174006
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies

"Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn."—Irvin S. Cobb

Born and raised in Paducah, Kentucky, humorist Irvin S. Cobb (1876–1944) rose from humble beginnings to become one of the early twentieth century's most celebrated writers. As a staff reporter for the New York World and Saturday Evening Post, he became one of the highest-paid journalists in the United States. He also wrote short stories for noted magazines, published books, and penned scripts for the stage and screen.

In Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of a Southern Humorist, historian William E. Ellis examines the life of this significant writer. Though a consummate wordsmith and a talented observer of the comical in everyday life, Cobb was a product of the Reconstruction era and the Jim Crow South. As a party to the endemic racism of his time, he often bemoaned the North's harsh treatment of the South and stereotyped African Americans in his writings. Marred by racist undertones, Cobb's work has largely slipped into obscurity.

Nevertheless, Ellis argues that Cobb's life and works are worthy of more detailed study, citing his wide-ranging contributions to media culture and his coverage of some of the biggest stories of his day, including on-the-ground reporting during World War I. A valuable resource for students of journalism, American humor, and popular culture, this illuminating biography explores Cobb's life and his influence on early twentieth-century letters.

1

The Making of an American Humorist

American humor comes in many forms and has multiple influences. The southwestern frontier, the antebellum South, and the post–Civil War era are important factors in interpreting the life of Kentuckian Irvin S. Cobb. In the latter third of the nineteenth century, life and humor in the smalltown South would have evoked the ethos of a post–Civil War world beset by recent memories of a “Lost Cause,” economic struggles in a burgeoning industrial age, and a world racially divided into black and white.¹

This environment produced one of the best known and most important humorists of the early twentieth century, a man who rose from a humble background to achieve fame and fortune as a newspaperman; as a writer of short stories, novels, and movie scripts; and eventually as an entertainer on radio and in motion pictures. The story of how he gained such heights and then fell into disrepute if not near ignominy illustrates the history of humor in Kentucky, the Upper South, and the nation. However, Cobb’s story is important in its own right, and it is one worth telling, as it exemplifies the pace of change in his lifetime.

Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb was born in Paducah, Kentucky, on June 23, 1876, the oldest son of Joshua and Manie Saunders Cobb. His siblings included sisters Manie and Reubie and brother John. Paducah, an important port on the Ohio River at the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, had more in common with west Tennessee and the Deep South than with other parts of Kentucky or the midwestern states. Moreover, according to Berry Craig in Kentucky Confederates, “while slavery was waning statewide, it was waxing in the [Jackson] Purchase,” which was like “the South Carolina of Kentucky” because so many of its leading citizens wanted to abandon the Union. Central Kentucky and the Appalachian region had more Union than Confederate representatives in the Civil War armies, but rebels predominated in the Jackson Purchase. Irvin’s uncle Major Robert Cobb led “Cobb’s Battery” throughout the war. Irvin’s father was a student at Georgetown College when the war broke out, and he joined the Confederacy at age twenty-one. Although there were no major battles in the Purchase, the presidents and generals of both the Confederacy and the Union knew that control of this area was crucial to winning the war. In the immediate post–Civil War era, repression of freedmen was common in the Purchase, and the Ku Klux Klan operated without reservation. Violence was rife: the Jackson Purchase, comprising only seven counties, accounted for a higher percentage of lynchings than any other region of Kentucky from the end of the Civil War to 1940. Irvin Cobb came of age in this milieu of rigid segregation and sometimes violent racial strife.²

Cobb described his lineage as “mostly Celt myself—North of Scotland and South of Ireland, with some Welsh and a little English mixed up in my strain” (his geographically challenged notions were humorously intended). The name Irvin, Cobb claimed, came from “an aunt of mine, of romantic tendencies,” and Shrewsbury came from “my father’s dearest friend,” a Confederate compatriot. Owing to his father’s loss of sight in one eye and ill health due to his Civil War service, the Cobbs lived with his mother’s family during most of Irvin’s formative years. Manie and her parents were among the elite in the busy river port of Paducah. Her father, Dr. Reuben Sanders, was a stalwart citizen, a man of means and substance in the community, and somewhat famous for his use of atropine to quell an outbreak of cholera. Her husband Joshua, who had difficulty making a living and often depended on his father-in-law for income, became an alcoholic. Manie, however, was a strong-willed and nurturing wife and mother. From his father, whom he described as a “perky little red bantam” because of his red hair, Irvin inherited wide-set eyes and bushy eyebrows. From the maternal side he got his grandfather’s height—about six feet when he was full-grown—and black hair. The young Kentuckian’s early life became more difficult as his father’s will to live lessened. In his last memoir, Cobb lamented that Joshua “set about drinking himself to death so that we might have something to live on until my Grandfather Saunders’ estate was distributed and my mother got her share. He had health though and was strong, and to accomplish this took four hard years. They were four hard years on my mother, too. The memory of them still is like a scar burnt in my brain.”³

Cobb attended the public schools of Paducah until age fifteen, when he was “chucked out of them for general cussedness.” His school record must have been spotty. He was not very good at mathematics, especially the multiplication tables. “At grammar school,” he admitted, “I got through Ray’s Higher Arithmetic by the simple expedient of doing their Latin for certain of my classmates while they did my problems for me.” One year at a nearby private school under the tutelage of Professor W. A. Cade, whom Cobb recalled as “one of the most lovable most impractical men I ever knew,” had a great influence on his life. What Cobb lacked in formal schooling he obtained by listening, observing, and traveling around his own small part of the world, consisting of Paducah and its environs along the Ohio River.⁴

Cobb interacted with the river men whose steamboats plied the Ohio and crowded the town’s wharf. The Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers flowed into the Ohio just above Paducah, adding commerce and occasional floodwaters to Cobb’s hometown. Paducah was also a railroad hub, and the Illinois Central connected it to major cities. The young Cobb drifted in and out of businesses and through the busy streets, where he absorbed the speech, local color, humor, and life of a small town. Paducah had a decidedly southern flavor and was located in a part of Kentucky that had avidly supported the Confederate cause. The war remained a vivid memory for many. Cobb knew many Confederate veterans as well as a few Union men, and he absorbed their tales of the war. Moreover, African Americans made up a large minority of the population there, including some in Cobb’s own household, and they added another dimension to the life of a young white boy struggling to find his way. With typical embellishment, Cobb told his old friend Fred Neuman, “I was Tom Sawyer.” (Neuman would later write a flattering biography of the man who became Paducah’s favorite son.) Wayne Chatterton, in an excellent literary critique of Cobb, maintained: “What Hannibal had been to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Paducah was to Irvin Cobb.” The young Kentuckian always seemed to be searching for ways to stretch his talents. From an early age, Cobb liked to sketch, and when he was in his teens, four of his drawings were published by Texas Siftings magazine—but they “forgot to send me a check,” Cobb chortled later in life. He also collected Native American relics and continued to do so until he died. About his surroundings he had unbounded inquisitiveness.⁵

The young Cobb also read extensively. His grandfather Reuben and uncle Jo (Joel Shrewsbury, who instructed Cobb in Latin) encouraged his reading by opening their libraries to the precocious boy. He delved into “stock literary classics” of the day, including Defoe, Scott, Cooper, Dickens, and Maupassant, as well as “dime novels” and the even more juvenile literature known in the argot of the day as the “nickel library.” Cobb would later write about the importance of the latter in his development, given its straightforward moral lessons. In addition, Cobb absorbed the plays of Shakespeare. He was as familiar with James Fenimore Cooper as he was with Ned Buntline. Southern humor of the Sut Lovingood variety penned by George Washington Harris permeated Cobb’s thinking and writing throughout his career. He carried a great store of knowledge about history and literature, which held him in good stead. He apparently remembered in great detail everything he read and observed. If Cobb had a fault, it was that he was a compulsive talker, which often got him into trouble as a student. Later, some friends and particularly foes complained of an intrusiveness that tended to dampen conversation. Robert H. Davis, who became one of Cobb’s best friends as well as a “crony and hunting companion,” once commented bluntly: “Damn it, he knows everything”—or least he appeared to.⁶

In the South, storytelling was pervasive and was considered an art form. Verbal and written storytelling was an important cultural value and was a common part of everyday life. Cobb learned this art by listening to and observing his parents and grandparents, Uncle Jo, and Judge William Sutton Bishop (the model for “Judge Priest” in some of Cobb’s best fiction), as well as the African Americans he interacted with every day. It cannot be overemphasized that his upbringing occurred in a prototypical New South–Lost Cause milieu. His relationship with blacks was paternalistic, and he told “darky stories” all his life, according to his daughter. He no doubt heard and used the “N-word” early and often, and his thinking continued to be influenced by the racial atmosphere of his youth until his death in 1944. Cobb was exposed to the cultural climate of the late nineteenth century, which included minstrel shows, fairs and carnivals, and the showboats that plied the lower Ohio River.⁷

Two African Americans had a profound influence on Cobb’s early upbringing, and he acknowledged their importance in his life in his last memoir. The family cook, “Mandy,” served “uninterrupted” for forty-two years and “was the fractious but affectionate despot of the kitchen department.” Cobb recalled with fondness the day she drove him out of her domain armed with a skillet for “filching” a delicious “fried pie.” His mother gave him “one of the worst whippings I ever got”—not for stealing the pie but for “the infinitely worst crime of calling Mandy ‘an ole black nigger’ as I fled with my spoils.” In contrast, “Uncle Rufus,” the family’s handyman, “was tolerant of small transgressions and ready to shield the transgressors” from the consequences of their childlike pranks. Cobb enjoyed joining the former slave in his cabin for a hearth-baked sweet potato and listening to the old man’s “buggerman tales.” According to Cobb, these stories were not in the Uncle Remus mold but the “pure essences of Ethiopian nightmare and making dreadful the wild things and the harmless tame things, as well.” Sooner or later, Cobb would be called to bed, which was “a grief and a shock to my enthralled soul.” Though the tales were frightening, at “the very next chance I got I’d go back, like a drug addict, for a fresh spasm. I wonder how many years’ growth I lost under Uncle Rufus’ fascinating treatments.” Like many white southerners of his age and time, Cobb developed a paternalistic, even loving view of African Americans, but he never harbored any thoughts of full equality for them. Like most Kentuckians of this era, he believed in the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Later in life, Cobb would struggle with his southern heritage as the world inexorably changed.⁸

Another influence on Cobb was religion—or the lack thereof. On more than one occasion he described rebelling against his Calvinist Presbyterian upbringing. As he explained in Exit Laughing, “I don’t believe I could have been more than eight years old, or maybe ten, when some vague adolescent sense of the plain fitness and fairness of things bade me secretly to revolt against a plan of unutterable, unendable punishment for poor faulty fallible mortals, let alone for innocent babes whose baptisms had been overlooked.” Having to dress up for Sunday services, and then being unable to play for the rest of the day, was only slightly offset by sumptuous southern-style dinners. Even reading was confined to something biblical and uplifting on Sunday afternoons. For his entire adult life, Cobb shunned formal religion. However, the moral lessons of the Bible appeared to have great meaning for him. Despite his seemingly wide knowledge of the Bible, Cobb never had an evangelical view of Jesus, whom he described as “the first great gentleman of recorded history and greatest gentleman that ever, in any age, walked upon this earth. And if that be blasphemy, I’m proud of it.” He claimed in his last memoir that “long before I grew out of short pants,” Uncle Jo had converted him “to tolerance of all creeds whatsoever, counseling that I must never set myself against the practice of any faith but only against its narrow-minded practitioners, if any.” Or, as he described himself in a New York Evening World column: “In religion he is an innocent bystander.” Although he was associated with many organizations, Cobb never became a member of the Masonic order, which many men joined if for no other reason than to enhance their careers. No doubt he eschewed its religious base. He reserved the highest praise of a religious group for the Salvation Army because of its efforts in World War I: “I stand ready to salute these people as what surely they are—the Shock Troops of the Lord.”⁹

At age sixteen Cobb’s formal education ended, primarily because of his grandfather’s death and his father’s dissipation. He was forced to go to work, driving an ice wagon. In mid-January 1893 Cobb’s father persuaded the proprietor of the Paducah Evening News to hire the teenager as a “cub reporter.” Unpaid at first, in keeping with newspaper custom, Cobb was told to go out in the community and look for stories. He soon found his niche and began to write about anything and everything he observed—wharf news, personals, court proceedings, accidents, and anything else that piqued his interest. At the end of three weeks, he received his first paycheck; in two years, he was making $10 a week. The challenges came early. In 1896, at the tender age of nineteen, Cobb took over the newspaper when the managing editor left abruptly. This probably made him the youngest editor of any daily paper in the nation. Cobb later wrote: “I’m sure I was the worst managing editor of any age in the United States. I was reckless, smart-alecky, careless, gaudy in my enthusiasms, a dynamic builder of lurid headlines. I rarely let a dull fact hamper my style.” Joshua Cobb had died a year earlier, and Irvin was now the sole breadwinner for himself, his mother, and his two sisters.¹⁰

Cobb gained a world of knowledge and experience as an editor. He became adept at rewriting, finding advertisers, handling a small staff, and negotiating the intricacies of local and state politics. The editorship did not last long, and Cobb relished the chance to go back to developing his own stories and covering the offbeat sides of events. His ambition to leave Paducah soured after “four fevered nightmarish weeks” at the Cincinnati Post. Cobb moved back home and got a job with the Paducah Daily Democrat. Almost marking time, he covered many interesting stories and developed a distinctive style, never short of words or description. Cobb had already learned the art of writing long articles for “space rates”—that is, the longer the article, the bigger his paycheck. This also avoided the need to pad columns with uninteresting “fillers.” One such story was about the hanging of a black man that Cobb knew well. Cobb’s article was what he called a “commonplace” or straight news rendering of the story, but he did not reveal until years later that he and another young man played a part in the event. When the condemned man’s feet touched the ground, they immediately grabbed his legs and dug out the ground with their feet so that he could be fully suspended and strangle to death without any more suffering.¹¹

At age twenty-one, Cobb received the opportunity of a lifetime for a small-town newspaperman when he got wind of a breaking story with national notoriety. As reported by the Chicago Tribune on December 1, 1897, Christopher Merry and his accomplice James Smith killed Merry’s wife for the paltry sum of $7.78 and then escaped a police cordon in Chicago. They worked their way south, riding the rails and walking a good bit of the time as winter deepened. Thrown off a freight train en route from Louisville to Memphis, Merry and Smith found themselves in Fredonia in western Kentucky in mid-December. From there, they walked to Kuttawa. Merry’s feet finally gave out, and the two me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Making of an American Humorist
• 2. Big-City Newspaperman
• 3. From Newspaperman to Short Story Writer
• 4. Crossroads Again: Success, Fame, and Fortune
• 5. World War I: Foreign Correspondent
• 6. Midlife: 1915 to Early 1918
• 7. Momentum: War and Peace, Awards and Prosperity
• 8. Accommodation: The Early Jazz Age
• 9. From the “Boss” to the “Chief”: Cobb at the Pinnacle of His Career
• 10. From Prosperity to Depression
• 11. A New Beginning and the Beginning of the End
• 12. Exit Laughing
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index