Bringing Up Father: From Comics to Film

This photograph documents the crossover between newspaper comics and early cinema. It shows Los Angeles City Counsel President Boyle Workman meeting actors portraying Jiggs and Maggie from the film adaptation of *Bringing Up Father*, the wildly popular comic strip by George McManus that debuted in 1913. McManus's strip pioneered the visual grammar of modern comics—distinct panels, speech balloons, and ongoing character relationships—that became the foundation of sequential art. The strip's humor centered on the Jiggs family's social climbing and domestic conflicts, reflecting 1920s anxieties about wealth and class. By 1920, the strip's success spawned multiple film versions, demonstrating how newspaper comics had become the primary source material for entertainment media and cultural conversation.