"What? Me Worry?"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 11:49:59 -0400, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

>Nothing in the FAQ about the history of "(What) Me Worry".

Aha, here's some history...

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http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/include.pl/blogs/shenews/archives/week143.htm#mad
February 1, 2005, 7:35 p.m.

The Quest For Alfred E. Neuman
<http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v12p162y1989.pdf>:
The folks at Metafilter gather all the pieces of this story
<http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/39206>.

    In this memoir, Carl Djerassi, Stanford University, California,
describes his encounters with the grinning face of Alfred E. Neuman,
mascot of MAD magazine. For Djerassi, the face recalls anti-Semitic
posters seen in his European neighborhood in the days prior to World
War II. He discusses his personal inquiry into the origins of Alfred
E. Neuman -- an attempt to reconcile the comic-book face with the
troubling images of his youth.

    The face I’d remembered -- the face that had remained with me for
decades and had brought me to MAD’s New York office -- first surfaced
in MAD in November 1955...

    It took until the December 1956 issue before the likeness of Alfred E.
Neuman -- tbe famous Norman Mingo portrait apparently familiar to all
Americans but me -- filled the cover in lonely splendor. He was
featured as a write-in candidate for President under the slogan “What
-- Me Worry?”

    I was totally perplexed by the incompatibility between these facts and
my memory until the first glimmer of vindication arose. An early
Letters to the Editor section, an amusing collection of feisty and
succinct missives, contained no less than eleven different images of
Alfred alias who knows who, sent in by readers claiming to have known
the ur-Alfred. In three pictures, the hair was actually slicked
down...

    These letters and many other fascinating exhibits were in a huge
binder containing background material from a copyright suit that had
been filed against MAD in the 1950s. I found nyself rooting for MAD—my
belated and, by now, favorite introduction to American comics.
Therefore I was relieved to find that the magazine had won by
demonstrating an abundance of prior art with that face and with
legends such as “Me worry?” or “Da-a-h.. .Me worry?” There were
references to a publication of that face by Gertrude Breton Park of
Los Angeles around 1914; to a 1936 advertisement from Brotman Dental
Lab in Winnipeg; to a somewhat corny book, Hall of Fame, published in
1943 in Toronto by one J. J. Carrick. There was no question that at
least in terms of chronology that face existed when I was a teenager
in the Midwest....
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One of the links provided on Metafilter is to a button sold on Ebay
depicting a proto-Neuman with the text "Me Worry? Superior - 1941":

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=4264&si=123


--Ben Zimmer