Saturday Evening Post Cartoon Submission - November 5, 1949 - pre Berenstain Bears

I always liked the Berenstain Bears when I was a kid and my children did too when they were little.

Years before the Berenstain Bears, Stan and Jan were trying to get cartoons published without success. Stan managed to get a meeting with John Bailey, the cartoon editor of the Saturday Evening Post, who liked their work,but felt the subject matter was too highbrow and suggested that they focus their jokes on everyday daily life and family dynamics. His advice worked and starting in 1947, their cartoons started appearing in the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and other magazines.

Fun fact -- the same John Bailey also inspired the character of Beetle Bailey. He suggested to Mort Walker that he should base some cartoons on his college experiences at the University of Missouri, which included a goof-off character named "Spider". Walker ended up submitting a comic strip to King Features Syndicate starring "Spider", but now renamed "Beetle" (as King Features already had a different "Spider" character). Walker gave the character the last name of Bailey in honor of John Bailey.

Back to this art - it was drawn on 8.5 x 11 art paper and as you can see, it says "OK JB" on it, which was John Bailey signing off on the concept. I believe the Berenstains then redraw this on art board, possibly at a slightly larger size. I've seen a bunch of these prelims, but very few published cartoons. It's possible that the family kept those or potentially donated them to a library or university.

I was fortunate to be able to find a scan of the published art from the November 5, 1949 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. I have several other of these prelims -- most likely from the late 40's to early 50's, but so far this is the only one where I've been able to confirm the date.

Please note that a lot of my info comes from Stan and Jan's autobiography, "Down A Sunny Dirt Road", which was published in 2002. The book makes it clear that both Stan and Jan worked on these cartoons, in spite of the fact that they're often credited only to Stan.