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2 unusual facts about Joe Palooka


Palooka

Joe Palooka, an American comic strip from which subsequent usages are derived

Pete Latzo

Cartoonist Ham Fisher met Latzo outside a pool hall and, impressed by his personality, sportsmanship, and physique, was inspired to create his popular character Joe Palooka.


Funnies on Parade

These included such popular strips as cartoonist Al Smith's Mutt and Jeff, Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka, and Percy Crosby's Skippy.

Leon Errol

Monogram signed Errol to appear as fight manager Knobby Walsh in the eight entries of their "Joe Palooka" sports comedies (1946–50).

Lou Nova

Other movie roles include that as Hubert in the 20th Century Fox film noir crime drama Somewhere in the Night (1946) starring John Hodiak, and a cameo in Joe Palooka, Champ the same year.

Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin

Boxing aficionado Ham Fisher, the creator of the "Joe Palooka" strip, moved to a large home on South Lake Shore Drive in Edithton Beach where he drew the series and where famous pugilists (among them Joe Louis) would train.


see also

Ham Fisher

However, while there is no doubt that Capp did a substantial amount of work on Joe Palooka for several months, as an artist and probably also to some degree a writer, comics historians Denis Kitchen and Michael Schumacher have recently made a case that there is no way of knowing whether Capp or Fisher invented the hillbillies, in their biography Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (Bloomsbury USA, 2013).

Joe Kirkwood, Jr.

Kirkwood is married to Joyce Kirkwood (1980–present) and was married to Cathy Downs (1952–55) (divorced), who starred with him in The Joe Palooka Story TV series from 1954 to 1955.