Control click header above to hear vaudevillian George Price sing his 1923 hit, "Barney Google with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes".



Billy DeBeck was a comic genius. In other words, he was flat out funny. Thus, Barney Google kicks off our Splendiferous Barney Google New Year Celebration! Note in the 12/26/20 b/w page how the comic situation escalates with every panel advancing in a logical manner.







December 26, 1920 January 1, 1921 September 26, 1923 show in Elyria, Ohio

January 3, 1926

May 9, 1926

, DeBeck's topper strip, came to an end on May 9, 1926. In the corner of the last panel ofis a note of thanks to "Odd McIntyre" (pronounced "udd"). Now mostly forgotten, O.O. McIntyre (1884-1938) was a newspaper columnist with a huge readership in the 1920s and 1930s. (He almost vanished entirely. Try to find more than three pictures of him on the Internet!) His daily column, "New York, Day by Day," was widely syndicated and collected into bestselling books. His readers expected to find his columns about celebrities and parties in the big city occasionally interruped with portraits of small town life, such as "The Glee-or-ious Fourth" . Why did O.O. veer into obscurity while other columnists (Hedda Hopper, Herb Caen, Louella Parsons, Walter Winchell, Irv Kupcinet) never faded away? I think it was because he had no interest in radio. He felt that the discipline that went into writing his columns would slide if he made a detour into broadcasting. (Thus, Fred Allen was free to use O.O.'s columns as the uncredited inspiration for his popular Allen's Alley segments.)On May 16, 1926, withgone, DeBeck launched, the title an apparent reference to his cheapskate main character.