Fawcett Publications

Fawcett Publications was launched in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota by Wilford H. "Captain Billy" Fawcett (1883-1940) with his cartoon and joke magazine, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. The first issue appeared October, 1919.

The book Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals notes, "Few periodicals reflect the post-World War I cultural change in American life as well as Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. To some people [it] represented the decline of morality and the flaunting of sexual immodesty; to others it signified an increase in openness. For much of the 1920s, Captain Billy’s was the most prominent comic magazine in America with its mix of racy poetry and naughty jokes and puns, aimed at a small-town audience with pretensions of ‘sophistication’." Circulation soared on this humor title during the early 1920s, and it continued into the late 1930s. Fawcett expanded with other magazines, including Battle Stories, True Confessions, Woman's Day, Rudder (later merged with Sea), Mechanix Illustrated (retitled Home Mechanix in 1984) and True.

A key figure in the growth of Fawcett Publications was Captain Billy and Claire Fawcett's son, Roscoe Kent Fawcett, who was born February 7, 1913, and died December 23, 1999.

The company introduced Fawcett Comics in 1940. Beginning in 1949, the line of Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks were published by Roscoe Fawcett, who saw the potential of publishing paperback originals rather than reprints. Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury paperback bestseller got a huge boost from Fawcett, as Spillane explained to interviewer Michael Carlson: "Now at that time you had to go through hardback. So I wrote I, the Jury and turned it in to EP Dutton. It had been rejected by four different publishers, saying no, no, this is too violent, too dirty... and it was picked up by Roscoe Fawcett, Fawcett Publications. He was a distributor, doing comic books, but he saw the potential, and he went to New American Library, which was Signet Books, and he said 'If you print this book, I'll distribute it.' Now they can't get distribution, so it's a win-win thing for them, but they have to get it published in hardback, so they go to Dutton and say if you print this, we'll do the paperback. So now it's win-win-win, and they offer me $250, and I say no, I need a thousand dollars to build a house in Newburgh, so I get a $1,000 advance, which was unheard of. So Roscoe ordered a million copies, and that was unheard of! So somebody in his outfit says, oh, that wasn't what he meant, he must've meant a quarter million. So they bring out a quarter of a million at the wrong time, cause books sell great at Christmas time, but my book came out between Christmas and New Year, which is death, and it went straight to the top, because it was word of mouth, and it's sold out, and Fawcett says get the rest of them out, and the guy says there aren't any more and Roscoe says whaddaya mean, I ordered a million, and a guy got fired!"

Ralph Daigh was Fawcett's editor-in-chief in the early 1950s, when Fawcett had offices in Greenwich, Connecticut, and at 67 West 44th Street in Manhattan. CBS acquired Fawcett Publications in 1977. In Robbinsdale, Minnesota, an annual four-day festival, Whiz Bang Days, is a city celebration that recalls the glory days of Fawcett Publications.

External links

Captain Billy's log mansion, Fawcett House