Collection inventory

Overview of the Collection
Creator:	Baer, Arthur, 1886-1969.
Title:	Arthur Baer Papers
Inclusive Dates:	1892-1969
Quantity:	12.5 linear ft.
Abstract:	Columns, correspondence, clippings, scrapbooks, photographs, memorabilia and published material of the American cartoonist and humor writer.
Language:	English
Repository:	Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries 222 Waverly Avenue Syracuse, NY 13244-2010 https://library.syracuse.edu/special-collections-research-center

Biographical History

Arthur "Bugs" Baer (1886-1969) was an American journalist, humorist, and illustrator living and working in New York City.

Born in Philadelphia to immigrant parents from Alsace-Lorraine, Bear left school at the age of 14 to attend art school and found work as an artist with the Philadelphia Public Ledger. In 1918 Baer was selected to attend the Field Artillery Central Officers' Training School (FACOTS) at Camp Zachary Taylor where he contributed to the military camp's soldier-run newspaper, The Probable Error, also known as The Probable Era. Baer went on to work at William Randolph Hearst's New York American and then, in the 1920s, for King Features Syndicate Inc., Hearst's syndication company, where Baer worked for the rest of his life writing his column "One Word Led to Another" along with numerous other columns and articles. During the 1920s Baer reviewed Broadway shows in his regular column "One Foot in the Aisle." He was the master of ceremonies for many Banshees Luncheons hosted by the American Newspaper Publishers Association, which Marilyn Monroe, J. Edgar Hoover, Walt Disney, George McManus, the Duke of Windsor, Babe Ruth, General MacArthur, Herbert Hoover, and others attended.

Baer married twice. His first wife, Marjorie Cassidy, sied shortly after the birth of their daughter, Arthura ("Atra"). Louise Andrews, his second wife and mother of his son Arthur "Bugs" Baer, Jr., was a Ziegfeld Follies girl.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Arthur Baer Papers contains correspondence, memorabilia, printed material, and writings.

Correspondence includes letters from J. Edgar Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, Buster Keaton, and others. A portion of letters are from Hoover and King Features Syndicate Inc. Baer also kept a binder of "confidential letters written by Bugs to his pals." Some correspondence also appears in the scrapbooks (see below).

Memorabilia consists of clippings about Baer and his work, material related to his 75th birthday, his military service (including his 1918 military commission to Camp Zachary Taylor and a garrison hat), photographs, and scrapbooks. The photographs depict parties Baer and his wife Louise hosted in the home, their family on vacation, Baer at work writing articles and as master of ceremonies for the Banshees Luncheon, and him chumming about with friends and colleagues at events. Baer's scrapbooks contain clippings of his articles, photographs of memorable moments in his life, important letters, etc.

Printed material consist of books, clippings, and miscellaneous items by and about Baer as well as some unrelated to him. Baer contributed to two of the books, one that relates the story of the field artillery training school at Camp Zachary Taylor outside Louisville, Kentucky and the other in which Baer and Henry Major illustrate famous people in show business before 1938. The clippings range from articles and columns written by Baer to clippings sent to Baer about interesting topics and articles on home design. One interesting item is a once bound volume of the complete 13-issue run of The Probable Error also known as The Probable Era. This newspaper was created and published by the soldiers of Camp Zachary Taylor as an information source for the whole camp. The short run gives insight into the soldiers' perspectives on the Spanish Flu epidemic, which hit Camp Zachary Taylor especially hard, and the end of World War I.

Writings makes up the majority of the collection. These writings are written by Baer and are not printed but typescript copies. Baer wrote articles and columns discussing a wide variety of topics important at the time. Trivial topics include how to shop for and wash a toupee, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Christian Dior's spring/summer 1955 collection, and the British model Twiggy. More serious topics include the atom bomb, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the power of nuclear weapons, multiple presidential elections, the Cold War and McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights Movement. Two standout columns are the coverage of the United Nations Conference on International Organization of 1946, informally known as the UNO conference, and multiple World Series with match ups between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

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Arrangement of the Collection

Correspondence is arranged alphabetically with Bugs' confidential letters kept together in their original order. The rest of the collection is arranged alphabetically then chronologically with Writings subdivided by type.

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

The majority of our archival and manuscript collections are housed offsite and require advance notice for retrieval. Researchers are encouraged to contact us in advance concerning the collection material they wish to access for their research.

Use Restrictions

Written permission must be obtained from SCRC and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

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Subject Headings

Persons

Corporate Bodies

Subjects

Genres and Forms

Occupations

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Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Arthur Baer Papers,
Special Collections Research Center,
Syracuse University Libraries

Acquisition Information

Gift of Arthur Baer, 1970, 1973.

Finding Aid Information

Created by: MRC
Date: 3 May 2010
Revision history: 15 Aug 2023 - processed (RMH)

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Inventory

	Correspondence
Box 1		"Confidential letters written by 'Bugs' to his pals" 1931-1937, 1940, undated
Box 1		Hoover, J. Edgar 1936-1938, 1943, 1954, 1961-1962
Box 1		King Features Syndicate Inc. 1935, 1939-1953, 1959-1963, undated
Box 1		Miscellaneous 1921, 1925, 1929-1969, undated (10 folders)

	Memorabilia
Box 2		75th birthday 1961 - cards and clippings
Oversize 5		75th birthday 1961
Tube 1		Banner undated - large green and white paper banner with Baer's name and logo
Box 2		Clippings about 1935, 1938, 1966-1968, undated
Oversize 5		Clippings about 1935, 1938, 1966-1968, undated
Oversize 8		Garrison hat circa 1918 - blue and gold with "Argonne Players" and "77th Div. A.E.F." stitched on either side
Oversize 5		Hand-drawn caricatures of Baer by others undated
Box 2		Military records 1918 - selection letter to report to Camp Zachary Taylor for field artillery training, permission to leave base, etc.
Oversize 4		Photograph album circa 1935
Box 2		Photographs circa 1935-circa 1945, 1962 - Baer as master of ceremonies, family vacations, parties, groups of other journalists and reports, etc. (8 folders)
Box 3		Photographs circa 1935-circa 1945, 1962
Oversize 1		Photographs circa 1935-circa 1945, 1962
Box 3		Press credentials 1939, 1941, 1944-1946
Box 3		Programs and invitations circa 1920, 1941, 1944-1946, 1951, 1955-1956, 1960-1962, undated - playbills, Banshees Luncheons, White House visit with the National League of Professional Baseball, etc.
Oversize 5		Programs and invitations 1960-1962
Oversize 2		Scrapbooks circa 1920-circa 1950 (2 volumes)
Oversize 1		Scrapbooks circa 1920-circa 1950
Box 3		Miscellaneous 1900, 1920, 1939, 1945, 1949-1954, 1963, undated - Louise Baer's death certificate, patent for "'Bugs' Baer", court summons from Baer to Arthur Frank, family recipe for beef stroganoff, etc.

	Printed material
		Books
Oversize 9			American Illustrations by F. Hopkinson Smith 1892
Oversize 6			F.A.C.O.T.S.: The Story of the Field Artillery Central Officers Training School at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky by Raymond Walters, George Palmer Putnam, John Kirby, Arthur Baer, Homer Dye, Jr., Forrest B. Myers, and others 1919
Oversize 4			Hollywood with "Bugs" Baer and Henry Major by Arthur Baer and Henry Major 1938
		Clippings
Box 3			Articles by Baer 1925, 1931, 1937, 1966, undated
Oversize 7			Articles by Baer circa 1945 (3 volumes)
Oversize 5			Articles by Baer 1925
Box 3			Bugs' eye view 1953, undated
Box 3			"Bugs" says 1953, undated
Box 3			Bugographies of a bug 1939-1940
Oversize 1			The girl from Rector's 1926-1928, - clippings from The Saturday Evening Post, by Baer as George Rector
Oversize 3			The probable error Oct-Dec 1918 - complete 13-issue run of newspaper for the FACOTS at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky
Box 3			World Series 1956 - written by Baer
Box 3			Miscellaneous 1941, 1958, 1962-1965 - clippings sent by friends of Baer topics include articles on the design of homes, JFK's proposed moon shot, etc.
Oversize 1			Miscellaneous 1941, 1958, 1962-1965
Box 3		Miscellaneous 1954, 1959-1960
			The items are an issue of People Today, booklet remembering Gene Fowler, and The Cartoonist! National Cartoonists Society summer 1959 issue.

	Writings
		This series contains typed and handwritten drafts of Baer's writings, including regular columns (Bearing down on the news, International news, One foot in the aisle, One word led to another, and his self-titled Sunday special articles); columns covering specific events and topics (Bugs Baer in the army, Bug's eye view on sports, The ethics of..., Instantenous etiquette, Rufftown, Uno conference, and World Series); biographical articles (Bugographies of a bug, How I came to write it, and Pardon my era); and several folders of articles and short stories with no defined column, notes, and copyright envelopes.
Box 3		Articles miscellaneous 1929, 1934, 1938-1945, 1949, 1955, undated (4 folders)
Box 3		Baering down on the news 1936-1940 (9 folders)
Box 4		Baering down on the news 1941-19454 (13 folders)
Box 5		Baering down on the news 1944-1948 (13 folders)
Box 6		Baering down on the news 1949-1952 (13 folders)
Box 7		Baering down on the news 1952-1954 (10 folders)
Box 8		Baering down on the news 1954-1956 (11 folders)
Box 9		Baering down on the news 1956-1959 (13 folders)
Box 10		Baering down on the news 1959-1963 (13 folders)
Box 11		Baering down on the news 1964-1969 (11 folders)
Box 12		Baering down on the news 1969, undated
Box 12		Bugs Baer in the army: tough sergeant 1942 (2 folders)
Box 12		Bug's eye view of sports 1938-1939
Box 12		Bugographies of a bug 1938-1941 (3 folders)
Oversize 5		Copyright envelopes 1960-1962, undated - multiple empy postmarked envelopes, evidently used to establish copyright of works.
Box 12		The Ethics of... 1941-1942
Box 12		How I came to write it circa 1956
Box 12		Instantaneous etiquette 1941
Box 12		International news 1938-1941, 1944, 1948, 1952-1954, undated (2 folders)
Box 12		The Long Game undated (2 folders)
Box 13		One foot in the aisle 1942-1944 (4 folders)
Box 13		One word led to another 1935-1938 (6 folders)
Box 14		One word led to another 1938-1940 (11 folders)
Box 15		One word led to another 1941-1943 (10 folders)
Box 16		One word led to another 1943-1946 (11 folders)
Box 17		One word led to another 1946-1949 (11 folders)
Box 18		One word led to another 1949-1951 (11 folders)
Box 19		One word led to another 1951-1954 (14 folders)
Box 20		One word led to another 1954-1955 (7 folders)
Box 20		Pardon my era 1915, 1930, 1934, 1938-1944, 1951 (3 folders)
Box 20		Poems undated
Box 20		Rufftown 1931 (2 folders)
Box 21		Rufftown 1931, 1936-1937 (3 folders)
Box 21		Short stories miscellaneous 1940, 1947, 1961-1963, undated (6 folders)
Box 21		Special articles 1940 - topics Baer wanted to write about that didn't fit within his regular columns, either thematicly or physically.
Box 21		Sunday special articles 1945-1946 - special articles became the Sunday special articles for topics different from his regular columns. (4 folders)
Box 22		Sunday special articles 1947-1953 (13 folders)
Box 23		Sunday special articles 1954-1958 (5 folders)
Box 23		Uno conference 1946
Box 23		World Series circa 1945 (2 folders)
Box 23		Miscellaneous notes 1920-1921, 1925-1926, 1930-1931, 1935-1935 (4 folders)
Box 24		Miscellaneous notes undated (2 folders)

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