Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Henry Boltinoff
The brainchild of writer Aleen Leslie, the A Date With Judy radio show inspired a media franchise that included a popular DC Comics series.
Article Summary
- Discover the origin of A Date With Judy, born from Aleen Leslie’s One-Girl Chorus column in the Pittsburgh Press.
- Learn about Aleen Leslie’s diverse writing career, from her newspaper beginnings to Hollywood and novels.
- Explore how the radio series evolved into a cross-media franchise, including a film and TV show.
- Dive into the DC Comics series, launched in 1947 with contributions from several artists, lasting 79 issues.
The first sign of the eventual media franchise that would be called A Date With Judy appeared with an announcement in the June 3, 1934 edition of the Pittsburgh Press: “When a girl of 17 talks to another of 26, what have they in common what do they want to know from each other? In the new order of things, does the first look upon the second as an old maid; the second upon the first as a mere child? One-Girl Chorus delves into a lot of intimate little items of the day, rips the tinsel away and goes in for some subtle satire that calls for chuckles. It’s a new column to appear exclusively in The Press, and it starts tomorrow.”
One-Girl Chorus was Aleen Leslie‘s (née Wetstein) eclectic satire of the lives of teenage girls, in the form of a regular column in the Pittsburgh Press. Leslie’s credits would eventually include work on 19 major-studio film releases, two novels, and a number of plays. Said to have started writing for the Pittsburgh Press at the age of 17 in 1925, Leslie sold her first short story to College Humor in 1928, and appeared in that magazine’s syndicated newspaper section as early as 1931. In 1941, Leslie and Jerome Lawrence adapted her One-Girl Chorus column into A Date with Judy, a radio comedy series centered around the saga of the teen girl character Judy Foster and her friends and family. The series became a media franchise, spawning a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and a television series, as well as a comic book from DC Comics. Leslie briefly served as president of the Writers Guild of America in 1956.
At DC, A Date with Judy launched in 1947 with the comics industry’s teen humor boom well underway, and also catching the rising wave of comic book romance. The series lasted for 79 issues 1947-1960, and included work by Henry Boltinoff, Graham Place, Bob Oskner, Ira Schnapp and a number of others. A popular and historically important DC Comics series, there’s a number of issues of A Date with Judy up for auction in the 2024 October 3 – 5 Good Girl Art and Romance Comics Showcase Auction #40269.
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