| Cylinda Oyl | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Real Name |
Cylinda Oyl |
|
First appearance |
Syndicated comic strip The Thimble Theatre (1926) |
|
Original publisher |
King Features Syndicate |
|
Created by |
E. C. Segar |
Origin[]
Castor and Cylinda at their wedding (strip printed August 21, 1926)
Cylinda Oyl was originally Cylinda Lotts, the spoiled, attractive, adult daughter of I. Caniford Lotts. She was kidnapped by a gang of crooks, who hit her over the head, causing her amnesia. They kept her hidden in a forest outside of town. She managed to escape her captors when the crook who was supposed to be guarding her was distracted, and wandered into the woods, capable of speech, but with no idea who she was.
Ham Gravy was squirrel hunting in the woods when he ran into Cylinda. It did not take long for her captors to catch up to her and recapture her, along with capturing Ham Gravy. They bound the two together, and the gang's leader, amused by Ham's long nose, tied said appendage to a lower tree branch, making extra sure Ham could not escape. The gang then got word that Cylinda's father had suffered a mental breakdown and been committed to an asylum, where he would confuse each of the male asylum guards for his daughter (the guards would then just humor him, each pretending to be his daughter). Realizing the father was now in no condition to pay them the ransom they wanted, the gang just chose to leave the woods, abandoning Ham and Cylinda (and Ham's nose) still bound together.
Olive Oyl, worried at how long Ham was gone, asked her brother Castor to go to the woods and find him. Castor found Ham and Cylinda bound together and freed them.
Castor brought Ham Gravy and the young woman to the Oyl home, and with the woman still amnesiac, she had nowhere else to go, so Nana Oyl invited her to stay at their place, despite Olive's objections. It soon became obvious that both Castor and Ham were attracted to her. Castor proposed marriage to her several times, with her turning him down each time. Ham began actively courting her while ostensibly dropping by to see Olive, much to Olive's consternation.
Eventually, Olive grew so jealous of the young woman that the latter found it uncomfortable to be under the same roof with her and chose to move out, despite having nowhere to go. Castor bought her a tent to sleep in, and slept in a sleeping bag outside her tent at night to protect her. This increased her affection for him. Soon after, she kissed him, just after shyly telling him she was going to do so, later admitting that she loved him, and when Castor soon after proposed again, this time she said yes. Soon afterwards, she remembered her first name was Cylinda, although she still remembered nothing else. Castor pointed out that gave her the perfect first name to marry into the Oly family, as 'Cylinda Oyl'.
The wedding was held in the Oyl home, despite several interruptions. First, Castor and Cylinda were all dressed up for the wedding in front of his family, before he realized he had forgotten to get a minister. His father Cole Oyl rushed out and got a justice of the peace, an old friend of his, to come to the house and perform the wedding. When the justice asked for the marriage license, Castor realized he had forgotten that too, and rushed out to get one. When he returned with the license, the justice asked if he had the ring. Realizing he also forgot that as well, Castor rushed to a jeweler, but when the jeweler refused to give him a ring on credit, Castor rushed back to the house and begged his father for twenty bucks. With Castor finally getting the ring, the justice raised the standard question of, "Does anyone know of any reason why this marriage should not take place? If so- speak now or forever hold your peace." At that moment, Ham Gravy rushed into the house and declared he knew of a reason: "The groom is a sap!" He was promptly thrown out. Despite all these interruptions, the wedding was performed and Castor and Cylinda were married.
Now with a wife to support, Castor got a job as groundskeeper on the estate of Mr. Lotts, who by this time had recovered his sanity and been released from the asylum, but was now depressed over the loss of his still-missing daughter. One day, Castor noticed a photograph of Cylinda in the mansion and asked Mr. Lotts why he had a photo of Castor's wife. Mr. Lotts took this as an insult and had Castor thrown out. But the latter was still employed as groundskeeper and had yet to realize the significance of Cylinda's photo. Castor invited Cylinda to come stay on the grounds while he performed his job, and it was on these grounds that Mr. Lotts found Cylinda. He was overjoyed to be reunited with her, but dismayed to discover that she did not remember him, and disgusted to learn she had married an "ordinary fellow". This was aggravated when Castor promptly quit his job upon realizing who his wife was, and began shamelessly sponging off Lotts' fortune as his son-in-law.
Castor and Cylinda would be married for two years within the strip, from 1926 to 1928. Cylinda made her debut in the Sunday strip in January, 1927, and would be in most Sundays of that year. Her father, Mr. Lotts, made his Sunday debut in March of that year. The stories in that year's Sundays would be the sort of domestic foibles of newlyweds common in comic strips of that time, with Mr. Lotts as a regular, disapproving father-in-law/antagonist to Castor.
At the start of 1928, Cylinda's role in the dailies rapidly diminished. Of the first two stories begun there in 1928- Castor buying a newspaper and becoming its editor, and the return of Castor's fighting game cock Blizzard- Cylinda appeared in only one daily strip each (although her father had a large role in the latter story, since one of the chickens Blizzard fought belonged to Lotts). Cylinda continued to have a major role in the Sunday strips, but only for the first two months of the year. In March 1928, "The Great American Desert Saga" would begin in the Sunday strips, seeing Castor travel to the American Southwest without his wife. In June 1928, the decision was made to write Cylinda and her father out of the strip by ending her marriage to Castor. The plot device that would end it in the dailies was introduced without warning in the June 1 strip. Cylinda and her father both made their final appearance in the dailies in the June 13 strip, less than two weeks later, and Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl made their return to the dailies as regulars shortly afterwards.
In the June 1 strip, Castor would come home only to see a strange man there, studio executive Mr. Flimbo, offering Cylinda thousands of dollars to move to Hollywood to become a movie actress, "and leave that sap husband behind." Cylinda immediately accepted, declaring she had always wanted to be an actress (even though she had never expressed that desire in her entire two years in the strip). Castor tried to forbid it, but she just ignored him. In desperation, Castor turned to his father-in-law, only to find that Mr. Lotts already knew about the deal and fully approved of it since he had always wanted his daughter to be an actress (again, despite no mention of this in the previous years he and his daughter had been in the strip). The next time Flimbo came to their home, Castor asked if he could also get a job at the studio so he could be with his wife. Flimbo offered to "start you in at twenty dollars a week- and you can work your way up. And when you get to be janitor I'll pay you thirty." Castor was too shocked and insulted to reply (given that right from the start Flimbo had urged Cylinda to "leave that sap husband behind," it is highly likely that Flimbo's offer was intentionally insulting to ensure he would not accept it). Finally, Castor tearfully told Cylinda he was leaving her and wished her good luck on her film career. Cylinda, who took the moment to bring up how tired she was of housework, and her eagerness to get her film career started, did not seem to mind.
Cylinda appeared in three Sunday strips of "The Great American Desert Saga": the March 2, March 25, and June 10, 1928 strips, in just one panel each (the opening panel in all three cases). In the March 2 strip, Castor tells Cylinda he will be going to the American Southwest to see if he can make a killing on some land deals. Cylinda hopes he will have a fun trip. In the opening panel of the March 25 strip, Cylinda could be seen at home, expressing worry about Castor since she had not heard from him in a while. Her worry was well-founded, as this was the start of a sequence within "The Great American Desert Saga", lasting several months, where Castor was lost in the desert and regularly risked death from starvation, dehydration and animal predators. In the opening panel of the June 10 strip, Cylinda could be seen at home, reading a brief letter from Castor that revealed he had just survived getting lost in the desert (this Sunday strip came out at the same time Cylinda was so eagerly leaving Castor in the dailies, indicative perhaps, that Segar wrote and drew his Sundays ahead of his dailies, so the decision to write Cylinda out had yet to be made while Segar produced this page).
In the December 23 strip, Castor realized it had been a while since he had written to his wife, and decided to do some Christmas shopping for her at a local store. There, Castor noticed a radio on display and used it to pick up a broadcast from his hometown's radio station two thousand miles away, just in time to hear the news announcement that, "wife of Castor Oyl gets divorce on grounds of desertion", which shocked and angered him.
Public Domain Comic Strip Appearances[]
- Thimble Theater (1926–1928)
Notes[]
- Married into the Oyl family, Cylinda has an oil-based pun for a name, much like her in-laws. In this case, referring to "cylinder oil".