Figure 1.--.

Ray Nelson has kindly provided us this account of the propeller beanie.

In 1947 I was holding a small science-fiction convention for the Michigan Science Fantasy Society at my home in Cadillac, Michigan. As the convention drew to a close, we began shooting joke photographs poking fun at various space opera cliches. The space monster was easy and the damsel in distress only required a mop to serve as a wig, but the hero posed problems. What would a space hero wear as a hat? I remembered a cover from an old "Amazing Stories" magazine illustrating "The Skylark of Space" of a man in flight with a kind of antigravity rig. (I think this was the same issue where Buck Rogers made his first appearance.) We didn't have any antigravity rig, but someone said, "Maybe we should put a propellor on his head." In a flash I remembered a box where I kept unused parts from airplane model kits. George Young wanted to go to a dime store or hardware store for parts, but I said, "Wait a second", and dashed up to my room. In a frenzy I stapled together a little cap made of strips of plastic and affixed a model airplane propellor to it on a wire, putting a few beads on the wire first so the propellor could spin freely, then I ran back downstairs and out to the garage, propellor beanie in hand. George said, "You sure got back fast from the store." I told him I didn't go to the store but he didn't believe me, and I didn't argue because the sun was getting low in the sky and we didn't have much daylight left for picture taking.

When the convention was over George wanted to keep the propellor beanie and I gave it to him, believing it was totally worthless. George, however, started wearing it to club meetings in Detroit, so I drew a cartoon of him wearing it for an amateur magazine (fanzine). I think the fanzine was called "Spacewarp" and was published out of Saginaw, Michigan by my fan friend, Arthur H. Rapp.

Other fans began to hand make variations on the beanie and wear them to conventions all over the United States, and I and several other amateur cartoonists began drawing cartoons in which the propellor beanie was the symbol of the science fiction fan the way the yarmulke is the symbol of the orthodox Jew. (The other cartoonists included Redd Boggs, Bill Rotsler and a British artist who used the pen name of Atom.)

Sometime in the 1940s I was visiting relatives in California and won a contest to design a hand puppet for a character called "Professor Befuddled" created originally for radio by a voice actor named Bruce Sedley and now switching to the relatively new medium of television. Sedley told me a friend of his in Los Angeles was going to do a similar television show for kids. Sedley thought I should send in a sample of my work and gave me an address. I drew up a sketch of my beanie boy and Sedley sent it on with his recommendation.

Soon after the show hit the airwaves entitled, "Beanie and Cecil, the Seasick Sea Serpent", and Beanie was a hand puppet faithfully following my sketch but making Beanie much younger. Cecil was a sock puppet, literally a sock with two buttons sewed on for eyes.

Sedley tried to get payment or screen credit for me but the director of the show thought the beanie puppet was a design submitted in Sedley's contest and that therefore it was now in the public domain. (My contract from the contest deeded all rights to Sedley.) Also the Beanie show people maintained they had changed the design enough so it now was no longer the same design.

Anyway, the show was a hit and a Warner Brothers cartoonist named Bob Clampett revamped it to use animated cartoons instead of puppets, and launched it on national television around 1950 where it was a hit again. Clampet licensed the mass production of a propellor beanie to a novelties company and the cap was yet another hit, making millions for Clampet. As soon as just anybody started wearing it, the science fiction fans stopped. Indignantly.

But fan cartoonists continued to draw science fiction fans with this characteristic headgear until the computer "geeks" picked it up and actually began marketing it as a part of "geek culture", admitting I was the creator of it but never sending me any royalties.

Finally, in my own fanzine, I have announced my abandonment of the beanie, adopting instead the French beret, mainly to annoy Republicans. And as Porky Pig might say, "That's all, folks!"

Ray Nelson

Navigate the Historic Boys' Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronologies] [Countries] [Style Index]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [Expanded Site] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Satellite sites] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: August 11, 2003
Last updated: August 11, 2003