Trivia / Li'l Abner

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• Breaking News Interruption: At 1:30pm Eastern time on November 22, 1963, WLW radio in Cincinnati, Ohio had just begun a program of Broadway show music during which Li'l Abner was to be featured when bulletins began coming in regarding the shooting of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. The station managed to make it through only the overture (with several interruptions for more local bulletins) before the program was canceled and the station switched to playing somber instrumental music while awaiting further news.
• Creator Breakdown: Simply put, the times moved on and Al Capp couldn't. And when he did move, it tended to be in exactly the wrong direction. While the strip had always been in part a vehicle for social satire, Capp slowly became more ultra-conservative in the 1960s until almost every strip was openly griping about hippies, the civil rights movement and anti-war protestors.
• Life Imitates Art: The name of Lockheed Martin’s "Skunk Works" (the place that made the Blackbird, Nighthawk, and Raptor aircraft) comes from Barney & Big Barnsmell's "Skonk Works".
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Lena the Hyena's face was finally selected by holding a contest for fans of the strip.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In 1971, Al Capp came under immense media condemnation due to being caught up in multiple, near-simultaneous sex scandals. As a result, many newspapers dropped the strip out of protest. Combined with how sharply Al Capp had alienated his potential fanbase since the 60s, it was a death sentence.
• What Could Have Been: Positive reactions to reruns of the strip in 1988 and 1989 and the success of the revival of Pogo almost led to a revival of Li'l Abner drawn by cartoonist Steve Stiles. Despite approval by both Capp's widow and brother, his daughter objected at the last minute and permission was withdrawn, relegating the comic to the mists of time.
  • Warner Bros. Animation was going to produce an Animated Adaptation series based on the strip to air on primetime network TV for the 1969-70 season, but the Kinney National Company buying Warner Bros.- Seven Arts and closing the animation studio prevented that from happening. Given how the Looney Tunes shorts of the era turned out, it probably wouldn't have been that much different from a typical Filmation or Hanna-Barbera series of the time.
  • Writer/lyricist Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady) originally had the theatrical rights to the strip and spent several years developing his own musical version, which he intended to re-imagine the title character as a modern-day version of The Good Soldier Švejk.
• Writer Revolt: Al Capp wiped out the Shmoos (though not until after he'd made a pile merchandising them.)

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