Alfred E. Neuman is the fictitious mascot and cover boy of the American humor magazine Mad. The character's distinct smiling face, gap-toothed smile, freckles, red hair, protruding ears, and scrawny body date back to late 19th-century advertisements for painless dentistry, also the origin of his "What, me worry?" motto. The magazine's founder and original editor, Harvey Kurtzman, began using the character in 1954. He was named "Alfred E. Neuman" (a name Kurtzman had previously used in an unconnected way) by Mad's second editor Al Feldstein in 1956. Neuman's likeness has appeared on all but a handful of the magazine's covers, over 550 issues. He has almost always been rendered in a front view but has occasionally been seen in silhouette, or directly from behind.
Despite the primacy of Neuman's incomplete smile, his other facial features have occasionally attracted notice. Artist Andy Warhol said that seeing Neuman taught him to love people with big ears.
In 1958, Mad published letters from several readers noting the resemblance between Neuman and England's King Charles, then nine years old. Shortly thereafter, an angry letter under a Buckingham Palace letterhead arrived at the Mad offices: "Dear Sirs No it isn't a bit – not the least little bit like me. So jolly well stow it! See! Charles. P." The letter was authenticated as having been written on triple-cream laid royal stationery bearing an official copper-engraved crest. The postmark indicated it had been mailed from a post office within a short walking distance of Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the original letter disappeared in the 80's while on loan to another magazine and has never been located.
For many years, Mad sold full-color prints of the official portrait of Neuman through a small house ad on the letters page of the magazine. In the early years, the price for one picture was 25 cents, three for 50 cents, nine for a dollar, or 27 for two dollars. The ad frequently stated that the prints were "suitable for framing or wrapping fish".
The precise origin of the image used for Alfred E. Neuman is unknown. Among the earliest known images is an advertisement for Atmore's Mince Meat, Genuine English Plum Pudding. Author Maria Reidelbach wrote, "Dating from 1895, this is the oldest verified image of the boy.... The kid's features are fully developed and unmistakable, and the image was very likely taken from an older archetype..."
Similar faces turned up in advertising for "painless" dentistry. According to original Mad publisher William Gaines, Neuman had his origin in Topeka with the Painless Romine Topeka Dental College, actually a dental group at 704 Kansas Avenue, at the office of William Romine – often misspelled as Romaine – , a dentist who resided and practiced in Wichita. A face virtually identical to Neuman's appears in the 1923 issue of the University of Minnesota humor magazine The Guffer above the caption "Medic After Passing Con Exam in P. Chem." Another identical face shows up in the logo for Happy Jack Beverages, a soda drink produced by the A. B. Cook company in 1939. An almost-identical image appeared as "nose art" on an American World War II bomber, over the motto "Me Worry?" (this painted face was sometimes referred to as "The Jolly Boy").
The name Alfred E. Neuman was picked up from Alfred Newman, the music arranger from back in the 1940s and 1950s. Actually, we borrowed the name indirectly through The Henry Morgan Show. He used the name Newman for an innocuous character you'd forget in five minutes. So we started using the name Alfred Neuman. The readers insisted on putting the name and the face together, and they would call the "What, Me Worry?" face Alfred Neuman.
In 2012, longtime editor Nick Meglin offered a streamlined, exasperated version of Neuman's origins:
– Oh, don't ask me about Alfred E. Neuman. That story is so old and so meaningless. Does the average Playboy reader care about where the rabbit came from? It's just a symbol that lets you know what's on the inside. It's just a name we made up. We had 20, and that's the one we settled on.
Mad magazine
Harvey Kurtzman first spotted the image on a postcard pinned to the office bulletin board of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff. "It was a face that didn't have a care in the world, except mischief", recalled Kurtzman. Shir-Cliff was later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
In November 1954, the image made its Mad debut on the front cover of Ballantine's The Mad Reader, a paperback collection of reprints from the first two years of Mad.
Mad switched to a magazine format starting with issue #24, and Neuman's face appeared in the top, central position of the illustrated border used on the covers, with his now-familiar signature phrase "What, me worry?" written underneath. Initially, the phrase was rendered "What? Me worry?" These borders were used for five more issues, through Mad #30.
During Mingo's absence, Frank Kelly Freas rendered Neuman for Mad from 1958 to 1962. Mingo's total surpassed Freas' in 1965, and his leading status endured until 2016, when current contributor Mark Fredrickson became the most prolific Mad cover artist with his 98th cover.
Neuman has appeared in one form or another on the cover of nearly every issue of Mad and its spinoffs since that issue and continuing to the present day, with a small handful of exceptions.
In late 1959, Mad released a 45 rpm single entitled "What – Me Worry?" (ABC-Paramount 10013), by "Alfred E. Neuman and His Furshlugginer Five", featuring an uncredited voice actor singing as Neuman. (The B-side of the single, "Potrzebie", is an instrumental.)
In 1965, the origins and copyright of the Neuman image made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. A small publisher sued the parent company of Mad magazine, claiming infringement of a 1914 copyright of the Neuman character's image. Mad asked readers to find earlier images of the character in an attempt to show it was part of the public domain. The Court ruled in favor of Mad, and found the 1914 copyright holder could not prove that all prints manufactured by her husband, the original holder, carried a valid copyright notice. Furthermore, the court ruled the original copyright holder "most derelict in preventing others from infringing his copyright" given widespread use of similar images over the decades.
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Alfred E. Neuman
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