Green Sheet’s corny jokes became its calling card
For more than half a century, The Milwaukee Journal’s Green Sheet section was comfort food for Milwaukee newspaper readers.
And the section’s first course was a heaping side of corn.
When The Journal brought back the Green Sheet in 1920 — it had been discontinued during World War I — it added a freestanding headline at the top of the first page, in newspaper jargon an “overline.” Often a pun, and nearly always corny, the overline became the Green Sheet’s calling card. Some examples: “A Girl Who Marries a Man to Mend His Ways May Find He Isn’t Worth a Darn”
“A Man Who Stole Comforts From a Hotel Was Arrested on a Blanket Charge”
“The Most Discouraging Thing About Middle Age Is All Those Years Going to Waist”
Most of the time, the jokes were anonymous. But sometimes a gag was attributed to a guy named Phil, with the last name spelled, varyingly, Osopher, Osofer and Osifer. As in:
“Phil Osofer Says He’s Noticed That a Smile Always Adds to a Person’s Face Value”
“Here’s Phil Osofer’s Success Tip for Today: Start at the Bottom and Wake Up”
“Phil Osifer Says One of the Hardest Instruments to Learn Is Second Fiddle”
Who invented Phil Osofer is unclear. Dan Chabot, who was Green Sheet editor from 1981 until its end in 1994, said via email that he thought it was a creation of Ben Waxse, assistant Green Sheet editor and the unofficial “keeper” of the overline joke until his retirement in 1981.
But the name “Phil Osopher” turns up in overline jokes as early as 1938, and in the Green Sheet at least five years earlier, including several mentions in a kids’ page feature called “Captain Larry’s Rambler,” a string of gags seemingly put together by Larry Lawrence, the editor who transformed the Green Sheet from a tabloidnews page to the family-friendly respite that longtime Milwaukeeans remember.
Whatever its origin, Phil Osofer became readers’ shorthand for that joke at the top of the page.
The jokes themselves were written mostly by the section’s editors: Lawrence; Waxse; Lawrence’s predecessor, Wallace MacIver; Lawrence’s successor, Wade Mosby; and Chabot.
But other Journal writers contributed, too. Chabot, who pitched a joke or two himself before getting the Green Sheet gig, said “Slightly Kloss-Eyed” columnist Gerald Kloss and feature writer Jackie Loohauis-Bennett were “especially adept” at inventing them.
Waxse’s approach to the overline was to go for the “groaner,” said Paul Hayes, a reporter who started at The Journal in 1962 and retired when the paper merged with the Sentinel in 1995.
“Phil Osofer was deliberately bad humor — poor puns, obvious jokes, cornball stuff,” Hayes said. “I think (Waxse) sought that out.”
Generally speaking, Chabot said, the jokes steered clear of “serious social commentary.” Reread today, however, some are problematic; the numerous jokes about women and shopping reinforce the men’s club that newsrooms historically have been.
Sometimes, though, the jokes were, um, borrowed. In his Green Sheet column “That Reminds Me,” published Feb. 26, 1960, Lawrence revealed his approach to coming up with them:
“I have never claimed that I invent them, but, of course I have invented many. I have adopted more. ... It dawned on me that jokes know no father.”
Often, coming up with the right joke just meant finding something that fit. In that 1960 column, Lawrence recounted how he agonized over writing something that was 80 characters long — enough to fit what was then an eight-column page.
Spoiler alert for Phil Osofer fans: That “all the joke that fits” anxiety could be the real explanation for the punster’s “birth.”
“Many readers ask who Phil Osofer is, because the quips often start out ‘Phil Osofer Says ... ,’ ” a Journal feature story about the Green Sheet noted on May 18, 1969. “There is no Phil. He’s used only when a few words are needed to make the line fit.”