The California Pelican was a college humor magazine founded in 1903 by Earle C. Anthony at the University of California, Berkeley. Lasting eighty years, it was the first successful student humor magazine in UC Berkeley, though it was preceded by Smiles in 1891 and Josh in 1895. It is succeeded by the Heuristic Squelch, which is still running.
Description
Gender was significant in the magazine's name. Although early issues carried an illustration of the eponymous bird on its cover, at the turn of the twentieth century “pelican” was actually an uncomplimentary term for female Berkeley students. The publication was even often referred to as “the Old Girl,” in contrast to its cross-bay counterpart, the Stanford Chaparral, known as “the Old Boy.”
Often referred to simply as the Pelican, the magazine featured cartoons, poetry, original humor articles, and short jokes reprinted from other college humor magazines such as the Pennsylvania Punchbowl and Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern. Aside from its wealthy founder, the magazine's most well known contributor was Rube Goldberg, who drew cartoons for the magazine as a student. Goldberg recalled in later years that he “had great admiration for Earle Anthony, the editor of the Pelican, a tall, gangling young man who wore his floppy senior stovepipe at a jaunty angle and took long strides across the campus like one who had the past, present and future all wrapped in a nice secure package. When he accepted one of my drawings it gave me a greater thrill than a good mark in calculus or geology.” Additionally, science fiction author Ron Goulart wrote for the magazine and later republished one of his Pelican articles professionally.
History
According to Verne Stadtman's Centennial Record, the magazine was founded on April 16, 1903 by Anthony and an original staff of ten. It eventually became sponsored by the Associated Students and by the 1960s was issued once a month during each school year. The Centennial Record lists its circulation as 7,000 copies per issue in 1965, making it the second largest publication on the campus at that time. The Daily Cal newspaper, published each day, had the largest circulation.
The magazine was given the rare privilege of its own building on the UC Berkeley campus in 1957 after Earle C. Anthony donated money to the university to provide a home for the publication he had created. Although the structure beside Strawberry Creek is now occupied by the Graduate Student Assembly, the prominence of pelicans in architect Joseph Esherick's design as well as Irene Rich's larger-than-life pelican sculpture on the front lawn leave no doubt as to Anthony Hall's original purpose. Still exhibiting the sense of humor that had led to the magazine's founding more than a half-century before, Anthony fittingly arranged for a live pelican at the dedicatory ceremonies over which Berkeley Chancellor Clark Kerr presided.
The 1960s were especially difficult times for the Pelican and marked the beginning of a long period of turmoil and changes of directions in the publication's history. As the Free Speech Movement flourished at Berkeley in the mid-decade and students’ minds turned to more serious matters, there seemed little place for a humor magazine. After struggling for several years, the Old Girl finally succumbed, the October 1970 number being the last in the traditional humorous format.
By the spring of that college year, The New California Pelican emerged, adopting a feature or variety format that did not, however, necessarily exclude humor. The opening editorial explained, “The old PELICAN has waddled on unsteady legs since around 1963, and this fall, the last editors quietly packed up their negatives of Miss Pelly Girls and left. This issue of the NEW CALIFORNIA PELICAN was put out on short notice by some graduates in the School of Journalism. We had a few suitable pieces from classes; we wrote a few new things, got some art, took some pictures... The point was to keep the bird alive. There has been no continuity between the old PELLY staff and the new.” With the request to “think of us as a magazine-in-progress,” a second issue was produced in May 1971 that included a humorous story, “Kansas.” Three quarterly numbers issued during the 1971-1972 academic year under the title California Pelican.