The U.S. Anti-Comic Book Movement: New Evidence

My new book, Beauty Doesn’t Reach Me, examines the journey of antifascist playwright Ernst Toller’s death mask from the hands of its maker to the collection at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City.

Along the way, a new window into the anti-comic book crusade of the 1950s opened up.

Why? Because of the importance of Fredric Wertham to the story.

Wertham was one of Toller’s psychiatrists at the time of Toller’s suicide on May 22, 1939. His wife – sculptor Florence “Hesketh” Wertham – made the death mask in the hours after the tragedy. Fredric Wertham took control of Toller’s funeral arrangements, and he had a role in the disposition of the author’s personal papers after his death.

Yet most startling of all is finding Wertham’s protégé and collaborator Hilde Mosse at the center of events in Toller’s final days. New evidence points to Mosse as Toller’s final lover – a relationship that was suppressed and then kept secret for over eight decades.

Wertham and Mosse worked closely together on anti-comic book studies (including Seduction of the Innocent), as well as in creating the pioneering Lafrague Clinic in Harlem. But when did they first meet?

The best previous guess was in the early 1940s, when Mosse landed a position at Queens General Hospital, where Wertham was the director of Psychiatric Services. But Beauty Doesn't Reach Me confirms that they actually met in 1939, likely shortly before Toller’s suicide.

Wertham played a key role in erasing Mosse from the scrutiny of scandal-obsessed Manhattan tabloids after the playwright’s demise in 1939. And the death mask made by the psychiatrist’s wife ended up in the collection of Hilde Mosse’s brother, historian George Mosse.

Beauty Doesn’t Reach Me offers a provocative new look at a relationship which was central to the anti-comic book movement and the creation of the Comics Code in 1954. It also offers a correction to recent attempts by researchers to separate Wertham and Mosse’s work on racial justice from their war on comics.

Check out my personal website and the We Heard You Like Books website for more information about Beauty Doesn’t Reach Me, including how you can buy a copy.

Listen to a discussion of Beauty Doesn't Reach Me (27 minutes) at Neil Denny's Little Atoms podcast.

Read Tobias Carroll's take on the book at Inside Hook.

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