A History of Charlton Comics

1920s–30s

MEANWHILE BACK ON THE FARM… Ever since leaving the old country, Giovanni had been dutifully mailing a portion of his pay to his young wife in Abruzzo, which kept her from starvation and homelessness. He had also made a firm promise, Domenica later testified,3 to send her a visa and steamship ticket to come join him in the States. But, in 1932, suddenly the marital support payments stopped. That same year, on Jan. 22, Giovanni Santangelo, of 263 New Main Street, Yonkers, N.Y., was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.4 Deserted in toto by an absentee spouse, Domenica was thrust into poverty and, as a newspaper account later reported, was “obliged to work in the fields and in other menial ways to eke out a living.”5 What the spurned wife did not yet know was that her husband had found someone new—a person who would connect him to a Connecticut city, where he thereafter would be permanently linked, and a girl whose idle request for a pal would lead to riches beyond imagining.

The new girl was Carmela “Carrie” Altorelli [b. 1915], daughter of factory worker Carmen and Mary, and she lived with her large family in the Italian enclave of Derby, Connecticut. She was 16—a lass half his age—when first meeting Giovanni Santangelo (now known as “John”). In 1935, their firstborn, Charles, arrived and the couple was married on Jan. 2, 1937, after John secured an Oct. 1936 Reno divorce from Domenica. (That Nevada decree would, some 15 years later, result in a landmark court decision.) Carrie gave birth to daughter Elsie in 1938 and to their second son, John, in 1942. She remarried her husband on New Year’s Eve, 1951, and, after he died in Oct. 1979, the wife survived her spouse by 34 years, passing away at the age of 98, on Dec. 28, 2013. The epitaph on Carrie’s headstone in Derby’s Mt. St. Peter Cemetery, declares that she loved to travel, cook, and play pinochle.

Nights (and Days and Nights) at the Roxy

By all accounts Giovanni Santangelo was an extraordinarily driven man and that dedication served him well when, in 1926, the newly-minted contractor scored a lucrative subcontract for masonry work on the interior of the magnificent 5,920-seat movie house then under construction, New York City’s extravagant Roxy Theatre.

“For 11 months,” Santangelo profiler Ralph H. Minard explained, “[Giovanni] and one helper worked and slept in the theater. Their day began at 5:00 a.m. and ended at 11:00 p.m. Supper was a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. They ate the bread, drank the wine, and tumbled into their cots to sleep.”6

Located on West 50th Street in Manhattan, the opulent cinema palace was first conceived as the largest and finest movie house in the world. By the time of the Roxy’s demolition, in 1960, Time magazine reported, “Opening night of the Roxy in 1927 was an event that bedazzled New Yorkers. The $11 million theater was so big and luxurious that the only billing it thought fitting was ‘The Cathedral of Motion Pictures.’ As the cathedral’s doors opened, 125 special policemen held back the mobs that strained for a look at their flicker favorites… As the audience settled back in the plush mohair seats, an actor in a monk’s robe appeared on stage, spread his arms and said: ‘Let there be light.’ With his words, the audience rose [to recite] The Star-Spangled Banner.”7 Minard reported, “By the end of 1926, Santangelo had earned money he never dreamed existed. He started a development and built homes in White Plains.”8 Soon enough, the go-getter left construction to focus on a new venture, though he apparently was never reluctant, when the need arose, to dig out his old bricklayer overalls from storage and again make use of the skills that made Giovanni his first fortune in America.

SHUFFLE OFF TO BUFFALO The origin story of Charlton Publications is the stuff of legend, a saga told again and again and again, with just enough variation to make one suspect embellishments might have been added over time. But the possibly apocryphal yarn is utterly charming by any measure, beginning as it does with a blithe offhand request from a friend of Santangelo’s sweetheart.

The oft-told tale runs like this: Around 1931, Carrie Altorelli had a friend in Derby who had a desire to learn the lyrics of a song from the Warner Brothers’ movie musical, 42nd Street. The format for sheet music, which had been a highly profitable publishing business in decades past, was for the lyrics to be printed along with the musical composition. But Carrie’s gal pal only wanted the words to “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” not the musical notes, so Carrie asked her beau to pick up the sheet music next time he was in New York City.

By this time, the advent of phonographs and radio had dampened sales on sheet music, with a public becoming less prone to actual playing the piano and singing in the front parlor as families did in times passed. Anyway, John came back with the sheet music and Carrie’s girlfriend was livid to learn it cost a whopping 35¢ to purchase ($7.39 in 2022 dollars), and John instantly recognized an opportunity. Thus, on his next visit to the Big Apple, John bought the sheet music to a batch of popular songs, had just the lyrics typed up, amassed said lyrics onto a single sheet, and had copies printed. Then, going shop to shop, he dropped off sheets on consignment, offering storekeepers to keep 5¢ for each copy sold for a dime, and pay him a nickel in return. Thus, goes the myth, was born the soon-to-be enormously successful songsheet business. SONGSTER MAN One factor glaringly missing from Santangelo’s calculation was the rightful percentage owed to the actual owners of the 50 or so song lyrics he printed up on each sheet and then sold without permission. Technically it’s referred to as copyright infringement, punishable by law. Plus absent from the Charlton origin story is the fact that the songsheet business actually first began in 1929, two years prior to Santangelo’s professed start. Still, the building contractor did find a new line of work, in a realm he’d soon dominate, one making him filthy rich, and, by decade’s end, it would lead the big shot straight to jail.

This page: 42nd Street sheet music. Opposite page: Sept. 1939 newspaper article on the scourge of bootleg songsheets.

B.S.: Before Santangelo

Despite the fact John Santangelo became, from the 1930s to the ’70s, the unrivaled king of songsheets—bootleg or legitimate— he was not, as reported, creator of the form. In fact, according to music scholar Barry Kernfeld’s authoritative Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 [2011], “Song-sheet bootlegging was evidently going on for some months before it gained public notice. On Sept. 23, 1929, [the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers] submitted a complaint to U.S. District Attorney Charles H. Tuttle that songsheets were being sold on the street at a price of five cents per copy, that the sheets were an infringement of copyright, and that the volume of these sales was substantial enough to interfere with the sales of legitimate copyrighted copies, that is, sheet music. The New York Times reported [on Sept. 24, 1929] that there were already several different sheets, each selling for five cents each and containing lyrics to 25 or more songs. At a subsequent ASCAP meeting early in 1930, another member stated that bootlegging had threatened legitimate music publishing for almost a year.”9