Hearst considered Swinnerton one of his most talented employees and he paid to have Swinnerton examined by three specialists. The consensus was that tuberculosis was doing most of the damage, so in the summer of 1906 Hearst arranged for Swinnerton to rehab in Colton, California, a small desert community west of Palm Springs that served as a resort for tuberculosis sufferers.
Harold Davidson wrote that “Jimmy Swinnerton, more than most males, was a mixture of fact and fiction”, also noting that “The fiction occasionally commenced the moment he opened his mouth.” It seems as though this characteristic was at its most prevalent during Swinnerton’s early years in the desert. Swinnerton claimed he weighed ninety-eight pounds when he arrived in Colton. He immediately paid for a casket and bartered for his epitaph inscription on a tombstone by buying drinks for a local stone carver. When he noticed another bar patron’s tendency to cry after a few rounds, Swinnerton offered to buy “drinks and grub” in exchange for the man to become his “number one mourner”. The mourner’s job was to follow Swinnerton around Colton, crying out loud at the heartbreak that would be suffered by the public when it lost one of its foremost citizens. According to a story that appeared in numerous papers nationwide in 1924, the mourner’s initial response to Swinnerton’s request was “If you liquor me well I’ll mourn you like a lost brother”.
Yet in between the binges, pranks and daily walks a remarkable transformation occurred. Three weeks after his arrival he was surprised to find himself not only alive, but heavier and healthier. Swinnerton noted the first improvement when he was invited by a local Mexican to visit his hacienda outside of town. The “hacienda” turned out to be a gross exaggeration and Swinnerton spent the night sleeping under a pepper tree. But the pepper tree turned out be “good medicine”, and he began taking the advice of the local Indians who told him to sleep on the ground, believing one’s health was a direct result of how close one lives to the earth. Shortly afterwards, Swinnerton purchased a burro and began traveling deeper into the desert, spending the nights sleeping on the ground under the vast, open sky. He continued to draw his cartoons, mailing them to New York when the opportunity presented itself, and sketching the surrounding landscape which he referred to as the hardest of all subjects. “So many grays . . . And the mood and the light are always changing.” It was the beginning of a lifestyle which he continued for the next fifty years.
By 1907 Swinnerton had discovered Palm Springs, then a small unincorporated community surrounded by an abundance of natural oases and rugged canyons. There he developed a friendship with another artist named Carl Eytel. Eytel was a shy, reclusive German, also suffering from tuberculosis, who had come to Palm Springs nearly ten years earlier. Self-taught but talented, Eytel had been exploring the area extensively for years, intrigued by the stark yet constantly changing beauty the desert atmosphere provided. Together the two explored the far corners of the Colorado and Mojave deserts. When the heat became too oppressive in the summer they would retreat to the San Gabriel Mountains or high into the slopes of Mt. San Jacinto near Palm Springs.
Two years later Swinnerton made his first trip to the Grand Canyon where he became enamored with both the people and the landscapes of the Colorado River Plateau. The Hopis and Navajo, who still lived in their traditional ways, were as fascinating to him as the seemingly endless mazes of canyons and buttes. Both tribes would later become the subject matter for one of his most popular cartoon series, The Canyon Kiddies. Roaming northern Arizona in the same way as he had traveled the southern California deserts, his initial efforts at capturing the striking horizons resulted in solid but unspectacular results. Although fundamentally sound, he had not yet acquired and cultivated the unique artistic voice, the depth of field and ability to combine light and shadows contrasted across vast receding spaces, that would eventually define his work.
Swinnerton recalled that about this time he felt encouraged enough to show some of his oil paintings to William Randolph Hearst, describing them as a good example of what he could do since he quit drinking. After inspecting the paintings Hearst suggested, “Jimmy, I think maybe you had better go back to drinking!” Undeterred, Swinnerton persisted.
By 1910 Swinnerton claimed Colton as his home. Although legally still married to his second wife, he lived with his girlfriend, Espie Castle and her mother at a house on 8th Street. Espie may well have been his third wife rather than his girlfriend, as Swinnerton always claimed. According to the 1910 U.S. Census James and Espie Swinnerton, five years his junior, were husband and wife. But regardless of the legal status the arrangement was similar to his previous marriages in that it was very brief. Espie soon became deeply religious and Swinnerton refused to convert. In 1914 he relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona alone.
Flagstaff provided a good jumping off point to not only the Grand Canyon, but also to the Hopi and Navajo reservations, which included Monument Valley. The region would eventually become one of his favorite subject matters. Swinnerton spent so much time there that a well known landmark, Swinnerton Arch, is named in his honor. His extended trips throughout the Colorado River Plateau helped him forge long lasting relationships with many members of the Navajo and Hopi tribe. He was a source of entertainment to many. Various clans within the tribes gave him names ranging from “The Fun Maker” to “Chief Big Mouth”, and in turn “named their babies and burros Jimmy Swinnerton”.
In 1917 Swinnerton met and married his third (or perhaps fourth) wife, Louise Scher, a statuesque blonde from Gallup, New Mexico who had a seven year old daughter from a previous marriage. He soon legally adopted his step-daughter, Mary-Elizabeth, who changed her last name from Scher to Swinnerton and in 1920 Swinnerton and his new wife returned to Palo Alto, California in order to be closer to medical specialists for his step-daughter’s heart condition. Swinnerton would remain a California resident for the rest of his life, but for over thirty years he returned regularly to Flagstaff every summer, often embarking on extended trips throughout northern Arizona and southern Utah and Colorado.
It was also in 1920 that Good Housekeeping began publishing another major cartoon success, Kiddies of the Canyon Country. The strip (revived after a seven year hiatus and changed to The Canyon Kiddies in 1933) was hugely successful and ran for almost twenty-five years. Frequently subtitled “A Page of Smiles for Youngsters”, the Kiddies were a hit with both children and adults. Every issue consisted of three to four individual panels on a single page, each printed in color and captioned with a two to four line poem written by Swinnerton himself. The Canyon Kiddies depicted the escapades and daily lives of Hopi and Navajo children, often accompanied by their pets or the local wildlife. Although comical in both intent and result, Swinnerton treated his subject matter affectionately and the results revealed his reverence for both the people and the land. Set in the remote, dramatic scenery of northern Arizona’s canyon country, the spectacular backdrops contribute almost as much to the timeless appeal of the series as the loveable kiddies themselves.
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