"Mutt & Jeff" were a comic strip (drawn by Bud Fisher around 1916). That's also a slang term for the "good cop/bad cop" method of police interrogation. Which came first, the comic or the slang? And is there a complete Mutt & Jeff comic (not just a single panel) out there on the web somewhere? 

Not an online Mutt & Jeff, but I thought this note from Elico was interesting enough to include:

Did you know that that the term 'Mutt and Jeff' is used in Cockney rhyming slang? As in 'You'll have to shout, he's a bit Mutt and Jeff!'(deaf)

My dear wife came up with a couple of complete comics, plus some other information:

http://www.markomics.com/fisher.html
http://www.markomics.com/smith.html

A Mutt & Jeff stamp, hmmm: http://www.usps.gov/ctc/stamps/1900s.htm

Ew, yuck, Mutt & Jeff sell out to "the man": http://www.adh.bton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/15/LMJ.html

Interesting tidbit at the end of this one about the Blondie comic.. off-topic, yes; sue me! http://www.journalnow.com/projects/centennial/stories/sec_c/comics3.html

This one says M&J has been around since 1907 (no source listed, tho): http://www.minisink.com/middle/mcdowellcartoons.html

This one corroborates the 1907 date, and lists a source: http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/Students98/LimL/innovate/comichistory.html

Robert Orenstein also found the comic at http://www.markomics.com/smith.html before I got around to updating this page.

And Paul passes along this item:

MUTT AND JEFF, TEXAS. Mutt and Jeff (Mutt-and-Jeff) was a community at the intersection of State Highway 37 and Farm Road 14, near Big Sandy Creek six miles from Winnsboro in northeastern Wood County. The community, which apparently never had a post office but did at one time have several stores and a blacksmith shop, is said to have gotten its name because of the contrasting sizes of the town's two leading merchants (one quite short, the other tall), which reminded inhabitants of the characters in the then-popular comic strip of that name. Many of the residents moved away in the 1920s, and though the community is not labeled on the 1936 county highway map, several farms and two businesses remained in the area at that time. By the early 1960s Mutt and Jeff, once locally famous for its barbecue, was abandoned.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dallas Morning News, September 4, 1963.

Rachel Jenkins

Nathan Wiley writes:

did u know that mutt and jeff were real people not just a comic
strip they were preformers in the 1800's i have aot of photos of
the actuall people. my great great grandmother was a performer
back then well in the 1800's and she grew up with mutt and jeff
hence the fact i have many photos of the actual mutt in jef

Still waiting on any dates or origins for the slang term. Ideas, anyone?

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