Alphonse and Gaston

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Alphonse and Gaston was an American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper, featuring a bumbling pair of Frenchmen with a penchant for politeness. They first appeared in William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, the New York Journal on September 22, 1901.^[1]

The very first strip was titled in capital letters, "ALPHONSE A LA CARTE" AND HIS FRIEND GASTON DE TABLE D'HOTE." Their routine "After you, Alphonse.", "No, you first, my dear Gaston!" entertained readers for more than a decade. Alphonse was tall and grotesque; Gaston was short and grotesque. The premise of their strip was that they were both extremely polite, constantly bowing to each other and deferring to each other. Neither could ever do anything or go anywhere because each insisted on letting the other precede him.

Though never a daily or even weekly feature, Alphonse and Gaston was a Sunday feature for several years, a stage play, appearing in a few comedy shorts and Hearst collections and even being licensed as product mascots, before fading from public view altogether shortly following Opper's death in 1937.^[1]

A prolific artist and writer, Opper's other creations included Willie, Hans from Hamburg, Our Antediluvian Ancestors, And Her Name Was Maud and Happy Hooligan. The characters would occasionally make guest appearances outside their own strips. On one occasion, And Her Name Was Maud featured an appearance by Alphonse and Gaston aboard a runaway sleigh, each of them bowing to the other in the seat.

The catchphrase "After you, Alphonse" continues to be used, in situations when a person receives a dare to do something difficult or dangerous or both; the catchphrase returns the dare to the person who made it. Sometimes it is said when two people are simultaneously trying to go through the same doorway and awkwardly stop to let the other go through.

The imagery of Alphonse and Gaston appears fairly frequently in baseball broadcasts when two outfielders go after the ball and it falls in for a base hit.