Blondie (comic strip) was adapted into a long-running series of 28 low-budget theatrical B-features, produced by Columbia Pictures. Beginning with "Blondie" in 1938, the series lasted 12 years, through "Beware of Blondie" (1950). The two major roles were Penny Singleton as Blondie and Arthur Lake (whose first starring role was another comic strip character, Harold Teen) as Dagwood. Faithfulness to the comic strip was a major concern of the creators of the series. Little touches were added that were iconic to the strip, like the appearance of Dagwood's famous sandwiches—and the running gag of Dagwood colliding with the mailman amid a flurry of
Blondie (comic strip) strip to focus almost entirely on Dagwood as the lead character: During the early years of the strip, the Sunday installments were much in the vein of the then-popular genre of "pretty girl" strips (including a variety of regular suitors), rather than spoofing them like in the daily continuities. Dagwood would actually not appear in a Sunday page until January 1, 1933. From 1930 to 1935, Young drew "The Family Foursome" as a topper, being replaced by the pantomime strip "Colonel Potterby and the Duchess", which ran until 1963 (becoming a stand-alone strip in 1958). For years, the Sunday installments