Jane Arden and the Vanished Princess

In 2021, with the coronavirus still haunting people's thoughts, I went to just one very small comic book convention, I think. It actually happened in the driveway and garage of a comic book dealer and college professor. I bought only a few things, but I wanted to show this little treasure, a Better Little Book called Jane Arden and the Vanished Princess by Monte Barrett and Russell Ross (1938). It appears here at about original size.

The writer, Monte Barrett, was Percy Montgomery Barrett. Born on June 19, 1897, in Mitchell, Indiana, he was a journalist and novelist with historical novels and mysteries to his credit. He died on October 8, 1949, in New York City.

Jane Arden began in the comics on November 26, 1928. Frank Ellis was the original artist, but he was replaced by Russell E. Ross in 1933. Ross continued with the strip for twenty years. After appearing in movies and comic books, as well as having her own radio drama, Jane reached her end in 1968. This Better Little Book was just another one of her multimedia appearances--a word that of course didn't exist at the time.

Text copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Evaline Ness (1911-1986)

Evaline Ness was born Evaline Michelow on April 24, 1911, in Union City, Ohio. Her father was Albert Michelow (1867-1932), a Swedish-born brickmason. Her mother was Myrtle W. (Carter) Michelow (1875-1958), a dressmaker born in Virginia. Evaline's parents were married in 1898 in North Carolina. They had four children, Rudolph, Eloise, Josephine, and Evaline, the youngest. Maybe the title character in Evaline's book Josefina February (1963), shown below, was named for her older sister.

The Michelow family lived in North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio before settling in Pontiac, Michigan, when Evaline was a young child. She graduated from Pontiac Central High School in 1929. In 1930, at age eighteen, she lived with her parents in Pontiac and worked as a librarian at the city public library. In 1931-1932, she studied to be a librarian at Ball State Teachers College, now Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, thus her connection to the Hoosier State. While in Muncie, she was also a fashion model. After leaving Ball State, Evaline Michelow studied at the Chicago Art Institute from 1933 to 1935. She worked as a fashion illustrator throughout the 1930s.

Evaline Michelow was married five times and was known by her second husband's surname. Her first marriage was to a man named McAndrews. He seems to have disappeared from the public record. They were divorced sometime in the 1930s. Her second husband was Eliott Ness (1903-1957) of Untouchables fame, whom she met on a train traveling between Chicago and New York. Both were married at the time but got divorced soon enough, he just in time apparently to marry her. (Eliot Ness' divorce came in 1939 in Florida. He and Evaline were married in late October 1939.) The couple lived in Cleveland and Washington, D.C. They divorced in 1945 or 1946 or 1951, but she kept his name. There were three other husbands, last of whom was Arnold A. Bayard (1904-1988), an engineer and wine connoisseur. They had homes in New York and Florida. The two lie together--or at least they have headstones next to each other--at Snow Cemetery in Truro, Massachusetts. As you might guess, Evaline Ness was a free spirit. "I don't need a husband all the time," she said. And though children intrigued her and she wrote and illustrated books about them, she never had any of her own.

Evaline Ness was a fashion illustrator, magazine illustrator, commercial artist, painter, and children's book author and illustrator. Her first illustrations for a children's book were for Story of Ophelia by Mary J. Gibbons (1954). Other books which she illustrated include:

• The Bridge by Charlton Ogburn (1957)
• The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1958)
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (1960)
• Thistle and Thyme: Tales and Legends from Scotland by Sorche Nic Leodhas (1962)
• A Gift for Sula Sula by Evaline Ness (1963)
• Josefina February by Evaline Ness (1963)
• All in the Morning Early by Sorche Nic Leodhas (1963), a Caldecott Honor Book
• Exactly Alike by Evaline Ness (1964)
• Josie and the Snow by Helen E. Buckley (1964)
• A Pocketful of Cricket by Rebecca Caudill (1964), a Caldecott Honor Book
• The Princess and the Lion by Elizabeth Coatsworth (1964)
• A Double Discovery by Evaline Ness (1965)
• Tom Tit Tot: An English Folk Tale retold by Virginia Haviland (1965), a Caldecott Honor Book
• Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Italy by Virginia Haviland (1965)
• Sam, Bangs and Moonshine by Evaline Ness (1966), for which she won a Caldecott Medal
• Books by Lloyd Alexander, including:
• The Book of Three (1964)
• The Black Cauldron (1965)
• The Castle of Llyr (1965)
• Coll and His White Pig (1965)
• Isle of Mona (1966)
• Taran Wanderer (1967)
• The Truthful Harp (1967)
• The High King (1968)
• Mr. Miacca, an English Folktale by Evaline Ness (1967)
• The Girl and the Goatherd by Evaline Ness (1970)
• Some of the Days of Everett Anderson by Lucille Clifton (1971)
• Everett Anderson's Christmas Coming by Lucille Clifton (1971)
• Amelia Mixed the Mustard and Other Poems (1975)
• Four Rooms from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Cut Out and Color by Evaline Ness (1977)

The list above is by no means complete.

Evaline Ness had an extraordinary run from 1963 to 1966 during which she won three Caldecott Honors and a Caldecott Medal. She is tied for seventh among winners of the most Caldecott awards.

By 1979, when the Palm Beach Post published a profile of her (Apr. 5, 1979), Evaline was tired of illustrating. Her last book was The Hand-Me-Down Doll by Steven Kroll (1983). Evaline Ness died on August 12, 1986, in Kingston, New York. Her remains were cremated and her ashes scattered. The stone at Snow Cemetery may be only for old time's sake.

Evaline Michelow Ness (1911-1986), her high school yearbook photograph, 1929.

Backdated to February 2, 2022.

Text copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Happy New Year!

I have run out of time again this year, and so I will close out 2021 with a simple image of children, drawn by Florence Sarah Winship (1900-1987). Soon, now, it will be time for bed . . .

Happy New Year!

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2024.

Sharon Kane (1932-2021)

Sharon Katherine Smith Koester Kane has died. Known for her wonderfully made drawings of babies, toddlers, young children, and teenagers, she began her career as a published artist, illustrator, and cartoonist while she was herself still a child. Her picture-making went on for the next eighty years, ending only last month with her death.

Sharon Katherine Smith was born on February 18, 1932, in South Bend, Indiana, to Stuyvesant C. Smith, an engineer at Bendix Aviation, and Katherine Eunice (Young) Smith, also an artist and writer. "Ever since I can remember I have been drawing," Sharon Smith wrote in 1950, "mostly pictures of children." She had her first published drawing in Children's Activities Magazine (now Highlights For Children) when she was nine years old. Later she had her work published in Scholastic and Seventeen and became a regular contributor to Child Life and The Christian Science Monitor. But it was for her children's books that she is remembered so well today.

As a student at Mishawaka High School, Sharon Smith wrote and illustrated a humorous teen advice column for the school newspaper, the Alltold. Her mother encouraged her to submit her cartoons to the South Bend Tribune. "Atomic Teens," printed on the newspaper's teen page, was the result. In May 1950, McNaught Syndicate picked up the teenaged artist's feature, renaming it "Buttons an' Beaux" for national syndication. "Buttons an' Beaux" ran in newspapers until 1952. The popular song "Buttons and Bows" had won an Academy Award for best song in 1948. The punning title of Sharon's comic panel would have capitalized on the popularity of the song.

Sharon Smith attended Bradley University and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1954. The following year she married George C. Koester. While living with her husband in Seattle, she did freelance artwork as well as design work for a children's program on a local television station. The young couple spent two years in Seattle. In 1957, when she was just twenty-five years old, Sharon had her first book published. Entitled Where Are You Going Today?, it had been submitted to its publisher by Sharon's mother without her knowledge. More than two dozen children's books followed, her last being Kitty & Me from 2014.

Sharon Smith was married and divorced twice. Her second husband was Hawaiian historian and author Herbert "Herb" Kawainui Kāne (1928-2011). The late Mr. Kāne was an extraordinary artist and illustrator in his own right.

Sharon Kane lived in Glencoe, Illinois, and Plano, Texas. She died on November 3, 2021, at age eighty-nine. Her art is in the collections of the Northern Indiana Historical Society and the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. She also created a mural in the Bloomingdale Public Library in Illinois. The scene is a woodland scene, perhaps recalling her childhood in Mishawaka. "It was a rural life," she remembered, "with hills and woodland and wide open spaces." These are the things we remember of our Hoosier homes.

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To read more on Sharon Smith Kane, see "Sharon Smith Kane, February 18, 1932-November 3, 2021" by Andrew Farago on the website of The Comics Journal, dated December 13, 2021, by clicking here.

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I have pictures from just one of Sharon Smith Kane's books to show today. These are from Tie My Shoe by Helen Wing (1964). The interior drawings shown here are two of my favorites and two of the best from the book, I think. These and other drawings made by women artists show just how well women depict children, much better, in my opinion, than the average male artist. Men tend to draw children as miniature adults, whereas women see and understand and can draw the essential childness of children. Anyway, please enjoy these pictures and join me in remembering the life and work of Sharon Smith Kane.

Updated on July 17, 2022.

Original text copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures of Adopted Hoosiers

Comedian Herb Shriner famously said, "I wasn't born in Indiana but I moved there as soon as I heard about it." He wasn't alone. Since its beginnings, the Hoosier State has been a destination for pioneers, settlers, refugees, migrants, escaped and manumitted slaves, industrial workers, and just plain, ordinary farmers, workers, artists, and others. Early on, people must have sensed that nothing better would await them beyond the rich and generous lands of Indiana. And so they stayed.

Johnny Appleseed was an adopted Hoosier. Born John Chapman on September 26, 1774, he was a native of Leominster, Massachusetts. Like Abraham Lincoln a generation later, he was orphaned with the death of his mother. His father remarried. Later in life, the elder Chapman pulled up stakes and moved to Ohio. Johnny had gone west before him, first to Pennsylvania, then to Ohio. It was in Ohio that John Chapman earned his nickname, Johnny Appleseed.

Johnny Appleseed lived a long life. In his later days, he lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and that's where he died after reaching his allotted threescore and ten. Johnny's end came on March 18, 1845. He was buried in Fort Wayne, though no one knows exactly where.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was probably the most famous adopted Hoosier. He was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. In the fall of 1816, when Abe was just seven years old, his father, Thomas Lincoln (1778-1851), moved his young family to what was then the Indiana Territory. Not long after, on December 11, 1816, Indiana became a state. Like Johnny Appleseed before him, Abe Lincoln's mother and a younger brother died when he was young. Nancy Hanks Lincoln (1784-1818) lies buried in Indiana, near her Spencer County home. Her son said of her, "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

Abe Lincoln spent his formative years in the Hoosier State, raised there by his parents and his stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln (1788-1869). In March 1830, he moved with his family to Illinois. He had just turned twenty-one. Kentucky and Illinois have their claims upon the Great Emancipator, but Indiana has its claim, too. I might be biased, but I would call it equal.

In 1964, Scholastic Books published a children's biography, Johnny Appleseed, written by Eva Moore and illustrated by Judith Ann Lawrence. Born in 1942, Eva Moore lives or has lived in Montauk, New York. Also known as J.A. Lawrence and Judy Blish, Judith Ann Lawrence is an author and an artist. She was married to the science fiction author James Blish (1921-1975). Judy has a new book out. You can find out more about it by clicking here.

In 1948, Walt Disney released Melody Time, an animated musical featuring seven short films. One of these is "The Legend of Johnny Appleseed."  I had hoped to find a Hoosier, either native or adopted, who contributed to "Johnny Appleseed," but to no avail. In any case, Simon and Schuster published a children's book adaptation in 1949. It was printed by Western Printing and Lithographing Company as one of its Little Golden Library series. The pictures were by the Walt Disney Company. (There might be a Hoosier hiding in there somewhere.) The adaptation was by Ted Parmalee, about whom I know nothing at all. 

Here's an interior illustration from Disney's Johnny Appleseed. This is romanticized of course, but not by much. If you have been in Appalachia and to the American Midwest, you might have seen scenes like this one. We had a storm just like it yesterday.

Rand McNally & Company of Chicago had its own line of children's books, including those in the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club series. Here is one called Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance, written by Frances Cavanah, illustrated by Paula Hutchison, and published in 1959. I have cleaned up the image a little, as the original I have is a little worn. I found this and the two books above on Johnny Appleseed at the local secondhand store about three weeks ago.

Frances Cavanah was a Hoosier. She was born on September 26, 1897, in Princeton, Indiana, to Rufus Oscar Cavanah and Louella "Lula" Neale Cavanah. Educated at DePauw University, she worked as an editor at Child Life magazine in Chicago. (Sometimes people come to Indiana, and sometimes they go away from it.) Frances wrote dozens of books and lived in Washington, D.C., later in life. She died in May 1982.

The illustrator, Paula A. Hutchison, was born on December 19, 1902, in Helena, Montana. She worked as a teacher, illustrator, and fine artist. She was married to Michael John McGrath (1905-?) and lived in New Jersey. She illustrated many children's books, most of which seem to be biographies and other nonfiction. Paula died on November 5, 1982.

In the fall of 1816, Thomas Lincoln moved his family from Kentucky to Indiana. Part of the reason for the move was for him to get away from some land disputes, but part was also to relocate to what would soon be a free state versus the slave state of Kentucky. Making the trip with him were his wife Nancy and their two children, Sarah and Abe. That made Abe's sister, Sarah Lincoln Grigsby (1807-1828), an adopted Hoosier, too. The illustration is from Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance.

The endpapers of Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance together make this map of Lincoln Country. Plum in the middle is an image of Pigeon Creek Farm, the place in what is now Spencer County where Abe spent his childhood years, from age seven to age twenty-one. Here he was formed and here his mother lies.

Original text copyright 2021, 2204 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 5

I'll close this series and the year with two illustrations for children's books, plus a magazine gag cartoon.

Kokomo native Norman Bridwell (1928-2014) may be renowned for his many books about Clifford the Big Red Dog, but he also illustrated this one featuring a small brown dog. The book is How to Care for Your Dog (1964), and the author is Jean Bethell. 

Jared Lee (b. 1943) is another well-loved children's book illustrator. He was born in Van Buren, Indiana, and now lives in Ohio. The picture shown here is from Monster Manners by Joanna Cole. It was published in 1985.

Finally, a drawing by Clyde Lamb (1913-1966) from the cartoon collection The Jokeswagon Book (1966), published during the Volkswagon craze of the 1960s. Lamb wasn't born in Indiana, nor did he go to school here or teach here or work here. Instead he was incarcerated in the Hoosier State in the 1930s and '40s. After gaining his freedom, he drew gag cartoons and created full-color illustrations for calendars published by Brown and Bigelow of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Black Hoosiers in Animation

Ours is a cancel culture in which art is permitted to serve a political purpose or none at all. In other words, any art that is not propaganda is to be censored, bowdlerized, suppressed, cancelled, eliminated, or destroyed. Right now it is statuary that is bearing the brunt of the anti-art, anti-history, and anti-culture movement in the West. Once the destroyers are done with sculpture, they are certain to move on to other forms. Museums and libraries are likely targets. The nation's cultural and educational institutions should probably start thinking about how they're going to protect their collections. After all, it's a lot easier for a single destroyer to slip into the stacks and burn everything there is about Andrew Jackson or Christopher Columbus than it is to topple a statue. The act might not be as public or ostentatious, but it would be effective nonetheless. If the goal is to destroy the past and all knowledge of the past, then words and images must go into the memory hole in the same way that statues are decapitated, burned, dumped into lakes, or dragged through city streets like an American serviceman in Mogadishu.

Movies, too, are being cancelled. Gone with the Wind (1939) has joined Song of the South (1946) on the list of forbidden works. Never mind that it includes a performance by Hattie McDaniel, the first by a black actor or actress to win an Academy Award. We cannot be permitted to see it. Other movies and television shows can't be far behind.

Animated film hasn't escaped the wrath of the cancelers and destroyers. Hank Azaria, an American of Sephardic Jewish extraction, can now no longer provide the voice for the South-Asian character Apu on The Simpsons. Instead, Apu and other characters in animated series will have "race"-appropriate actors speak in their voices. It is one of the absurdities of our age that actors, who are in the business of pretending to be something they are not, will not be permitted to pretend to be something they are not.

One of the cancelled film performances is by James Baskett, a chemist, chiropodist, mortician, and newspaper columnist who was of course best known as an actor. He won a special Oscar for his performance in Song of the South, making him only the second black actor and the first black man to win the the award. In Song of the South, he played opposite the first black woman to win an Oscar. By my estimate, Song of the South was the first movie to feature two black Oscar winners. (Mr. Baskett's winning the award was of course still in the future when the movie was being filmed.) Nevertheless, we cannot see his or her performance.

In addition to appearing in the live-action sequences of Song of the South, Mr. Baskett provided the voice of Brer Fox in the animated parts. He had previously been the voice of Fats Crow in Dumbo, released in 1941. As far as I know, he was the first black Hoosier to appear in animation or to provide the voice for an animated character. I don't know of any black Hoosier artist to have worked behind the scenes as a storyboard artist or animator. 

James Franklin Baskett was born on February 16, 1904, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of John S. Baskett (1869-1921) and Elizabeth Baskett (1879-1961). The death of his older sister in her infancy (before he was born) left him an only child. His parents, both native Kentuckians, lived close to downtown Indianapolis, including on Douglass Street, the same street on which members of my dad's family once lived. Douglass Street is no longer in existence. It was cleared to make way for the Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis campus, possibly also for the Lockefield Gardens Apartments. Mr. Baskett grew up in Indianapolis, but he left his native city in the 1920s to work on the Broadway stage, then in Hollywood. He appeared in fewer than a dozen movies, with Song of the South being his last. James Baskett, also known as Jimmie Baskett, died on today's date in 1948 and was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis with his father. His mother was also buried at Crown Hill. May he and they rest in peace. The image above is from Uncle Remus Brer Rabbit Stories, published by Golden Press of New York in 1977.

In 1968, the Hong Kong flu ravaged the world. A couple of years later, a kung fu craze swept across America like a contagion. Combine the two and you might have the beginnings of Hong Kong Phooey, an animated TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera and broadcast from 1974 to 1976. The title character, as any culturally literate person knows, is a dog who knows kung fu and sings scat for his title song. That's convenient because the voice of Hong Kong Phooey was done by none other than Scatman Crothers.

Born on May 23, 1910, in Terre Haute, Indiana, Benjamin Sherman Crothers was a singer and actor who appeared in movies and TV shows from 1950 until his death in 1986. His parents were Benjamin Crothers (1873-1938) and Fredonia (Lewis) Crothers (1871-1937), both of whose families had come from the South. Scatman Crother's paternal grandfather at least, named Abe Carothers or Caruthers (ca. 1844-1907), was born a slave.

Scatman Crothers performed on the radio in Ohio during the 1930s. In 1937, he married and moved to California. He continued to sing and play guitar in front of live audiences, on radio, and on records. As a member of the group The Ramparts, he recorded "The Death of Emmett Till" in 1955. By then he had made his movie debut. Two years later, in 1957, he made his first appearance in a television series, in an episode of The Adventures of Jim Bowie entitled, strangely enough, "Quarantine." The Adventures of Jim Bowie, by the way, was based on a  book by a fellow Hoosier, Monte Barrett (1897-1949) of Mitchell, Indiana. Barrett also created and wrote the script for the long-running newspaper comic strip Jane Arden.

Although there were only sixteen episodes of Hong Kong Phooey, the character proved very popular. There were Hong Kong Phooey children's books, comic books (above), lunch boxes, and other merchandise. A few years back there was talk of a Hong Kong Phooey movie. I'm not sure how good it--or anything else--could be without the participation of Scatman Crothers. He died on November 22, 1986, in Van Nuys, California.

Scatman Crothers also did the voice of Meadowlark Lemon on The Harlem Globetrotters cartoon series produced by Hanna-Barbera and shown on Saturday morning television from 1970 to 1973. Like Hong Kong Phooey, The Harlem Globetrotters was a very popular  show and spawned its own line of merchandise, including the stickers shown above, which, if you were lucky, you would have found in boxes of General Mills cereal in 1970.

The Jackson 5 were also from Indiana. They were Jackie (b. 1951), Tito (b. 1953), Jermaine (b. 1954),  Marlon (b. 1957), and Michael (1958-2009). All are natives of the city of Gary, the largest American city founded in the twentieth century. Like The Beatles before them, they were immensely popular. Like The Beatles, too, they had their own Saturday morning cartoon series, The Jackson 5ive, produced by Rankin-Bass and Motown Productions and broadcast in 1971-1972. The brothers didn't do their own voices except in the songs on the soundtrack. Voice actors took their place, including Edmund Sylvers, later of the group The Sylvers.

If you don't have to be born in, work in, or live in Indiana to be considered a Hoosier, then maybe we can still call people imprisoned within the state Hoosiers. Cartoonist Clyde Lamb (1913-1966), for example, a native Montanan, served time in Michigan City. Upon his release, he became a magazine gag cartoonist, then had his work syndicated in American newspapers. It seems pretty likely to me that Mike Tyson would rather just forget about his Indiana years. My including him here might be in pretty bad taste. But I would like to consider him a Hoosier, too. Since being released from an Indiana prison in 1995, Mr. Tyson has had his ups and downs. I would like to think that he considers the animated television series Mike Tyson Mysteries, in which he plays himself, one of the ups. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, it has been on the Cartoon Network Adult Swim since 2014. Because of it, Mr. Tyson's form and image have been turned into an action figure (above), which is really just a miniature statue. I dare anyone to knock this one down.

Vivica Fox (b. 1964) of South Bend has done voice acting in Unstable Fables: Tortoise vs. Hare (2008), Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright (2013), and The Sky Princess (2018). The still above is from Sofia the First: Carol of the Arrow, from 2015.

Born in Evansville, Indiana, Ron Glass (1945-2016) did voice work on Superman: The Animated Series and All Grown Up! His most prominent voice-acting role was as Randy Carmichael on the Nickelodeon series Rugrats.

Finally, Kenneth Brian Edmonds (b. 1959), a native of Indianapolis and better known as Babyface, was a producer on the music soundtrack of The Prince of Egypt, released in 1998. Ironically, The Prince of Egypt was banned in several countries, including of all places Egypt. As always, the non-artists of the world, the intolerant and the iconoclastic, the haters and destroyers, the oppressors and censors, seek to deny us a look at any art they deem inappropriate. When will it ever end? How will it end? Not as the destroyers expect, I think, because the true artist possesses an irrepressible and indomitable spirit.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Gray Morrow (1934-2001)

The police are in the news. Or they were. Now it's people against the police who are getting all of the attention. A couple of years ago, I found an old comic book drawn by one of my favorite comic book artists, Gray Morrow. I had planned at the time to feature it in this space, but that little project slipped away from me. Now the time seems right . . . or wrong, depending on how you look at things. From one angle, you can see Gray Morrow's comic book The Super Cops as a piece of 1970s pop culture: a little cheesy, a little exploitative, but nothing at all serious. Some people will no doubt see it differently. That won't stop me from showing it, as I think Gray Morrow's cover for The Super Cops, published forty-six years ago this month, is a beautifully done piece of comic book art.

The Super Cops, published by Red Circle Comics in July 1974, was based on a movie of the same name released in March of that year. The Super Cops was directed by Gordon Parks (1912-2006), a man of extraordinary accomplishment who had previously directed Shaft (1971), now considered one of the first movies in the genre known as blaxploitation. By the way, Gordon Parks' second wife was the daughter of a cartoonist, E. Simms Campbell (1906-1971).

In 1975, American International Pictures released Friday Foster with Pam Grier in the title role playing an intrepid magazine photographer. She was supported by Yaphet Kotto, Eartha Kitt, Scatman Crothers, and Carl Weathers. (During his long and varied career, Gordon Parks was also a magazine photographer.) Friday Foster is considered a blaxploitation film. It was based on a comic strip, the first of the postwar era and the first widely syndicated comic strip with a black woman as its title character. (It was preceded by Torchy Brown in "Dixie to Harlem", which was drawn by Jackie Ormes [1911-1985] and syndicated in 1937-1938.) Friday Foster began on January 18, 1970, with Jim Lawrence as writer and Jorge Longarón (1933-2019) as artist. Longarón was with the strip for most of its run. Gray Morrow took over on December 24, 1973, and carried it through to its end on February 17, 1974. Below is an image of the daily from January 29, 1974. Note the artist's inscription under the last panel.

Dwight Graydon Morrow was born on March 7, 1934, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He attended North Side High School in his hometown and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, where he received the sum total of his formal art training in just three months under Jerry Warshaw (1929-2007). Recognizing Morrow's talent, Warshaw told his young student, "Pack your bags and get started," and that's what Morrow did.* In 1954, he moved to New York City and found enough work to keep himself from starving. Not long after arriving in the city, he decided to look up political cartoonist Eugene Craig (1916-1984), formerly of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel but by then with the Brooklyn Eagle. Craig took Morrow to a meeting of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) and introduced him to giants, including Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), and future giants, including Wally Wood (1927-1981). Morrow went on to work with Wood, as well as with Al Williamson (1931-2010) and Angelo Torres (b. 1932). That made his start as one of the great American cartoonists, comic book artists, and science fiction illustrators of the 1950s and after.

In 1956, Morrow got caught in the draft and spent two years in the U.S. Army, including service in South Korea. He returned to civilian life and his career as an artist in 1958. In the 1960s, he drew comic book stories for Classics Illustrated. In The Illustrated Story of Whaling, a title in the World Around Us series (#W28, Dec. 1960), Morrow depicted in his original artwork a number of black whalers in an attempt at historical accuracy. He later told of how his publisher, Roberta Strauss Feuerlight, made him change their features so as to avoid controversy. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of this comic book or any images of Morrow's artwork to show you.

In the mid-1960s, Morrow illustrated children's biographies of famous black Americans, Crispus Attucks: Black Leader of Colonial Patriots by Dharathula H. Millender (1965) and Frederick Douglass: Freedom Fighter by Lillie Patterson (1965). I have two images from these books:

An illustration by Morrow from Crispus Attucks: Black Leader of Colonial Patriots by Dharathula H. Millender (1965). Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Dharathula H. "Dolly" Millender (1920-2015) was an author, educator, librarian, and local historian known as "Gary's Historian" for the northern Indiana city where she made her home. I should point out that Crispus Attacks was also at one time a whaler: in this case, Morrow was right in his research and in his art, and there should have been no controversy at all when he drew his comic book story for Whaling. Instead his art was bowdlerized. Today, with all of the smashing of statues, we see the same thing happening, though in a far worse way. What are artists and lovers of art to do in this age of violent, ruthless, aggressive iconoclasm, destructiveness, and culture of cancellation?

An illustration by Morrow from Frederick Douglass: Freedom Fighter by Lillie Patterson, a Discovery Book published by Garrard Publishing Company of Champaign, Illinois, in 1965. Lillie Griselda Patterson (1917-1999) was an author of children's books and a librarian in the Baltimore Public Schools. She also wrote about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Booker T. Washington, and Francis Scott Key, whose statue was knocked down recently in San Francisco. I wonder what Ms. Patterson, who was black and a creator and an educator, would have thought of that.

Update (July 6, 2020): Now comes word that a statue of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, has also been toppled. The date was July 5, 2020, the 168th anniversary of his famous speech, "What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?" At this point, the question must be: what statue in America will stand?

You can read more about Gray Morrow on the Internet and in magazines and books, including Gray Morrow: Visionary, published in 2001 by Insight Studios Group. His work is characterized by flawless draftsmanship, an extraordinary ability to handle the human face and form, great skill at composition, and an excellent sense of color. His sense of aesthetics placed him above most comic book artists of his time and ours. Mr. Morrow died on November 6, 2001, in Kunkletown, Pennsylvania. May he rest in peace.

Dharathula H. Millender's biography of Crispus Attacks is part of the Childhood of Famous Americans series, originally published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis. The image above is from the Aladdin edition of 1986. The cover artwork was not by Gray Morrow, but his interior illustrations remained.

On this Independence Day, we should all remember Crispus Attucks and the men and women who sacrificed so much so that we might have and enjoy our freedoms. We should also hold in contempt the people who want to take all of that away from us. And we should remember people like Gray Morrow, who sought the universal in the particular and looked past surfaces to see the truth in things, as good and great artists do.

Happy Independence Day, America!

*After leaving art school, Morrow worked for a Chicago art studio. He also met a fellow Hoosier, Allen Saunders (1899-1986), famed author of Mary Worth, Big Chief Wahoo, and Steve Roper, who encouraged him to get into the field of syndicated comic strips. Morrow gave it a try, but only later did he find success as a not-always-credited artist on such strips as Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby, and Tarzan.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Some Drawings by Women Artists-No. 3

Though born in New Jersey, Ursula Koering (1921-1976) was the daughter of a Hoosier and spent part of her childhood in Indiana. She started selling her illustrations when she was in her early twenties. The illustrations shown below are from Tom Stetson on the Trail of the Lost Tribe by John Henry Cutler, published by Whitman in 1948 when she was just twenty-seven. It was the second in a series of three juvenile novels about the character Tom Stetson. You can read my full article on Ursula Koering by clicking here.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Some Drawings by Women Artists-No. 2

Next up in this series is Florence Sarah Winship (1900-1987) of Elkhart, Indiana. I have written about her before. Click here to find out more about her and to see more of her art. The front and back cover illustrations here are from Fifty Famous Fairy Tales, published by Whitman in 1954 and 1956.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for Christmas

The year is almost over, but before it ends, I want to offer a few pictures for the season and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

First, a charming illustration by John Dukes McKee (1899-1956) of Kokomo, from My American Heritage, collected by Ralph Henry and Lucile Pannell (1959).

Next, the cover design for More About the Live Dolls by Josephine Scribner Gates (1906), an drawing created by Virginia Keep (1878-1962) of Indianapolis.

Not everyone who puts on a Santa suit is nice. Sometimes they can be naughty, as in this illustration by John A. Coughlin (1885-1943), a Chicagoan who studied at the University of Notre Dame. (For that I think we can call him a Hoosier.) The illustration is from Detective Story Weekly, December 19, 1925.

Finally, what the season is really about, an image of the birth of Jesus Christ by Sister Esther Newport (1901-1986) of Clinton, Indiana, from the book A Bible History: With a History of the Church by Rev. Stephen J. McDonald and Elizabeth Jackson (1932, 1940).

Text and captions copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley