Percy Crosby

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Percy Leo Crosby (born December 8, 1891 in Brooklyn , New York City , † December 8, 1964 in New York City ) was an American author, illustrator and cartoonist . He became known for his popular comic strip Skippy .

Childhood, youth and early career

Percy Crosby grew up in Richmond Hill, Queens , New York , a borough of New York. His father, the son of Catholic immigrants from Ireland , was a hobby painter who ran an art supplies business. His mother Fanny was of English and Scottish descent. Crosby had two younger sisters.

Crosby dropped out of high school in 10th grade to take a job as an office boy in the arts department of Theodore Dreiser's magazine The Delineator . He later found a job as a cartoon editor for the socialist magazine New York Daily Call . He then became a sports reporting columnist and illustrator for The New York Globe . He entered an Edison Company competition for the best cartoon on the use of electric light, won $ 75, and his cartoon was published in every newspaper in New York. This success earned him a job at New York World , " at the time the promised land for aspiring cartoonists ". After a few years, he continued to work as a freelancer, selling cartoons to the editor of The World , John Tennant . In 1916, the George Matthews Adams Service marketed Crosby's first daily and Sunday comic strips, The Clancy Kids , which earned him $ 135 a week.

Meanwhile, Percy Crosby was studying in Manhattan with the Art Students League of New York under such teachers as George Bridgman , Frank DuMond , Joseph Pennell and Max Weber . League president and painter Gifford Beal recognized his talent and invited him to spend the summer in Cape Cod . There he met Edwin Dickinson , Edward Hopper , Eugene O'Neill, and other permanent visitors to the Provincetown , Massachusetts artist colony .

During World War I , Crosby created the comic strip That Rookie from the Thirteenth Squad for publisher McClure, which he wrote and drew daily while serving on the front lines. This comic and Between Shots were published in books. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive , he was injured in the eye by shrapnel and was awarded the Purple Heart .

After the war, Percy Crosby continued his studies and between 1921 and 1925 sold a series of panel cartoons on a wide variety of topics, primarily about children who lived in the slums of large cities.

Skippy (1923 to 1945)

Crosby became a prolific Life employee . Several of his cartoons were about a boy named Timmy who served as the prototype for Skippy Skinner . One of the series, Always Belittlin , was a direct predecessor of Skippy . Her hero, a child with a striped scarf and a hat with a black bobble, whose daily thoughts were expressed in the form of aphorisms .

Percy Crosby was able to inspire the art director for a regular series. On May 15, 1923, the first full-page issue of Skippy appeared in Life and quickly became a success. Two years later the series was marketed by a newspaper syndicate until William Randolph Hearst recruited it for King Features Syndicate . The first daily edition of Skippy appeared on October 7, 1926, and the first Sunday edition on April 1, 1929. Crosby retained the copyright , which was unusual. He was making $ 2,350 a week, an enormous sum at the time.

The main character of the comic strip was Skippy Skinner, a young boy from town. Usually he wore a huge collar, a tie and a plaid floppy hat. He was a strange mixture of mischief and sadness who stole fruit in the corner shop, couldn't roller-skate or play baseball, complained about the adult world, or gazed sadly at an old relative's grave: “She got me just last year A tie for free. ”The model for the character of Skippy is said to have been the Australian cyclist Harris Horder. His stories about his time as a newsboy are said to have inspired Crosby to Skippy .

Crosby published a novel about Skippy and other books; there were Skippy dolls, toys, and books. In 1931 Paramount produced a Skippy film that was a great success. The director Norman Taurog received an Oscar ; for the main actor Jackie Cooper it was the beginning of his career. There were three other nominations in the categories of Best Film , Best Actor and Best Screenplay .

Between 1928 and 1937, Crosby produced 3,650 Skippy strips, ten novels, political and philosophical essays, drawings and cartoons, and numerous pamphlets. He also took part in around a dozen exhibitions in New York, Washington, DC , London , Paris and Rome , where his oil paintings, watercolors and other paintings and drawings were shown. At the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles , he received a silver medal for his works.

Crosby was in the circles of the creative elite at the time and was the head of a media empire that he managed with his then wife Agnes and an employee. For Skippy he hired an assistant, the illustrator Richard Reddy , who worked with him until the end of his career.

In the late 1930s, the Skippy strips became increasingly political and philosophical; Crosby increasingly used the comic strips to convey his beliefs. In 1931 he wrote his memoirs, A Cartoonist's Philosophy , which were rejected by eight publishers because of their polemics, and eventually edited them himself. All of his subsequent books were self-published or by Freedom Press , which he founded in 1936.

Life separated from Crosby when he made a condition that in addition to his comic strips, political contributions should be published by him. However, the rival paper Judge agreed to his terms. In his articles he denounced corrupt politicians, organized crime and the Ku Klux Clan and fought for civil rights. His speeches, articles, and cartoons have been featured in the Washington Herald , Washington Post , The New York Times, and New York Sun newspapers as paid inserts.

Although Percy Crosby had voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election , he spoke out publicly and vehemently against his Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 , according to which the Supreme Court of the United States should get more powers.

An audit by the Internal Revenue Service found that Crosby and his firm Skippy, Inc. had more than $ 67,000 in tax debt. He contested this decision for years and unsuccessfully claimed that this tax claim was retaliation for his political contributions, "a political witch hunt".

Percy Crosby started drinking again the following year, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. He was financially ruined by divorces, tax claims, alimony payments, and other obligations. He had to sell his Ridgelawn estate for a fraction of its value; his other properties went to his second wife. The quality of Skippy suffered as a result, so that the comic strip appeared for the last time on December 8, 1945.

At the same time, a California grocer, Joseph Rosefiled, began selling a newly developed peanut butter that he called Skippy without Crosby's permission . This was followed by a decade-long legal dispute that preoccupied Crosby's heirs well into the 2000s.

The figure Skippy is considered an important inspiration for the Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz . For comic historian Maurice Horn , Skippy is a classic. In Vanity Fair magazine, humorist Corey Ford described the comic strip as " America's most important contribution to humor of the century ". In 1997 the US Postal Service issued a postage stamp with a Skippy motif.

Personal

In 1916, Percy Crosby fell in love with the sculptor Gertrude Volz, daughter of a wealthy real estate agent, in New York. After Crosby was drafted as a soldier in 1917, where he worked for a while as a Jiujitsu instructor, he ran away with Gertrude Volz. The couple were married at the Plattsburgh Military Training Grounds. In 1927 the marriage was divorced and Gertrude Volz received custody of their daughter Patricia.

Crosby later dated actress Libby Holman and was friends with other actresses such as Colleen Moore , Elsie James and Marilyn Miller . During this time he often went to nightclubs and speakeasys with friends and developed an alcohol addiction. He often woke up in the morning with no memory of the previous evening. Even so, he was still very productive,

Percy Crosby fell in love with his secretary, Agnes Dale Locke, and married her on April 4, 1929. He stopped drinking and was abstinent for seven years. The couple moved to McLean and bought The Beeches property there . The Crosbys later moved to a larger property in the area, Ridgelawn , and had four children. During this time, Crosby invented a firearm that was patented.

When Crosby was faced with a tax claim of around $ 67,000 in 1937, he began drinking again and the family had violent arguments. In February 1939 he left for Florida for two weeks after an argument ; when he returned remorsefully, his family had moved out and his wife had filed for divorce. He never saw his children between the ages of five and nine. He moved back to Manhattan where he was hospitalized for an infection. There he met a nurse, Carolyn Soper, whom he married in May 1940.

Late years (1945 to 1964)

In his later years, Percy Crosby was unable to find work due to his alcoholism, and attempts to bring Skippy back to life failed. His wife had to go back to work as a nurse. In December 1948, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital after attempting suicide after his mother's death. In January 1949 he was transferred to Kings Park Veterans' Hospital , where he was diagnosed with supposed schizophrenia . His placement was approved by an uncle of his wife's. Today there are doubts about the legality of this placement.

Crosby spent the last 16 years of his life there. He continued to produce manuscripts and drawings, but these were never published, although it is unclear whether the hospital staff who monitored and censored his mail even forwarded it to editors. He received irregular visits from his two sisters and the cartoonist Rube Goldberg . Crosby's wife, Carolyn, died of cancer on November 8, 1949. On December 8, 1964, Percy Crosby died in the clinic on his 73rd birthday after being in a coma for months after suffering a heart attack. He was buried in the Pine Lawn Veterans' Cemetery on Long Island .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad Jerry Robinson : Skippy and Percy Crosby . Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1978, ISBN 0-03-018491-6 .
  2. ^ A b Archive of Collin Nash: The "Skippy" Mystery ( Memento of February 13, 2004 in the Internet Archive ).
  3. ^ Newsday , November 10, 2002
  4. ^ Singleton Argus , April 8, 1938
  5. ↑ a b Maurice Horn (ed.): 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics. New York: Gramercy Books 1996. ISBN 0-517-12447-5 . "Skippy", pp. 348-349
  6. ↑ a b c Biography of Crosby on skippy.com
  7. ↑ Brian Cronin: Comic Legends Revealed . # 198 (column), Comic Book Resources . March 12, 2009. Archived from the original on September 17, 2010. Retrieved October 16, 2013.
  8. ^ Tibbetts: Prologue . Archived from the original on September 17, 2010. Retrieved October 17, 2013.
  9. ^ Hugh Turley: A Tale of Two Cartoonists . Hyattsville Life and Times (Hyattsville, Maryland), via DCDave.com. April 2009. Archived from the original on February 3, 2010. Retrieved October 16, 2013.
  10. ↑ Quoting from Skippy: A Complete Compilation 1925-1926 . Hyperion Press, Westport, Connecticut 1977.

Web links

literature

personal data
SURNAME Crosby, Percy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crosby, Percy Leo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American comic artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1964
Place of death new York