Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Walt Kelly" - New World
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| − | '''Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr''' ( | + | {{epname}} |
| + | '''Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr''' (August 25, 1913–October 18, 1973), known as '''Walt Kelly''', was a [[cartoonist]] notable for his [[comic strip]] ''[[Pogo]]'' featuring characters that inhabited a portion of the [[Okefenokee Swamp]] in [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]. | ||
| − | Kelly was born in [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]. While he was still a child, his family moved to [[Bridgeport, Connecticut]] where his father worked in a munitions plant. After graduating from [[Warren Harding High School]] in | + | ==Early Life== |
| + | Kelly was born in [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]. While he was still a child, his family moved to [[Bridgeport, Connecticut]] where his father worked in a munitions plant. After graduating from [[Warren Harding High School]] in 1930, Kelly worked a few odd jobs until landing a position as a crime reporter on the Bridgeport Post. There he took up cartooning and illustrated a biography of Bridgeport native [[P. T. Barnum]]. He found a job at [[The Walt Disney Company|Walt Disney Productions]] in California as an animator on [[Donald Duck]] cartoons. Kelly worked 1935 to 1941 for Disney, contributing to films including ''[[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)|Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs]]'', ''[[Fantasia (movie)|Fantasia]]'', and ''[[Dumbo]]''. During 1935 and 1936, his work also appeared in early comic books for what later became [[DC Comics]]. Kelly was one of many Disney animators, including [[Art Babbitt]], [[Bill Tytla]], and [[John Hubley]], who picketed Disney during the 1941 [[Disney animators' strike]], after which he left the studio. | ||
| − | Kelly began a series of comic books based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes along with annuals celebrating [[Christmas]] and [[Easter]] for [[Dell Comics]]. He also produced a series of stories based on the ''[[Our Gang]]'' film series, provided covers for ''[[Walt Disney's Comics and Stories]]'' and illustrated adaptations of [[Snow White]], [[Pinocchio]] and [[The Three Caballeros]]. This period saw the creation of Kelly's most famous character, [[Pogo]], who first saw print in 1943 in | + | ==Comic Strips== |
| + | Kelly began a series of comic books based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes along with annuals celebrating [[Christmas]] and [[Easter]] for [[Dell Comics]]. He also produced a series of stories based on the ''[[Our Gang]]'' film series, provided covers for ''[[Walt Disney's Comics and Stories]]'' and illustrated adaptations of [[Snow White]], [[Pinocchio]] and [[The Three Caballeros]]. This period saw the creation of Kelly's most famous character, [[Pogo]], who first saw print in 1943 in Dell's ''Animal Comics''. His health would not allow him to work as a service man, so during World War II, Kelly worked in the Army's [[Foreign Language Unit]] illustrating manuals. He returned to journalism as a political cartoonist after the war. In 1948, while art director of the short-lived ''[[New York Star]]'', Kelly began to produce a pen-and-ink strip of current-events commentary populated by characters from Okefenokee Swamp. The first ''Pogo'' strip appeared on October 4, 1948. After the ''New York Star'' folded on Jan. 28, 1949 Kelly arranged for syndication through the [[Hall Syndicate]] which re-launched the strip in May of 1949. Kelly eventually arranged to acquire the copyright and ownership of the strip, which was uncommon in that era. | ||
| − | ''Pogo'' was a landmark strip in many ways and Kelly is arguably one of the greatest and most influential of cartoonists in the history of the craft. Kelly combined masterful line and brush-work (learned at the "mouse factory" | + | ==Pogo== |
| + | ''Pogo'' was a landmark strip in many ways and Kelly is arguably one of the greatest and most influential of cartoonists in the history of the craft. Kelly combined masterful line and brush-work (learned at the "mouse factory," Disney) with fluent and highly amusing story-telling acted out by an endearing cast of "nature's screechers." He borrowed from various dialectical sources and his own fertile imagination to invent a unique and charming backwoods-patois, heavy on the nonsense, to fit his cartoon swampland. Although ''Pogo'' stands on its own as a superbly-realised cartoon strip for the ages, it was perhaps Kelly's interjection of political and social satire into the work that was its greatest pioneering accomplishment- such commentary was simply not done in the genre of dailies in Kelly's time. | ||
The principal characters were [[Pogo]] the [[opossum|Possum]]; Albert the [[Alligator]]; Churchy LaFemme (''cf''. [[Cherchez la femme]]), a [[turtle]]; Howland [[Owl]]; Beauregard (Houndog); Porkypine and Miss Mamzelle Hepzibah, a French [[skunk]]. Kelly used the strip in part as a vehicle for his liberal and humanistic political and social views and satirized, among other things, Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]]'s anti-Communist demagogy (in the form of a shotgun-wielding bobcat named "Simple J. Malarkey") and the sectarian and dogmatic behavior of [[Communism|Communist]]s. | The principal characters were [[Pogo]] the [[opossum|Possum]]; Albert the [[Alligator]]; Churchy LaFemme (''cf''. [[Cherchez la femme]]), a [[turtle]]; Howland [[Owl]]; Beauregard (Houndog); Porkypine and Miss Mamzelle Hepzibah, a French [[skunk]]. Kelly used the strip in part as a vehicle for his liberal and humanistic political and social views and satirized, among other things, Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]]'s anti-Communist demagogy (in the form of a shotgun-wielding bobcat named "Simple J. Malarkey") and the sectarian and dogmatic behavior of [[Communism|Communist]]s. | ||
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Another interesting facet of the comic strip were the unique speech balloons that several characters were drawn with. One character, Deacon Mushrat, an educated [[muskrat]], spoke in speech balloons with decorated [[Gothic script|Gothic]] style lettering. The village mortician, Sarcophagas Macabre, a [[vulture]], had square, black-framed speech balloons with fine script lettering, resembling funeral announcements. P.T. Bridgeport, a [[bear]] and showman/promoter of questionable repute, spoke with speech balloons in highly decorated type, resembling 19th century circus posters. | Another interesting facet of the comic strip were the unique speech balloons that several characters were drawn with. One character, Deacon Mushrat, an educated [[muskrat]], spoke in speech balloons with decorated [[Gothic script|Gothic]] style lettering. The village mortician, Sarcophagas Macabre, a [[vulture]], had square, black-framed speech balloons with fine script lettering, resembling funeral announcements. P.T. Bridgeport, a [[bear]] and showman/promoter of questionable repute, spoke with speech balloons in highly decorated type, resembling 19th century circus posters. | ||
| − | In | + | ==Politics== |
| + | In 1952 and later, a "Pogo for President" campaign, with followers wearing "I Go Pogo" buttons, became an expression of political protest. "Pogo" was also distinguished by exceptional linguistic inventiveness and playfulness, as expressed, for example, in the Pogo version of songs such as "Deck Us All with Boston Charlie" (for "[[Deck the Halls|Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly]]") and "[[My Bonnie Has Tuberculosis#Ma Bonny Lice Soda Devotion|Ma Bonny lice soda devotion]]" (for "My Bonnie lies over the ocean"). | ||
| − | Perhaps the most famous quotation to come from this series is, "We have met the enemy and he is us" (a paraphrase of [[Oliver Hazard Perry|Commodore Perry]]'s famous "We have met the enemy and he is ours" from the [[War of 1812]]). The earliest form of this expression appeared in his introduction to ''The Pogo Papers'' ( | + | Perhaps the most famous quotation to come from this series is, "We have met the enemy and he is us" (a paraphrase of [[Oliver Hazard Perry|Commodore Perry]]'s famous "We have met the enemy and he is ours" from the [[War of 1812]]). The earliest form of this expression appeared in his introduction to ''The Pogo Papers'' (1953); it was used much later in the comic strip and as the title of a collection of strips. This is typical of the wry and politically astute commentary to be found in the daily and Sunday strip. It was distributed by [[King Features Syndicate]] to hundreds of newspapers for many years. The individual strips were collected into at least twenty books edited by Kelly, reprinted editions of some of these remain available today. He received the [[Reuben Award]] for the series in 1951. |
| − | Walt Kelly illustrated ''The Glob'', a children's book about the evolution of man written by John O'Reilly and published in | + | Walt Kelly illustrated ''The Glob'', a children's book about the evolution of man written by John O'Reilly and published in 1952. The characters and creatures in the book have a distinctly ''Pogoian'' character. |
| − | In | + | In 1969, a half-hour animated television special, ''The Pogo Special Birthday Special'' was produced, and aired on the NBC television network. Kelly himself provided the voices for P.T. Bridgeport, Albert Alligator and Howland Owl. In an interview [[Ward Kimball]], who had worked with Kelly at Disney, quoted Kelly as saying angrily that [[Chuck Jones]] had changed the script without Kelly's ok, and altered [[Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah]]'s face to look more human. <ref>Kelly, Walt: "Phi Beta Pogo," p. 146, Simon and Schuster, 1989.</ref> |
| − | Having previously lampooned McCarthy, Kelly was also censored by some papers in the | + | Having previously lampooned McCarthy, Kelly was also censored by some papers in the 1960s for portraying Soviet leader [[Nikita Khruschev]] as a pig and [[Fidel Castro]] as a cigar-smoking goat spouting pseudo-Marxism like "The shortage will be divided amongst the peasants!" <ref>Kelly, Walt: "Instant Pogo," p. 11, Simon and Schuster, 1962.</ref> However Kelly was speaking partly from experience, having spent time in Cold War Berlin, writing newspaper articles about the situation there.<ref>Kelly, Walt: "Outrageously Pogo," pp. 61-69, Simon and Schuster, 1985.</ref> |
| − | During the | + | During the 1968 political campaign, Kelly's strip depicted rival Presidential candidates [[Hubert Humphrey]] and [[Richard Nixon]] as the Tweedle twins ([[Tweedledum]] and [[Tweedledee]]) but never established which was which: each twin claimed to be "Dee" while identifying the other as "Dum." In later years, Kelly's strip featured caricatures of Nixon depicted as a spider, [[J. Edgar Hoover]] as a bulldog, [[Spiro T. Agnew]] as a hyena and [[George C. Wallace]] as a bantam cock. |
Throughout the run of ''Pogo'', the strip's characters frequently traversed the [[Okeefenokee|Okeefenokee Swamp]] aboard a flimsy flat-bottomed boat. Kelly developed the pleasant gimmick of lettering the boat's name on its hull ... the gimmick being that the name changed from one day to the next, and even from panel to panel within the same day's strip, but was always a tribute to some obscure real-life person whom Kelly wished to salute in print. | Throughout the run of ''Pogo'', the strip's characters frequently traversed the [[Okeefenokee|Okeefenokee Swamp]] aboard a flimsy flat-bottomed boat. Kelly developed the pleasant gimmick of lettering the boat's name on its hull ... the gimmick being that the name changed from one day to the next, and even from panel to panel within the same day's strip, but was always a tribute to some obscure real-life person whom Kelly wished to salute in print. | ||
| Line 27: | Line 32: | ||
In contrast to the rigidly straight-edged panels of most other comic strips, the panels of ''Pogo'' were always defiantly hand-drawn with no attempt at straightness. Frequently a ''Pogo'' character would lean against the edge of the panel, or Albert would strike a match (to light his cigar) against the nearest panel edge, invariably distorting the panel even further. | In contrast to the rigidly straight-edged panels of most other comic strips, the panels of ''Pogo'' were always defiantly hand-drawn with no attempt at straightness. Frequently a ''Pogo'' character would lean against the edge of the panel, or Albert would strike a match (to light his cigar) against the nearest panel edge, invariably distorting the panel even further. | ||
| − | On his passing in | + | ==Later life and Legacy== |
| + | On his passing in 1973 in [[Woodland Hills, California]], Walt Kelly was interred in the [[Cemetery of the Evergreens]] in [[Brooklyn, New York]]. | ||
| − | In | + | In 1980, a [[clay animation]] feature film, ''Pogo For President'' (aka ''I Go Pogo'') was released, but failed to gain much media attention. |
| − | [[Fantagraphics Books]] in | + | [[Fantagraphics Books]] in 2006 published the first volume of a series collecting Kelly's Our Gang stories. |
| − | == | + | == Notes == |
<references/> | <references/> | ||
== External links == | == External links == | ||
| − | + | * [http://www.toonopedia.com/kelly.htm Toonopedia entry] Retrieved November 5, 2007. | |
| − | * [http://www.toonopedia.com/kelly.htm Toonopedia entry] | + | * [http://www.pogopossum.com/index.htm Walt Kelly's Pogo] Retrieved November 5, 2007. |
| − | * [http://www.pogopossum.com/index.htm | ||
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| − | [[Category: | + | [[Category:Writers and poets]] |
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Revision as of 15:59, 5 November 2007
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr (August 25, 1913–October 18, 1973), known as Walt Kelly, was a cartoonist notable for his comic strip Pogo featuring characters that inhabited a portion of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
Early Life
Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While he was still a child, his family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut where his father worked in a munitions plant. After graduating from Warren Harding High School in 1930, Kelly worked a few odd jobs until landing a position as a crime reporter on the Bridgeport Post. There he took up cartooning and illustrated a biography of Bridgeport native P. T. Barnum. He found a job at Walt Disney Productions in California as an animator on Donald Duck cartoons. Kelly worked 1935 to 1941 for Disney, contributing to films including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, and Dumbo. During 1935 and 1936, his work also appeared in early comic books for what later became DC Comics. Kelly was one of many Disney animators, including Art Babbitt, Bill Tytla, and John Hubley, who picketed Disney during the 1941 Disney animators' strike, after which he left the studio.
Comic Strips
Kelly began a series of comic books based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes along with annuals celebrating Christmas and Easter for Dell Comics. He also produced a series of stories based on the Our Gang film series, provided covers for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and illustrated adaptations of Snow White, Pinocchio and The Three Caballeros. This period saw the creation of Kelly's most famous character, Pogo, who first saw print in 1943 in Dell's Animal Comics. His health would not allow him to work as a service man, so during World War II, Kelly worked in the Army's Foreign Language Unit illustrating manuals. He returned to journalism as a political cartoonist after the war. In 1948, while art director of the short-lived New York Star, Kelly began to produce a pen-and-ink strip of current-events commentary populated by characters from Okefenokee Swamp. The first Pogo strip appeared on October 4, 1948. After the New York Star folded on Jan. 28, 1949 Kelly arranged for syndication through the Hall Syndicate which re-launched the strip in May of 1949. Kelly eventually arranged to acquire the copyright and ownership of the strip, which was uncommon in that era.
Pogo
Pogo was a landmark strip in many ways and Kelly is arguably one of the greatest and most influential of cartoonists in the history of the craft. Kelly combined masterful line and brush-work (learned at the "mouse factory," Disney) with fluent and highly amusing story-telling acted out by an endearing cast of "nature's screechers." He borrowed from various dialectical sources and his own fertile imagination to invent a unique and charming backwoods-patois, heavy on the nonsense, to fit his cartoon swampland. Although Pogo stands on its own as a superbly-realised cartoon strip for the ages, it was perhaps Kelly's interjection of political and social satire into the work that was its greatest pioneering accomplishment- such commentary was simply not done in the genre of dailies in Kelly's time.
The principal characters were Pogo the Possum; Albert the Alligator; Churchy LaFemme (cf. Cherchez la femme), a turtle; Howland Owl; Beauregard (Houndog); Porkypine and Miss Mamzelle Hepzibah, a French skunk. Kelly used the strip in part as a vehicle for his liberal and humanistic political and social views and satirized, among other things, Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist demagogy (in the form of a shotgun-wielding bobcat named "Simple J. Malarkey") and the sectarian and dogmatic behavior of Communists.
Another interesting facet of the comic strip were the unique speech balloons that several characters were drawn with. One character, Deacon Mushrat, an educated muskrat, spoke in speech balloons with decorated Gothic style lettering. The village mortician, Sarcophagas Macabre, a vulture, had square, black-framed speech balloons with fine script lettering, resembling funeral announcements. P.T. Bridgeport, a bear and showman/promoter of questionable repute, spoke with speech balloons in highly decorated type, resembling 19th century circus posters.
Politics
In 1952 and later, a "Pogo for President" campaign, with followers wearing "I Go Pogo" buttons, became an expression of political protest. "Pogo" was also distinguished by exceptional linguistic inventiveness and playfulness, as expressed, for example, in the Pogo version of songs such as "Deck Us All with Boston Charlie" (for "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly") and "Ma Bonny lice soda devotion" (for "My Bonnie lies over the ocean").
Perhaps the most famous quotation to come from this series is, "We have met the enemy and he is us" (a paraphrase of Commodore Perry's famous "We have met the enemy and he is ours" from the War of 1812). The earliest form of this expression appeared in his introduction to The Pogo Papers (1953); it was used much later in the comic strip and as the title of a collection of strips. This is typical of the wry and politically astute commentary to be found in the daily and Sunday strip. It was distributed by King Features Syndicate to hundreds of newspapers for many years. The individual strips were collected into at least twenty books edited by Kelly, reprinted editions of some of these remain available today. He received the Reuben Award for the series in 1951.
Walt Kelly illustrated The Glob, a children's book about the evolution of man written by John O'Reilly and published in 1952. The characters and creatures in the book have a distinctly Pogoian character.
In 1969, a half-hour animated television special, The Pogo Special Birthday Special was produced, and aired on the NBC television network. Kelly himself provided the voices for P.T. Bridgeport, Albert Alligator and Howland Owl. In an interview Ward Kimball, who had worked with Kelly at Disney, quoted Kelly as saying angrily that Chuck Jones had changed the script without Kelly's ok, and altered Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah's face to look more human. [1]
Having previously lampooned McCarthy, Kelly was also censored by some papers in the 1960s for portraying Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev as a pig and Fidel Castro as a cigar-smoking goat spouting pseudo-Marxism like "The shortage will be divided amongst the peasants!" [2] However Kelly was speaking partly from experience, having spent time in Cold War Berlin, writing newspaper articles about the situation there.[3]
During the 1968 political campaign, Kelly's strip depicted rival Presidential candidates Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon as the Tweedle twins (Tweedledum and Tweedledee) but never established which was which: each twin claimed to be "Dee" while identifying the other as "Dum." In later years, Kelly's strip featured caricatures of Nixon depicted as a spider, J. Edgar Hoover as a bulldog, Spiro T. Agnew as a hyena and George C. Wallace as a bantam cock.
Throughout the run of Pogo, the strip's characters frequently traversed the Okeefenokee Swamp aboard a flimsy flat-bottomed boat. Kelly developed the pleasant gimmick of lettering the boat's name on its hull ... the gimmick being that the name changed from one day to the next, and even from panel to panel within the same day's strip, but was always a tribute to some obscure real-life person whom Kelly wished to salute in print.
In contrast to the rigidly straight-edged panels of most other comic strips, the panels of Pogo were always defiantly hand-drawn with no attempt at straightness. Frequently a Pogo character would lean against the edge of the panel, or Albert would strike a match (to light his cigar) against the nearest panel edge, invariably distorting the panel even further.
Later life and Legacy
On his passing in 1973 in Woodland Hills, California, Walt Kelly was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1980, a clay animation feature film, Pogo For President (aka I Go Pogo) was released, but failed to gain much media attention.
Fantagraphics Books in 2006 published the first volume of a series collecting Kelly's Our Gang stories.
Notes
External links
- Toonopedia entry Retrieved November 5, 2007.
- Walt Kelly's Pogo Retrieved November 5, 2007.
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