| Percy Crosby | |
|---|---|
| Born | Percy Lee Crosby (1891-12-08)December 8, 1891 Brooklyn,New York, U.S. |
| Died | December 8, 1964(1964-12-08) (aged 73) Kings Park, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, Writer, Artist |
Notable works | Skippy |
| Spouse(s) | |
| www | |
Percy Lee Crosby[1] (December 8, 1891 – December 8, 1964)[2][3] was an Americanauthor,illustrator andcartoonist best known for hiscomic stripSkippy. Adapted intomovies, anovel and aradio show, Crosby's creation was commemorated on a 1997U.S. Postal Servicestamp. An inspiration forCharles Schulz'sPeanuts,[4] the strip is regarded by comics historianMaurice Horn as a "classic... which innovated a number of sophisticated and refined touches used later by Charles Schulz andBill Watterson."[4] HumoristCorey Ford, writing inVanity Fair, praised the strip as "America's most important contribution to humor of the century".[5]
Percy Crosby was born inBrooklyn,New York, prior to the 1898 incorporation of thefive boroughs ofNew York City. He grew up inRichmond Hill, in what would be the borough ofQueens but at the time was considered part ofLong Island.[6] His father, Thomas Francis Crosby, the son of Catholic immigrants fromCounty Louth, Ireland, was an amateur painter who ran an art supply business.[7] His mother Frances (née Greene),[1] known as Fanny, was ofEnglish andScottish descent. Percy had two younger sisters, Ethel and Gladys.[7]
Crosby quit high school during his sophomore year to take a job as an art department office boy at editorTheodore Dreiser's magazineThe Delineator. He was quickly promoted to artist, but the job ended after one issue. When he was 17, he sold a drawing toLife for $6. After delivering sandwiches and working as a magazine salesman, he found a position as aneditorial cartoonist for theSocialist newspaper theNew York Daily Call.[8] There he published his first two comic strips,Biff andThe Extreme Brothers—Laff and Sy, but readers became outraged at frivolity in the paper and the strips were pulled.[9]
Crosby next became a sports columnist and illustrator atThe New York Globe. On the side, he produced comics used as occasional filler for the paper. Eventually fired, he entered anEdison Company contest for the best cartoon on the use of electric light. He won the $75 prize and saw his cartoon appear in every newspaper in New York City. The exposure led to a job at theNew York World, "at the time the promised land for aspiring cartoonists".[10] After a few years, he left to freelance, selling cartoons toWorld editor John Tennant. In 1916, theGeorge Matthew Adams Service syndicated Crosby's first feature, thedaily andSunday stripThe Clancy Kids, earning Crosby a respectable $135 a week.[11]
While continuing on this first strip, Crosby studied atManhattan'sArt Students League under such instructors asGeorge Bridgman,Frank DuMond,Joseph Pennell andMax Weber. The painter and League presidentGifford Beal, recognizing Crosby's talent, invited him to spend the summer inCape Cod, where Crosby made the acquaintance ofEdwin Dickinson,Edward Hopper,Eugene O'Neill and other habitues of theProvincetown, Massachusetts artists colony.[11] Back in New York, he fell in love with fellow League student Gertrude Volz, the artist-sculptor daughter of a well-to-do real-estate broker. After being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Officer Reserve Corps in 1916 and being called to active service the following year, serving for a time as ajiujitsu instructor, he and Volz eloped and were married at the training camp inPlattsburgh, New York, on July 7, 1917.[12]
While in training, Crosby created a daily comic panel,That Rookie from the Thirteenth Squad, for theMcClure Syndicate, writing and drawing it from the front in France while serving as afirst lieutenant in the 77th Division, AEF. The comic was collected into his first two books,That Rookie of the Thirteenth Squad (1917) andBetween Shots (1919).[13] While at theArgonne front, Crosby was struck by shrapnel in the eye, suffering no permanent damage, and earned thePurple Heart.[12]
Following the war, he resumed his studies and syndicated a series of panel cartoons from 1921 to 1925. These covered a variety of subjects, with some series, such asWho Cares for the Feelings of a Small Boy,The Local Boy,Back o' the Flats,The Little Girl Who Moved Away andSend a Poor Child to the Farm, featuring children, particularly from the slums.[14]
One such series,Always Belittlin', presagedSkippy with its star, a child with a striped shawl and a bonnet with a black pop-pom, whose thoughts consisted of the text's daily aphorism.[15] This series and two others,Bugville andBug Lugs, would eventually run as the supplementaltopper feature accompanying theSkippy Sunday strip.[16]
Crosby concurrently became a prolific contributor toLife, where several of his cartoons featured a child named Timmy, who became the prototype for Skippy Skinner when Crosby pitched art director Frank Casey about a regular feature.[17] As Crosby recalled, "I drew up three pages and thought of forty-four names (among themBeanie andJumper)—Skippy last on the list. A minor editor put his oar in and suggestedTiny Tim. I bristled with [sic] such uncalled-for interference, and... the thought flashed through my mind: '[The title] had to beSkippy and nothing else!'"[18]
Following a full-page house ad in the March 15, 1923, issue,Skippy premiered inLife and quickly became a success. It became asyndicated comic strip two years later, initially by Johnson Features, Central Press Association and Editors Features Service, before publisherWilliam Randolph Hearst signed Crosby to hisKing Features Syndicate. King distributed its first dailySkippy on October 7, 1926, and its first Sunday on April 1, 1929. Crosby retained the copyright, a rarity for strip artists of the time.[19]
The strip focused on Skippy Skinner, a young boy living in the city. Usually wearing an enormous collar and tie and a floppy checked hat, he was an odd mix of mischief and melancholy who might equally be found stealing from the corner fruit stand, failing to master skates or baseball, complaining about the adult world, or staring sadly at an old relative's grave: "And only last year she gave me a tie."
The popular strip at one point guaranteed Crosby $2,350 a week,[20] an enormous sum at the time. Crosby published aSkippy novel and other books; there were Skippy dolls, toys and comic books. The comic was adapted as the 1931 movieSkippy byParamount Pictures. A hit, it won directorNorman Taurog theAcademy Award for Best Director, and boosted the career of young starJackie Cooper, who played the title role.
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Art competitions | ||
Representingthe United States | ||
| Olympic Games | ||
 | 1932 Los Angeles | Watercolors and drawings |
From 1928 to 1937, Crosby produced 3,650Skippy strips, ten books of fiction, political and philosophical essays, drawings and cartoons, as well as numerous pamphlets, while also mounting a dozen exhibitions in New York City,Washington, D.C.,London,Paris andRome of his oils, watercolors and other paintings and drawings.[4] With its success, he befriended a pantheon of famed creators, including the authorMarc Connelly, the humoristRobert Benchley,The New Yorker editorHarold Ross,Life magazine editor and futurePulitzer Prize-winning playwrightRobert E. Sherwood, and the cartoonists and paintersGeorge McManus,H. T. Webster and Guy Hoff.[21]
Crosby's marriage to Gertrude Volz had become strained during the 1920s, and after a few years of legal separation the two were divorced in 1927. She received custody of Patricia, their only child.[21] Crosby later dated thetorch singer and stage-musical actressLibby Holman and became friends with such actresses asColleen Moore, Elsie James andMarilyn Miller.[22] But during this time, making the rounds ofspeakeasies andnight clubs, Crosby began developing analcohol addiction.[22] Crosby was a member of several private clubs—thePlayers Club, theSalamagundi Club, theDutch Treat Club and the Coffee House Club at the Hotel Seymour, where he lived, dining withGeorge Abbott,Jerome Kern,Ring Lardner,John Barrymore,Rube Goldberg,Heywood Broun andFrank Crowninshield. After nights at these clubs, he sometimes would awaken with no recollection of the previous evening.[22]
Regardless, Crosby continued to explore numerous creative realms, writingSkippy prose vignettes forLife that led to aSkippy novel forG. P. Putnam's Sons.[23] He fell in love with the secretary assigned to him,Vassar graduate Agnes Dale Locke, and the two were married on April 4, 1929.[24] While on vacation in Europe, Crosby stopped drinking alcohol, becoming a teetotaler for the next seven years.[25] Weathering thestock market crash of that fall, Crosby and his wife moved toMcLean, Virginia, where Crosby bought an estate called "The Beeches".[25] They later moved to an even larger estate in the area, "Ridgelawn".[26] The couple would have four children: son Percy Jr., nicknamed Skippy,[27] the eldest, and daughters Barbara, Joan, and Carol, who were, respectively two, three and four years younger.[26][28] During this time, Crosbypatented a firearm that incorporated a pistol in the stock of a rifle.[26] With his wife and an agent handling his business affairs, Crosby oversaw aSkippy empire that included aradio show, three novels, a series of 34 posters forStandard Oil, and the aforesaid movie and a sequel,Sooky.[29] To assist him on theSkippy strip, Crosby hired an old friend, artist Richard Reddy, who continued with him through the end of Crosby's career.[29]
In the late 1930s, Crosby began drawing more overtly political and philosophicalSkippy strips. Following his thirdSkippy prose-fiction book, the essay collectionSkippy Rambles, Crosby began using his writing as primarily a vehicle for his beliefs. His 1931 memoirA Cartoonist's Philosophy was found to be too polemical for eight publishers, and Crosby published it himself, in a money-losing venture; his future books were all privately published under his own name or Freedom Press, which he founded in 1936.[30]Life dropped him when Crosby agreed to do humorous cartoons only if the magazine agreed to publish his political work as well; the rival magazineJudge obliged. Of the nine books and pamphlets published from 1932 on, onlySports Drawings (1933) and the poetry collectionRays (1937) were not political or philosophical.[31] Speeches, articles and cartoons would appear as paid ads in theWashington Herald, theWashington Post,The New York Times and theNew York Sun.[31]
Although he had voted forFranklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 U.S. Presidential election, Crosby opposed Roosevelt's controversialJudiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937.[32] Crosby's vitriolic editorials called the president "crazed for power", and referred to Roosevelt'sFireside Chats as "talking from the Moscow room of the Spite House".[33] He also fired editorial broadsides at thegangsterAl Capone.[34] When theInternal Revenue Service brought a tax claim against Crosby and hiscorporation Skippy, Inc., for more than $67,000 in 1937, Crosby—who fought the decision for years, ultimately unsuccessfully—claimed it was in retaliation for his political writing.[35]
The previous year, Crosby had begun drinking again, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. His marriage suffered, and after a violent episode in February 1939, Crosby left forFlorida for two weeks. When he returned, repentant, his family had decamped, and his wife had filed for divorce. He never again saw his children, then aged five to nine. A devastated Crosby moved back toManhattan and eventually entered Presbyterian Hospital for an extended stay for exhaustion and an infection.[28] There he met nurse Carolyn Soper, whom he took on a first date to the1939–40 New York World's Fair. The two were married in May 1940, and they honeymooned inVenice, Florida.[36]
About the same time, a California food packer, Joseph Rosefield, began to sell his newly developed hydrogenated peanut butter, which he labeled "Skippy" without Crosby's permission.[37] Years of expensive litigation followed, which Crosby's heirs have continued into the 2000s.[38][39]
His finances, dire due to tax claims, the divorce settlement, legal fees, andalimony, Crosby sold Ridgelawn for a fraction of its value; his 1,500-acre (610 ha) farm and other Virginia real-estate were awarded to his second wife. His beloved stripSkippy suffered; as his biographer,Jerry Robinson, wrote:
The occasional diatribes in theSkippy strip became more frequent, more surreal. Some days were almost solid dialogue. In the past, Crosby had been able to move from one discipline to another—painting, writing, cartooning, and politics. Now, under extreme mental stress, the boundaries became blurred, and one intruded into the other to the detriment of all. … [A]fter long negotiations, Crosby and King Features were unable to agree on a new contract. On December 8, 1945, Crosby's fifty-fourth birthday,Skippy, aged twenty, died.[40]
In his later years, Crosby'salcoholism contributed to the cartoonist being unable to find employment. His wife Carolyn returned to work as a nurse anddietitian. Efforts to reviveSkippy went nowhere.[41]
In December 1948, Crosby was committed to the psychiatric ward ofBellevue Hospital after attempting suicide following the death of his mother.[20][41] In January 1949, he was transferred to the mental ward atKings Park Veterans' Hospital, inKings Park, New York, where he was declared aparanoidschizophrenic.[20][42] His confinement was authorized by Arthur Soper, an uncle of Crosby's wife.[20]
Though he would spend the last 16 years of his life institutionalized, Crosby continued to produce artwork and manuscripts, though no work was published and it is uncertain how much was sent to publishers by the hospital staff, through whom all mail had to be vetted.[43] Carolyn, adiabetic whose workday began at 5:30 a.m., was unable to obtain legal counsel or the help of friends to try to secure Crosby's release.[44]
Crosby's estranged daughters Barbara and Joan had graduated fromVassar College, and Carol from theRhode Island School of Design, without having known of their father's whereabouts; son Skip had become ageologist. Crosby had received infrequent visits from his two sisters, and from his cartoonist friendRube Goldberg.[45] Carolyn, whose failing health had eventually precluded visits, died November 8, 1959.[46]
On December 8, 1964, after aheart attack that had left him in acoma for months, Crosby died in the asylum on his 73rd birthday. He was buried inPine Lawn Veterans' Cemetery onLong Island.[20][46]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link).Newsday, November 10, 2002. Site last updated 2004-02-13
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