The Cartoonist's Art; 3; Vern Greene and Mort Walker

fb our system needs the cartoonist art with wearing green cartoonist for bringing up father he's recorded interviews with some of america's outstanding cartoonist we'll survey recent developments of the comics on narrative art form as old as recorded history mr greene's guest tonight is more blogger creator of beetle bailey in our business the great wealth or water at that to all of you people to read the comics writer lee you know beetle bailey and hyun lois he's a man who has a great many irons in the fire

but today more we're going to talk a bit about your career about the background of beetle how we got in the army and then we'll do some minor philosophizing that are i define how you're not because we're not going to do this so much for a cartoonist a cartoonist is to the live people say around the station and it might not know comics as much as eight show ed and we'll we'll point out the great value of comics and how they can't do without him from now on friends and snow will start off our philosophical dissertation here on the difference between people with high iq send creative people quite often people that have high iq are particularly creative don't you think what would you say that it's a low really from an article that i read in that people with pike used and you go into safer types of pursuits

they get in the business or professions you know a safer more secure and i didn't then i would think that creative people tend to lean to the arts they are created here but the bigger dividing line up in between first hike use as opposed to creative people as a sense of your eyes on the most people in creative feels a tremendous sense of you were living out its present in a party that's one of my problems at the board and in my own private studio i and i think the url and i should say you do and i found that to market with people even though they're creative results are especially for him in the comic field or on a stage or anything the sword when you get them actually in their work though they may be very quiet by themselves they will they really this comes out the sense of the word a show in that is a divided and i think

you think comic strips make a contribution to society of any great degree it i think that that anything could great degree is a matter of opinion i think of colleagues are all for all of society at certain autoimmune potatoes titans think just as though marilyn monroe's not stable but thats a law on their own we knew that i think we went and we are we are riverside radio of fine arts station and all we could conclude that marilyn monroe may not be a potato with a fine time you know we wouldn't have been had up on the air here i think that your background board is very interesting because you were one of the youngest cartoonist i think to get into the slick book field into the magazine

cartoonists were true very very close to being a freshman in high school when you sort of first up the saturday evening post are some in the magazine before that other nineties the us also sells a lot twelve years old and none of that they supported my dates and michael oakes among gas for my father's car of cartoon sense but for thirteen in and then after that i became a greeting card design of her homework and which which is kind of an interesting experiment i was working in the stockroom and ran an ad in the local paper asking for an artist i applied for the job and it turned out to be the same company i was working for they said that we were going to hire for as an audience we try and they think they are as an artist and it was an experiment i work with the writers of the greeting cards and they would tell me what their vision was when they wrote the poem and we have a wonderful station every morning when i got there we would sit down this long

conference table in the boss would read the poems would stretch out and close our eyes a little bit more sleep than and then i would take with the artist at visualized and draw sketch of it and it would go to the art department for finished work so for a couple years i created most of the cars that hallmark reading carson and it didn't turn out too well because i think oh i know my time this was back in nineteen forty and i was going to slam title of studio cards that more popular nowadays with that in your town well then they're right in those days when and what they were used to call a crater on a greeting card which was neither male or female a little valley public there in that either a supposedly a man or woman could buster didn't want to exclude half of the sale by making dorn a man on the current in which a woman wouldn't buy so we had to draw or call creepers and there because i don't think many men bought them

this is kind of an odd of the year that you should've been so far ahead of the time on that because it reminds us of that old cartoon titled born thirty years too soon of dr williams and actually you are one of the youngest of the cartoonist at the big toe i am but they let them in quite not quite is born adventures some of the greeting cards that we have today i see the word club universe different and a bookstore in and there's something the ways there are never won the religion so what was your faces a fortune and your glory my work isn't that a hard luck story had been selling toyotas or a long winded and i hope into your early career a little bit going too the beginning of beetle bailey but i want to touch on another thing here first the very early age that you started out why

you didn't use order first cartoons about sixteen you were going about the age of four re vitally interested in becoming a cartoonist march i was so interested that means of telling the nursery rhymes and reading the about where rabbit and so for my father used to nominate him tell me about rube goldberg and enjoyment madison many the great cartoons of those days and that fascinated me greatly and he would take me down to the kansas city star and i always admired ali tremendous patience of the art of song the newspaper there have because they used a lama to come in the art department and sit on the floor go through drawers all along when i go to the massive i have this cartoon is the us mint they've signed for me and i do that on all time summer on the floor and spend time cartoons or those are all pressed oh well that

sounds like my one i liked him and i was a cagey about him beyond this though on your dad i wish my dad had known your dad because i think that they're was my father got me all wrong he there were kids there were seven of us and that was his great love to tell us stories from the time we were old enough to know what the words were about greek and roman mythology and stories of english and history in and all that and so my first report about the king features was a profuse sunday page on greek mythology and i was beloved old boy i could never have gone either because they they said no this is great stuff but who wants to see you at the tender age of the buyer's job at the tender age of about seven nine ofa because i was in the first grade knows it because i

find it's just finished this great home i wrote a thirty six stanza poem on the life of the role and forty five women and i am the container yet on that said right now my dad had been telling me about rube goldberg and i'm sure that it got started awkwardly to but i got underway but i i was on the wrong track i'm sure but that brings in the very interesting thing what would you consider is the creative impulse it makes kids wanted role more anything else usually be a cartoonist i knew i was too but i think a lot of young kids today are a soul it was we were well i think that the i was a kind of poor when i was a young live in a poor neighborhood and i think ever buy the newest trend in various away too make a very good on become somebody and i think that so long that it's going to do it it has now the

fact that it always gave me great notoriety in high school you know when i was a cartoonist matt effect or maybe a little failure is a wizard as the cardinals mr droste and i designed the end noble course for people and at cartoons and they were among the most famous in high school a lot of fun and of course you enjoy this is if you could say that's when you're famous so i think that's one of the reasons i did become curtains because i i found that it worked to gain approval and it was a way to become somebody working as and i was nobody and i think more than anything else are just as much of it was the fact that you just loved to draw more than anything else you can think of i think that it might naturally my mother father both parties my mother was a designer designed wastebaskets and the frog who plays like that my father was an architect and and later in a good one of a cartoonist who had been denied a robot scientist bridget autonomy was tremendously

proud of my success or landmine the idea that a cartoon a stroke my first record i was about fifteen and it made a trip from kansas city to des moines iowa where the closest synagogue at that time was registering tribune's than that and then they like to strip pretty well what they said backwards in mind that you know they got me now to finish before that again you know what's the sense in getting a guy who were on right now we can go on great length i think an advice to young fellow starting out on the value of this education at a time but that really isn't something i hadn't thought of asking you offended about one minute on and that's the old bromide it's asked so many times you think that our training for more training is of the necessity or of any great value to someone intending knowing it will be a cartoonist

doing comics in cartooning isn't writing or anything else that any country all kinds of training come and apply think actually if you're trained well apart that would probably help a great deal if you train on an englishwoman on grammar and history in and you know just about anything you can think of comes into play because you draw on your own experiences and the more expensive the more interesting experiences you can have in a more you know i think i assume the buttermilk and i think my own but they taught minnie going to college with that for twelve hours but after i got there i enjoyed it tremendously and at the time it seemed great surprise bring the twenty million college mentally oh the culmination of all kinds of things as i mean i went to the army sent me to an engineering school or woman engineering and i started out in journalism and when i came back from the war with an impatient to get out so i combined it all chris that i hadn't graduated in

humanities literature and i think that's a terrific because i think that's one of the things it's probably more valuable to a cartoonist and learning a whole lot of anatomy way down deep i was interested in dealing with the english gardens you met him to get into work and this man is a great grasp and he couldn't draw more of boy but he sort of a b little b a lot of time at one should spend in preparing themselves song learning russian ship and learning her fine art know if you gonna be a cartoonist he contended as i am sure you do that the idea is more important then learning and all the and not to growing he felt that you could be bogged down a bit and he thought that possibly he had been bogged down a bit by knowing so much i'd like to be bogged down that way myself well i do think you know the way we structure arms you know to put across and wonderfully about pitching a baseball owners aren't goes out in a cartoon

would be exaggerated and got much further than i would normally are you know impossible and if you're a fine artist you know or all of owns oregon i grate against rousseff the seventies to stretch out words as far i've always had that theory are the same as with modern art in non objective painting so forth that a knowledge of true maduro anatomy and all would be a very valuable thing even though ft richie forget it because if you get the basic knowledge of how these things work for instance it's interesting though george mcmanus got away beautifully with all was having gigs running with one arm and one leg on the same side forward and into its in part really couldn't do a bit of a funnier and i think george did purposely lawyer aaron and then i go on the other day kids saying where's beatles other army is weird when you're drawing in the audience seemed to fit into the power has a and those haven't been behind them and couldn't

quite see home or they pick up those things don't they have three fingers you know a lot of people count fingers and how they used to have a fit or walt disney first leaving one finger off but a virus re much easier to make an expressive hand with one finger on but they weren't caught dryness excited pentagon at the vatican but i think we should get on to beat a little bit and on the beginning didn't you have a different name for a beetle bailey well originally when i was drawing for the saturday evening post one courtyard garden yesterday and heard seen some of my college work in suggestive that draw some college curtains and i came up with this one character that i used from time to time and he suggested that perhaps they may use it as a feature and i gave him my name's smarter than them and a little music as a features are

stuck with a more healthful of spiders so to speak so i took on the committee made them into a stroke in and took them to king features they have another district at the time with a secondary character named spider so i just look around for a better body and he came up with the love with you but for the melee come from jon bailey well i think it's a nice though we do to stretch about parents and certainly was a successful name when you began asking features now you didn't have too many papers in the beginning that it's actually started off i was thirty four was a college trip and we found after we launched a much towards mainland colleges differ greatly throughout the country whereas and harvard they may wear derby require richardson jackson thais missouri university where we went you could wear leather jackets and levis means mortars whatever you know you have to wake up in the

morning i think actually it's a lot more interesting or rather comfortable college you had coins are too much better without it but many plays noah's another thing to join the boys and girls in the same class was out of place ribs and unmarried college atmospheres so alone for other drama that one reason it may limited solely college idea how long did that iran long as a college and i'm not too long because your little desperate when manning well when i think about six months and what was the reason than for changing beetle and digging in to the army the korean war just started then but beetle actually couldn't pass the physical could he didn't like it actually was an investor they made some big mirror that scraping along the girl you know there was that you couldn't give enough to fund that i tested because i know never seen his eyes then

but at a rate that was a big shot in the arm and i think that the fact that everyone was keenly interested in the korean war then we'd have fought off and that people are sick and tired of or strips after all world war two stuff but here suddenly you hit the spot actually urging features tells me that if i brought to them as an army strip they wouldn't have launched in the first place and but then it became necessary to change the college idea and since that time there were drafting young men and low iq none violence and i think that's an unfair well the man that perhaps we're devoting their entire capabilities to the college studies doubts that oh we're being drafted into the service and those that were doing better luck in continuing college so it's a human being building way was naturally must go into the service and he did and it was a turner that's formed

again the soil in a way one could say well my winnipeg part chance plays in this first unit of the ongoing spider he may never been successful as spider then he was a college boy and not too successful but partly by chance these things evolve into what is one of the great scripts i think concrete has claimed that no other strip a chick young's blondie has also warned beetle bailey not an idea to a lot of funny papers now as blondie and that's a lot i like quiet approach him and the world has about eight hundred papers all over the world might affect those tolls morning we have some hundred and ninety six in the senate for more on a lot of it never have i don't think it is an advertising campaign ad that well is another couple other papers thrown the world that's right you must've missed a few somewhere but it certainly got around and i wonder now on this chance remember this trip

that harried him and had dragged mop which was a real labor of love beautifully drawn a cartoon a strip but i think while harry was never able to understand why it didn't go i think eastern long for welcoming one paper but it is a beautiful strip i think maybe his was a little bit more of a the specialized audience of you shooting at than yours that the beetle bailey maybe founder universal interest in many ways but he didn't well sometimes the subject matter has something to do with it i think more than that though it's the basic premise of the underlying motive in the strip mall in approach to my would label harry dolan strippers more of an artistic and venture at the utilities a fine artist and you wanted to do something different in the comic strip and i think whenever you do something different you require readers or your editors too reassess their values all over again and it's almost too much less than when you ring and

that's when i saw my show these sewn by the editor of king features said i would advise you not to try to do having great been tremendously different than try to do the old style of thing better than you is being done now and i took that advice to heart and i don't think that i would call the lion artistic success but certainly is very saleable come on yes it is and and i've enjoyed doing and i don't donald on that i'm you know taking my ethics committees but then i'll say i enjoyed every moment i couldn't enjoy the more you have a beautiful balance their of the things that you might be a little bit frustrated and doing other day exit don't just fit from below so mort walker has lost fix the period and other comic strip called i and lost the round rather that you do you're the main motivating force in the editing i write i write this trip underground roads of

iowa system iran yesterday you have to get on in work together as the right to marry to assist know a very fine he's one of about i work with an extremely talented and many respects the renaissance man do you go about searching for the assistance or does someone come along that that works in your style pre well or how an orgy of the way so the way jerry came to me was interesting in a way that i have a man working for me hullo more launches own shtick on this is that says floods frank of river birch and get on our times where companies won't tell you who he is but he says there's a guy would be perfect to work with his job and i can tell you is in him so on when fred were merged others chats to do this message that says floods

you drop a cartoon journalist and telling him that there was a job available in the meantime jerry had just gotten out of college and working on his master's degree and in arizona and had written a cartoon fried rubber saying is or anything available up a new york right at the very moment the very week that frank had quit his job with meeting here comes jerry looking for a job and so he had been with me for five years now he sees he there's that all girl chance thing again did not have to have a half hour of it on the private channel utah jazz i was going to say something like you know you're talking about the house trips change and its effects i would think you more and more than that it is much the same as taking the show on the road before iran's new york you know if you get a chance to have to run for six months or a year to keep trying different things until finally something happens to tell you of all that technique or an approach that works they can only up that old bromide in opportunity

striking but once but that's a lot of bomb because sure you know i think a good chance is coming every day it's still a matter of which jewish jamaican if you make wrong choice one time you get a chance next leader she's around for years and they are now in high analysts believe that a very interesting thing they're bearing up chick young's it again and you don't have to go out and think up gags you take what happened around the house and i'm sure that you get a lot of that from genes and now has two claims that that occur what happens to her in the kitchen especially this disastrous in and give it to the cook and the strip now which is very complimentary actually the court has to cook cooking manual cinema sergeant and a beetle bailey but actually in the end i lost i do jawed observations all day long things that i see the children to eat we're on our seventh child and we have plenty of research mother running around i'm i've

been inspired by you and i have five so that i expected not to get together have a nice quiet for the july to make observations all the time about what the children do many times so they got in trying to make a gag out of it i find that i am not able to do it and i eventually say well why not just do it straight though it happened then it turns out to be well one thing you made morton a family comedy strip isn't org stunted we've always used i think most families trip to be printed on this struggle between husband and wife the fights in which are friendly and all but let's first line of gags you don't do that so much and i enlist now as murch start observing the people i know i don't see many people throwing frying pans and unpaid cups and saucers gigs and maggie and sergeant beetle have private the same thing there and in this ad running battle but it's a very friendly

batte on doesn't seem to be offensive to anyone and i think i could really stick you know for the last few seconds that we have on saying come up with one last big thing for a young artist you think the cartooning for newspapers has the glamour that used to have another does this because there's so much competition lemon autism this journalism and advertising in television and i think back until there's been cartooning was maybe one of our of the few forms of entertainment that we had it was a very glamorous profession well so as foreign service economy more we could go on for hours but i give a sour so no i would it would again sometime thanks a million it written you have been listening to the cartoonist art with verne grain cartoonist for bringing up father mr greene's guest tonight as ben mort walker creator of beetle bailey

next week you will hear an interview with alan saunders writer of the comic strips mary worth and steve cropper dr jonas art is produced by riverside radio w r b r for distribution by the national association of educational progress this is the baby radio network