164-695: Zenas Winsor McCay ( c. 1866–1871 – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo (1905–1914; 1924–1927) and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend . From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums , and in 1898 began illustrating newspapers and magazines. In 1903 he joined
328-516: A Broadway reviewer at the Tribune in 1951. However, the paper's losses were continuing to mount. Whitelaw Reid was gradually replaced by his brother, Ogden R. Reid , nicknamed "Brown", to take charge of the paper. As president and publisher of the paper, Brown Reid tried to interject an energy his brother lacked and reach out to new audiences. In that spirit, the Tribune ran a promotion called "Tangle Towns", where readers were invited to unscramble
492-529: A hit song and a singing group . Despite the show's success, it failed to make back its investment due to its enormous expenses and came to an end in December 1910. McCay displayed his social awareness in the last strip he created for the Herald , Poor Jake . Its title character was a silent laborer who worked thanklessly for a Colonel and Mrs. Stall, who exploit him. The strip ran from 1909 until spring 1911. McCay
656-465: A story arc in Little Nemo in which the characters visit a Mars oppressed by a greedy business magnate. McCay said he was most proud of his animation work. He completed ten animated films between 1911 and 1921, and three more were planned. Inspired by the flip books his son brought home, McCay "came to see the possibility of making moving pictures" of his cartoons. He claimed to be "the first man in
820-473: A "writer's newspaper" and competed with The New York Times in the daily morning market. The paper won twelve Pulitzer Prizes during its lifetime. A "Republican paper, a Protestant paper and a paper more representative of the suburbs than the ethnic mix of the city", according to one later reporter, the Tribune generally did not match the comprehensiveness of The New York Times ' coverage. Its national, international and business coverage, however,
984-516: A Scottish immigrant who came to the United States aged 24. Bennett, a firm Democrat , had established a name in the newspaper business in the 1820s with dispatches sent from Washington, D.C., to the New York Enquirer , most sharply critical of President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay ; one historian called Bennett "the first real Washington reporter". Bennett was also
1148-419: A badge of honor". Reid's hostility to labor led him to bankroll Ottmar Mergenthaler 's development of the linotype machine in 1886, which quickly spread throughout the industry. However, his day-to-day involvement in the operations of the Tribune declined after 1888, when he was appointed Minister to France and largely focused on his political career; Reid even missed a large-scale 50th anniversary party for
1312-409: A child protagonist, lasted one installment that April, and his first color strip, Phurious Phinish of Phoolish Philipe's Phunny Phrolics , appeared in the Herald ' s Sunday supplement that May. McCay's first popular comic strip was Little Sammy Sneeze . The strip starred a young boy whose sneeze would build panel by panel until it was released, with explosively disastrous results, for which he
1476-511: A clear, lively style, and pushed the Herald Tribune ' s local coverage "to a new kind of social journalism that aimed at capturing the temper and feel of the city, its moods and fancies, changes or premonitions of change in its manners, customs, taste, and thought—daily helpings of what amounted to urban anthropology". The Herald Tribune ' s editorials remained conservative—"a spokesman for and guardian of mainstream Republicanism" —but
1640-644: A competitor"; the film itself called McCay "the originator and inventor of Animated Cartoons" and drew attention to the fact that it took 25,000 drawings to complete. The Sinking of the Lusitania did not greatly return on McCay's investment—after a few years' run in theaters, it netted $ 80,000. McCay continued to produce animated films using cels. By 1921, he had completed six, though three were likely never shown commercially to audiences and have survived only in fragments: The Centaurs , Flip's Circus , and Gertie on Tour . In 1921, he released three films based on Dream of
1804-567: A day. If I say the feature is black beetles, black beetles it's going to be." In 1874, the Herald ran the infamous New York Zoo hoax , where the front page of the newspaper was devoted entirely to a fabricated story of animals getting loose at the Central Park Zoo . Whitelaw Reid, who won control of the Tribune in part due to the likely assistance of financier Jay Gould , turned the newspaper into an orthodox Republican organ, wearing "its stubborn editorial and typographical conservatism…as
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#17328559439351968-560: A dozen correspondents in the field, the most famous of whom was Homer Bigart . Allowing wire services to write "big picture" stories, Bigart—who covered the Anzio Campaign , the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa —focused instead on writing about tactical operations conducted by small units and individual soldiers, in order to "bring a dimension of reality and understanding to readers back home". Frequently risking his life to get
2132-570: A film about the Americans' role in World War I. McCay's son Robert married Theresa "Tedda" Munchausen on April 9, 1921. McCay bought them a nearby house as a wedding gift. The couple gave McCay two more grandchildren: Janet (named after McCay's mother) in 1922, and Robert in 1928. Robert suffered shell shock during World War I, and following the war had difficulty drawing. McCay tried to boost his son's confidence by finding him cartooning work, and some of
2296-497: A former glass stainer , influenced McCay's use of color. McCay learned how to draw quickly using drills on a blackboard, and gained an appreciation for master artists of the past. McCay spent two years in Chicago after making his way there sometime in 1889 with his friend Mort Touvers. He traded art techniques there with painter Jules Guérin , whom he met at a boarding house in which he lodged, and did artwork for posters and pamphlets at
2460-566: A full-time position there. His many illustrations for the paper displayed his bold use of perspective and mastery of hatchwork . Soon after, he began freelancing for the humor magazine Life as well. In 1900, McCay accepted a position with a higher salary at The Cincinnati Enquirer . There, he produced a prolific number of drawings, did some reporting, and became head of the art department. In his drawings, he began using line thickness to indicate depth, and used thick lines to surround his characters in an Art Nouveau -inspired style that became
2624-522: A long association with the Reids. Whitney, recently named ambassador to Great Britain, had chaired Dwight Eisenhower 's fundraising campaigns in 1952 and 1956 and was looking for something else to engage him beyond his largely ceremonial role in Great Britain. Whitney, who "did not want the Tribune to die", gave the newspaper $ 1.2 million over the objections of his investment advisors, who had doubts about
2788-586: A major role in the Reids' sale of the Herald Tribune in 1958. Seeking to cut costs during the Recession of 1937 , the newspaper's management decided to consolidate its foreign coverage under Laurence Hills, who had been appointed editor of the Paris Herald by Frank Munsey in 1920 and kept the paper profitable. But Hills had fascist sympathies—the Paris Herald was alone among American newspapers in having "ad columns sprout(ing) with swastikas and fasces —and
2952-533: A moral mission to uplift society, and frequently focused his energies on the newspaper's editorials—"weapons…in a ceaseless war to improve society" —and political coverage. While a lifelong opponent of slavery and, for time, a proponent of socialism , Greeley's attitudes were never exactly fixed: "The result was a potpourri of philosophical inconsistencies and contradictions that undermined Greeley's effectiveness as both logician and polemicist." However, his moralism appealed to rural America; with six months of beginning
3116-559: A new company called Whitney Communications Corporation, proved profitable, but executives chafed at subsidizing the Tribune. Thayer also looked for new leadership for the newspaper. In 1961—the same year Whitney returned to New York—the Tribune hired John Denson, a Newsweek editor and native of Louisiana who was "a critical mass of intensity and irascibility relieved by interludes of amiability." Denson had helped raise Newsweek's circulation by 50 percent during his tenure, in part through innovative layouts and graphics, and he brought
3280-407: A number of addresses before settling into a three-story house at 1901 Voorhies Avenue, where McCay resided for the rest of his life. As his reputation grew, his employers allowed him to work from his home studio more often. While still turning out illustrations and editorial cartoons daily, McCay began three more continuing strips in 1905. In January, he began The Story of Hungry Henrietta , in which
3444-502: A pioneer in crime reporting; while writing about a murder trial in 1830, the attorney general of Massachusetts attempted to restrict the coverage of the newspapers: Bennett criticized the move as an "old, worm-eaten, Gothic dogma of the Court...to consider the publicity given to every event by the Press, as destructive to the interests of law and justice". The fight over access eventually overshadowed
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#17328559439353608-587: A pro-business, internationalist viewpoint. The paper, first owned by the Reid family, struggled financially for most of its life and rarely generated enough profit for growth or capital improvements; the Reids subsidized the Herald Tribune through the paper's early years. However, it enjoyed prosperity during World War II and by the end of the conflict had pulled close to the Times in ad revenue. A series of disastrous business decisions, combined with aggressive competition from
3772-444: A promised $ 5,000 bonus. He returned to the Herald Tribune , and brought back Little Nemo beginning that August. The new strip displayed the virtuoso technique of the old, but the panels were laid out in an unvarying grid. Nemo took a more passive role in the stories, and there was no continuity. The strip came to an end in December 1926, as it was not popular with readers. Hearst executives had been trying to convince McCay to return to
3936-443: A public duty rather than developed as a profit-making opportunity". With its generally marginal profitability, the Herald Tribune had few opportunities to reinvest in its operations as the Times did, and the Reids' mortgage on the newspaper made it difficult to raise outside cash for needed capital improvements. After another profitable year in 1946, Bill Robinson, the Herald Tribune ' s business manager, decided to reinvest
4100-447: A result of the new technology. Publishers were willing to protect jobs and reduce the workforce through attrition, but balked at what they viewed as "tribute payments" to the unions. After nearly a five-month strike, the unions and the publishers reached an agreement in March, 1963—in which the unions won a weekly worker wage and benefit increase of $ 12.63 and largely forestalled automation—and
4264-497: A role in the election of New York City Mayor John Lindsay , a liberal Republican, in 1965. Whitney supported the changes at the Tribune but they did not help the newspaper's bottom line. A survey of readers of the newspaper in late 1963 found that readers "appreciated the Tribune ' s innovations, (but) the Times still plainly ranked as the prestige paper in the New York field, based mostly on its completeness." Whitney himself
4428-503: A similar stance was approached by the Sun and the World-Telegram , the latter of them also having an ardently liberal past as a Pulitzer newspaper. Financially, the paper continued to stay out of the red, but long-term trouble was on the horizon. After Elisabeth Mills Reid died in 1931—after having given the paper $ 15 million over her lifetime—it was discovered that the elder Reid had treated
4592-476: A static background layer, relieving animators of the tedium of retracing static images onto drawing after drawing. McCay had the cels photographed at the Vitagraph studios. The film was naturalistically animated, and made use of dramatic camera angles that would have been impossible in a live-action film. Jewel Productions released the film on July 20, 1918. Advertising touted it as "the picture that will never have
4756-427: A target of Barry Goldwater partisans in the 1964 presidential campaign . The leadership of the Tribune , while agreeing with Goldwater's approach to national defense, believed he pushed it to an extreme, and strongly opposed Goldwater's voting record on civil rights. After some internal debate, the Tribune endorsed Democrat Lyndon Johnson for the presidency that fall. The newspaper's editorial support also played
4920-595: A trademark of his work. From January until November 1903, McCay drew an ongoing proto-comic strip for the Enquirer based on poems written by George Randolph Chester called A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle . Before the last two installments appeared in print, McCay had moved to New York City to work for James Gordon Bennett, Jr. 's New York Herald , at first doing illustrations and editorial cartoons. He worked alongside comic strip pioneer Richard F. Outcault , who
5084-484: A variety of formats, including booklets , comic strips , comic books , editorial cartoons , graphic novels , manuals , gag cartoons , storyboards , posters , shirts , books , advertisements , greeting cards , magazines , newspapers , webcomics , and video game packaging . A cartoonist's discipline encompasses both authorial and drafting disciplines (see interdisciplinary arts ). The terms "comics illustrator", "comics artist", or "comic book artist" refer to
Winsor McCay - Misplaced Pages Continue
5248-602: A vaudeville performance, Hearst pulled from his papers advertising for the theatre where McCay performed. Editor Arthur Brisbane told him that he was "a serious artist, not a comic cartoonist", and that he was to give up his comic strip work to focus on editorial illustrations. Hearst pressured McCay's agents to reduce the number of his vaudeville appearances, and he was induced to sign a contract with Hearst that limited his vaudeville appearances to greater New York, with occasional exceptions. In February 1917, Hearst had McCay give up entirely on vaudeville and all other paid work outside
5412-399: A whip. Gertie seemed to obey McCay, bowing to the audience, and eating a tree and a boulder, though she had a will of her own and sometimes rebelled. When McCay admonished her, she cried. McCay consoled her by throwing her an apple—in reality pocketing the cardboard prop apple as a cartoon one simultaneously appeared on screen. In the finale, McCay walked offstage, reappeared in animated form in
5576-429: A year between 1942 and 1945. In 1946, the Herald Tribune ' s Sunday circulation hit an all-time peak of 708,754. The Herald Tribune began a decline shortly after World War II that had several causes. The Reid family was long accustomed to resolve shortfalls at the newspaper with subsidies from their fortune, rather than improved business practices, seeing the paper "as a hereditary possession to be sustained as
5740-570: Is Mrs. Reid who often helps that independent mind make itself up". Editorially, the newspaper thrived, winning its first Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1930 for Leland Stowe 's coverage of the Second Reparations Conference on German reparations for World War I , where the Young Plan was developed. Stanley Walker , who became the newspaper's city editor in 1928, pushed his staff (which briefly included Joseph Mitchell) to write in
5904-430: Is highly unlikely that a first-time animator could have produced such an accomplished piece of animation. After 1921, McCay was made to give up on animation when Hearst learned he devoted more of his time to animation than to his newspaper illustrations. Unexecuted ideas McCay had for animation projects included a collaboration with Jungle Imps author George Randolph Chester, a musical film called The Barnyard Band , and
6068-512: Is naturalistic—rather than expanding like a balloon, with each sip of blood the mosquito's abdomen swells according to its body structure. The film was completed in January 1912, and McCay toured with it that spring and summer. Gertie the Dinosaur debuted in February 1914 as part of McCay's vaudeville act. McCay introduced Gertie as "the only dinosaur in captivity", and commanded the animated beast with
6232-514: The New York Herald , where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend . In 1905 his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted—a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveau style about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay's strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective . McCay experimented with
6396-536: The New York Herald Tribune stated, "not even Mr. McCay knew his exact age". The McCays had two more children: Arthur in 1868, and Mae in 1876. Both were born in Michigan. Robert worked as a teamster under Winsor, and by May 1870 had saved enough money to buy a parcel of land. From 1879 to 1881, he worked as a retail grocer. In 1885 he moved the family to Stanton, Michigan , and expanded his land holdings; he
6560-627: The New York Journal in 1895 and attempted to ape Pulitzer's methods in a more sensationalistic manner. The challenge of The World and the Journal spurred Bennett to revitalize the paper; the Herald competed keenly with both papers during coverage of the Spanish–American War , providing "the soundest, fairest coverage…(of) any American newspaper", sending circulation over 500,000. The Tribune largely relied on wire copy for its coverage of
6724-605: The New York Journal-American in the spring of 1966; the proposed merger led to another lengthy strike, and on August 15, 1966, Whitney announced the closure of the Herald Tribune . Combined with investments in the World Journal Tribune , Whitney spent $ 39.5 million (equivalent to $ 370,710,006 in 2023 dollars ) in his attempts to keep the newspaper alive. After the New York Herald Tribune closed,
Winsor McCay - Misplaced Pages Continue
6888-484: The American , and succeeded in 1927. While McCay was gone, his place had been filled by Mel Cummin , who was let go after McCay's return. Due to the lack of the 1920s Nemo's success, the Herald Tribune signed over all copyrights to the strip to McCay for one dollar. In 1927, McCay attended a dinner in his honor in New York. After a considerable amount of drinking, McCay was introduced by animator Max Fleischer . McCay gave
7052-492: The American News Company , the controller of many commuter newsstands, to achieve prominent display. Tribune executives were not blind to the challenge, but the economy drive at the paper undercut efforts to adequately compete. The newspaper fell into the red in 1951. The Herald Tribune ' s losses reached $ 700,000 in 1953, and Robinson resigned late that year. The paper distinguished itself in its coverage of
7216-601: The Canada–United States border later in the year and settled in Spring Lake, Michigan , on the eastern coast of Lake Michigan . Robert was employed by American entrepreneur Zenas G. Winsor (1814–1890), with whom he had made contact in Canada. Records of McCay's birth are not extant. He stated in an interview in 1910 that he was born in 1869, and this is the year listed on his grave marker. Late in life, he told friends he
7380-465: The Herald as a means of supporting his lifestyle, did not make serious moves to expand the newspaper's newsgathering operations, and allowed the paper's circulation to fall well below 100,000 by 1912. The Herald suffered a fatal blow in 1907. Bennett, his hatred for the Journal owner unabated, attacked Hearst's campaigns for Congress in 1902, and his run for governor of New York in 1906. The Herald ' s coverage of Hearst's gubernatorial campaign
7544-502: The Herald the most comprehensive source of news among the city's newspapers. Bennett also bankrolled Henry Morton Stanley 's trek through Africa to find David Livingstone , and scooped the competition on the Battle of Little Big Horn . However, Bennett ruled his paper with a heavy hand, telling his executives at one point that he was the "only reader of this paper": "I am the only one to be pleased. If I want it turned upside down, it must be turned upside down. I want one feature article
7708-423: The Herald . The elder Reid refused to sell, saying only that she would buy the Herald . The two sides negotiated through the winter and spring. Munsey approached Ogden Reid with a proposal to swap the profitable evening Sun with the Tribune , which Reid refused. The Reids countered with an offer of $ 5 million for the Herald and the Paris Herald , which Munsey agreed to on March 17, 1924. The move surprised
7872-472: The Herald Tribune to surrender the edge in foreign reporting to its rival. The Herald Tribune strongly supported Wendell Willkie for the Republican nomination in the 1940 presidential election ; Willkie's managers made sure the newspaper's endorsement was placed in each delegate's seat at the 1940 Republican National Convention . The Herald Tribune continued to provide a strong voice for Willkie (who
8036-445: The Journal , led to Bennett's conviction on charges of sending obscene matter through the mails. The publisher was ordered to pay a $ 25,000 fine—Bennett paid it in $ 1,000 bills —and the Herald "suffered a blow in prestige and circulation from which it never really recovered". Whitelaw Reid died in 1912 and was succeeded as publisher by his son, Ogden Mills Reid . The younger Reid, an "affable but lackluster person," began working at
8200-559: The Keith circuit refused McCay to perform in Boston without a new act, McCay switched to the William Morris circuit, with a $ 100-a-week raise. In several cities, McCay brought his son, who as publicity sat on a small throne dressed as Nemo. As part of an improvised story, Cawthorn introduced a mythical creature he called a " Whiffenpoof ". The word caught on with the public, and became the name of
8364-457: The Korean War ; Bigart and Marguerite Higgins , who engaged in a fierce rivalry, shared a Pulitzer Prize with Chicago Daily News correspondent Keyes Beech and three other reporters in 1951. The Tribune ' s cultural criticism was also prominent: John Crosby's radio and television column was syndicated in 29 newspapers by 1949, and Walter Kerr began a successful three-decade career as
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#17328559439358528-511: The Log Cabin , which advocated for the election of William Henry Harrison in the 1840 presidential election , attained a circulation of 80,000 and turned a small profit. With Whigs in power, Greeley saw the opportunity to launch a daily penny newspaper for their constituency. The New-York Tribune launched on April 10, 1841. Unlike the Herald or the Sun , it generally shied about from graphic crime coverage; Greeley saw his newspaper as having
8692-556: The Mexican–American War broke out in 1846, the Herald assigned a reporter to the conflict—the only newspaper in New York to do so—and used the telegraph , then a new technology, to not only beat competitors with news but provide Washington policymakers with the first reports from the conflict. During the American Civil War , Bennett kept at least 24 correspondents in the field, opened a Southern desk and had reporters comb
8856-626: The Republican Party , had called for reconciliation of North and South following the war and criticized Radical Reconstruction . Gradually becoming disenchanted with Ulysses S. Grant , Greeley became the surprise nominee of the Liberal Republican faction of the party (and the Democrats) in the 1872 presidential election . The editor had left daily operations of the Tribune to his protege, Whitelaw Reid ; he attempted to resume his job after
9020-648: The Republican elephant . Comic strips received widespread distribution to mainstream newspapers by syndicates . Calum MacKenzie, in his preface to the exhibition catalog, The Scottish Cartoonists (Glasgow Print Studio Gallery, 1979) defined the selection criteria: Many strips were the work of two people although only one signature was displayed. Shortly after Frank Willard began Moon Mullins in 1923, he hired Ferd Johnson as his assistant. For decades, Johnson received no credit. Willard and Johnson traveled about Florida , Maine, Los Angeles , and Mexico, drawing
9184-522: The Times and The Washington Post , joined by Whitney, entered an agreement to operate the International Herald Tribune , the paper's former Paris publication. By 1967, the paper was owned jointly by Whitney Communications, The Washington Post and The New York Times . The International Herald Tribune , also known as the "IHT", ceased publication in 2013. The New York Herald was founded on May 6, 1835, by James Gordon Bennett ,
9348-476: The Times and poor leadership from the Reid family, left the Herald Tribune far behind its rival. In 1958, the Reids sold the Herald Tribune to John Hay Whitney , a multimillionaire Wall Street investor who was serving as ambassador to the United Kingdom at the time. Under his leadership, the Tribune experimented with new layouts and new approaches to reporting the news and made important contributions to
9512-430: The Times outdistanced its rival in circulation and ad lineage, the Tribune continued to draw a sizeable amount of advertising, due to its wealthy readership. The Times management watched the Tribune ' s changes with "uneasy contempt for their debasement of classic Tribune craftmanship but also with grudging admiration for their catchiness and shrewdness." Times managing editor Turner Catledge began visiting
9676-413: The Times picked up 220,000 readers during the 1950s, its profits declined to $ 348,000 by 1960 due to the costs of an international edition and investments into the newspaper. A western edition of the newspaper, launched in 1961 by new publisher Orvil Dryfoos in an attempt to build the paper's national audience, also proved to be a drain and the Times profits fell to $ 59,802 by the end of 1961. While
9840-462: The Times . Denson's approaches to the front page often required expensive work stoppages to redo the front page, which increased expenses and drew concern from Whitney and Thayer. Denson also had a heavy-handed approach to the newsroom that led some to question his stability, and led him to clash with Thayer. Denson left the Tribune in October 1962 after Thayer attempted to move the nightly lockup of
10004-535: The Tribune ' s new Sunday magazine, New York , edited by Clay Felker . Bellows also prominently featured Jimmy Breslin in the columns of the Tribune, as well as writer Gail Sheehy . Editorially, the newspaper remained in the liberal Republican camp, both strongly anti-communist, pro-business, and supportive of civil rights. In April 1963, the Tribune published the " Letter from Birmingham Jail ", written by Martin Luther King Jr. . The Tribune became
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#173285594393510168-516: The Tribune ' s new audiences; the Sunday edition began to slide again and the paper fell into the red in 1957. Through the decade, the Tribune was the only newspaper in the city to see its share of ad lineage drop, and longtime veterans of the paper, including Bigart, began departing. The Reids, who had by now turned their mortgage into stock, began seeking buyers to infuse the Tribune with cash, turning to John Hay "Jock" Whitney , whose family had
10332-425: The Tribune ' s readership. In her first two years on the job, the Tribune ' s annual advertising revenues jumped from $ 1.7 million to $ 4.3 million, "with circulation responsible for no more than 10 percent of the increase". Reid's efforts helped cut the newspaper's dependence on subsidies from the family fortune and pushed it toward a paying track. Reid also encouraged the development of women's features at
10496-692: The Tribune in 1891. Despite this, the paper remained profitable due to an educated and wealthy readership that attracted advertisers. The Herald was the largest circulation newspaper in New York City until 1884. Joseph Pulitzer , who came from St. Louis and purchased the New York World in 1882, aggressively marketed a mix of crime stories and social reform editorials to a predominantly immigrant audience, and saw his circulation quickly surpass those of more established publishers. Bennett, who had moved permanently to Paris in 1877 after publicly urinating in
10660-501: The Tribune in 1908 as a reporter and won the loyalty of the staff with his good nature and eagerness to learn. Quickly moved through the ranks—he became managing editor in 1912—Reid oversaw the Tribune ' s thorough coverage of the sinking of the Titanic , ushering a revival of the newspaper's fortunes. While the paper continued to lose money, and was saved from bankruptcy only by the generosity of Elisabeth Mills Reid, Ogden's mother.,
10824-764: The Tribune , Greeley combined The New-Yorker and The Log Cabin into a new publication, the Weekly Tribune . The weekly version circulated nationwide, serving as a digest of news melded with agriculture tips. Offering prizes like strawberry plants and gold pens to salesmen, the Weekly Tribune reached a circulation of 50,000 within 10 years, outpacing the Herald ' s weekly edition. The Tribune's ranks included Henry Raymond , who later founded The New York Times , and Charles Dana , who would later edit and partly own The Sun for nearly three decades. Dana served as second-in-command to Greeley, but Greeley abruptly fired him in 1862, after years of personality conflicts between
10988-515: The Tribune , and promoted James Bellows to editor of the newspaper. Bellows kept Denson's format but "eliminated features that lacked substance or sparkle" while promoting new talent, including movie critic Judith Crist and Washington columnists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans . From 1963 until its demise, the Tribune published a weekly magazine supplement titled Book Week ; Susan Sontag published two early essays there. The Tribune also began experimenting with an approach to news that later
11152-587: The Tribune , and these readers stayed with The Times after the war into the Nineteen-fifties and Sixties". Although The New York Times had the most comprehensive coverage of any American newspaper—the newspaper put 55 correspondents in the field, including drama critic Brooks Atkinson —its news budget fell from $ 3.8 million in 1940 to $ 3.7 million in 1944; the paper did not significantly expand its number of newsroom employees between 1937 and 1945 and its ad space, far from declining, actually increased during
11316-420: The vaudeville circuit. For $ 500 per week he was to draw twenty-five sketches in fifteen minutes before live audiences, as a pit band played a piece called "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend". In his The Seven Ages of Man routine, he drew two faces and progressively aged them. His first performance was on June 11, 1906, in a show that also featured entertainer W. C. Fields . It was a success, and McCay toured with
11480-495: The 18th century, poked fun at contemporary politics and customs; illustrations in such style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". Following the work of Hogarth, editorial/political cartoons began to develop in England in the latter part of the 18th century under the direction of its great exponents, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson , both from London. Gillray explored the use of the medium for lampooning and caricature , calling
11644-587: The Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur. McCay and his assistants worked for twenty-two months on his most ambitious film, The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), a patriotic recreation of the German torpedoing in 1915 of the RMS Lusitania . Lusitania did not enjoy as much commercial success as the earlier films, and McCay's later movies attracted little attention. His animation, vaudeville, and comic strip work
11808-495: The Guild's leadership and thrust ITU to the fore. New technology was also a concern for management and labor. Teletypesetting (TTS), introduced in the 1950s, was used by The Wall Street Journal and promised to be far more efficient than the linotype machines still used by the Tribune and most other New York newspapers. TTS required less skill than the complex linotype machines, and publishers wanted to automate to save money. ITU
11972-552: The Hearst empire, though he was occasionally granted permission for particular shows. Hearst increased McCay's salary to cover the loss of income. McCay was expected to report daily to the American building, where he shared a ninth-floor office with humorist Arthur "Bugs" Baer and sports cartoonist Joe McGurk. There, he illustrated editorials by Arthur Brisbane, who often sent back McCay's drawings with instructions for changes. The quality of his drawings varied depending on his interest in
12136-535: The National Printing and Engraving Company. In 1891, McCay moved to Cincinnati , where he did more dime museum work while living in a boarding house near his workplace. He spent nine years making posters and other advertisements for the Kohl & Middleton Dime Museum, and later Heck and Avery's Family Theater (1896), Avery's New Dime Museum (1898), and Will S. Heck's Wonder World and Theater (1899) on Vine Street . At
12300-414: The Rarebit Fiend : Bug Vaudeville , in which insects and other creepy-crawlies perform on stage; The Pet , in which a creature with a bottomless appetite grows enormously and terrorizes the city in a way reminiscent of King Kong ; and The Flying House , in which a man attaches wings to his house to flee from debt. McCay's son Robert is credited with the animation on this last film, but Canemaker notes it
12464-419: The Reid family was once again forced to subsidize the newspaper. By 1933, the Herald Tribune turned a profit of $ 300,000, and would stay in the black for the next 20 years, without ever making enough money for significant growth or reinvestment. Through the 1930s Ogden Reid often stayed late at Bleeck's, a popular hangout for Herald Tribune reporters.; by 1945, Tribune historian Richard Kluger wrote, Reid
12628-542: The U.S. entered World War I. McCay's self-financed Lusitania took nearly two years to complete. With the assistance of John Fitzsimmons and Cincinnati cartoonist William Apthorp "Ap" Adams, McCay spent his off hours drawing the film on sheets of cellulose acetate (or " cels ") with white and black India ink at McCay's home. It was the first film McCay made using cels, a technology animator Earl Hurd had patented in 1914; it saved work by allowing dynamic drawings to be made on one or more layers, which could be laid over
12792-466: The allegations, and gave testimony at the Lambkins' divorce trial. The blackmail failed, and the divorce was not granted. Hearst animation studio International Film Service began in December 1915, and brought Hearst cartoonists to the screen. McCay was initially listed as one of them, but the studio never produced anything either by his hands or featuring his creations. McCay derived satisfaction from doing
12956-414: The backgrounds. McCay pioneered the "McCay Split System" of inbetweening , in which major poses or positions were drawn first, and the intervening frames drawn after. This relieved tedium and improved the timing of the film's actions. McCay refused to patent his system, and was sued in 1914 by animator John Randolph Bray , who took advantage of McCay's lapse by patenting many of McCay's techniques, including
13120-561: The body of New Journalism that developed in the 1960s. The paper steadily revived under Whitney, but a 114-day newspaper strike stopped the Herald Tribune ' s gains and ushered in four years of strife with labor unions, particularly the local chapter of the International Typographical Union . Faced with mounting losses, Whitney attempted to merge the Herald Tribune with the New York World-Telegram and
13284-461: The business side of the paper, combined with an increasing reputation as a "newspaperman's newspaper", led the Herald Tribune to post a profit of nearly $ 1.5 million in 1929, as circulation climbed over the 300,000 mark. The onset of the Great Depression , however, wiped out the profits. In 1931, the Herald Tribune lost $ 650,000 (equivalent to approximately $ 14,515,610 in 2023 dollars ), and
13448-493: The characters, which he did under the title In the Land of Wonderful Dreams . The Herald was unsuccessful in finding another cartoonist to continue the original strip. McCay began work that May on his next animated film, How a Mosquito Operates , based on a Rarebit Fiend episode from June 5, 1909, in which a man in bed tries in vain to defend himself from a giant mosquito, which drinks itself so full that it explodes. The animation
13612-470: The child protagonist visibly ages week by week, and eats compulsively in lieu of the love she craves from her parents. A Pilgrim's Progress by Mister Bunion was another "Silas" strip for The Evening Telegram , which ran from June 1905 until May 1909. Mr. Bunion spent each strip unsuccessfully scheming to rid himself of his suitcase, labeled "Dull Care". McCay got "an idea from the Rarebit Fiend to please
13776-449: The circulation in 1872 —saw the Tribune's readership jump to about 130,000 by 1924. Reid's wife, Helen Rogers Reid , took charge of the newspaper's advertising department in 1919. Helen Reid, "who believed in the newspaper the way a religious person believes in God", reorganized the faltering department, aggressively pursuing advertisers and selling them on the "wealth, position and power" of
13940-459: The city but, like other newspaper unions, had taken a backseat to the Newspaper Guild (which had the largest membership among the unions) in contract negotiations. This arrangement began to fray in the 1950s, as the craft unions felt the Guild was too inclined to accept publishers' offers without concern for those who did the manual work of printing. Powers wanted to call a strike to challenge
14104-402: The city room of his newspaper to read the early edition of the Tribune and sometimes responded with changes, though he ultimately decided Denson's approach would be unsuccessful. But the financial challenges both papers faced led Dryfoos, Thayer, and previous Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger to discuss a possible merger of the Times and the Tribune, a project codenamed "Canada" at
14268-604: The city's newspapers resumed publication on April 1, 1963. The strike added new costs to all newspapers, and increased the Tribune ' s losses to $ 4.2 million while slashing its circulation to 282,000. Dryfoos died of a heart ailment shortly after the strike and was replaced as Times publisher by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger , who ended merger talks with the Tribune because "it just didn't make any long-term sense to me." The paper also lost long-established talent, including Marguerite Higgins, Earl Mazo and Washington bureau chief Robert Donovan. Whitney, however, remained committed to
14432-409: The clan M-c-C-A-Y.' And that is how I got both my name and my sense of humor. I just couldn't stop drawing anything and everything. —Winsor McCay McCay came to be known by his middle name, Winsor. His drawing skills emerged early. According to a story told within the family, McCay made his first drawing in the aftermath of one of the many fires that hit Spring Lake: he picked up a nail and etched
14596-405: The conflict and was consistently ahead of the Herald Tribune ' s. Between 1941 and 1945, advertising space in the Times increased from 42.58 percent of the paper to 49.68 percent, while the Tribune saw its ad space increase from 37.58 percent to 49.32 percent. In 1943 and 1944, more than half the Times ' went to advertising, a percentage the Herald Tribune did not meet until after
14760-407: The conflict. Reid, who helped negotiate the treaty that ended the war had by 1901 become completely disengaged from the Tribune ' s daily operations. The paper was no longer profitable, and the Reids largely viewed the paper as a "private charity case". By 1908, the Tribune was losing $ 2,000 a week. In an article about New York City's daily newspapers that year, The Atlantic Monthly found
14924-566: The dime museum with her sister while he was painting. He rushed to his studio to change into a custom-tailored suit, returned, and introduced himself to the fourteen-year-old Maude. Soon they eloped in Covington, Kentucky . McCay began working on the side for the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune , where he learned to draw with a dip pen under the tutelage of Commercial Tribune art room manager Joseph Alexander. In 1898, he accepted
15088-596: The elder McCay's editorial cartoons were signed "Robert Winsor McCay, Jr." Robert also briefly revived the Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend strip as Rabid Reveries starting in 1924. In 1922, McCay resumed doing vaudeville shows for the Keith circuit. He had a cameo in a newspaper office scene in the boxing film The Great White Way in early 1924. McCay left Hearst upon the expiration of his contract in May 1924, bitter over not having received
15252-414: The election, but was badly hurt by a piece (intended humorously) that said Greeley's defeat would chase political office seekers from the Tribune and allow the staff to "manage our own newspaper without being called aside every hour to help lazy people whom we don't know and…benefit people who don't deserve assistance". The piece was widely (and incorrectly) attributed to Greeley as a sign of bitterness at
15416-457: The expense of its advertising, while the Herald Tribune chose to run more ads, trading short-term profit for long-term difficulties. In The Kingdom and the Power , Talese's 1969 book about the Times , Talese wrote "the additional space that The Times was able to devote to war coverage instead of advertising was, in the long run, a very profitable decision: The Times lured many readers away from
15580-402: The extreme". His promotions included printing the sports section on green newsprint and a pocket-sized magazine for television listings that initially stopped the Sunday paper's circulation skid, but proved an empty product. The Tribune turned a profit in 1956, but the Times was rapidly outpacing it in news content, circulation, and ad revenue. The promotions largely failed to hold on to
15744-478: The film, and had Gertie carry him away. Producer William Fox 's Box Office Attractions obtained distribution rights to a modified version of Gertie that could be played in regular movie theaters. This version was prefaced with a live-action sequence and replaced the interactive portions with intertitles . Gertie was McCay's first piece of animation with detailed backgrounds. McCay drew the foreground characters, while art student neighbor John A. Fitzsimmons traced
15908-501: The fireplace or piano of his fiancée's parents (the exact location differed in witnesses' memories) spent the Herald ' s still sizable profits on his own lifestyle, and the Herald's circulation stagnated. Bennett respected Pulitzer, and even ran an editorial praising the publisher of The World after health problems forced him to relinquish the editorship of the paper in 1890. However, he despised William Randolph Hearst , who purchased
16072-569: The first American newspaper to use the Bodoni font for headlines. The font gave a "decided elegance" to the Tribune and was soon adopted by magazines and other newspapers, including The Washington Post , The Boston Globe and the Miami Herald . The Tribune developed a reputation for typographical excellence it would maintain for more than four decades. Reid, who inherited a newspaper whose circulation may have fallen to 25,000 daily—no higher than
16236-449: The formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit. McCay was an early animation pioneer; between 1911 and 1921 he self-financed and animated ten films, some of which survive only as fragments. The first three served in his vaudeville act; Gertie
16400-480: The frames of the originally black-and-white animation. McCay had become frustrated with the Herald , partly over money issues and partly because he perceived a lack of freedom. He accepted a higher-paying offer in spring 1911 from Hearst at the New York American and took Little Nemo ' s characters with him. The Herald held the strip's copyright, but McCay won a lawsuit that allowed him to continue using
16564-514: The gathered group of animators some technical advice, but when he felt the audience was not giving him attention, he berated his audience, saying, "Animation is an art. That is how I conceived it. But as I see, what you fellows have done with it, is making it into a trade. Not an art, but a trade. Bad Luck! " That September he appeared on the radio at WNAC , and on November 2 he was interviewed by Frank Craven for The Evening Journal ' s Woman's Hour . During both appearances he complained about
16728-592: The hospitals to develop lists of casualties and deliver messages from the wounded to their families. The New-York Tribune was founded by Horace Greeley in 1841. Greeley, a native of New Hampshire , had begun publishing a weekly paper called The New-Yorker (unrelated to the magazine of the same name ) in 1834, which won attention for its political reporting and editorials. Joining the Whig Party , Greeley published The Jeffersonian , which helped elect William H. Seward Governor of New York State in 1838, and then
16892-504: The journalism community, which had expected Munsey to purchase the Tribune . The Herald management informed its staff of the sale in a brief note posted on a bulletin board; reading it, one reporter remarked "Jonah just swallowed the whale". The merged paper, which published its first edition on March 19, was named the New York Herald New York Tribune until May 31, 1926, when the more familiar New York Herald Tribune
17056-751: The king ( George III ), prime ministers and generals to account, and has been referred to as the father of the political cartoon. While never a professional cartoonist, Benjamin Franklin is credited with the first cartoon published in The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754: Join, or Die , depicting the American colonies as segments of a snake. In the 19th century, professional cartoonists such as Thomas Nast , whose work appeared in Harper's Weekly , introduced other familiar American political symbols, such as
17220-469: The last panel, cursing the Welsh rarebit they had eaten the night before, which they blamed for bringing on the dream. Rarebit Fiend was so popular that a book collection appeared in 1905 from publisher Frederick A. Stokes . It was adapted to film by Edwin S. Porter , and plans were made for a "comic opera or musical extravaganza" for stage that failed to materialize. McCay signed the Rarebit Fiend strips with
17384-412: The little folk", and in October 1905 the full-page Sunday strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted in the Herald . Considered McCay's masterpiece, its child protagonist had fabulous dreams, interrupted each week with his awakening in the final panel. Nemo's appearance was based on McCay's son Robert. McCay experimented with formal aspects of the comics page: he made inventive use of timing and pacing,
17548-463: The morning Sun (which he had purchased in 1916) into the Herald and attempted to revive the newspaper through his financial resources, hoping to establish the Herald as the pre-eminent Republican newspaper within the city. To achieve that end, he approached Elisabeth Mills Reid in early 1924 with a proposal to purchase the Tribune —the only other Republican newspaper in New York—and merge it with
17712-450: The most authentic and thorough list of market prices published anywhere; for these alone it commanded attention in financial circles". Bennett, who wrote much of the newspaper himself, "perfected the fresh, pointed prose practiced in the French press at its best". The publisher's coverage of the 1836 murder of Helen Jewett —which, for the first time in the American press, included excerpts from
17876-449: The murder victim's correspondence—made Bennett "the best known, if most notorious…journalist in the country". Bennett put his profits back into his newspaper, establishing a Washington bureau and recruiting correspondents in Europe to provide the "first systematic foreign coverage" in an American newspaper. By 1839, the Herald ' s circulation exceeded that of The London Times . When
18040-437: The museum in 1896, a demonstration of Thomas Edison 's Vitascope was given, which was likely McCay's first exposure to the young medium of film. He also did work during this time for Ph. Morton's printing and lithography company. McCay's ability to draw quickly with great accuracy drew crowds when he painted advertisements in public. His first year at Kohl & Middleton, McCay was smitten when Maude Leonore Dufour walked into
18204-411: The names of jumbled up town and city names in exchange for prizes. Reid also gave more prominent play to crime and entertainment stories. Much of the staff, including Whitelaw Reid, felt there was too much focus on circulation at the expense of the paper's editorial standards, but the promotions initially worked, boosting its weekday circulation to over 400,000. Reid's ideas, however, "were prosaic in
18368-467: The new front page "all overblown pictures (and) klaxon headlines" —but the newspaper's circulation jumped in 1961 and those within the Tribune said "the alternative seemed to be the death of the newspaper." The Tribune also launched an ad campaign targeting the Times with the slogan "Who says a good newspaper has to be dull?" The Tribune ' s revival came as the Times was bringing on new leadership and facing financial trouble of its own. While
18532-561: The news side, reducing its foreign and crime coverage. Robinson was dismissive of the circulation lead of the Times , saying in a 1948 memo that 75,000 of its rival's readers were "transients" who only read the wanted ads. The Times also began to push the Tribune hard in suburbs, where the Tribune had previously enjoyed a commanding lead. At the urging of Goldstein, Times editors added features to appeal to commuters, expanded (and in some cases subsidized) home delivery, and paid retail display allowances—"kickbacks, in common parlance"—to
18696-542: The newspaper also hired columnist Walter Lippmann , seen at the time as a liberal, after The World closed its doors in 1931. Unlike other pro-Republican papers, such as Hearst's New York Journal-American or the Chicago Tribune -owned New York Daily News , which held an isolationist and pro-German stance, the Herald Tribune was more supportive of the British and the French as the specter of World War II developed,
18860-593: The newspaper and done creditable work covering the London Blitz , but had not been trained for the duties of his position and was unable to provide forceful leadership for the newspaper. The Tribune also failed to keep pace with the Times in its facilities: While both papers had about the same level of profits between 1947 and 1950, the Times was heavily reinvesting money in its plant and hiring new employees. The Tribune , meanwhile, with Helen Reid's approval, cut $ 1 million from its budgets and fired 25 employees on
19024-448: The newspaper since the 1924 merger initially attempted to keep editorial control of the paper, but Whitney made it clear he would not invest additional money in the Tribune if the Reids remained at the helm. The family yielded, and Helen, Whitie and Brown Reid announced Whitney's takeover of the newspaper on August 28, 1958. The Reids retained a substantial stake in the Tribune until its demise, but Whitney and his advisors controlled
19188-602: The newspaper to managing editor James Bellows . But Denson's approach would continue at the paper. Daily circulation at the Tribune reached an all-time high of 412,000 in November, 1962. The New York newspaper industry came to an abrupt halt on December 8, 1962, when the local of the International Typographical Union , led by Bert Powers, walked off the job, leading to the 114-day 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike . The ITU, known as "Big Six", represented 3,800 printers, as well as workers at 600 printshops and 28 publications in
19352-458: The newspaper's "financial pages … execrable, its news columns readable but utterly commonplace, and its rubber-stamping of Republican policies (making) it the last sheet in town operated as a servant of party machinery". The Herald also saw its reputation for comprehensiveness challenged by the Times , purchased by Chattanooga Times publisher Adolph Ochs in 1896, a few weeks before the paper would have likely closed its doors. Ochs, turning
19516-426: The newspaper's viability. The loan came with the option to take controlling interest of the newspaper if he made a second loan of $ 1.3 million. Brown Reid expected the $ 1.2 million to cover a deficit that would last through the end of 1958, but by that year the newspaper's loss was projected at $ 3 million, and Whitney and his advisors decided to exercise their option. The Reids, claiming to have put $ 20 million into
19680-430: The newspaper, the hiring of female writers, and helped establish a "home institute" that tested recipes and household products. The Herald ' s decline continued in the new decade. With the outbreak of World War I, Bennett devoted most of his attention to the Paris Herald , doing his first newspaper reporting at the age of 73 and keeping the publication alive despite wartime censorship. The New York paper, however,
19844-419: The once-Republican Times into an independent Democratic newspaper, refocused the newspaper's coverage on commerce, quickly developing a reputation as the "businessman's bible". When the Times began turning a profit in 1899, Ochs began reinvesting the profits make into the newspaper toward news coverage, quickly giving the Times the reputation as the most complete newspaper in the city. Bennett, who viewed
20008-464: The outcome; Reid refused to print Greeley's furious disclaimer of the story, and by the end of the month, Greeley had died. Both newspapers went into gradual decline under their new proprietors. James Gordon Bennett Jr.—"a swaggering, precociously dissolute lout who rarely stifled an impulse" —had a mercurial reign. He launched the New York Telegram , an evening paper, in the late 1860s and kept
20172-575: The overall percentage of advertising for the paper was higher than it was in 1947, the Times was still higher: 58 percent of the average space in The New York Times in 1947 was devoted to advertising, versus a little over 50 percent of the Tribune . The Times would not raise its price until 1950. Ogden Reid died early in 1947, making Helen Reid leader of the Tribune in name as well as in fact. Reid chose her son, Whitelaw Reid , known as "Whitie", as editor. The younger Reid had written for
20336-519: The paper. Whitney initially left management of the newspaper to Walter Thayer, a longtime advisor. Thayer did not believe the Tribune was a financial investment—"it was a matter of 'let's set it up so that (Whitney) can do it if this is what he wants" —but moved to build a "hen house" of media properties to protect Whitney's investment and provide money for the Tribune . Over the next two years, Whitney's firm acquired Parade , five television stations and four radio stations. The properties, merged into
20500-508: The pen name "Silas", as his contract required that he not use his real name for Evening Telegram work. The McCays had been living in Manhattan, close to the Herald offices; before 1905 they moved to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, a seaside resort on Long Island . It was an hour commute from the Herald offices, but they believed it to be a better place to raise children. They lived at
20664-475: The picture-making portion of the discipline of cartooning (see illustrator ). While every "cartoonist" might be considered a "comics illustrator", "comics artist", or a "comic book artist", not every "comics illustrator", "comics artist", or a "comic book artist" is a "cartoonist". Ambiguity might arise when illustrators and writers share each other's duties in authoring a work. The English satirist and editorial cartoonist William Hogarth , who emerged in
20828-416: The profits to make needed upgrades to the newspaper's pressroom. The investment squeezed the paper's resources, and Robinson decided to make up the difference at the end of the year by raising the Tribune ' s price from three cents to a nickel , expecting the Times , which also needed to upgrade its facilities, to do the same. However, the Times , concerned by the Tribune ' s performance during
20992-439: The same approach to the Tribune . Denson "swept away the old front-page architecture, essentially vertical in structure" and laid out stories horizontally, with unorthodox and sometimes cryptic headlines; large photos and information boxes. The "Densonized" front page sparked a mixed reaction from media professionals and within the newspaper— Tribune copy editor John Price called it "silly but expert silliness" and Time called
21156-562: The scene of the fire in the frost of a windowpane. Drawing became obsessive for him; he drew anything he saw, and the level of detail and accuracy in his drawing was noted at a young age. He was able to draw accurately from memory even things he had never before drawn—what McCay called "memory sketching". His father thought little of his son's artistic talents, though, and had him sent to Cleary Business College in Ypsilanti, Michigan . McCay rarely attended classes. He bragged about how he would catch
21320-721: The show throughout 1907, while managing to complete his comic strip and illustration work on time, often working in hotel rooms or backstage. As early as 1905, several abortive attempts were made to produce a stage version of Little Nemo . In mid-1907, Marcus Klaw and A. L. Erlanger announced they would put on an extravagant Little Nemo show for an unprecedented $ 100,000, with a score by Victor Herbert and lyrics by Harry B. Smith . It starred midget Gabriel Weigel as Nemo, Joseph Cawthorn as Dr. Pill, and Billy B. Van as Flip. Reviews were positive; it played to sold-out houses in New York and toured for two seasons. McCay brought his vaudeville act to each city where Little Nemo played. When
21484-556: The size and shape of panels, perspective, and architectural and other details. The Herald was considered to have the highest quality color printing of any newspaper at the time; its printing staff used the Ben Day process for color, and McCay annotated the Nemo pages with precise color schemes for the printers. Impresario F. F. Proctor approached McCay in April 1906 to perform chalk talks for
21648-407: The state of contemporary animation. Cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators / artists in that they produce both the literary and graphic components of the work as part of their practice. Cartoonists may work in
21812-482: The stories, Bigart was highly valued by his peers and the military, and won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize. By the end of the conflict, the Herald Tribune had enjoyed some of its best financial years in its history. While the newspaper had just 63 percent of its rival's daily circulation (and 70 percent of the Sunday circulation of The Times ), its high-income readership gave the paper nearly 85 percent of The New York Times ' overall ad revenue, and had made $ 2 million
21976-478: The strip while living in hotels, apartments and farmhouses. At its peak of popularity during the 1940s and 1950s, the strip ran in 350 newspapers. According to Johnson, he had been doing the strip solo for at least a decade before Willard's death in 1958: "They put my name on it then. I had been doing it about 10 years before that because Willard had heart attacks and strokes and all that stuff. The minute my name went on that thing and his name went off, 25 papers dropped
22140-460: The strip. That shows you that, although I had been doing it ten years, the name means a lot." Societies and organizations Societies and organizations New York Herald Tribune The New York Herald Tribune was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald . It was regarded as
22304-493: The subject of the assignment, whether or not he agreed with the sentiments portrayed, and on events in his personal life. For example, in March 1914 he was subjected to a blackmail plot by a Mrs. Lambkin, who was seeking a divorce from her husband. Lambkin alleged that McCay's wife Maude was seeing her husband. With McCay's level of fame, such a story would likely be in the papers, and Mrs. Lambkin and her husband told McCay that she would keep it secret for $ 1,000. McCay did not believe
22468-436: The subsidies as loans, not capital investments. The notes on the paper were willed to Ogden Reid and his sister, Lady Jean Templeton Reid Ward. The notes amounted to a mortgage on the Herald Tribune , which prevented the newspaper from acquiring bank loans or securing public financing. Financial advisors at the newspaper advised the Reids to convert the notes into equity , which the family resisted. This decision would play
22632-615: The train to Detroit to show off his drawing skills at the Wonderland and Eden Musee dime museum . He drew portraits there for 25 ¢ Tooltip cent (United States coin) apiece, of which he kept half. McCay thrived on the attention he received, and his talents soon drew wider attention. John Goodison, a geography and drawing professor at Michigan State Normal School , offered to teach art to McCay privately, and McCay eagerly accepted. The lessons were practical and focused on using observation to learn to draw in geometrical perspective . Goodison,
22796-574: The trial itself. Bennett founded the New York Globe in 1832 to promote the re-election of Andrew Jackson to the White House , but the paper quickly folded after the election. After a few years of journalistic piecework, he founded the Herald in 1835 as a penny newspaper , similar in some respects to Benjamin Day's Sun but with a strong emphasis on crime and financial coverage; the Herald "carried
22960-780: The two men. Raymond, who felt he was "overused and underpaid" as a reporter on the Tribune staff, later served in the New York State Assembly and, with the backing of bankers in Albany, founded the Times in 1851, which quickly became a rival for the Whig readership that Greeley cultivated. After the Civil War , Bennett turned over daily operations of the Herald to his son James Gordon Bennett Jr. , and lived in seclusion until his death in 1872. That year, Greeley, who had been an early supporter of
23124-471: The use of registration marks , tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer, and the cycling of drawings to create repetitive action. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and there is evidence that McCay may have countersued—he thereafter received royalty payments from Bray for licensing the techniques. Hearst was disappointed with the quality of McCay's newspaper work. Infuriated that he couldn't reach McCay during
23288-478: The war, refused to go along. "We didn't want to give them any quarter," Times circulation manager Nathan Goldstein said. "Our numbers were on the rise, and we didn't want to do anything to jeopardize them. 'No free rides for the competition' was the way we looked at it." The move proved disastrous: In 1947, the Tribune ' s daily circulation fell nine percent, from 348,626 to 319,867. Its Sunday circulation fell four percent, from 708,754 to 680,691. Although
23452-478: The war. However, because the Tribune was generally a smaller paper than the Times and saw its ad space jump more, "the proportionate increase in the Tribune seemed greater than it was in absolute terms. The evidence that this disproportionate increase in the Tribune ' s advertising content left its readers feeling deprived of war news coverage and sent them in droves to the Times is, at best, highly ambiguous." The Herald Tribune always had at least
23616-648: The work himself. Begun in 1916, The Sinking of the Lusitania was his follow-up to Gertie . The film was not a fantasy but a detailed, realistic recreation of the 1915 German torpedoing of the RMS Lusitania . The event counted 128 Americans among its 1,198 dead, and was a factor leading to the American entry into World War I . McCay's daughter Marion married military man Raymond T. Moniz, eighteen years her senior, on October 13, 1917. She gave birth to McCay's first grandchild, Ray Winsor Moniz, on July 16, 1918. Moniz and McCay's son Robert were called up for service when
23780-434: The work of Fleischer Studios in the late 1920s, followed by Walt Disney 's feature films in the 1930s. He pioneered inbetweening , the use of registration marks , cycling , and other animation techniques that were to become standard. McCay's paternal grandparents, farmers Donald and Christiana McKay, immigrated from Scotland to Upper Canada in the mid-1830s. McCay's father, Robert McKay (1840 – March 21, 1915)
23944-776: The world to make animated cartoons", though he was preceded by others such as James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl . McCay made four thousand drawings on rice paper for his first animated short, which starred his Little Nemo characters. They were shot at Vitagraph Studios under Blackton's supervision. Live-action sequences were added to the beginning and end of the film, in which McCay bets his newspaper colleagues that in one month he can make four thousand drawings that move. Among those featured in these sequences were cartoonist George McManus and actor John Bunny . Little Nemo debuted in movie theatres on April 8, 1911, and four days later McCay began using it as part of his vaudeville act. Its good reception motivated him to hand-color each of
24108-401: The younger Reid encouraged light touches at the previously somber Tribune , creating an environment where "the windows were opened and the suffocating solemnity of the place was aired out". Under Reid's tenure the Tribune lobbied for legal protection for journalists culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court case Burdick v. United States . In 1917, the Tribune redesigned its layout and became
24272-598: Was approached in early 1910 to bring his vaudeville show to Europe. McCay requested the Herald ' s permission, but the plans never materialized. His show stayed within the Eastern United States until he ceased performing in 1917. Biographer John Canemaker assumed McCay's request to tour Europe was turned down, and that the refusal added to McCay's growing frustration with the Herald . A distrust of big business became pronounced in McCay's work around this time, including
24436-512: Was born September 26, 1871, in Spring Lake, and they published this information in a magazine. Michigan census records from 1870 and 1880 list a Zenas W. McKay, who was born in Canada in 1867, and others have speculated 1866 or 1868 based on evidence on how the censuses were carried out. No Canadian birth record has been found, and a fire in Spring Lake in May 1893 could have destroyed any American birth record he may have had. His obituary in
24600-736: Was born in Woodstock , Upper Canada, the third of six children. McCay's maternal grandparents, Peter and Mary Murray, were also Scottish immigrants, and settled as farmers in East Zorra in Upper Canada. Their daughter Janet was the third of nine children. Robert was a member of King Solomon's No. 43 Masonic Lodge in Woodstock. In 1862, Robert first traveled to the U.S. Robert and the twenty-five-year-old Janet married on January 8, 1866, at Woodstock's Methodist Episcopal Church. The couple moved across
24764-716: Was doing the Buster Brown strip at the Herald . A rivalry built up between the two cartoonists which resulted in Outcault leaving the Herald to return to his previous employer, William Randolph Hearst at The New York Journal . McCay's first continuing comic strip, Mr. Goodenough , debuted in the New York Evening Telegram on January 21, 1904. The formula for the strip was that a sedentary millionaire would seek ways to become more active, with embarrassing results. Sister's Little Sister's Beau , McCay's first strip with
24928-485: Was generally viewed as among the best in the industry, as was its overall style. At one time or another, the paper's writers included Dorothy Thompson , Red Smith , Roger Kahn , Richard Watts Jr. , Homer Bigart , Walter Kerr , Walter Lippmann , St. Clair McKelway , Judith Crist , Dick Schaap , Tom Wolfe , John Steinbeck , and Jimmy Breslin . Editorially, the newspaper was the voice for eastern Republicans, later referred to as Rockefeller Republicans , and espoused
25092-585: Was gradually curtailed as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst , his employer since 1911, expected McCay to devote his energies to editorial illustrations. In his drawing, McCay made bold, prodigious use of linear perspective, particularly in detailed architecture and cityscapes. He textured his editorial cartoons with copious fine hatching , and made color a central element in Little Nemo . His comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators. The technical level of McCay's animation—its naturalism, smoothness, and scale—was unmatched until
25256-490: Was having an affair with literary editor Irita Van Doren ) through the election. Dorothy Thompson , then a columnist at the paper, openly supported Franklin Roosevelt 's re-election and was eventually forced to resign. Historians of The New York Times —including Gay Talese , Susan Tifft and Alex S. Jones—have argued that the Times , faced with newsprint rationing during World War II, decided to increase its news coverage at
25420-409: Was in freefall, and posted a loss in 1917. The next year, Bennett died, having taken some $ 30 million out of the lifetime profits of the Herald . Two years later, the Herald newspapers were sold to Frank Munsey for $ 3 million. Munsey had won the enmity of many journalists with his buying, selling and consolidation of newspapers, and the Herald became part of Munsey's moves. The publisher merged
25584-435: Was more interested in cutting costs than producing journalism. "It is no longer the desire even to attempt to run parallel with The New York Times in special dispatches from Europe," Hills wrote in a memo to the Herald Tribune ' s foreign bureaus in late 1937. "Crisp cables of human interest or humorous type cables are greatly appreciated. Big beats in Europe these days are not very likely." The policy effectively led
25748-447: Was not necessarily opposed to TTS—it trained its members on the new equipment —but wanted to control the rate at which automation occurred; assurances that TTS operators would be paid at the same rates as linotype workers; that at least a portion of the savings from publishers would go toward union pension plans (to allow funding to continue as the workforce and union membership declined) and guarantees that no printer would lose their job as
25912-442: Was particularly vicious, as Bennett ordered his reporters to publish every negative item about Hearst's past that they could. Hearst, seeking revenge, sent a reporter to investigate the Herald ' s personal columns, which ran in the front of the paper and, in veiled language, advertised the service of prostitutes; reporters referred to it as "The Whores' Daily Guide and Handy Compendium." The resulting investigation, published in
26076-417: Was popular with the staff—Breslin called him "the only millionaire I ever rooted for" —and once burst out of his office wondering why the Tribune failed to sell more copies when "there's compelling reading on every page." But a second strike in 1965—which led the Tribune to leave the publishers' association in a desperate attempt to survive—pushed the Tribune's losses to $ 5 million and led Thayer to conclude
26240-512: Was referred to as the New Journalism . National editor Dick Wald wrote in one memo "there is no mold for a newspaper story," and Bellows encouraged his reporters to work "in whatever style made them comfortable." Tom Wolfe , who joined the paper after working at The Washington Post , wrote lengthy features about city life; asking an editor how long his pieces should be, he received the reply "until it gets boring." Bellows soon moved Wolfe to
26404-411: Was struggling with alcoholism . The staff considered the Herald Tribune ' s owner "kindly and likable, if deficient in intelligence and enterprise". Helen Reid increasingly took on the major leadership responsibilities at the newspaper—a fact Time noted in a 1934 cover story. Reid, angered, called her husband "the most independent-minded man I have ever met", to which Time replied that "it
26568-410: Was substituted. Apart from the Herald ' s radio magazine, weather listings and other features, "the merged paper was, with very few changes, the Tribune intact". Only 25 Herald reporters were hired after the merger; 600 people lost their jobs. Within a year, the new paper's circulation reached 275,000. The newly merged paper was not immediately profitable, but Helen Reid's reorganization of
26732-582: Was successful in real estate with his brother Hugh, who moved from Canada in 1887. By 1905, Robert was also a notary public . He had settled in Edmore, Michigan , and by this point had changed the spelling of his surname from "McKay" to "McCay". His son related this story about the change: Three Scotsmen of the clan McKay were looking for a fourth member to fight four members of the Irish clan Magee ... 'I'm not one of you', my father pointed out. 'You see, I'm one of
26896-587: Was usually punished or chased away by those affected. The strip debuted in July 1904 and ran until December 1906. McCay's longest-running strip, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend , first appeared in The Evening Telegram in September 1904. The strip was aimed at an adult audience, and had no recurring characters. The characters that appeared in the strip would have fantastic, sometimes terrifying dreams, only to wake up in
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