title | : | Drawing Power : Knott, Ficklen, and McClanahan, Editorial Cartoonists of the Dallas Morning News
author | : | Darden, Bob.
publisher | : | Baylor University
isbn10 | asin | : |
print isbn13 | : | 9780918954374
ebook isbn13 | : | 9780585135304
language | : | English
subject |  | Cartoonists--Texas--Biography, American wit and humor, Pictorial, Knott, John Francis,--1878-1963, Ficklen, Jack,--1911-1980, McClanahan, William J.,--1907-1981, Dallas morning news.
publication date | : | 1983
lcc | : | NC1305.D3 1983eb
ddc | : | 741.5/092/2
subject | : | Cartoonists--Texas--Biography, American wit and humor, Pictorial, Knott, John Francis,--1878-1963, Ficklen, Jack,--1911-1980, McClanahan, William J.,--1907-1981, Dallas morning news.

Page iii

Drawing Power

Knott, Ficklen, and McClanahan, Editorial Cartoonists of the Dallas Morning News

Robert F. Darden

Markham Press Fund
Waco, Texas

Page iv

This volume is the sixteenth volume published by the Markham Press Fund of Baylor University, established in memory of Dr. L. N. and Princess Finch Markham of Longview, Texas, by their daughters, Mrs. R. Matt Dawson of Waco, Texas, and Mrs. B. Reid Clanton of Longview, Texas.

Copyright © 1983 by
Markham Press Fund of Baylor University
Waco, Texas 76798
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-86546
International Standard Book Number: 0-918954-37-1

Page v

To my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Darden, Jr. 
Their love and unwavering support made this book possible.

Page vii

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

John Francis Knott

5

Jack "Herc" Ficklen

29

William J. McClanahan

57

Comparison of the Artists

85

Appendix I: Review of the Literature

99

Appendix II: A Chronology of Notable Events in the History of Cartooning in the Dallas Morning News

99

Notes

101

Bibliography

107

Page ix

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been completed without the loving assistance of the cartoonists' families, especially Mrs. David Robb, Mrs. Mary Ficklen, and Mrs. Eloise McClanahan. Our goal is to see that these classic works of art are preserved and shared for new generations of editorial cartoon buffs.

Also important have been the contributions of the retired and current artists, writers, editors, and librarians at the Dallas Morning News, many of whom worked on their own time in memory of these three cartoonists. I appreciate the permission to reprint artwork and articles from the pages of the News.

To my wife Kathy who always worked extra hard so I would have more time to write;

To Dr. Douglas Starr and Keith Shelton, two of my professors at North Texas State University, who encouraged me to write a book people would read, instead of just another dry statistical treatise;

And to Tommy Turner, the Dallas Times Herald, the SMU Alumni Association, Kent Keeth, Nancy Cochran Murray, the Markham Press Fund of Baylor University, and the patient microfilm librarians in a half-dozen university libraries across Texasthanks!

Page 1

1
Introduction

Political cartoons came originally to the United States from the relatively free societies of Holland and Great Britain. The first American cartoonist of note was Benjamin Franklin, who produced the now-famous "divided snake" cartoon calling for colonial unity in 1754. ¹ Though the cartoon quickly caught the public's fancy, production of artwork in early newspapers was limited by the crude printing processes of the day.²

By the 1800s, only weekly illustrated magazines like Puck, Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's could run quality artwork on a regular basis. The greatest of the early editorial cartoonists, and still recognized as one of the craft's finest practitioners, was Thomas Nast. At the peak of his popularity in the 1870s, Nast defeated the powerful Tweed Ring in New York virtually single-handedly. Nast's cartoons on the corrupt group once forced their leader "Boss" Tweed to demand: "Let's stop them damn pictures. I don't care so much what the papers write about memy constituents can't readbut damn it, they can see pictures!"³ Tweed was one of the firstwhether he knew it or notto understand the power of the editorial cartoon.

Historian Edwin Emery says that the reproduction capabilities of newspapers approximated those of magazines by 1900. Within a few years even Western newspapers were capable of producing quality artwork. And soon after the turn of the century the Dallas News hired a young artist named John Francis Knott.

Page 2

In the course of his lengthy career, Knott would go on to win several national cartooning awards and receive an honorable mention for the Pulitzer Prize. The two men who eventually succeeded him, William McClanahan and Jack "Herc" Ficklen, also achieved national acclaim.

All had the good fortune to work for a newspaper that was called "the Bible of Texas" by Governor W. P. Hobby. The News had been established in Dallas by the Galveston News in 1885 and soon surpassed its parent in size and circulation. For the first half of the twentieth century, the News had the largest circulation in Texas.

As with most newspapers, much of the power of the Dallas News came from its lively editorial pages. It was there that great ideas and proposals were born. Much of Ernest Sharpe's biography of the man who controlled the newspaper for half a century, G. B. Dealey of the Dallas News, details the projects initiated for Dallas and Texas that originated as campaigns on the editorial pages. ⁴

But the most influential of the contributors to those same pages may have been three men who wrote the least: editorial cartoonists Knott, McClanahan, and Ficklen. They were also the only opinion-shapers required to sign their names to their work. Of cartoonists, historian F. Fraser Bond writes:

Here we get the newspapers' views in a graphic form. In this picture-minded age, many readers who feel they lack the time to read a conventional editorial will gladly pause long enough to glance at the cartoon and catch its editorial meaning. It is claimed that more than three readers out of five take in the editorial cartoon.

For years, the cartoon has proved a potent force in modeling public opinion.⁵

Their impact on the Dallas News and its audience has doubtless been as great. Nathe Bagby, in his thesis on the editorial policies of the Dallas News, writes:

Cartoons interpreting the spirit of the significant news of the day and pictures illustrating news events of unusual importance, especially if they are related to matters which The News, as a matter of policy emphasizes in the display of news, are two important means which The News used to promote its policies. The cartoons of John Knott have long been recognized as among the best in the United States.⁶

The bold strokes in dramatic black and white that illustrate a complex problem in universal pictorial terms often make the editorial cartoon the most memorable part of the page. After Ficklen, the last of the three, retired in 1976, other artists soon stepped in to take their places. But Knott, McClanahan, and Ficklen still hold unique places in the annals of the Dallas News through their highly individualistic accomplishments and personalities.

Despite the apparent power of the newspaper called "the Bible of Texas," virtually nothing has been written on the people behind itor on the cartoonists of other major Texas dailies. No study has been undertaken to explore or chronicle the work of Knott, McClanahan, or Ficklen, though they were probably better known than many of their fellow newspapermen.

Readership figures for the editorial cartoons are startling. In the last extensive survey done by the Advertising Research Foundation of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies with the Bureau of Advertising for the American Newspaper Publisher's Association for the Dallas News, the political cartoon was shown to be the second most-read feature of the newspaper, behind only the front-page headline. Page one had 100 percent

Page 3

readership in the survey, while the cartoon followed with 98 percent. The editorial cartoon was more than 30 percentage points higher than either the sports page or comics page. ⁷

Retired editorial page director for the Dallas News Dick West said the cartoons have remained one of the top five features in total readership in recent years.⁸ A study dealing with any aspect of newspaper journalism and its impact would have a serious omission if it ignored a feature with that kind of readership.

Elsewhere across the country, volumes have been written on the lives and works of such editorial cartoonists as Nast, Herbert "Herblock" Block, and Bill Mauldin. Their best cartoons are compiled at regular intervals, and their biographies are frequently recounted to help readers understand the artists and their impact. Such has rarely been the case in Texas.

Though Knott received recognition from the Pulitzer Prize committee in 1936 and won many national awards, no biography longer than a newspaper page exists. And though McClanahan and Ficklen were reprinted in some of the nation's finest publications and received awards of their own, neither has a biography available.

Despite a lack of scholarly attention, interest in the three cartoonists has never flagged. D Magazine carried a long article on Knott's cartoons in the July 1977 issue. McClanahan's sports cartoons and characters continue to be popular items in the form of posters, book covers, and even clock faces, while Ficklen's editorial cartoons were on display in several Dallas galleries as late as the summer of 1980.

Their careers parallel virtually the entire scope of journalism and cartooning in Dallas and Texas from the early 1900s, when Knott was first hired by the News, through 1976, when Ficklen retired. Their firsthand experience with the changing facets of political and cultural life in Texas, as seen through their work, offers a unique perspective perhaps unavailable elsewhere. Their influence through the News reached beyond the boundaries of Texas and their experiences should be chronicled. No history of journalism or cartooning in the state would be complete without a study of the lives and influences of Knott, Ficklen, and McClanahan. The high readership of their cartoons alone is an important factor in a study of Texas journalism and politics.

Page 4

Fig. 1.
The Promised Land.

Page 5

2
John Francis Knott
18781963

John Francis Knott was born in Pilson, Austria, on 7 December 1878. His widowed mother emigrated to Sioux City, Iowa, when Knott was five, joining the rest of her family who had gone some years earlier. ¹

Though none of his immediate family was interested in art, Knott later recalled his earliest encounter with artistic failure:

My penchant for drawing began, as I dimly make out, with some conspicuous but not discriminating sketches drawn on the wallpaper of the parental home. My talent was so unappreciated that mother forbade, under penalty, a repetition of my efforts at interior design.²

His friend J. J. Taylor said Knott was an immediate success as a cartoonist:

Mr. Knott said that his first drawing to run the editorial gauntlet and emerge into print was when he was sixteen years old and favored one of his hometown newspapers, the Sioux City Journal, with a specimen of his art. The editor sent him an encouraging letter, but no financial encouragement.³

No one knows whether Knott graduated from high school, and he would never answer the question directly. But it appeared from the following interview that he left short of graduation:

About this time [1898], the Chicago Record began offering small prizes for cartoons on a variety of local subjects. I rose eagerly to the bait and began forwarding my handiwork by every mail. Strangely enough, my pictures got very kind consideration by the contest

Page 6

editor and several prizes were awarded me. As soon as I could separate myself from the schooling which my parents insisted upon, and obtain their consent to the great adventure, I shook the rich prairie soil of Sioux City off my two-dollar shoes and departed for Chicago, which represents the entire world to Iowa boys. ⁴

Knott approached all of the newspapers in Chicago for a position as staff cartoonist. But when none seemed interested, he obtained a job as a cub draftsman in a local architect office. At that time, he enrolled in night class at the Holme School of Illustration.⁵ Knott apparently fared well at the school and received several notes of encouragement from the school's director, Frank Holme.⁶

In 1901, Knott received a letter from Charles G. White, a former engraver from Sioux City who was opening the first engraving shop in Dallas, offering him a job.⁷ Knott accepted for reasons of health as much as any other:

The winters of Chicago, as anyone who has lived there can testify, are raw and cold, and early springs are cold and raw. Both are particularly irritating to tonsils. After fighting off several attacks of tonsillitis, I tired of the daily dozen of gargle-and-spray and decided to leave Chicago and seek a milder climate.

After several exchanges of letters as to the question of who should pay the transportation to Dallas was finally settled, White sent me a scalper's ticket. Traveling on a scalper's ticket was an inexpensive mode of transportation; however, not so cheap as hitchhiking. I came to Dallas and was not disappointed in the climate, town or the people. The salary, it's true, was a slight, though temporary, disappointment. But then good board and room was obtained in those days for $5 a week.⁸

After four years of illustrating harness and saddlery catalogues for White, Knott was offered a job by D. Prescott Toomey, managing editor of the Dallas News. Knott accepted and did a variety of work for the newspaper.

In the winter of 1904 I entered the service of A. H. Belo & Company and have had no other working connection since. For six or seven years after joining the News, I did general illustration and lettering for advertisements, borders for special pages, pictures for stories, etc. All along I sought to improve my technique and enlarge my vision with reading. My employers encouraged me, and once in a while they used a cartoon which I handed in.⁹

Fifty years later it would be hard to imagine Knott working for any other publication. He would become as much an institution within the newspaper and community as the paper's Old English masthead. Even so, his affiliation with the Dallas News was tenuous at first. His daughter, Mrs. David Robb, said the cartoonist turned down offers from several major East Coast newspapers rather than leave North Texas.¹⁰

In an article in Holland's Magazine in 1923, Knott leaves the impression that perhaps Central Texas was his first choice when he left Chicago in 1904:

It was my wish to grow up with what is regarded as a new state in the North. Also I wanted adventure, and supposed that the Texas people, worn low by constant fights with Indians, would welcome a little help from one who was willing to assist. I didn't have anything in particular against Indians, but my reading had led me to believe that Indians had almost free run of Texas and were scalping women and children all over the place. I bought a ticket to Dallas, understanding it was a promising settlement and hospitable to genius. That was in 1901. My intention to become a cartoonist was never given up, but I didn't expect to become one in Dallas, where I supposed no publisher could afford to pay me what I was worth. I thought I would do some drafting work and some Indian fighting, and perhaps eventually own a big ranch somewhere around Waco or Hico, where I imagined the Indians were waiting to be driven from the land.

The pay was better than in Chicago, and although I soon found there was no demand for my services as Indian exterminator, I made up my mind to stay in Texas.¹¹

Page 7

For Knott, Dallas proved to be the Promised Land (fig. 1). But during the first few years of the twentieth century, young John Knott was just another faceless toiler for one of the several Dallas newspapers. His first signed artwork did not appear until 1 January 1906. His first sports cartoon did not run until 18 March 1907 (fig. 2).

Later that year, Knott married Miss Carrie Bowen, a member of a pioneer Dallas family. Their first son, John Francis, Jr., was born a year later. ¹² They eventually had three other children, Helen, Karl, and Marjorie.

Although Knott was content in Dallas, he was not happy with the quality of his art:

In 1910 there was in Dallas a German painter from Munich, Professor Kunz-Meyer, conducting art classes and painting portraits. He painted life in Munich to me so attractively that I was persuaded to go over with him. That was long before Hitler had ruined all the gemuthlichkeit in Germany. I spent three semesters in Munich, drawing and painting. When I went broke, not being a remittance man, I returned to Dallas and the job on the News.¹³

Actually, the News was more than eager to have Knott return as quickly as possible. Managing Editor D. Prescott Toomey wrote him a note on 21 June 1911 saying:

I wrote you some weeks ago asking when you expected to return to the United States but have heard nothing from you. I would like to know if you will come back to Texas and, if so, would you care to come again and join the staff of the News and upon what terms?¹⁴

But the artist remained noncommittal, and Toomey sent a second letter three weeks later:

I wish to compliment you very cordially on the marked improvement in your drawing. We will be glad to have anything that you find that you think will be interesting to our clientele, and almost everything in the way of sketches from that side of the water will be good.

I note what you say about not having made any definite plans beyond returning to America. The situation here is just this. We are not satisfied with the artwork we are getting, and would be glad to have you rejoin the staff. Everybody here likes you and admires your work, and would be glad to know what you would consider satisfactory compensation, and when you could come to Dallas if we came to terms?¹⁵

In later years, Time magazine said Knott may have come across another Austrian painter during his stay in Munich: Adolf Hitler.¹⁶ Knott admitted only that he ''could have'' known of Hitler during those days.¹⁷

Knott returned to Dallas in late 1911, and his work began to appear on the front page of the News beginning 19 November 1911. He soon made his impact felt as an editorial cartoonist:

In 1910 and 1911, Knott was abroad studying in art schools in Munich, Bavaria. Perhaps this is where he first learned to depict German personal characteristics, a knack that stood him in good stead during the World War. It was during this period, 19141918, that he really won his spurs, nationally speaking, as a political cartoonist, if having his cartoons reproduced in Literary Digest, Review of Reviews and other publications, including contemporaries of the Dallas News, is the measure of national fame.¹⁸

Knott's cartoons may have had a significant impact in Texas during the first World War. One man walked into the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank with an application for $10,000 worth of Liberty Bonds pinned to a Knott cartoon. The man said the cartoons left him "with the sense of his duty to help float a loan [see fig. 3]."¹⁹

The Hillsboro Mirror was equally lavish in praise:

Those who read the Dallas News during the World War will

Page 8

Fig. 2.
That naughty little girl, she's flirting again
San Antonio and Dallas Are Rivals Once More for First Place.

Page 9

Fig. 3.
"Thank You, Patriots!"

Fig. 4.
Peace Chestnuts.

Page 10

remember just how much John Knott, that splendid cartoonist, did to win the war. How his pictures increased the purchase of Liberty Bonds, and ran up the contributions to Red Cross, Salvation Army or Y.M.C.A. No man in the United States can crowd a more complete story into one small cartoon than John Knott. ²⁰

Late in 1918, a collection of his best war work (fig. 4) was collected and put in a book entitled War Cartoons. His drawings commanded national and international attention and the book sold well. But Morning News columnist Paul Crume said the war cartoons were difficult for Knott to draw:

His cartoons on the Kaiser and the German warlords had in them something of the bite of Daumier, whom Knott then admired. They were rather strange ones for Knott, for his cartoons generally have been goodhumored.²¹

Knott would have the fortuneor misfortuneto be a regular cartoonist through two world wars, chronicling the daily ebb and flow of the massive conflicts. A Dallas News "Headliner Portrait" says the artist did not gain widespread attention until just before World War I:

So it was that he went to the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, Germany, to study. Upon Knott's return to the News in 1912, his skill had so improved that his cartoons hit the front page and stayed.

The year of Woodrow Wilson's campaign gave Knott a chance to let loose on politics. War soon came to the world and Knott used his knowledge of the German militarists' ways to good advantage. He portrayed the typical aristocratic Junkers like nobody else in the business [see fig. 5].²²

In a feature on the editorial cartoonist by noted columnist Paul Crume, much of the space was devoted to Knott's war cartoons:

With the first World War, he suddenly commanded national and international attention.

He translates strong feeling into black and white. His cartoons during the World War have a direct and trenchant bite, even a starkness, which make them like repeated blows.²³

Artist Bill McClanahan believed that the best of Knott's war illustrations were timeless:

One of the things that amazed me about Knott is his book of World War I cartoons: you could take those cartoons during the early part of World War II and just change the characters, Kaiser to Hitler. They were as easily applicable to World War I as they were to World War II. He had a very keen insight into the situation and he could portray it graphically, especially to readers out in the country who didn't know too much or couldn't wade through a lot of heavily worded editorials. But they could look at Knott's cartoons and see how things stood [see fig. 6].²⁴

After the war, his reputation assured in Dallas, Knott settled back to draw cartoons of a civilian America. Perhaps his most cherished accolade came from Baylor University in Waco. Baylor's Diamond Jubilee celebration was in 1920, and the university included Knott, along with former president William Howard Taft, among those who were to receive honorary doctorates. At the ceremony, Baylor President Samuel P. Brooks made the presentation:

John Francis Knott, you speak a universal language; you are an artist whose paintings are copied in probably more magazines in America and elsewhere than those of any cartoonist I know. Your paintings, sir, throughout the war have won for you the praise of your fellow citizens and I have heard it said many times, and have echoed it on many an occasion, that, in my judgment, no single man in Texas did more towards winning the war than the high and lofty cartoons you drewnever for fun, but always for a cause, the uplift

Page 11

Fig. 5.
World's Worst Wastrel Teaches Thrift.

Fig. 6.
Brotherhood Week in Cairo.

Page 12

Fig. 7.
"Your Country's Flag Should Be at the Top"

Fig. 8.

Page 13

of humanityand now, by virtue of the authority committed to me as President of Baylor University and in recognition of this versatility of yours, I confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Literature and admit you all the rights and privileges that pertain to this degree. ²⁵

The files of Mrs. David Robb, Knott's daughter, are filled with letters between her father and President Brooks. The content of Brooks's speech while conferring the doctor of letters upon Knott in 1920 seems to indicate that he was aware of the cartoonist at least as early as the war years.

The earliest surviving piece of correspondence between the two is a typewritten note dated 16 July 1917. It follows by two days a cartoon with the headline "Your Country's Flag Should be at the Top." Brooks's note says:

For more than a year I have thought from time to time that I would send you a letter expressing my appreciation for the keen wit and deep insight to public questions which you show forth in your daily cartoons. I could not draw anything if I were to be shot for the failure to do so, but I study each cartoon carefully and enjoy them very much.

I believe I shall not do any violence to the truth if, having said the kindly things above, I suggest that it seems to me that you have counter currents blowing in your picture sent herewith. The flag blows one way, and the smoke another; but you certainly hit the selfish businessman a hard blow. Yet it goes without saying, this letter is a friendly message and in no way seeks any newspaper publicity [see fig. 7].²⁶

An equally revealing handwritten postscript follows: "Should you come to Waco, let me know. Let us get acquainted. SPB."²⁷ Unfortunately, any reply of Knott's does not appear to have survived (see fig. 8).

The next flurry of correspondence between Brooks and Knott occurs in early 1920. From the cartoonist's side, two rare, handwritten letters tell the story. The first is dated 16 March 1920:

Please pardon my delay in replying to your invitation to the seventy-fifth anniversary. My wife has been quite ill during the past two weeks and I have been spending a great deal of time at the sanitariumneglecting my correspondence.

I should be glad indeed to be present at the anniversary, and feel honored by your invitation.

Though I do not know exactly what is expected of a recipient of an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature, I shall keep an eye on State Press [J. J. Taylor] and see what he does with his, and govern myself accordingly.²⁸

Knott symbolically depicted the anniversary of the school the following week in a cartoon that was later reprinted in the Baylor Diamond Jubilee yearbook (fig. 9). Brooks asked for the original cartoon, and twenty-five years later Baylor President Pat Neff requested Knott's work honoring Baylor's Centennial to be placed at the earlier drawing's side.²⁹

Mrs. Robb still has the cap and gown her father wore to receive the degree in 1920 and the letter of appreciation he wrote to Brooks with uncharacteristic promptness a few days later:

Please permit the writer to express a few words of gratitude for the honor recently conferred by Baylor University.

It would be impossible for me to express adequately my appreciation of that honorlet me therefore, simply say that the memory of that occasion and your generous part in it, will be a source of deep pleasure and inspiration to me as long as I live.³⁰

Knott's affection for Brooks is most apparent in the editorial cartoon he drew following the Baylor president's death. The cartoon was reprinted widely and was the cover of the June

Page 14

1931 issue of Baylor Monthly. Beneath the drawing ran this inscription:

This drawing by John Knott of the Dallas News, which appeared in the May 15 issue of that paper, probably struck a more responsive chord in the hearts of Dr. Brooks' friends and was appreciated by them more fully than any of the many tributes that were paid him. The original drawing was secured by H. S. Wright, '29, framed and presented by him to the Journalism Library at Baylor, where it now hangs [see fig. 10]. ³¹

Less than two days after Pat Neff took the office, he sent a letter to Knott that expressed a similar sentiment:

This is the first day I have been in my office since the passing of our dear good friend, Doctor Brooks. Before hooking-up with the duties of the office, I avail myself of this, my very first opportunity, to thank you for the touching and beautiful drawing of yours published in the Dallas News the morning after his passing.

I do not know of anything connected in a public way with his going that is more touching, more appropriate, or more expressive than your picture. It portrayed in a striking way the glory of his life and the grief of all of Baylor and all her friends at his going.³²

In a letter to Knott nearly fourteen years later, Neff summed up his feelings towards the cartoonist's work: "The heart of Baylor could not cherish and its imagination could not create a finer cartoon."³³

By 1924, Knott had already had thousands of cartoons printed in the pages of the Dallas News. Some drew widespread support; others equal amounts of criticism. A few elicited a humorous response as well. Four of Knott's best-known "boners" or mistakes were reprinted in the 26 October 1924 issue of the News:

These are the four cartoons in which Dr. Knott was alleged to have committed "boners." The three horses have thirteen legs, the cow pony should not be tied to the post, there is a misdeal in the card game between the allies and Kaiser, and there is considerable doubt in the mind of some persons as to whether John Bull and Uncle Sam are releasing pressure on the Kaiser or really squeezing him down [see figs. 11, 12, 13, 14].³⁴

Two weeks later, Knott's publisher Ted Dealey and good friend J. J. Taylor (State Press) conspired to present a full-page spread in the News with the intent of vindicating the artist. Dealey explained the proceedings in a synopsis in the middle of the second page:

Messrs. Taylor and Knott were awarded a doctor's degree by Baylor College in 1920. They went to Waco together to get it. It is reported on reliable authority that Taylor borrowed interurban fare from Knott to Waco and back on that occasion, and has never paid the debtuntil today. These two gentlemen were awarded the degree of doctor of letters by Baylor, not doctor of veterinary medicine, as has been claimed by some.

The accompanying article by Dr. Taylor may be made the more intelligible to the readers when it is explained that the drawings signed by him are not problems in analytical geometry, but attempted facsimiles of Knott's original cartoons. Dr. Taylor was hit on the head with a book of crossword puzzles when a child, and his progress in art was suddenly arrested by this event.³⁵

After the war, Knott's most famous single character began to receive considerable attention in Texas. This figure, called "Old Man Texas," actually was created in 1906, when James A. Boyd, postmaster and farmer from Lancaster, Texas, met Knott in the News building.

With his handle-bar mustache, old Uncle Jimmy looked like the typical Texan to Knott [see fig. 15]. Quickly he made a sketch of Boyd. Composite of a million Texans, Old Man Texas was later to

Page 15

Fig. 9.
"They Grew Up Together"
Baylor University Diamond Jubilee.

Fig. 10.
Commencement.

Page 16

Fig. 11.

Fig. 12.

Fig. 13.

Page 17

Fig. 14.

Page 18

Fig. 15.

Fig. 16.
Old Man Texas.

Page 19

become the symbol of Texas. He would be to Texas what Uncle Sam was to the United States. Knott used him hundreds of times since. Old Man Texas stood for honesty in government, low taxes and property ownership. He was the typical Texanborn Southerner, bred Westerner. ³⁶

Boyd received his share of fame from the happy meeting. In 1938 the News carried a story on the elderly gentleman with the headline ''Statue to Uncle Jimmy Boyd, Lancaster's Valued Citizen, Proposed by Mayor Ray Holder.''³⁷ The News even published a fondly sentimental poem, as well as various other tributes, after Boyd's passing in 1939:

James A. Boyd, The beloved Old Man Texas of Knott's cartoons

Across a long plain he rides today
Toward new horizons on the sunset's brim;
The loved wind fingers through old mesquites
Must have been beckoning, beckoning to him.

Alone he bravely rides the last great trail
Through firmaments beyond his cherished land;
Yet Texas prairies never will forget
His image living in an artist's hand;
For he who symbolizes all we are
Of good or bad, of poor or weak or strong,
Will love in all our dreams, our prayers, our hopes,
An Everyman among the 
                                                    Betty Carothers Dill³⁸
                                                                       [see fig. 16]

A story by Werner Renberg in Quill, headlined "Old Man Texas Stands Up to Uncle Sam," even referred to Knott's creation as a real person:

Across our land Uncle Sam is the object of reverence and affection. In his red, white and blue outfit he stands as the symbol of the United States. Few would trifle with him; few would ridicule him.

Except in Texas!

Old Man Texas depicts the typical Texan. He normally votes the Democratic ticket, but despises crooked politicians of any party. He owns property and favors low taxes. And, in recent years, when Washington has not been exactly chummy with Texas, Old Man Texas has been in a fighting mood [see fig. 17].³⁹

Retired News cartoonist Bill McClanahan once said Knott's fondness for the character came from his close feelings for rural Texas:

Knott would always draw cartoons about farmers. I would say, trying to help them fight their battles. Old Man Texas was strictly evolved from the rural aspect character. And so he drew the man, and that character became the official symbol of the state of Texas.⁴⁰

It was a rural concern that gave Knott an honorable mention for the Pulitzer Prize of 1936. The cartoon, entitled "Nature's Answer," was about the dust storms that were stripping West Texas (fig. 18). He had been cited by the Pulitzer committee before the award and was to receive several more citations in the years that followed.⁴¹

But by this time, Knott's inherent shyness was beginning to manifest itself. Never gregarious, Knott often had trouble coping with increased public attention and acclaim:

When officials of the National Safety Council invited him to come to Chicago to receive a citation a few years back, he would not go. They came to Dallas and arranged an appropriate ceremony in the News building. When the time came, everybody was there but Knott. The Council officials hung the citation on his doorknob.⁴²

Miss Anne Toomey, daughter of D. Prescott Toomey,

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worked in the News art department from 1922 to 1966 and was close to Knott. Miss Toomey said he was easily embarrassed:

He never did want anybody to congratulate him or anything like that. In fact it would embarrass him. The fact is that he was such a brilliant man, and things that he didI think they were quite easy for himhe felt a little embarrassed to be congratulated on something that in his own mind was easy. He did the same thing over and over, every day and it can't seem very big. He did have a great reputation but he was always downplaying it. He wanted to do just what he did and he was just spoiled. He'd do just what he wanted to do and everybody spoiled him because he was a delightful person. ⁴³

Dr. Herbert Gambrell, former chairman of the Southern Methodist University History Department and a scholar of Texas and Dallas history, said Knott's reticence may have denied him his rightful place among famous American cartoonists. Knott never received the nationwide acclaim heaped on many New York and Chicago cartoonists, possibly because he skipped many important engagements just to play chess or to drink beer with friends.⁴⁴

Knott's disdain of self-promotion left gaps in the amount of information available about him in later years. Miss Toomey said Knott would allow unopened letters to pile up on his desk, finally sweeping them out into the hall for the janitors.⁴⁵ Many of the letters contained correspondence from national political figures.

He did the same thing with old editorial cartoons, occasionally letting them spill out of his office in the News building. It was one such load that Miss Toomey salvaged and later gave to Dr. Gambrell. That group of cartoons constitutes a large part of the collection in the Archives in the Hall of State in Dallas.⁴⁶

Fortunately, Mrs. Knott kept a scrapbook from the turn of the century through the late 1930s. In it are letters from such notables as Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover, Texas Governors Dan Moody, Pat Neff, James Allred, and Allan Shivers, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. The scrapbook contains clippings of Knott's work reprinted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Evening Post, the New York Herald Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and others.⁴⁷ However, no comprehensive list of his awards survives.

At the onset of World War II, Knott was still drawing regular editorial cartoons for the Dallas News despite being sixty-two years old. Three years later, when he could have retired at sixty-five, Knott apparently gave it little thought.

Time magazine noted Knott's work during the two wars (fig. 19).⁴⁸ When the war ended, the News hired Colonel Jack "Herc" Ficklen to alternate with Knott doing the daily cartoon. Up until that time, Knott had been doing five or six cartoons a week. Ficklen had drawn occasionally before the war when Knott went on vacation. His first regular editorial cartoon was printed 1 June 1946. When it became obvious that Ficklen could handle part of the editorial load, Knott began to take long and leisurely vacations:

For years, Knott liked to go to Colorado on vacation, there to play chess and talk with artist Maxwell Boardman. On one such trip, he got too interested to return in time. The office began sending letters urging his return, and each time got an affable reply: "Am rushing back; will be there shortly." He returned some six weeks later.⁴⁹

Despite the impromptu vacations, Knott continued to do fine work. In 1950, the United States State Department gave

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Fig. 17.
"Let's Go!"

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Fig. 18.
Nature's Answer.

Fig. 19.
"Aren't You with Me?"

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him a citation for his work to combat Soviet aggression. Assistant Secretary Edward Barrett said Knott's pen was "a valuable weapon in telling the truth," and added that one cartoon had been reprinted in nine different countries. ⁵⁰ A year later, he was honored as "Best Cartoonist" by members of the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi.

His final years with the News were not as happy as were the previous fifty. His wife died in 1953, and the quality of his drawings slipped somewhat, particularly during his final year.⁵¹ He retired in 1957, his last regular cartoon having appeared 18 November 1957. During the next two years Knott would occasionally do weekend cartoons to give his successors an extra day off.⁵² But poor health finally prevented him from even doing that. He died in February 1963, at the age of eighty-four.

Part of what set Knott apart from many editorial cartoonists was the actual art in his cartoons. Whereas others used blatantly "cartoon" figures, Knott's invariably were more realistic in depiction (see fig. 20). McClanahan said he was "more of an artist than a cartoonist":

Knott was brilliant, his figures were the most realistic, not slapstick at all. Knott would draw the figure in the idealized proportions: the average human is seven "heads" tall from the soles of his shoes to the top of his head. You'd measure off and most of Knott's figures were drawn along those idealized proportions. Because Knott was, first of all, a fine artist, most of his figures were like that.

There was a period there when some of Knott's work, some of his cartoons, were absolutely works of art. I know I've seen some of his stuff where the shading and everything . . . He'd blend the shading off and fade it off from black to very light grey. And it would be just like a fine artist working on a canvas with oil. And he would be very realistic in his portrayal of things.⁵³

Former editorial director Dick West said Knott was a great newspaper artist who never had to compromise his art in reproduction:

John was subtle. Let me tell you why he was a genius as a cartoonist and let me tell you what a good cartoonist is: a good cartoonist, in addition to being an artist, is one whose cartoon is one you grasp the message the second you look at it. Knott's genius was that you got it in a second. But very, very subtle. His ideas were unbelievable, the way he transmitted. Plus the fact he was an amazing artist; he studied and taught art.

His cartoons stood out, not only artistically with a message, but typographically. They reproduced perfectly because of contrast. You've got to have contrast or it won't come out. On old presses it reproduced perfectly. That was part of his genius; in addition to being a great artist and a great idea-man, he was a great technician.⁵⁴

Even fine artists took note of the best of Knott's work. Richard Howard, director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, reviewed Knott's work in a story entitled, "John Knott the Artist Appraised. Craftsman's Eye Given to Work of Great Cartoonist":

Specifically, in this exhibition by Mr. Knott, there is an interesting regular growth which continues to the present day. Beginning with his early student work, which even then, as his instructor indicates, had the "figures in proportion," "well-composed," with ''clean and decisive'' pen work, he develops his style to the point where he has an admirable naturalism that is yet controlled by design and composition. An analysis of this naturalism shows it to be composed of an exact feeling for pose and gesture, something which is rare amongst those who devote themselves to easel pictures, and is undoubtedly partly the result of the forces which hurry him to a deadline each day. An increasing use of accessories, too, lends the illusions of reality to these creations of the moment which are nevertheless never copies of nature but imaginary people arranged in such a manner as to point a message.⁵⁵

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Knott's method of composing those much-praised cartoons was as colorful as any aspect of his personality. In a magazine story, Taylor asked a secretary how Knott worked at his cartoons:

[Knott comes to work] sometimes at eight o'clock, sometimes ten, and sometimes any old time. He leaves about the same way. Some days he makes two pictures and goes hunting or fishing for a day to recuperate from the strain. As a rule, though, Mr. Knott comes in about 9:30, walking very rapidly and strides into his office so energetically we imagine he has a picture almost popping out of his mind. But after he hangs up his coat, he finds a prop for his feet and reads the paper until noon. Then with a pencil he starts making the outlines of a picture, and after he has finished the penciled sketch, he puts on his hat and coat again, goes to the nearest cafeteria and orders his favorite brain food, which is apple pie and chili with beans in it.

When he comes out from his lunch, he reads a magazine until about one o'clock, then he turns in and draws the picture with pen and ink, sending it up to the engravers about three p.m. They have to have it by two-thirty and he usually gets it to them later. ⁵⁶

Knott switched from India ink and a crow quill (see fig. 21) pen to a grease pencil on pebble board (see fig. 22) in the middle 1930s because the latter was quicker.⁵⁷ Miss Toomey said that, in later years, even though the engraving deadlines were pushed later and later in the day, Knott would still procrastinate until the last minute before drawing the editorial cartoon.⁵⁸

In ideas and general cartoon emphasis, Knott differed from the artists who came after him. West said the differences were due to the News's editorial outlook in the first half of the twentieth century:

You see, John came up in an era when editorially the News campaigned harder for things than they did for people. Issues and things. When I took over, we still did that, but we also began to concentrate more on individuals themselves. Now they don't do that. John's cartoons, if you'll go back and look at them, reflect movements in Texas: "Better Highways," "Soil Conservation," ''Better Methods of Agriculture" and the "Cow, Sow and Hen Program" [see fig. 23].⁵⁹

Dr. Gambrell said that in concentrating on the issues and movements of the day, Knott could sometimes actually see visible effects of his work:

See, the News was, under old Mr. Dealey's direction, a great exponent of civic improvements for the community: physically, mentally, or morally. His cartoons reinforcedand I suppose all cartoons doeditorial policy. One I can remember in particular: for many years I was in charge of the Hall of State in Fair Park. It was built during the Centennial and there was a great popular movement on to extend Grand Avenue through Fair Park in front of the Hall of State. And he did some cartoons that did the most to kill that movement, I think. He had a whole bunch of heavily loaded trucks just obscuring the Hall of State on Grand Avenue. With this caption: "Wouldn't it be Grand?" So everybody laughed and gave it up. He was greatly concernedas the News waswith state politics, too. And during the News' very courageous attack on the Ku Klux Klan, many of his cartoons determined the plans.⁶⁰

Despite frequent reprinting of his editorial cartoons across America, major awards and acknowledgments from local and national political figures and his impact on civic life in Dallas, Knott remains largely unrecognized today. A Dallas resident since 1904, Dr. Gambrell said Knott's relative obscurity is unfair to the artist:

Well, actually he had an impact all over the state. As you know from studying the history of journalism, the News had a statewide distribution in South Texas. So, his cartoons were widely read out of

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Fig. 20.
His Ace in the Hole.

Fig. 21.
He Wants to Stop the Hold-up.

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Fig. 22.
Nixon Forecasts a Split.

Fig. 23.
His Ever-Normal Ceiling.

Page 27

the Dallas area, too. He was probably the most acute cartoonist of his period. That is, he had a knack for capturing the gist of a public question.

His cartoons, I think, were more frequently reproduced in Literary Digest and old magazines of opinion, than any other. I don't think any other newspaperof course, I don't know the newspaper field wellhad a staff cartoonist who could do as much.

I don't know of any other widely recognized newspaper cartoonist in Texas.

With the wide distribution of the News, and the excellence of Knott's cartoons that hit points, I think he unquestionably had a considerable impact. ⁶¹

Taylor was perhaps Knott's closest friend during his days as editorial cartoonist for the Dallas Morning News. He once ended a long story about the artist with the following paragraph:

I turned John Knott over in my mind to the extent of half a dozen revolutions and said to myself, that I had just seen a man in Dallas, Texas, whose work is known and praised by the best men in his field, his fellow artists; and whose pictures are reprinted perhaps oftener than those of any other cartoonist by those metropolitan publications which make a regular feature of such reproductions. This man John Knott makes pictorial editorials which are significant for their depth of expression, for their instantaneous appeal, for their unmistakable art, and for their outstanding, though nonobtrusive humor. Then I wondered if an artist is like a prophet, in that he is most honored out of his own country [see fig. 24].⁶²

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Fig. 24.
Thirty.

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3
Jack "Herc" Ficklen
1911-1980

Jack "Herc" Ficklen was born in Waco, Texas, in 1911. He was nicknamed "Herc" at an early age because of the ease with which he destroyed sandcastles, and the name stuck. ¹ He attended grammar school in Waco and junior high school in Houston after his family moved there in the 1920s. A final family move was to Dallas, where he attended North Dallas High School and Peacock Military Academy. He was graduated from Peacock in 1930 and made his permanent residence in Dallas.²

Ficklen said his first introduction to newspaper cartooning came while attending North Dallas High:

One of the few subjects I was interested in in high school and passed without any trouble was art. They had it in high school then. I illustrated newspaper and magazine articles in school and for the annual and did programs for minstrels and things like that. That's where I first saw anything I'd done in print.³

The high school experience interested him in reporting as a career, and he got a job as a copy boy for the Dallas News on 15 September 1928, making $15 a week. He later attended Southern Methodist University for two semesters, majoring in art. But the Depression soon deepened, and he was forced to withdraw from the university.⁴

During his six years as a copy boy for the News, Ficklen met most of the newspaper's staff, including the famed edito-

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rial cartoonist John Knott. His hours spent working for the newspaper increased his fascination with the business:

All during the copy boy days, the copy boy has to go around to each department and each floor and take stories down to the press room. Generally, it is a good education on how a paper works. I was a copy boy six years because during the Depression there was no place to go, no openings. My secret ambition was to have been a reporter. I got chances to take stories over the telephone and one or two or three obituaries from places like Sherman, Waco, Waxahachie, Gainesville. I found out real quick that you had to know how to spell and spell correctly, which I didn't know. At any rate, it looked like I was never going to make a reporter, and I began doing a lot of freelancing in those days to magazines. ⁵

Ficklen began to send cartoons he had drawn at home to the various popular magazines of the day. He took a correspondence course in cartooning and suffered through five years of rejection slips. He got serious about freelance cartooning after Startling Detective Magazine bought two of his drawings:

I guess the disease bit at that point. I was so simple-minded, I was sending finished drawings to them, great big stacks. You don't do that in freelance; you make them rough. The editor will change them around, make marginal notes and send them back saying, "Finish them up." I didn't know that till they finally told me how, and I began to save a lot of postage. For about four or five years there, I was strictly a cops-and-robbers cartoonist. I knew I could sell to detective magazines [see fig. 25].⁶

Meanwhile, Ficklen began to spend as much time as possible with the art department at the News. Eventually he was able to do small illustrations and photography retouching for the newspaper. After he got his courage up from a few magazine sales, he began to submit sports and editorial cartoons to the art department editor.⁷

Ficklen was promoted to the art department in 1934 and had a regular sports cartoon by 1937 (see fig. 26). About the same time, his gag cartoons began to sell regularly. Before World War II, he had been published in The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Boy's Life and Collier's (see fig. 27).⁸

When Ficklen, an army reservist, was called up in October 1940, he had just contracted with the Register and Tribune syndicate to do a regular army-oriented cartoon strip entitled "You're in the Army Now." The strip recorded the humorous trials and tribulations of army "dog faces" as they fought the Nazis overseas (see fig. 28).

I did that just prior to leaving the Dallas News to enter the war. Of course, when I did go into the service, I drew this thing under all kinds of conditions and it helped me immensely in the Army. It was popular and most division commanders always wanted their outfit in it and I learned quickly to use a lot of names and put them in. This came out in 1940, the day the Secretary of Defense reached down into that capsule and pulled out the first draft pick. We were in 75 papers before anybody else for about two years.⁹

But his career had started much earlier than that. At 14, Ficklen's 6'2" frame and mother's signature enabled him to pass for 18 and indulge in his deep love of horses by joining the 112th Cavalry National Guard where he became a crack player on its polo team. It began 32 years of reserve and active service, before he retired as a lieutenant colonel at 55. Before the second World War began he was on active duty in the cavalry. On discharge in December of 1945 he had earned a chest full of campaign, invasion and commendation ribbons, the Bronze Star with Arrowhead, plus the Belgian Croix de Guerre. His units were assigned to Patton and Eisenhower during this three years abroad.¹⁰ Sadly, he could not switch "You're in the Army Now" to a civilian role as easily as he

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Fig. 25.

Fig. 26.

Page 32

Fig. 27.
Somehow I can always express myself better over the phone!

Fig. 28.

Page 33

accomplished his own transition, and the strip died ''a very timely death." He traveled around the United States for six months after the war and was offered several editorial cartooning jobs. But News Editorial Page Director Bill Ruggles hired him back to the newspaper after one afternoon of heated conversation. ¹¹ He began a Saturday editorial cartoon on 20 April 1946, and began to alternate daily with Knott on 1 June 1946. It was a position he was to hold until he retired in 1976.

He married Mary Brown of Desdemona, Texas, on 21 October 1950. They had three children, Mollie, Jack Jr., and Robert.

Ficklen was a popular and successful cartoonist during the thirty years he drew for the News. He received twelve Freedom Foundation Awards, an award from the National Physicians Committee for the Extension of Medical Services, five "Katy" awards from the Dallas Press Club, and a Southwest Journalism Forum certificate of recognition for contributions to the art of political cartooning from Southern Methodist University. He was listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the Southwest.¹² More than 100 of his cartoons hang in the Presidential Museum in Odessa.¹³ His work comprised the bulk of a revolving series of exhibits entitled "Cartoonists Look at the Presidents" in January of 1977.¹⁴

Dallas Morning News cartoonist Bill DeOre said Ficklen was always highly regarded among editorial cartoonists:

I think, by and large, Herc is considered one of the art's forefathers. I know in the National Association of Editorial Cartoonists, Herc is highly emulated. He is really considered a top dog. And that's from your own peers and there isn't anything shabby about that.¹⁵

During his career as an artist, Ficklen received the acclaim of the people he drew. His files are full of notes from the famous and not-so-famous, requesting a certain piece or complimenting him on a cartoon they enjoyed. Texas politicians, including Senators John Tower, Lloyd Bentsen, and Ralph Yarborough, and Governor Allan Shivers, Preston Smith (who called himself Ficklen's "number one fan"), and John Connally, all corresponded regularly with him.

During his career, Ficklen drew cartoons featuring seven different American presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Jimmy Carter and received letters from many of them.¹⁶ In the Intercom interview, Ficklen spoke on the editorial cartoonist's particular challenge when delineating the presidency:

I guess Eisenhower was probably the hardest to draw. He was sort of baby-faced, and it was hard to give his face character. It was the same way with Ford. Others were naturals. I first thought Roosevelt was hard, but he was really quite easythe cigarette holder, the sharp chin, the little glasses, and the wavy hair, like John Connally's. Then we had Harry Truman, who had a pointed nose, beady black eyes, and horn-rimmed glasses. And of course John Kennedy was a natural with his hair.

The problem is, after four years of drawing a man and looking at each other's work, nearly all of us cartoonists were drawing pretty much the same thing. We all drew Nixon the same way after about four years.

With Nixon I thought a lot of the guys [other cartoonists] went overboard on it; Herblock used to make him dirty lookingfive o'clock shadow and everything. What I liked to do was try to hit a kind of medium, which was not necessarily nasty or dirty to him, but at the same time was being fairly representative of him. I don't think you should go out of your way to butcher him as far as his facial characteristics go [see figs. 29, 30, 31, 32, 33].¹⁷

Ficklen also discovered that some perfectly innocent cartoons had entirely different meanings by the time they were

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Fig. 29.
Final Act.

Page 35

Fig. 30.
Out of the Mountains.

Page 36

Fig. 31.

Page 37

Fig. 32.

Page 38

Fig. 33.

Page 39

published. Like Knott and McClanahan, he worked at least one day ahead of publication, occasionally two or three days. But a sudden tragedy can alter the meaning of any artist's work, sometimes for the worse:

It fell my day to cartoon when Kennedy came here to visit us. I had a cartoon of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and they were in a jeep bouncing over the Texas Hill Country. Kennedy had this rifle with a scope on it aiming at deer and the deer were labeled ''Texas Votes" [see fig. 34].

Well, you know the assassination came in here and that [cartoon] came out on that day. Everybody jumped on me. Actually, that was two days before the assassination. The day of the assassination I had an airplane coming down to Love Field like this and Jackie and John Kennedy's heads sticking out looking down at Love Field. And the title was "Welcome Jack and Jackie" [see fig. 35].

After the assassination people would call me and ask, "Did you have a premonition, did you realize that, well, you had Love Field and smoke coming out of the city, which means acrimony and hate. And did you know something was going to happen?" They gave me powers I didn't have. They read things into that cartoon; things that I didn't even think about or have on my mind. ¹⁸

The day following the assassination was also traumatic:

The Kennedy thing was very touch and go. We were all made up on a Friday afternoon, and I think I had drawn a "Goodbye and Thank You for Coming"-type cartoon. Everything was jerked, and I had to come up with something apropos within an hour.¹⁹

Much like the cartoon he drew on the death of animator Walt Disney years later, the result was a picture of Knott's Old Man Texas with a single tear in his eye. The untitled cartoon was widely reprinted and was included in a book of cartoons on the assassination, entitled The Day After.²⁰

Though Ficklen did not do President Lyndon Johnson any favors in his editorial cartoons, there does seem to be a special closeness between the two Texans. Johnson's long-time assistant, Mrs. Willie Day Taylor, frequently wrote Ficklen requesting certain cartoons for her employer's voluminous collectionmuch of which is now at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library at the University of Texas in Austin.

When Johnson left office in 1968, Mrs. Taylor sent a letter to all major cartoonists requesting any final cartoons. At the bottom of Ficklen's copy she wrote this postscript:

This is just a final request for those we did not request because we did not have the opportunity to see them. Your past generosity is deeply appreciated. My very own cartoon arrived this morning. Thank you so much. It will be one of my most cherished mementoes from my years in Washington [see fig. 36].²¹

Ficklen said Johnson was held in high regard by other cartoonists as well:

I tell you the most popular president of all of the cartoonists is always going to go down as Lyndon Johnson. He did something that no other president has ever done. He devised a scheme of showing his administration in office through the medium of the political editorial cartoon. And in doing so, he set up a little office with Willie Day Taylor, his secretary he had with him for 30 years, to scan all of the newspapers around the country and [when she saw any] on him, good or bad, to write and ask for it.

Well, cartoonists began hearing from President Johnson that never heard from any president. Letters from the White House coming across your boss's desk is a very impressive thing. And they all sent cartoons.

When he retired and opened up his library down in Austin, he made a boast he was going to have every cartoonist down there at a convention; he was going to show us a good time and he was going to put our cartoons up in a gallery down there. Well, this happened

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Fig. 34.
Big Game.

Page 41

Fig. 35.
Zeroing In.

Page 42

Fig. 36.
"Don't Spring Anything on Me!"

Page 43

and we all went to Austin, the whole association: New Yorkers and everybody. And we went to the ranch.

We spent an afternoon sitting on the ground out there, talking to him under a big old oak tree. He toured the ranch in his Cadillac and led three busloads of Eastern cartoonists. He was just a past master at good public relations. They went away from there feeling good, and he was not even president. To this day, if any of those guys come to Austin, they go to the museum and see their cartoons; they show [them] to their grandchildren.

I've got one or two that's permanent. He must have over a hundred from both Bill and I, and they trot them out. There's been some criticism lately that guys go down there and look for their cartoons and can't find them. But if they'll go to the men's rooms, or in a little waiting room down there, well, they are all there [see fig. 37]. ²²

Perhaps the most representative message came in the form of an open letter from President Gerald Ford to the Dallas News:

Nothing is more lasting than humor or the enjoyment of laughter. Despite the passing of time since I met with the members of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, the outstanding collection of caricatures continues to be source of tremendous pleasure to all the Fords.

I appreciate the time Herc Ficklen took to contribute his talent to his special memento. And I hope I will have an opportunity to thank him personally some day. Until then, may his hand be steady, his mind creative and his perspective sharp.²³

The art Ficklen used to depict President Ford and the other figures in his editorial cartoons has been described in various ways. DeOre said the style ''evolved between the new and old style of cartooning."²⁴

Herc, I think, was more classical in his drawings. He took after the newer trends of artists, the Mad magazine type of stuff.

Ficklen would work on his cartoons and try and get some gimmicks for them and a little exaggeration and things like that . . . that, I think, is the order of the day [see fig. 38].²⁵

Though his fellow artists and editors said Ficklen usually treated his subjects with more courtesy than many editorial cartoonists, a politician would still occasionally take offense:

Really, I've gotten several quite mad with me and indirectly mad at the Dallas News. I guess Ralph Yarborough was probably the worst. We're on good terms now, good friends. He used to have a saying that he was going to stand on the doorstep of the Dallas News and sue us for $50,000. We treated him rather roughly in some of our news stories. Editorial cartoon-wise, not too rough.²⁶

Ficklen cherished two letters written by Yarborough in 1971. They reveal an easy camaraderie between the two former antagonists, and an interesting insight into the feelings of politicians toward cartoonists:

Thank you for your kindness in sending me the original of your cartoon labeled "Texas Grass Roots, There's Gotta Be a Message for Me Somewhere."

I got many a good laugh out of this cartoon, which poked fun at me as symbolic of the status of all of the politicians hoping for nomination for election. You drew an almost universal cartoon insofar as it applies to politicians, and I must confess that I got more laughs out of that cartoon than any cartoon drawn at my expense (I do not usually get too hearty a laugh out of a cartoon drawn at my expense), but this one is so universal in its application, so true a year before a campaign, that it is pure political americana.

It is as universal as the Missouri artist Bingham's "Stump Speaking" or Jerry Bywater's painting of the Texas election of 1938 in the Pappy O'Daniel era (I was a candidate also that yearthe year the flour sack rolled us all under).²⁷

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Fig. 37.
Fueling Up.

Page 45

Fig. 38.

Page 46

A second letter from that year is also intriguing:

Thank you very much for the inscribed original of your cartoon of recent date which depicts me about to jump into the Governor's race. The only adverse comment that I heard from it was that written by a local reporter in the Longview paper (in a county where much of the prevailing sentiment makes the John Birch Society look like a left-wing organization), and he said that I was too old to jump into anything. That was only a prelude for his remarks which grew more violent by the paragraph.

P. S. Spiro Agnew has got some company. Now Chief Justice Burger has taken after the cartoonists! Not even a cartoonist is safe any more! [see fig. 39]. ²⁸

Of the artwork itself, Bill McClanahan, the Dallas Morning News cartoonist who worked with Ficklen from 1946 to 1972, said he thought similar influences appeared in both their cartoons:

We both admired Vaughan Shoemaker a lot. I'm sure Shoemaker influenced Herc's style as well as he did mine, to some extent, in our editorial cartooning. As a result, Herc and I used the same tools and techniques of shading. As a result, our drawings were similar, not exactly alike, but similar. He'd be blamed sometimes for a cartoon I'd draw, and I'd be blamed sometimes for a cartoon he'd draw.²⁹

The two cartoonists used two different boards with rough patterns for shading purposes: a "Coquille Board" or a "Garko Number Twelve." The shading effects were at first done by special pencils, either a ''Blazer Number 152T" or a "Prism Color 930." Ficklen later used a commercially prepared "Benday background.'' He did most of his heavy black lines in pen, and McClanahan used a "Number Three Winsor Newton" camel hair brush. Both drew twice actual size of the printed cartoon for reproduction purposes.³⁰

But if the two artists had similar art styles, their methods of arriving at ideas for cartoons differed radically. DeOre said Ficklen would do extensive research on each germ of an editorial idea. He would then make a list of cartoon possibilities before choosing one to complete. McClanahan would sit for up to an hour and "rack his brain and then he'd have this thing all worked out in his head and just pop it on paper."³¹

Even so, like Knott before him, Ficklen was not above an occasional "boner":

One of the darndest ones I ever did was when I had a "high noon" scene: two characters stalking each other out in the middle of a Western street. And I wasn't showing much of anything but their hips with two big pistols. You know, Gary Cooper and "High Noon."

I have had two boys and I don't know how many pistol belts I had seen and I knew exactly in my mind how they looked. So I drew them and we published this cartoon and I had put every bullet in the cartridge belt upside down. I heard from every drugstore cowboy that ever had a pistol, from all over the area. It was so obvious that the bullets would have fallen out this way.

There was a lawman, Jess Sweetenwho is quite a well-known lawmanin East Texas, and a real gunfighter. He wrote, "Don't let them kid you: a real gunman wears them that way so he can get them out real quick.³²

Ficklen's other major artistic blunder came a few years later:

[I] also have this trouble with anatomy. I drew this cartoon of two guys handwrestlingI thought there was something wrong with it, but I couldn't see anything. It was Israel and the Arabs. It went through the whole edition and I discovered I had the thumb coming out of the wrong side of the hand.

I heard a lot from other cartoonists, kidding me. This happens.

Some guys do it once in a whileadd an extra finger or something out of the ordinaryto see if people are looking [see fig. 40].³³

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Fig. 39.
Campaigner.

Fig. 40.

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In the end, Ficklen said his artwork was influenced most by members of his immediate family:

My background? Well, my mother was a decorative artist. She worked all through the Dallas area for people in their homes. I was exposed to drawing and painting and turpentineI knew what it was. Along about fourteen, fifteen, I seriously tried to study art under some local teachers. I couldn't afford the lessons, but I hung around anyway. I wanted to be a painter, but I was quick to find out that I was never going to make a living if I didn't get into newspaper work. It always seemed very, very comforting to me to know that someone out there in the big, cold world would pay for a doggone cartoon. ³⁴

One of the most noticeable aspects of art in a Ficklen cartoon was the inevitable appearance of a little longhorn figure in the bottom right corner of his drawings (see fig. 41). He first used the character before the 1971 Cotton Bowl football game between the University of Texas and Notre Dame:

Remember that year Texas was going great guns and they were number one and everyone ran around hollering, "We're number one." On the day of the game, I had a little steer saying, "We're number one." Then Notre Dame came along and knocked the socks off Texas and I left that steer out. I began to get telephone calls, cards, saying, "put that donkey back in,'' or "put that billy goat in and have him saying something."

This is not a new trick in cartooning; many cartoonists had it. I was aware of it and often wanted to have a little "dingbat." So I jumped on it and I began putting the dingbat in there with something funnythat I thought was funnyand in cases where I thought my cartoon didn't explain itself, I let the little dingbat explain.³⁵

Ficklen considered himself apart from Dallas Morning News cartoonists in his personal political philosophy. He delighted in calling himself a "liberal" on a traditionally conservative news paper.³⁶ He said, however, that only four of his cartoons were withdrawn by the management for editorial differences.³⁷

But News editorial page director Dick West disagreed with Ficklen's estimate of editorial differences with the newspaper. West said Ficklen reported to him for cartoon approval during the final sixteen years of the artist's stay with the News:

Herc's more of a liberal. Herc never agreed with the Dallas News; he never did. We'd have an editorial conference and towards the end he'd get kind of cynical when we'd talk about certain things. And he'd make sarcastic remarks. He never liked our policy on city politics.

Now Herc would come in with art for approval and because he was kind of convexwise, he'd come in with something and I'd look at it, and I'd say, "Now Herc, that's a little out of line with how we feel." He'd understand and he'd be very sweet and I didn't want to be in a position of killing his work. What I tried to do was work with him and say, "Let's change this around a little."³⁸

During his years as editorial cartoonist for the News, Ficklen branched into other facets of the cartooning business. His success with "You're in the Army Now" prompted him to try syndicated material again. One strip, "Out of Orbit" (see fig. 42), ran for three years in the 1950s. Another, "Key Peek" (see fig. 43), lasted two years during the 1960s. He drew a syndicated editorial cartoon for smaller Texas newspapers under the one-man syndicate he formed, called "Avalon Features" (see fig. 44).

Ficklen continued to draw for his syndicate until shortly before his death in 1980. His work ran weekly throughout the state, and his name was known by Texans in some of the state's smallest, most far-flung communities (see fig. 45):

About 20 years ago it hit me that Texas weeklies and daily newspapersof which there are over 650had a great drought of

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Fig. 41.

Fig. 42.

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Fig. 43.

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Fig.  44.

Fig. 45.

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cartoons in their papers. It's hard for them to get, particularly on Texas subjects.

Now they get a lot of handout stuff: National Manufacturing Association handouts and National Sugar Week and all of this. So I conceived an idea of drawing up some editorial cartoons slanted to Texas weeklies and mailing them out to quite a few newspapers; some to my friends who ran newspapers. I got nine of them interested enough that they would carry them on a weekly basis, and I started a little syndicate, then called "Ficklen Features."

I was quick to find out that the Dallas News didn't want me to have my name in any way associated with it; if would be like Dallas News policy forced on other papers. So I had to quickly Change it and it became "Avalon Features," which is this street here [in Dallas]. I've had a lot of success with that thing; at one time I had over 65 newspapers.

I try to brochure them once a year. I do run ads in the Texas Pressman every month. If I got in my car and ran around and pushed it to all of these editors around here, I'd sell a lot more of my artwork. They're flattered as heck when I come to see them. This is the way to do it, really. I just haven't got around to it [see figs. 46, 47]. ³⁹

His fellow workers called Ficklen the kindest of men. Noted News columnist Paul Crume once called him "The most completely decent man I have ever known." And Jim Wright, the current News editorial director, said at Ficklen's retirement, "He liked to pretend to be the mean old gruff colonel. But actually he was a real softy. Anyone with a problem would end up in Herds office."⁴⁰

With that kind of reputation, it is not surprising to find that during Ficklen's career the cartoons that were most often requested were sensitive, emotional ones. The most famous was drawn within hours of Walt Disney's death and depicts cartoon characters Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse weeping silently:

I suspect that the best one and the one that got the most reaction, people writing in and wanting a copy and writing letters, was on the death of Walt Disney.

I wanted to do one on him, but my boss was uncertain. I said "We ought to prepare a tribute to him. He's done more and had more effect on children and cartooning and animation than any single man in the game." He said, "Go ahead."

I had very little time, and I didn't do a thing in the world except take the strip of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and copy it, as they were. And put that grey background behind it, that benday. That's not my work; that's not even original. I added that tearI'm kinda heavy on tearsand struck a chord.

Boy, my phone began to ring before I got out of bed the next morning. The family wanted it; they have a copy of it. This simultaneously happened all across the country. All cartoonists hit on this theme. I was the only one who used the duck and Mickey. Karl Hubenthal had Mickey crying by himself.

They made a collection of these things and gave them to the family. I still get requests to this day for that one from people who want it. They decoupage it and use it in all kinds of manners [see fig. 48].⁴¹

Ficklen retired from the Morning News in 1976 (fig. 49); his last cartoon appeared 31 December 1976. He resumed the landscape painting he had abandoned as a teenager and was featured in exhibits in the Williamson Art Gallery, Dallas, Texas, The Dawley Gallery, Cranford, New Jersey, and The Bahi Mar Gallery, South Padre Island, Texas.⁴²

DeOre, Ficklen's replacement at the News, expressed high regard for him as an artist and a person:

I don't think anybody can deny the fact that over a period of forty years, Herc's stuff got better and better. Maybe the last year he slid a little bit, but he was ready to retire. His best stuff was back during LBJ.

He's a folksy type guy; he's a sharp old man, too. He really thinks

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Fig. 46.

Fig. 47.

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Fig. 48.

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Fig. 49.

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and acts young and he could be alive a hundred years from now and still be youngthat's the kind of person he is. He can relate to a lot of different things. And that's half of it in this business. ⁴³

The cartoon of Mickey Mouse that Ficklen drew following Disney's death was reprinted over Ficklen's obituary when he died in a Dallas hospital 20 October 1980, following a lengthy bout with several illnesses.⁴⁴ DeOre paid tribute to the artist with a cartoon rendered in Ficklen's style on the editorial page a few days later (see fig. 50).

Fig. 50.

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4
William J. McClanahan
19071981

William J. (Bill) McClanahan was born in Greenville, Texas, on 2 December 1907. His family moved to San Angelo, Texas, in January 1919 and stayed until June when they moved to Dallas where he lived until his death in 1981. ¹

McClanahan attended Highland Park High School and won varsity letters in football and track.² He later described his first brush with newspaper work during those years:

I belonged to what was then called ''The Journalism Club" in high school. That was the sort of thing where English students would write up activities in their high school. The Dallas Journalwhich was the evening edition of the Dallas Newsdevoted a full page every Friday to carry those reports from high schools.³

He entered Southern Methodist University as an engineering student. His father owned a large cotton farm in North Texas and wanted his son to be a textile engineer. McClanahan said he agreed so he could stay in Dallas close to his girlfriend, Eloise Dunagan.⁴ But he discovered he was not actually interested in engineering:

I used to spend all my time doing cartoons in classes of the professors. Dean Flaith of the engineering school stopped me one day on campus and said, "McClanahan, you ought to give up the idea of becoming an engineer and start studying art."⁵

During his second year at Southern Methodist University, McClanahan decided to give up pursuing the engineering

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degree. He quit school and worked for a year. During this time he married Miss Dunagan. McClanahan later quit his job.

But I didn't go back to SMU, I went to the Dallas Art Institute instead. I studied art and I didn't have any intention to go into newspaper art or cartooningI wanted to be a commercial artist. My interest was commercial: in doing theatre display and that was what I studied toward. My overall plan was to go about a year at the Dallas Art Institute, then follow it with study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. ⁶

At the Institute, McClanahan studied under Rubye Stone and Olin and Katherine Travis. Classes included life drawing in the mornings and design or composition in the afternoons.

During that time, the Dallas News was shorthanded and was operating with a three-man sports staff. Then the weekend would come around and they had about five or six football games they wanted to staff. Well, I had a friend from high school named Bill Singleton who was working on the Dallas News at that time, and he suggested that I come down and do some part-time work for them and cover football games on Friday and Saturday. And that was how I got my foot in the door at the Dallas News.⁷

The Depression ended his plans of further art training, and McClanahan went to work as a trainee for the Dallas Journal's Oak Cliff edition. From there, he went to the Journal as a general writer, specializing in sports. In 1937, the Dallas News sold the Journal to the rival Dallas Dispatch. McClanahan left that newspaper to rejoin the News a year later as a sports writer.⁸

During World War II, McClanahan enlisted in the Army Air Corps at the age of thirty-five. After serving in Dallas as a physical training instructor, he was sent to Officer Candidate School in Maryland where he received his commission. While he was stationed at Romulous Field in Michigan, McClanahan's commanding officer voiced concern that the accident reports were not being read and asked him to illustrate a few.

I said, ''I'll try," and sure enough, the readership of the flying safety reports increased incredibly in no time at all. That was when I first seriously began to think about being a cartoonist instead of a writer in civilian life.⁹

McClanahan was discharged in 1946 as a captain; he remained in the Air Force Reserve and ultimately retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1967. After the war, he returned to the News and divided his time between writing, editing, and drawing cartoons on the sports staff. It was not until his sixth month of work that the newspaper was able to fill the vacancies in the sports department, enabling him to draw full-time.¹⁰ His first regular sports cartoon appeared 4 August 1946 (see fig. 51).

In the early 1950s, McClanahan began a feature called "Grid Grams" (see fig. 52) that soon became popular in Texas:

I drew up a grid chart of the playing field, and we used symbols to chart the game. Where there was room in the little chart, I'd draw a little cartoon. Say, Doak Walker took off here for a touchdown, and I'd draw a little cartoon character running with the football to illustrate it. The sports editor at that time was Bill Rives and he said the cartoons were more interesting than the charting of the games. So he said, "Let's just drop the charts and do a Monday cartoon in which you cartoon one or two or three games and what happened." It did prove popular and the "Grid Predictions" [see fig. 53] came out on a Friday and then on Monday there would be a follow-up, and I'd have to do a cartoon on Sunday morning before noon so we could get it to the engraver.¹¹

Because of his involvement with sports cartoons, McClana-

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Fig. 51.

Fig. 52.

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Fig. 53.

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han became known as "the father of Southwest Conference cartoon mascots." ¹² While doing the cartoons, he received requests for originals and compliments from national sports figures Frank Leahy of Notre Dame, Bud Wilkinson of Oklahoma, Joe Paterno of Penn State, and Dutch Meyer of Texas Christian University and from most major college coaches and athletic directors in Texas.¹³

Current Dallas Morning News editorial and sports cartoonist Bill DeOre said McClanahan was a highly influential sports cartoonist:

Just for starters, Bill had a bigger background in sports. He always was a sports writer; he was interested in sports. He knew everything there was to know; I mean he was really into it. He was not fanatical, but he would draw those "Grid Grams" for years. He kept running lists of everything that was happening. Not only stuff that would go into the paper, but stuff that would go into his own files. He kept files on everything, almost to the point of being fanatical. Anybody that interested is going to take a lot more time than they normally would on anything else. Consequently, with his style of drawing, he became kind of a legend in the South, because of his sports cartoons. He was the first real big, well-known sports cartoonist, I like to think. If not in the South, then in Texas. Because of the way he approached things and his action. And also by bringing the Southwest Conference figures to life.¹⁴

McClanahan's most humorous sports cartoons were drawn extensively from his own knowledge of sports. The actual artwork was the result of several influences:

I would say that there were two cartoonists who influenced my style more than any others: that would be Jack Patton and Willard Mullin. Mullin was the guy that every kid that wanted to be a sports cartoonist copied. He was their idol. I would sit down and copy him. I know that during my army days, after I decided that I wanted to return as a cartoonist, every time I got my hands on a Mullin cartoonI kept a scrapbook of itI would sit down and study Mullin's style.¹⁵

Through the years one of McClanahan's favorite characters was the Baylor Bear. In his sports cartoons he always drew the Baptist bruin in tattered, patched clothes, barefoot, and with a pin holding up his pants. The other Southwest Conference mascots were rarely dressed in tuxedoes themselves, but to some Baylor fans it seemed like their Bear suffered more than most. McClanahan later said that was indeed the case:

That was becauseat least while I was drawingthe poor Bears had suffered the longest since winning the conference title. That kind of stamped them as the poor folks of the league. It was no reflection on the Baptistsbut 50 years is a long time to wander in the wilderness [see figs. 54, 55, 56].¹⁶

And because Baylor is a private church school, McClanahan said the university's fans were more sensitive than most about how their mascot was depicted. One season the Baylor basketball team was easily the class of the conference. To indicate the squad's toughness in an upcoming game, he used standard comic symbols to show the Bear: a slouchy cap, heavy five-o'clock shadow, a billy club and a cigarette dangling from his lip. The Bogart-like portrayal set off howls of protest from Waco:

One fellow called to say my cartoon upset him. He said I could have shown the Baylor Bear as being a tough guy without putting the cigarette in his mouth. Because, after all, Baptists don't smoke.

I said, "I beg your pardon, but my grandfather is a deacon in the Baptist Church, and he's smoked a pipe all of his life. I'm sure he's as devoted a Baptist as you are."

The guy paused a moment and said, "Well, okay. But next time put the cigarette in the SMU Mustang's mouth: those Methodists will do anything."¹⁷

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Fig. 54.

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Fig. 55.

Fig. 56.

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In the 1950s the emergence of Texas Tech brought the need for another caricature in McClanahan's growing cast of cartoon characters. After wrestling with several different depictions, he took the question to the News's state-wide readership:

In the old days, Texas Tech was known as the Matadors; obviously that was a caped bullfighter. Then Pete Cawthon came along. Now I don't know who tacked the nickname on: some say Pete did and others said it was some sports writer out there in Lubbock. But because they were in red and black, they started calling them the Red Raiders.

Well, they called them the Red Raiders for yearsall through the war and everything. I came back and had to draw cartoons of them, and I didn't know what the hell a Red Raider was. My first inclination was that the Red Raider was an Indian. So in some cartoons I portrayed them as Indians. In others I portrayed them as something else. Finally, I fudged about it and did a cartoon for the Sunday paper, in which I used all of these characters I had used in the past. Included in there was this old character with his red mustache. He was kind of patterned after this character cartoonist Tex Avery drew, but wasn't a copy of it. It was my version of a Red Raider. He had a cape and a hat with "TT" on it.

I ran him in the paper along with the Indian and two or three other types of Matadors and all and asked the readers to write in on a penny postcard to vote for the favorite. The vote came out and I think it was seven to one in favor of this mustached character [see fig. 57]. ¹⁸

The cartoon was such a hit that McClanahan said the Texas Tech alumni association quickly asked him to design a car window sticker with the new character. He said he never saw the sticker until years later when he was attending a cartoonists' convention in Kansas City. There on a car in a street outside his hotel was the sticker (see fig. 58).¹⁹

Another cartoon with a strange evolution is the Texas A&M Aggie. McClanahan's caricature of the jut-jawed old sergeant can now be found on virtually every piece of Aggie paraphernalia. But that was not always the case:

I also had a problem with Texas A&M. I had first used a farmboy as the comic character for A&M because it was an agricultural school. However, I soon began getting letters from Aggie alumni who pointed out that A&M was the largest military school in the country. They thought my character should have a military look.

At that time, an oil company printed a car sticker depicting an old cavalry sergeant and put A&M on it. The cavalry sergeant was complete with campaign hat and leather boots. Some alumni of A&M asked me to develop a character along that line.

I was not sure if that was a good idea, because every football team is going to get beat, sooner or later, and my idea for those cartoons was that every time a team got beat, I would show their mascot a little more bedraggled. I didn't know how it would set with the public to show a military-hero-type character getting beat.

Having been reassured by our assistant managing editor, Felix McNight, an old Aggie supporter, that it would be all right, we developed that character. The character of Old Sarge has evolved since then. He started out very tough-looking, but in the past few years I have begun to put a little more comic touch to him [see fig. 59].²⁰

Only the Aggies' archrival, the University of Texas Longhorn, suffered more from McClanahan's pen after a defeat. While one team might only receive a few minor bumps after a gridiron loss, the cartoonist would put knots in Bevo's tail, break off a horn, and give the ungainly steer a black eye. McClanahan said Texas losses hurt fans of the giant university more than other schools (see fig. 60).²¹

McClanahan invented several features for the Dallas News sports pages, in addition to these caricatures, the Grid Gram, and weekly prediction and recapitulation cartoons. One popular idea was the Texas Sports Exam. Drawing on the artist's prodigious knowledge of the state's various sports and ath-

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Fig. 57.
Cartoonist's Nightmare!

Fig. 58.

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Fig. 59.

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Fig. 60.

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Fig. 61.
ANS.The Wichita Falls (Tex.) Spudders.

Fig. 62.
ANS.The late Harry Cooper.

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letes, the column became an immediate success and lasted for many years.

Sports Editor Bill Rives said the idea was a sure winner; the only question concerned the title:

When the sports department was planning ''Texas Sports Exam,'' there was considerable debate over the choice of the name and the way it, along with McClanahan's byline, should be displayed.

Finally, the present pattern, "Texas Sports Exam by Bill McClanahan," was decided upon. McClanahan drew a sample and submitted it to the sports desk.

As he studied it, along with Ray Osborne, assistant sports editor, he murmured: "You know, it might look better like this: 'Bill McClanahan's Texas Sports Exam.' "

The big ham wanted top billing [see figs. 61, 62]. ²²

But after many years of producing the column, even McClanahan's vaunted files began running low. Thomas Turner, once a writer for the News and later assistant to Baylor Chancellor Abner McCall, soon stepped into the breach, supplying the artist with many excellent questions (and answers). Two of the cartoonist's return notes to Turner remain:

Am returning the Mule Frazier clipping as requested. Am using practically all of the suggestions you sent. However, since most of them deal with football, I'm drawing them in advance and saving them for the dizzy season ahead.

Another request. An enthusiastic Baylor alumnus, Bob Poole, called today to suggest I use one on Howard C. (Yank) Wilson who won four letters in sports at Baylor in 1915. Says it was the first time anyone did that in the Texas Intercollegiate Conference or whatever they called it then. I doubt this as athletes were more versatile in those days and didn't specialize.

However, it bears checking into from this angle . . . Was he first BAYLORITE to win four major sports letterstrack, baseball, football and basketball?

Keep the ideas coming. It's good public relations to plug Waco and Baylor in this little feature.²³

A second memo also shows the depth of McClanahan's sports knowledge when he caught an error in a suggestion from avid sports fan Turner:

A thousand thanks for the questions for the Texas Sports Exam. They arrived just when I was dragging the bottom of the old barrel and really needed them.

One was inaccurateJack Gray was not the first All-American cager from the Southwest. Abb Curtis made it about 1926. Funny thingI used this about six months ago and the next day Jimmy Banks comes out with a story about Jack Gray resigning and referred to him as the Southwest's first All-American. The desk didn't catch it. I had to prove to Banks that Abb was the boy.

Actually, they didn't start picking All-American teams until about 1930 in basketball. But after the first year the Helms Foundation went back 10 years and selected All-American squads on the basis of their past records and Curtis was on that squadbefore Gray was named [see figs. 63, 64].²⁴

In 1957, John Knott retired after more than fifty years of cartooning for the News. Jack "Herc" Ficklen had joined the staff as an editorial cartoonist in 1946 and had alternated with Knott since that time. Retired News Editorial Director Dick West recalled that there was little hesitation about hiring a replacement:

Bill, as I recall, was doing sports cartoons and I think had maybe substituted during periods of vacations. Ted Dealey liked Bill's stuff very much, and Ted called me down and said, "Add him to your staff. Take him off the sports department and put him on to take Knott's place." That's how Bill got down there. We've always had two; we're the only paper in this part of the world with two cartoonists.²⁵

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Fig. 63.
ANS.Bulldog Turner.

Fig. 64.
ANS.The late Dusty Boggess.

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McClanahan's first regular editorial cartoon ran 19 November 1957, the day following Knott's final regular effort. The transition from doing sports cartoons to editorial cartoons apparently was easily made:

After I was on the News, and I began to think about the business of maybe going into editorial cartooning permanently, I thought to myself, "Well, why in the world can't you use the same technique Willard Mullin uses for sports cartoons and use it for editorial cartoons?" And so I began to experiment with it for a little bit [see fig. 65]. ²⁶

DeOre, who has been doing sports cartoons for the News since 1976, said he was influenced by McClanahan's work because of the art's direct nature:

The byword of a McClanahan cartoon is action. He was so hardline. He was very conservative, almost ultra-right and had a lot of action. It carried over from his sports cartoons; it had to, because he always had something moving or hopping or buzzing in his cartoons. He believed in that and it made him kind of unique. Some of his editorial stuff was so hard-hitting it would smack you right between the eyes. Which is good; that's very positive in any kind of editorial cartoon because a quick reaction is what you want. It got really good; he drew with even a finer line than even Mullin did. He had a lot of really good whiz-bang ideas as far as action went [see fig. 66].²⁷

McClanahan's overall concept of the editorial cartoon kept the idea and action simple, and his personal beliefs were slightly right of center. His favorite character was a paunchy politician with an effete cigarette holder and beret called Lefty Q. Liberal (see fig. 67).²⁸ McClanahan used Lefty whenever he thought that conservative elements needed a symbol to ridicule.

McClanahan's fellow cartoonist Ficklen sometimes was at odds with him over just such politics.

It was funny; I was a Kennedy man and Bill was not, and this caused some friction between us. Not personal friction; we're best of friends. But I foundand I don't know whether Bill knows this or notwhen he'd draw Lefty Q. Liberal and everything, he'd make me pretty doggone mad. I found, in many cases, I would be answering him with another type of cartoon. This was not too hot for the paper. But they never seemed to notice it. He was the conservative, and I was the liberal in that particular sense. It was good for us and I kind of have the reputation of being a little liberal up there and had a lot of fun tearing holes in their theories.²⁹

McClanahan had a different view of his personal editorial cartooning beliefs. He said he was only conservative on a national level (see fig. 68).

Now, on a local level, I didn't always draw the way I felt. Lots of times I disagreed. You see, our paper was a conservative paper on all levels. I agreed with their conservative policies 100 percent. In fact, I was more conservative than they were on some national issues. But on a local level, I didn't always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes I would pass up a local cartoon simply because I didn't agree with their policy or the man they were backing at that time, or for a particular office at that time. No, I considered myself on some issuesparticularly on a state or local levelleaning towards the liberal side.³⁰

McClanahan's cartoons became a fixture on the News's editorial page, nearly as much as his work on the sports pages. And although some artists said his sports cartoons would have a longer-lasting impact than his editorial work,³¹ McClanahan's career on the editorial page was long and distinguished.

He later said the high point of his newspaper career was the Southwest Journalism Award he received in 1970 for "continued excellence in sports and editorial cartooning." The award was made jointly by Southern Methodist University and the Dallas Press Club.³² He won twelve National Liberty

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Fig. 65.
Heah Come de Bus!

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Fig. 66.
Another Step Backward?

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Fig. 67.

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Fig. 68.
Look Back Home, Paul.

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Fig. 69.

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Awards, the 1967 Dallas Press Club Award for Cartooning, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce Sportsman Award, the National Foundation for Highway Safety Award, the Lincoln National Life Foundation Award, and the 1972 Hella Temple Award (Shriners). ³³

Just as he was recognized by figures in the sports field, McClanahan received voluminous amounts of correspondence from figures in the political arena. Texas political powers, such as Governor Allan Shivers, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Governor Preston Smith, and national politicians such as Senators Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and Barry Goldwater of Arizona, all wrote the cartoonist.³⁴

Most just wrote short notes requesting a certain cartoon or complimenting the artist on a certain piece of work. But occasionally a cartoon would bring a lengthier response. A letter from Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1966 says a great deal about Humphrey the manand the power of the editorial cartoon:

A mighty clever cartoonI would enjoy having the original. What I really meant is what I said and what I have said again and again, before the speech in New Orleans, during the speech in New Orleans, and after it; namely, that violence and lawlessness cannot be condoned but to suppress it does not always answer the problems that cause it.

Possibly you would be interested in my speech to the FBI graduating class which was delivered sometime before I appeared in New Orleansa speech which our friends of the press did not feel the need to cover or report, possibly because I called upon the citizens of our nation to support their police officers, to respect the badge of police authority. But isn't it interesting that, when a man seeks to give dramatic emphasis to intolerable social conditions which you and I know do prevail in many of our cities and do warp the lives of some of our fellow citizens, there is reporting, even if inaccurate? Because the text of that speech makes it perfectly clear that I was not advocating violence or lawlessness, but rather was advocating reform, rehabilitation, justice, and law observance, and, if need be, law enforcement.

It has been almost two months since I spoke in New Orleans so the purpose of this letter is not to complain but, out of respect for you and your sense of fair play, to give you the whole story because what I meant is what I have saidthat for an American to be aroused over injustice, to protest injustice, and even to cry out against injustice is not un-American or inciting to violence [see fig. 69].³⁵

But it was Senator Lyndon Johnson who best summed up the letter-writers:

You were always two steps, at least, ahead of all the rest of us.

Many, many thanks for the cartoons. Allen sent them to me a few days ago and they are already incorporated into a book I keep in my office to look at when my morale needs a boost.

I am grateful to you for the gift and I have a high regard and appreciation for your artistic gift for expressing your keen political insights.³⁶

McClanahan was widely reprinted in national magazines and newspapers during his more than twenty years as a cartoonist:

I made Time with an editorial cartoon, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek, and on some occasions, the overseas editions of those magazines, especially U.S. News. Then I was reprinted quite often in the Los Angeles Times, back when the Times was more conservative than it is today.³⁷

McClanahan retired in 1972, his last regular cartoon appearing on 29 December 1972: fittingly, a humorous look at previous Cotton Bowl games. A few days later his friend, noted columnist for the News, Frank X. Tolbert, wrote a column entitled, "Curmudgeon's Cartoons Will Be Keenly Missed."

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This column is composed because The McClanahan, my compadre since I too was a goatish young sports writer, is retiring today. That is, he is retiring as a resident Dallas News curmudgeon, and with the laurels of a nationally-renowned editorial and sports cartoonist. ³⁸

At one point, Tolbert quotes Executive Editor Jack Krueger's affectionate observations on the cartoonist and his dress:

The soul of a sensitive artist is encased in the trappings of the extrovert. In the manner of dress, McClanahan has the brilliance of an ocean sunset. He has a flair for mixing bright reds, yellows and blues in his collection of sports jackets, slacks, caps and ties. He wears arresting plaid shorts which tastefully match the vivid red of his runabout sports car.³⁹

But Tolbert spends much of the column detailing the cartoons he will miss when McClanahan retires:

Bill is a magnificently lucid draftsman. His editorial cartoons have bold meanings and are often graced with delightfully cynical humor [fig. 70]. Those editorial cartoons are reproduced by other admiring newspapers and national news magazines.

He gets most of his complaints from persons of a political philosophy who are miffed by one of his stock editorial page cartoon characters, a cretin in beret and tennis shoes labeled "Lefty Q. Liberal." In one of his final cartoons last Friday he had Lefty Q. Liberal delivering a swift kick to a likeness of "Ol' Bill" with the McClanahan observation on Lefty Q.: "He even kicks left-footed" [see fig. 71].

The McClanahan gallery of cartoon characters I will miss most keenly, though, are those on the Dallas News sports pages.

These are the creations of a real genius at pictorial humor. What sports fan can ever forget his raunchy Texas Longhorn, perhaps with a broken horn and a tail tied in a knot after an Oklahoma game, or McClanahan's mean-looking and masked runt of a Texas Tech Red Raider or the Baylor Bear in patched overalls or his Arkansas "Super Hog" battered after a poor season and flying around with the sideboards from an outhouse, complete with half moon design, for wings?⁴⁰

After McClanahan's retirement, West recalled the artist's work as a news cartoonist:

Bill wasn't subtle, nothing subtle about him. Nothing subtle about him as a person; he says what he thinks. He had a great way of putting over a message. It wasn't as subtle as Knott's but he was a good artist.

But it's good, it's good cartoon art and Bill was the best informed cartoonist of all. Bill read: he would read U.S. News and World Report from cover to cover every damn week. He'd go up and study the New York Times; he'd read Time and Newsweek. And, of course, the Dallas NewsBill read more than anybody. Bill was great, old Bill was great [see fig. 72].⁴¹

After McClanahan retired, he came back the next fall to revive his sports prediction cartoons and quit when the football season was over. Over the years, he authored one book on his hobby, Scenery for Model Railroads, and illustrated several others. A collection of the panels he drew during the 1950s was published under the title Texas, The Way It Used To Be. He became an avid painter, and his work has appeared in several Dallas area exhibits (see fig. 73).⁴²

The great cartoonist died after a second heart attack on 7 September 1981. His passing was marked in several publications, and the Morning News ran an editorial tribute on 9 September 1981. Above the editorial was a cartoon by DeOre honoring his late friend and mentor (see fig. 74). Even the rival Dallas Times Herald featured an editorial cartoon honoring the passing of Bill McClanahan (see fig. 75).

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Fig. 70.
Pick the Best Quarterback, Coach.

Page 80

Fig. 71.
Wacky Cotton Bowl Classics.

Page 81

Fig. 72.

Page 82

Fig. 73.

Page 83

Fig. 74.

Page 84

Fig. 75.

Page 85

5
Comparison of the Artists

According to artists Herc Ficklen and Bill McClanahan, editorial cartoonists in general enjoy comparing cartoons and art styles. Mrs. David Robb remembers her father John Knott swapping cartoons with favorite national artists. Even the most casual newspaper reader may notice distinct styles by popular cartoonists.

Ficklen and McClanahan may have had certain superficial similarities in their work. Those similarities probably had more to do with the prevailing cartoon art styles of the day and their roughly similar artistic backgrounds than any attempt to copy each other's work. Knott, on the other hand, was a throwback to an earlier time, with a vastly different fine-art education. Since both McClanahan and Ficklen worked with Knott, it would be logical to assume that the nationally recognized artist exerted a strong influence on the styles of the two young cartoonists. However, both McClanahan and Ficklen agreed that this was not the case.

Miss Anne Toomey was employed by the Dallas News's art department and worked with all three cartoonists during her forty-four-year career. She said Knott's classical art background immediately separated him from the other two artists. ¹ Ficklen and McClanahan learned about editorial cartooning while actually employed in that capacity. Current Dallas Morning News political cartoonist Bill DeOre said their styles resembled each other more than they resembled the classical realism Knott favored:

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After a while, Bill came upon his style and stayed with it for twenty years. And I'd say during that time, his style changed very little at all.

As for Herc's style, like I say, they're cast in the same mold. Herc's tended to be a little more subtle.

I think what happened was not so much that Herc was copying Bill or Bill was copying Herc. They both just kind of taught themselves by looking at the same kind of people. ²

Observation of the national artists that the three cartoonists admired is also revealing. Knott, who rarely talked about his work, once said he was grateful to two artists who were his instructors at night school in Chicago: Joseph Leyendecker and Frederick Mulhaupt.³ In an interview in 1923, Knott selected his favorite American cartoonists of the day:

J. N. Darling, in my unauthoritative judgment, stands first for the originality of ideas. Rollin Kirby, of the New York World, I regard as the best artist. His work is graphic and proportioned most adequately. John T. McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune is the most famous newspaper cartoonist. He is the dean of the class, but he doesn't have to work so hard as he used to. He has done some pictures which will remain as cartoon classics in all traditions of the art. His work is characterized first by humor and next by a style, which is entire absence of style, that is peculiarly his, therefore not successfully imitated.⁴

Mrs. Robb said her father was ''very, very good friends'' with both Darling and McCutcheon.⁵

Jim Palmer, former Morning News editorial cartoonist, said McClanahan's work was most influenced by Jack Patton and Ficklen.⁶ In various interviews, McClanahan listed Vaughan Shoemaker (see fig. 76), Willard Mullin, Patton, and Ficklen as influences:

I was influenced more by Ficklen than Knott because of the style of drawing. Knott was brilliant. I always considered Knott more of an artist than a cartoonist. I was not a fine artist; I was a cartoonist.

Ficklen was a fine cartoonist and was patterning some of his work after Vaughan Shoemaker. And I, too, admired Shoemaker's work. So, as a result, I was probably influenced more by Ficklen's style of drawing than Knott's style of drawing.⁷

From the beginning, McClanahan said he avoided drawing in any manner that would invite comparison with Knott:

I shied away from trying to draw like Knott because I didn't want people to think I was trying to copy Knott, and I was striving to develop my own style and technique of drawing.

On one or two occasions, just to satisfy my own curiosity, I made an attempt to draw in Knott's technique. I just could not do it. So I never seriously tried to be influenced by Knott's style of drawing.⁸

Ficklen was a close friend of Knott's, and in the early years it was almost like a father-son relationship.⁹ But Ficklen said that his style throughout his career was much closer to Jack Patton's than to Knott's.¹⁰

All three artists employed different media in the bulk of their cartoons. Knott began by strictly using India ink with heavy crosshatching and fine lines (see fig. 77). But as more sophisticated printing processes became available after World War I, he began a gradual switch to grease pencil on a rough pebble-board surface.¹¹ With the depth provided by the grease pencil, Knott was able to do such realistic work that McClanahan called them "absolute works of art" with their detailed, almost photographic shading (see fig. 78).¹²

Ficklen started with a grease pencil on pebbleboard (fig. 79), but during the 1960s switched to a rigid pen and India ink, using a commercially prepared, adjustable peel-off sheet called "Benday" for tones and backgrounds (fig. 80). Benday can

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Fig. 76.
Arrows Still Fly.

Fig. 77.
The Hogs of War

Page 88

Fig. 78.
Worthy Causes.

Fig. 79.
Time Will Tell.

Page 89

Fig. 80.

Page 90

Fig. 81.

Page 91

be cut into any shape with a razor, and pieces were frequently found scattered throughout his office. ¹³

McClanahan also changed media during his thirty years as an editorial and sports cartoonist for the newspaper:

I switched back and forth a little bit. Sometimes I would mix them up, particularly in sports cartoons. Grease pencil was my main, particularly with editorial cartoons. With sports cartoons, sometimes I would draw the cartoons where you'd have the portrait of an athlete that would be done with a mixture of grease pencil and brush. Surrounding that I would draw some little action figures strictly with lines.¹⁴

He eventually went to pen and ink, reserving the grease pencil for shading effects to give the pieces more depth (see fig. 81).

The three artists' varied political and personal beliefs also differentiated among them. Ficklen recalled the continual battles he had with the more conservative McClanahan, using the not-so-private battleground of the News editorial page.¹⁵ Retired Dallas Morning News Editorial Director Dick West said differences among the three were obvious: "Bill was very well informed, and he's by far the most right-wing. John's in the center, and Herc's more of a liberal."¹⁶

Each of the artists had a favorite target for their cartoons. West recalls that Knott's special prejudice was against former Gov. W. Lee O'Daniel:

If he lampooned anybody, it was him. I don't know why. Knott never understood him with his cornball and hillbilly stuff, the Light Crust Doughboys. John never quite understood it and was sort of repulsed by it all; especially in the '30s with his cartoons about O'Daniel [see fig. 82].

He would also get rough with Stalin and Hitler and the Russian bear. ¹⁷

For his part, O'Daniel occasionally fought back. A Knott cartoon entitled "I'll Be With You When I'm Gone" so irritated the candidate that he retaliated by writing a song dedicated to the News. A few days later his band performed the new tune on the courthouse square in Vernon. One of the Western Swing-styled stanzas went like this:

I'll be with you when I'm gone, you politicians.
I'll be with you when your paper goes to press;
If you print old nasty lies,
I'll blow pepper in your eyes;
I'll be with you when I'm gone, you politicians.

The story quoting the song was headlined, "O'Daniel Bursts Into Poetry With Warning For Politicians."¹⁸

Ficklen and McClanahan had other targets. Ficklen said, "Bill and I both had some targets we liked to work on part of the time: City Hall or the County Commissioners." Ficklen said his fellow cartoonist often feuded with Dallas City Hall (see fig. 83).¹⁹ West remembers the Citizen's Charter Association of Dallas as Ficklen's prized target (see fig. 84).²⁰

The methods of selecting topics for editorial cartoons also varied among the three artists. West said during much of Knott's tenure with the News the selection process was rigidly controlled:

Artists are such individualists that G. B. Dealey made a ruleor it might have been his brother Jamesand this rule was adhered to for years: we had to make a carbon and take it to the cartoonists. They would study them over and get their ideas and they had to draw on some subject that was being written on.

There used to be a line under it [the cartoon], "See editorial so-and-so." For that reason, when Knott was a top cartoonist, all editorial writers had to make extra carbons and give them to the car-

Page 92

Fig. 82.
"Hallelujah!"

Page 93

Fig. 83.
Give Him Air Cover, Earle.

Page 94

Fig. 84.
Comeback Hotrod

Page 95

toonist. And John would read all of the editorials very carefully. He'd get up and walk around, and suddenly he'd have an idea out of one of those and he would do it. And about eight times out of ten, it was the top editorial. His cartoon was based on the lead editorial, and G. B. Dealey liked that. ²¹

West said the rule was not changed until after Knott retired and Ficklen and McClanahan had become the featured cartoonists:

Ficklen and McClanahan despised that rule, so much so, that I felt it was unfair to them. When Knott was a cartoonist, you had no editorial conferences. We started the editorial conferences during the war, or right afterwards. And even then you didn't have them every day. And it was imperative that the cartoonists attend. Herc didn't like them and never wanted to be restricted in any way.

Now they draw on whatever idea comes to mind; they don't even have to relate to anything. They like it better that way.²²

McClanahan caught the end of the "assigned editorial" era. He said a cartoonist could still manage to avoid drawing something he did not agree with:

The way cartoonists work on that is that everyday at nine o'clock we would have a staff meeting of the Dallas News writers and cartoonists. We would spend about thirty minutes discussing the topics and problems of the day and where the paper stood on them.

For instance, was the paper for giving away the Panama Canal or was it against it? The publisher informed the editor, and he informed us what stand he thought we should take on certain things. So the cartoonist knew in advance what subjects were important for the day, and we knew what stand to take to express his opinion in the paper, and as a result, we never differed in opinion.

Sometimes we disagreed on a local issue. I know one time it was my turn to do the cartoon on a Wednesday, and the editor wanted the cartoon drawn about the mayor's race or something to do with

local politics, which I disagreed with. He didn't say what to draw, but he wanted us to draw on that subject. And I said, "If you don't mind, I'd rather Herc drew the cartoon tomorrow and I'll draw on another subject." So we just switched days.²³

The entire outlook of the Dallas News changed between the Knott era and the Ficklen and McClanahan era. During most of Knott's tenure, West said the newspaper's editorial page was more concerned with establishing goals and movements than with highlighting personalities.²⁴

McClanahan said by the time he and Ficklen were drawing together, the editorial emphasis of the Morning News had changed dramatically:

The News was more rurally oriented than it is today. It paid a heck of a lot more attention to the problems of the farmers and the people who lived out in the country. It paid a lot more attention to their needs, wants, problems, than to the people who lived in the cities.²⁵

It was this rural emphasis, McClanahan said, that gave Knott's creation Old Man Texas such popularity (see fig. 85). But as the News swung to a pronounced Dallas emphasis, with a corresponding change to personalities instead of ideas, the cartoonists switched accordingly (see fig. 86). In his final years as a regular cartoonist, even Knott began concentrating more on political figures than broad movements or stated editorial goals.

Current cartoonist DeOre grew up in Dallas under both Ficklen and McClanahan and believes that in comparing the three, the two later cartoonists are sometimes underrated:

This is from my point of view and I don't think there is anybody

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Fig. 85.
Farm Report!

Page 97

Fig. 86.
Whozzat?

Page 98

who looked at more of their stuffalthough I sure didn't look at as much of Knott's stuff as Herc and Bill didI feel like maybe Knott was considered a genius and a master because of the times in which he worked. I am really not impressed when I see other cartoonists that drew in his times. I think that the guy is really built up way too much.

Here's the thing: you've got to figure back when this guy was drawing, the communications system was half of what it is now. The person's whole realm was the city. You were almost cut off. Each little circulation was an entity in itself. So you really had nothing to compare it with. It's a sure different story now, and you can look at a thousand cartoonists a day if you want to.

But I think he hung the moon when he was down here because nobody else was doing stuff like that; very few people were doing cartoons in those days. If you want to compare him to some of the really old, old style guys who were back East, to some of the New York cartoonists, Knott was second rate. At best he was second rate.

I don't want to take anything away from the man because he was really kind of fascinatingthe way he came up with his ideas, from what Bill and Herc say. But I don't hold him in the awe that they do.

I think, as far as direct impact, on the public and the nation, that McClanahan's sports cartoons had more effect than the Knott period. I would put those two above Knott any day of the week. ²⁶

Finally, the two modern cartoonists both claimed repeatedly they were not influenced artistically by Knott. West said they both worked ''awfully hard'' to remain stylistically distinct. Ficklen said he sometimes tried a cartoon in Knott's style and failed badly. And McClanahan denied emphatically that Knott had any measureable influence on his editorial cartoons.

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Appendix I
Review of the Literature

Although no books exist on Knott, Ficklen, or McClanahan, two deal directly with the institution for which all three worked, the Dallas Morning News: Sam Acheson's 35,000 Days in Texas (New York: Macmillan, 1938; see pp. viii-ix, 243, 368, 306) and Ernest Sharpe's G. B. Dealey of the Dallas News (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955). Acheson's book, which traces the history of the newspaper through 1938, has several paragraphs about Knott; Sharpe's book about Dealey has passing mention of cartoonists.

Four master's theses, two from North Texas State University and two from the University of Texas at Austin, contain a few references to one or more of the cartoonists. The studies are James Bradley's "The Dallas Morning News' View Toward International Relations" (Master's thesis, North Texas State University, 1970), Samuel Maranto's "A History of Dallas Newspapers" (Master's thesis, North Texas State University, 1952), Nathe Bagby's ''Editorial Policies of the Dallas News" (Master's thesis, University of Texas, 1930), and Ralph Parker's "The History of the Dallas News" (Master's thesis, University of Texas, 1930).

For comparison with an acknowledged master, several books on Thomas Nast are available, including Albert Paine's Th. Nast, His Period and His Pictures (New York: Macmillan, 1904), Morton Keller's The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), and J. Chal. Vinson's Thomas Nast, Political Cartoonist (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 1967).

Comprehensive articles on the history and future of cartooning are in such books as Editorial and Political Cartooning by Syd Hoff (New York: Stravon Educational Press, 1971), Art and Politics by Richard Fitzgerald (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), A History of American Graphic Humor by William Murrell (New York: The Whitney Museum, 1938), and The Ungentlemanly Art: A History of American Political Cartoons by Stephen Hess and Milton Kaplan (New York: Macmillan, 1938).

Appendix II
A Chronology of Notable Events in the History of Cartooning in the Dallas Morning News

2 October 1885, page 8. First artwork in Dallas Morning News (advertisement featuring Houston hotel).

14 November 1885, page 1. First piece of nonadvertisement art (diagram featuring extent of Galveston fire).

5 August 1886, page 1. First illustration (portrait of Samuel B. Tilden).

6 March 1888, page 8. First sports illustration (baseball manager).

23 December 1888, page 23. First editorial cartoon (temperance union).

1 January 1906, page 8. First signed cartoon by John Knott (stork carrying baby).

18 March 1907, page 13. First recognizable Knott sports cartoon (Indian chief).

19 November 1911, page 1. Knott returns from Europe, first editorial cartoon.

10 January 1937, page 4-IV. First "Herc" Ficklen sports cartoon.

20 April 1946, page 2-2. Ficklen begins regular Saturday editorial cartoon.

1 June 1946, page 6. Ficklen begins regular cartoon.

4 August 1946, page 14. First regular Bill McClanahan sports cartoon.

18 November 1957, page 4-4. Final regular Knott cartoon.

19 November 1957, page 4-4. First regular McClanahan editorial cartoon.

29 December 1972, page 2-D. Final regular McClanahan cartoon.

31 December 1976, page 2-D. Final regular Ficklen editorial cartoon.

Page 101

Notes For Chapter One

1. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 54.

2. Edwin Emery, The Press and America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), p. 494.

3. Isabel Simeral Johnson, "Cartoons," The Public Opinion Quarterly, July 1937, pp. 4142.

4. Ernest Sharpe, G. B. Dealey of the Dallas News (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955).

5. F. Fraser Bond, An Introduction to Journalism (New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 218.

6. Nathe Bagby, "Editorial Policies of the Dallas News" (Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1930), p. 15.

7. Statement by Dick West, retired editorial page director, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 12 February 1978.

8. Ibid.

Page 102

Notes For Chapter Two

1. Statement by Mrs. David Robb, daughter of John Knott, Lake Whitney, Texas, 15 March 1978.

2. J. J. Taylor, "John KnottA Close-Up," Holland's Magazine, April 1923, p. 13.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Dallas Morning News, 1 October 1935, p. 935.

6. Holme to Knott, 2 April 1899, Archives, Dallas Historical Collection.

7. Werner Renberg, "Old Man Texas Stands Up to Uncle Sam," The Quill, April 1951, p. 17.

8. Dallas Morning News, 1 October 1935, p. 935.

9. Taylor, "John KnottA Close-Up," p. 13.

10. Robb interview.

11. Taylor, "John KnottA Close-Up," p. 13.

12. Dallas Morning News, 17 February 1963, p. 1.

13. Dallas Morning News, 1 October 1935, p. 935.

14. Toomey to Knott, 21 June 1911, private collection of Knott's daughter, Mrs. David Robb.

15. Toomey to Knott, 12 July 1911, private collection of Mrs. David Robb.

16. "Austrian-born Artists," Time, 4 August 1940, p. 6.

17. Robb interview.

18. Victoria Advocate, 28 September 1934.

19. Dallas Morning News, private files of Mrs. David Robb, undated clipping (ca. February 1919).

20. Hillsboro Mirror, private files of Mrs. David Robb, undated clipping.

21. Dallas Morning News, 1 December 1955.

22. Dallas Morning News, private files of Mrs. David Robb, undated clipping (ca. 1951), p. 1.

23. Dallas Morning News, 1 December 1955, p. 24.

24. Statement by Bill McClanahan, retired cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 13 January 1978.

25. Baylor Diamond Jubilee Record, prepared by Henry Trantham (Waco, Texas, 1921), p. 127.

26. Brooks to Knott, 16 July 1917, private collection of Mrs. David Robb.

27. Ibid.

28. Knott to Brooks, 16 March 1920, Archives, Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

29. Neff to Knott, 10 February 1945, private collection of Mrs. David Robb.

30. Knott to Brooks, 29 June 1920, Archives, Texas Collection, Baylor University.

31. "Commencement," The Baylor Monthly, June 1931, p. 1.

32. Neff to Knott, 20 May 1931, private collection of Mrs. David Robb.

33. Neff to Knott, 10 February 1945, private collection of Mrs. David Robb.

34. Dallas Morning News, 26 October 1924, p. 1, section 7.

35. Dallas Morning News, 9 November 1924.

36. Dallas Morning News, 4 March 1951.

37. Dallas Morning News, 25 January 1938.

38. Dallas Morning News, 7 September 1939.

39. Renberg, "Old Man Texas Stands Up to Uncle Sam," p. 16.

40. McClanahan interview.

41. Dallas Morning News, 4 May 1937.

42. Renberg, "Old Man Texas Stands Up to Uncle Sam," p. 16.

43. Statement by Miss Anne Toomey, former employee of the Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 10 March 1978.

44. Statement by Dr. Herbert Gambrell, former chairman of Southern Methodist University's History Department, Dallas, Texas, 17 May 1978.

45. Toomey interview.

46. Gambrell interview.

47. Mrs. David Robb, private files, scrapbook.

48. "Austrian-born Artists," Time, 4 August 1940.

49. Dallas Morning News, 1 December 1955.

50. Dallas Morning News, 27 September 1950.

51. McClanahan interview.

52. Toomey interview

53. McClanahan interview.

54. Statement by Dick West, former editorial director, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 12 February 1978.

55. Dallas Morning News, 9 December 1938.

56. Taylor, "John KnottA Close-Up," p. 12.

57. McClanahan interview.

58. Toomey interview.

59. West interview.

60. Gambrell interview.

61. Ibid.

62. Taylor, "John KnottA Close-Up," p. 26.

Page 103

Notes For Chapter Three

1. Syd Hoff, Editorial and Political Cartooning (New York: Stravon Educational Press, 1976), p. 211.

2. Statement by Herc Ficklen, retired editorial cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 20 January 1978.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. "Drawn and Quartered," Intercom Magazine, January 1977, p. 9.

8. Ibid.

9. Ficklen interview.

10. Private correspondence files of Ficklen.

11. "Drawn and Quartered," p. 9.

12. The San Angelo Standard, 17 January 1977, p. 3A.

13. Ficklen interview.

14. The San Angelo Standard, 17 January 1977, p. 3A.

15. Statement by Bill DeOre, editorial cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 3 February 1978.

16. Private correspondence files of Ficklen.

17. "Drawn and Quartered," p. 11.

18. Ficklen interview.

19. "Drawn and Quartered," p. 10.

20. Ficklen interview.

21. Taylor to Ficklen, 20 November 1968, private collection of Mrs. Mary Ficklen, Dallas, Texas.

22. Ficklen interview.

23. Dallas Morning News, 26 May 1975, p. 22A.

24. DeOre interview.

25. Ibid.

26. Ficklen interview.

27. Yarborough to Ficklen, 21 September 1971, private collection of Mrs. Mary Ficklen.

28. Yarborough to Ficklen, 20 May 1971, private collection of Mrs. Mary Ficklen.

29. Statement by Bill McClanahan, retired cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 13 January 1978.

30. Ibid.

31. DeOre interview.

32. Ficklen interview.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. The San Angelo Standard, 17 January 1977.

38. Statement by Dick West, retired editorial page director, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 12 February 1978.

39. Ficklen interview.

40. Dallas Morning News, 21 October 1980, p. 5D.

41. Ficklen interview.

42. Ibid.

43. DeOre interview.

44. Dallas Morning News, 21 October 1980, p. 5D.

Page 104

Notes For Chapter Four

1. William McClanahan, unpublished biographical outline, p. 1.

2. Ibid.

3. Statement by William McClanahan, retired cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 13 January 1978.

4. Tom Black, "The End of an Era," The Mustang, July-August 1973, p. 2.

5. Ibid.

6. McClanahan interview.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Black, "The End of an Era," p. 3.

11. McClanahan interview.

12. Black, "The End of an Era," p. 3.

13. Personal correspondence file, McClanahan.

14. Statement by Bill DeOre, editorial cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 3 February 1978.

15. McClanahan interview.

16. Bob Darden, "McClanahan's Mascots," The Baylor Line, September 1980, p. 25.

17. Ibid.

18. McClanahan interview.

19. Ibid.

20. Tom Black, "The End of an Era," pp. 4-5.

21. Darden, "McClanahan's Mascots," p. 24.

22. Dallas Morning News, 27 January 1951, p. 6.

23. McClanahan to Turner, undated, private correspondence files of Thomas Turner, Assistant to Chancellor at Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

24. McClanahan to Turner, undated, private correspondence files of Thomas Turner.

25. Statement by Dick West, retired editorial director, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 12 February 1978.

26. McClanahan interview.

27. DeOre interview.

28. West interview.

29. Ficklen interview.

30. McClanahan interview.

31. DeOre interview.

32. Unpublished McClanahan biographical outline, p. 1.

33. Ibid.

34. McClanahan personal correspondence file.

35. Humphrey to McClanahan, 1 September 1966, McClanahan personal correspondence file.

36. Johnson to McClanahan, 28 July 1959.

37. McClanahan interview.

38. Dallas Morning News, 1 January 1973, p. 23a.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. West interview.

42. Unpublished McClanahan biographical outline, p. 2.

Page 105

Notes For Chapter Five

1. Statement by Miss Anne Toomey, former employee, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 10 March 1978.

2. Statement by Bill DeOre, editorial cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 3 February 1978.

3. J. J. Taylor, "John KnottA Close-Up," Holland's Magazine, April 1923, p. 13.

4. Ibid.

5. Statement by Mrs. David Robb, daughter of John Knott, Lake Whitney, Texas, 15 March 1978.

6. Statement by Jim Palmer, editorial cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 3 February 1978.

7. Statement by Bill McClanahan, retired cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 13 January 1978.

8. McClanahan interview, 31 March 1978.

9. Toomey interview.

10. Statement by Jack "Herc" Ficklen, retired cartoonist, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 20 January 1978.

11. McClanahan interview, 31 March 1978,

12. Ibid.

13. "Drawn and Quartered," Intercom Magazine, January 1977, p. 8.

14. McClanahan interview, 31 March 1978.

15. Ficklen interview.

16. Statement by Dick West, retired editorial director, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, 12 February 1978.

17. Ibid.

18. Dallas Morning News, August 1942.

19. Ficklen interview.

20. West interview.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. McClanahan interview, 13 January 1978.

24. West interview.

25. McClanahan interview, 13 January 1978.

26. DeOre interview.