George Booth
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- This article is about a cartoonist. For the 17th century English Royalist, see George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer.
George Booth (born June 28, 1926) is a New Yorker cartoonist.
Born in Cainsville, Missouri, he was the son of schoolteachers; his mother was also a musician and fine artist and cartoonist, and his father became a school administrator in Fairfax, Missouri, where Booth grew up on a vegetable farm. Booth attended, but did not graduate from, the Corcoran College of Art and Design, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the School of Visual Arts, and Adelphi College.
Drafted into the US Marine Corps in 1944, he was invited to re-enlist and join the Corps' Leatherneck magazine as a staff cartoonist; when re-drafted for the Korean War, he was ordered back to Leatherneck. As a civilian he moved to New York City where he struggled as an artist, married, then worked as an art director in the magazine world. During this era he worked on the comic strip Spot in 1956. Fed up, he quit and pursued cartooning full time, beginning a successful phase in 1969 with his first New Yorker cartoon sale. He also created the comic strip Local Item in 1986.
Over time his cartoons have become an iconic feature of the magazine. In a doodler's style, they feature everymen beset by modern complexity, goofballs perplexing their spouses, cats, and very often a fat dog. One signature element is a ceiling light bulb on a cord pulled out of vertical by another cord attached to an electrical appliance such as a toaster.
He has been recognized for his work with the National Cartoonist Society Gag Cartoon Award for 1993.
Sources: Booth Again (ISBN 0-8362-1843-4)
[edit] References
- Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1.
