'Beetle Bailey' gets museum treatment

Ray Hogan, Contributor

THEY record the history of the common man, create friends for their readers and invent language. Great books? Try comic strips.

But for Stamford resident Mort Walker, creator of the comics "Beetle Bailey", "Hi and Lois" and "Boner's Ark", among others, a strip's greatest attribute is also one of its simplest.

"Most importantly, they allow people to have a laugh in the morning when they read the paper and start the day right," he says.

"Beetle Bailey", his most famous daily strip, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Starting in just 12 newspapers in 1950, the strip now appears in more than 1,800 newspapers throughout the world.

"Fifty Years of Beetle Bailey: The Cartoon World of Mort Walker", a tribute to Walker and his cartoon legacy, runs through October 21 at the Stamford Museum & Nature Centre. Visitors will discover different incarnations of Beetle; Sargeant Snorkel and his dog, Otto; Miss Buxley and General Amos T. Halftrack; and the rest of Camp Swampy, as well as other characters Mr. Walker has created throughout his esteemed career.

A section of the exhibit traces the evolution of Mr. Walker's characters from the photos of the real-life people who inspired them. In addition, there is a family-friendly, hands-on drawing room so kids and adults can try their hand at cartooning.

Mr. Walker hopes viewers get "an overview of my work and the breadth of it. I learn something every day, especially in terms of ideas."

Mr. Walker's characters literally live in the office of his Stamford studio. Framed books (in several languages), awards,

original sketches ­ even a clock with Bailey taking the face and Sgt. Snorkel serving as the pendulum ­ are crammed into every bit of space. Today he creates the strip with a staff of eight that includes six of his children.

50th anniversary

In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of "Beetle Bailey", "Mort Walker's Private Scrap-book: Celebrating a Life of Love and Laughter" was published through Andrew McMeel publishing last year. The book is a collection of drawings, sketches and anecdotes.

Mr. Walker was born in 1923 in El Dorado, Kansas. His father was an architect by trade but also was a musician, an impressionist painter and the poet laureate of Kansas. His mother was a newspaper illustrator.

"I don't ever remember not drawing," he says. "My parents were artists and back in the days prior to television and radio we would sit around the dining room table and draw. That was
our entertainment."

He began drawing for the school newspaper while in the fourth grade and sold his first comic a few years later.

"The money was motivating," he says. "We were always very poor. When I sold my first cartoon at 11 for US$1, I said, 'That's where the real money is.'"

By the age of 18, Mr. Walker was chief editorial designer for Hall Bros., using his playful drawing style for the company's Hallmark greeting cards.

He was drafted into the Army in 1943, but the seed for the Beetle Bailey character was planted some years before - in the form of high school and eventual army pal Dave Hornaday.

"We were going to play golf one day and he was still in bed," Mr. Walker remembers. "I flipped the bed, he rolled over and still didn't get up. He kept sleeping."

After the Army, Mr. Walker graduated from the University of Missouri and moved to New York City, where his first 200 strip ideas were rejected.

"Beetle Bailey" was born with its hero as a work-shirking college student, but Walker saw an opportunity as the Korean War was heating up, and placed the lazy young man in basic training. After the war, when the spit and polish of a peace-time military replaced the wartime survival mode, "Beetle Bailey" was pulled from Pacific Stars and Stripes because of its portrayal of military personnel.

"It started in 12 papers," he says. "The minute I put him in the Army, it was in 100 papers. When it got kicked out of Stars and Stripes it became world news and that's when circulation really zoomed and never stopped."

As the strip became among the most popular in the world, others followed. "Hi and Lois", which he created with Dik Browne, was a spin-off involving Bailey's sister and brother-in-law that premiered in 1954. He launched "Boner's Ark" under the pen name Addison in 1968 and teamed with Jerry Dumas to create "Sam and Silo" in 1977.

Among Mr. Walker's contributions to cartoon art are his use of high-contrast and deceptively simple imagery and compact gags. He's also contributed to the art form's historical significance by establishing the Museum of Cartoon Art in 1974.

L.A. Times-Washington Post

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