Percy Crosby
Encyclopedia
Percy Leo Crosby was an American
author
, illustrator
and cartoonist
best known for his popular comic strip
Skippy
. Adapted into movies, a novel
and a radio show, Crosby's creation was commemorated on a 1997 U.S. Postal Service stamp
. An inspiration for Charles Schulz's Peanuts
, the strip is regarded by comics historian Maurice Horn as a "classic... which innovated a number of sophisticated and refined touches used later by Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson
." Humorist Corey Ford
, writing in Vanity Fair
, praised the strip as "America's most important contribution to humor of the century".
, New York
, prior to the 1898 incorporation of the five boroughs of New York City
. He grew up in Richmond Hill, in what would be the borough of Queens but at the time was considered part of Long Island
. His father, Thomas Francis Crosby, the son of Catholic immigrants from County Louth, Ireland, was an amateur painter who ran an art supply business. His mother Fanny, was of English
and Scottish
descent. Percy had two younger sisters, Ethel and Gladys.
Crosby quit high school during his sophomore year to take a job as an art department office boy at editor Theodore Dreiser
's magazine The Delineator
. He was quickly promoted to artist, but the job ended after one issue. When he was 17, he sold a drawing to Life
for $6. After delivering sandwiches and working as a magazine salesman, he found a position as an editorial cartoonist
for the Socialist newspaper the New York Daily Call. There he published his first two comic strips, Biff and The Extreme Brothers—Laff and Sy, but readers became outraged at frivolity in the paper and the strips were pulled.
Crosby next became a sports columnist and illustrator at The New York Globe
. On the side, he produced comics used as occasional filler for the paper. Eventually fired, he entered an Edison Company contest for the best cartoon on the use of electric light. He won the $75 prize and saw his cartoon appear in every newspaper in New York City. The exposure led to a job at the New York World
, "at the time the promised land for aspiring cartoonists". After a few years, he left to freelance, selling cartoons to World editor John Tennant. In 1916, the George Matthews Adams Service syndicated Crosby's first feature, the daily
and Sunday strip
The Clancy Kids, earning Crosby a respectable $135 a week.
While continuing on this first strip, Crosby studied at Manhattan
's Art Students League under such instructors as George Bridgman
, Frank DuMond
, Joseph Pennell
and Max Weber
. The painter and League president Gifford Beal
, recognizing Crosby's talent, invited him to spend the summer in Cape Cod
, where Crosby made the acquaintance of Edwin Dickinson
, Edward Hopper
, Eugene O'Neill
and other habitues of the Provincetown, Massachusetts
artists colony. Back in New York, he fell in love with fellow League student Gertrude Volz, the artist-sculptor daughter of a well-to-do real-estate broker. After being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Officer Reserve Corps in 1916 and being called to active service the following year, serving for a time as a jiujitsu instructor, he and Volz eloped and were married at the training camp in Plattsburgh, New York, on July 7, 1917.
While in training, Crosby created a daily comic panel, That Rookie from the Thirteenth Squad, for the McClure Syndicate
, writing and drawing it from the front in France while serving as a first lieutenant in the 77th Division, AEF. The comic was collected into his first two books, That Rookie of the Thirteenth Squad (1917) and Between Shots (1919). While at the Argonne
front, Crosby was struck by shrapnel in the eye, suffering no permanent damage, and earned the Purple Heart
.
Following the war, he resumed his studies and syndicated a series of panel cartoons from 1921 to 1925. These covered a variety of subjects, with some series, such as Who Cares for the Feelings of a Small Boy, The Local Boy, Back o' the Flats, The Little Girl Who Moved Away and Send a Poor Child to the Farm, featuring children, particularly from the slums.
Always Belittlin One such series, Always Belittlin' , presaged Skippy
with its star, a child with a striped shawl and a bonnet with a black pop-pom, whose thoughts consisted of the text's daily aphorism. This series and two others, Bugville and Bug Lugs, would eventually run as the supplemental topper
feature accompanying the Skippy Sunday strip.
Following a full-page house ad in the March 15, 1923, issue, Skippy premiered in Life and quickly became a success. It became a syndicated
comic strip two years later, initially by Johnson Features, Central Press Association and Editors Features Service, before publisher William Randolph Hearst
signed Crosby to his King Features Syndicate
. King distributed its first daily Skippy on October 7, 1926, and its first Sunday on April 1, 1929. Crosby retained the copyright, a rarity for strip artists of the time.
The strip focused on Skippy Skinner, a young boy living in the city. Usually wearing an enormous collar and tie and a floppy checked hat, he was an odd mix of mischief and melancholy who might equally be found stealing from the corner fruit stand, failing to master skates or baseball, complaining about the adult world, or staring sadly at an old relative's grave: "And only last year she gave me a tie."
The popular strip at one point guaranteed Crosby $2,350 a week, an enormous sum at the time. Crosby published a Skippy novel and other books; there were Skippy dolls, toys and comic books. The comic was adapted as the 1931 movie Skippy by Paramount Pictures
. A hit, it won director Norman Taurog
the Academy Award for Best Director, and boosted the career of young star Jackie Cooper
, who played the title role.
From 1928 to 1937, Crosby produced 3,650 Skippy strips, ten books of fiction, political and philosophical essays, drawings and cartoons, as well as numerous pamphlets, while also mounting a dozen exhibitions in New York City, Washington, D.C.
, London
, Paris
and Rome
of his oils, watercolors and other paintings and drawings. With its success, he befriended a pantheon of famed creators, including the author Marc Connelly
, the humorist Robert Benchley
, The New Yorker
editor Harold Ross
, Life
magazine editor and future Pulitzer Prize
-winning playwright Robert E. Sherwood
, and the cartoonists and painters George McManus
, H. T. Webster and Guy Hoff.
and stage-musical
actress Libby Holman
and became friends with such actresses as Colleen Moore
, Elsie James and Marilyn Miller
. But during this time, making the rounds of speakeasies and night clubs, Crosby began developing an alcohol addiction
. Crosby was a member of several private clubs&dmdash;the Players Club, the Salamagundi Club, the Dutch Treat Club
and the Coffee House Club at the Hotel Seymour, where he lived, dining with George Abbott
, Jerome Kern
, Ring Lardner
, John Barrymore
, Rube Goldberg
, Heywood Broun
and Frank Crowninshield
. After nights at these clubs, he sometimes would awaken with no recollection of the previous evening.
Regardless, Crosby continued to explore numerous creative realms, writing Skippy prose vignettes for Life that led to a Skippy novel for G. P. Putnam's Sons
. He fell in love with the secretary assigned to him, Vassar
graduate Agnes Dale Locke, and the two were married on April 4, 1929. While on vacation in Europe, Crosby stopped drinking alcohol, becoming a teetotaler for the next seven years. Weathering the stock market crash
of that fall, Crosby and his wife moved to McLean, Virginia
, where Crosby bought an estate called "The Beeches". They later moved to an even larger estate in the area, "Ridgelawn". The couple would have four children: son Percy Jr., nicknamed Skippy, the eldest, and daughters Barbara Dale, Joan, Carolyn and Carol, who were, respectively two, three and four years younger. During this time, Crosby patent
ed a firearm that incorporated a pistol in the stock of a rifle. With his wife and an agent handling his business affairs, Crosby oversaw a Skippy empire that included a radio
show, three novels, a series of 34 posters for Standard Oil
, and the aforesaid movie and a sequel, Sooky. To assist him on the Skippy strip, Crosby hired an old friend, artist Richard Reddy, who continued with him through the end of Crosby's career.
In the late 1930s, Crosby began drawing more overtly political and philosophical Skippy strips. Following his third Skippy prose-fiction book, the essay collection Skippy Rambles, Crosby began using his writing as primarily a vehicle for his beliefs. His 1931 memoir A Cartoonist's Philosophy was found to be too polemical for eight publishers, and Crosby published it himself, in a money-losing venture; his future books were all privately published under his own name or Freedom Press, which he founded in 1936. Life dropped him when Crosby agreed to do humorous cartoons only if the magazine agreed to publish his political work as well; the rival magazine Judge obliged. Of the nine books and pamphlets published from 1932 on, only Sports Drawings (1933) and the poetry collection Rays (1937) were not political or philosophical. Speeches, articles and cartoons would appear as paid ads in the Washington Herald
, the Washington Post, The New York Times
and the New York Sun
.
Although he had voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt
in the 1932 U.S. Presidential election, Crosby opposed Roosevelt's controversial Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937
. Crosby's vitriolic editorials called the president "crazed for power", and referred to Roosevelt's Fireside Chats as "talking from the Moscow room of the Spite House". He also fired editorial broadsides at the gangster
Al Capone
. When the Internal Revenue Service
brought a tax claim against Crosby and his corporation
Skippy, Inc., for more than $67,000 in 1937, Crosby—who fought the decision for years, ultimately unsuccessfully—claimed it was in retaliation for his political writing.
The previous year, Crosby had begun drinking again, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. His marriage suffered, and after a violent episode in February 1939, Crosby left for Florida
for two weeks. When he returned, repentant, his family had decamped, and his wife had filed for divorce. He never again saw his children, then aged five to nine. A devastated Crosby moved back to Manhattan
and eventually entered Presbyterian Hospital for an extended stay for exhaustion and an infection. There he met nurse Carolyn Soper, whom he took on a first date to the 1939-40 New York World's Fair
. The two were married in May 1940, and they honeymooned in Venice, Florida
.
About the same time, a California food packer, Joseph Rosefield, began to sell his newly developed hydrogenated peanut butter, which he labeled "Skippy" without Crosby's permission. Years of expensive litigation followed, which Crosby's heirs have continued into the 2000s.
His finances dire due to tax claims, the divorce settlement, legal fees, and alimony
, Crosby sold Ridgelawn for a fraction of its value; his 1500 acres (6.1 km²) farm and other Virginia real-estate were awarded to his second wife. His beloved strip Skippy suffered; as his biographer, Jerry Robinson
, wrote:
contributed to the cartoonist being unable to find employment. His wife Carolyn returned to work as a nurse and dietitian
. Efforts to revive Skippy went nowhere.
In December 1948, Crosby was committed to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital after attempting suicide following the death of his mother. In January 1949, he was transferred to the mental ward at Kings Park Veterans' Hospital
, in Kings Park, New York
, where he was declared a paranoid
schizophrenic
. His confinement was authorized by Arthur Soper, an uncle of Crosby's wife.
Though he would spend spent the last 16 years of his life institutionalized, Crosby continued to produce artwork and manuscripts, though no work was published and it is uncertain how much was sent to publishers by the hospital staff, through whom all mail had to be vetted. Carolyn, a diabetic whose workday began at 5:30 a.m., was unable to obtain legal counsel or the help of friends to try to secure Crosby's release.
Crosby's estranged daughters Barbara and Joan had graduated from Vassar College
, and Carol from the Rhode Island School of Design
, without having known of their father's whereabouts; son Skip had become a geologist
. Crosby had received infrequent visits from his two sisters, and from his cartoonist friend Rube Goldberg
. Carolyn, whose failing health had eventually precluded visits, died November 8, 1949.
On December 8, 1964, after a heart attack
that had left him in a coma
for months, Crosby died in the asylum on his 73rd birthday. He was buried in Pine Lawn Veterans' Cemetery on Long Island
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
best known for his popular comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Skippy
Skippy (comic strip)
Skippy was an American comic strip written and drawn by Percy Crosby that was published from 1923 to 1945. A highly popular, acclaimed and influential feature about rambunctious fifth-grader Skippy Skinner, his friends and his enemies, it was adapted into movies, a novel and a radio show. It was...
. Adapted into movies, a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
and a radio show, Crosby's creation was commemorated on a 1997 U.S. Postal Service stamp
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...
. An inspiration for Charles Schulz's Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
, the strip is regarded by comics historian Maurice Horn as a "classic... which innovated a number of sophisticated and refined touches used later by Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson
Bill Watterson
William Boyd Watterson II , known as Bill Watterson, is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes...
." Humorist Corey Ford
Corey Ford
Corey Ford was an American humorist, author, outdoorsman, and screenwriter. He was also friendly with several members of the Algonquin Round Table and occasionally ate lunch there....
, writing in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, praised the strip as "America's most important contribution to humor of the century".
Early life and career
Percy Crosby was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, prior to the 1898 incorporation of the five boroughs of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He grew up in Richmond Hill, in what would be the borough of Queens but at the time was considered part of Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
. His father, Thomas Francis Crosby, the son of Catholic immigrants from County Louth, Ireland, was an amateur painter who ran an art supply business. His mother Fanny, was of English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
and Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
descent. Percy had two younger sisters, Ethel and Gladys.
Crosby quit high school during his sophomore year to take a job as an art department office boy at editor Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
's magazine The Delineator
The Delineator
The Delineator was an American women's magazine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founded by the Butterick Publishing Company in 1869 under the name The Metropolitan Monthly. Its name was changed in 1875. In November 1926, under the editorship of Mrs...
. He was quickly promoted to artist, but the job ended after one issue. When he was 17, he sold a drawing to Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
for $6. After delivering sandwiches and working as a magazine salesman, he found a position as an editorial cartoonist
Editorial cartoonist
An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary....
for the Socialist newspaper the New York Daily Call. There he published his first two comic strips, Biff and The Extreme Brothers—Laff and Sy, but readers became outraged at frivolity in the paper and the strips were pulled.
Crosby next became a sports columnist and illustrator at The New York Globe
The New York Globe
The New York Globe was a daily New York City newspaper published from 1904 to 1923, when it was bought and merged into the New York Sun.-History:...
. On the side, he produced comics used as occasional filler for the paper. Eventually fired, he entered an Edison Company contest for the best cartoon on the use of electric light. He won the $75 prize and saw his cartoon appear in every newspaper in New York City. The exposure led to a job at the New York World
New York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
, "at the time the promised land for aspiring cartoonists". After a few years, he left to freelance, selling cartoons to World editor John Tennant. In 1916, the George Matthews Adams Service syndicated Crosby's first feature, the daily
Daily strip
A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays....
and Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...
The Clancy Kids, earning Crosby a respectable $135 a week.
While continuing on this first strip, Crosby studied at Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
's Art Students League under such instructors as George Bridgman
George Bridgman
George Brant Bridgman was a Canadian-American painter, writer, and teacher in the fields of anatomy and figure drawing. Bridgman taught anatomy for artists at the Art Students League of New York for some 45 years....
, Frank DuMond
Frank DuMond
Frank Vincent DuMond was an American Impressionist painter born in Rochester, New York. He taught at the Art Students League of New York for more than 50 years, until his death in 1951. His students included Charles Hawthorne, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Andrew Loomis, Norman Rockwell, Frank J....
, Joseph Pennell
Joseph Pennell
Joseph Pennell was an American artist and author.-Biography:Born in Philadelphia, and first studied there, but like his compatriot and friend, James McNeill Whistler, he afterwards went to Europe and made his home in London...
and Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
. The painter and League president Gifford Beal
Gifford Beal
Gifford Beal was an American artist noted for his work as a painter, watercolorist, printmaker and muralist.-Early life:Born in New York City, Gifford Beal was the youngest son in a family of six surviving children...
, recognizing Crosby's talent, invited him to spend the summer in Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
, where Crosby made the acquaintance of Edwin Dickinson
Edwin Dickinson
Edwin Walter Dickinson was an American painter and draftsman best known for psychologically charged self-portraits, quickly painted landscapes, which he called premier coups, and large, hauntingly enigmatic paintings involving figures and objects painted from observation, in which he invested his...
, Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
, Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
and other habitues of the Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...
artists colony. Back in New York, he fell in love with fellow League student Gertrude Volz, the artist-sculptor daughter of a well-to-do real-estate broker. After being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Officer Reserve Corps in 1916 and being called to active service the following year, serving for a time as a jiujitsu instructor, he and Volz eloped and were married at the training camp in Plattsburgh, New York, on July 7, 1917.
While in training, Crosby created a daily comic panel, That Rookie from the Thirteenth Squad, for the McClure Syndicate
McClure Syndicate
McClure Syndicate , the first American newspaper syndicate, introduced many American and British writers to the masses. Launched in 1884 by publisher Samuel S. McClure, it was the first successful company of its kind...
, writing and drawing it from the front in France while serving as a first lieutenant in the 77th Division, AEF. The comic was collected into his first two books, That Rookie of the Thirteenth Squad (1917) and Between Shots (1919). While at the Argonne
Meuse-Argonne Offensive
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, or Maas-Argonne Offensive, also called the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire western front.-Overview:...
front, Crosby was struck by shrapnel in the eye, suffering no permanent damage, and earned the Purple Heart
Purple Heart
The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those who have been wounded or killed while serving on or after April 5, 1917 with the U.S. military. The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is located in New Windsor, New York...
.
Following the war, he resumed his studies and syndicated a series of panel cartoons from 1921 to 1925. These covered a variety of subjects, with some series, such as Who Cares for the Feelings of a Small Boy, The Local Boy, Back o' the Flats, The Little Girl Who Moved Away and Send a Poor Child to the Farm, featuring children, particularly from the slums.
Always Belittlin One such series, Always Belittlin
Skippy (comic strip)
Skippy was an American comic strip written and drawn by Percy Crosby that was published from 1923 to 1945. A highly popular, acclaimed and influential feature about rambunctious fifth-grader Skippy Skinner, his friends and his enemies, it was adapted into movies, a novel and a radio show. It was...
with its star, a child with a striped shawl and a bonnet with a black pop-pom, whose thoughts consisted of the text's daily aphorism. This series and two others, Bugville and Bug Lugs, would eventually run as the supplemental topper
Topper (comic strip)
A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.Toppers usually were drawn...
feature accompanying the Skippy Sunday strip.
Skippy (1923–45)
Crosby concurrently became a prolific contributor to Life, where several of his cartoons featured a child named Timmy, who became the prototype for Skippy Skinner when Crosby pitched art director Frank Casey about a regular feature. As Crosby recalled,Following a full-page house ad in the March 15, 1923, issue, Skippy premiered in Life and quickly became a success. It became a syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
comic strip two years later, initially by Johnson Features, Central Press Association and Editors Features Service, before publisher William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
signed Crosby to his King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...
. King distributed its first daily Skippy on October 7, 1926, and its first Sunday on April 1, 1929. Crosby retained the copyright, a rarity for strip artists of the time.
The strip focused on Skippy Skinner, a young boy living in the city. Usually wearing an enormous collar and tie and a floppy checked hat, he was an odd mix of mischief and melancholy who might equally be found stealing from the corner fruit stand, failing to master skates or baseball, complaining about the adult world, or staring sadly at an old relative's grave: "And only last year she gave me a tie."
The popular strip at one point guaranteed Crosby $2,350 a week, an enormous sum at the time. Crosby published a Skippy novel and other books; there were Skippy dolls, toys and comic books. The comic was adapted as the 1931 movie Skippy by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. A hit, it won director Norman Taurog
Norman Taurog
Norman Rae Taurog was an American film director, and screenwriter.Between 1920 and 1968, Taurog directed over 140 films, and directed Elvis Presley in more movies than any other director...
the Academy Award for Best Director, and boosted the career of young star Jackie Cooper
Jackie Cooper
Jackie Cooper was an American actor, television director, producer and executive. He was a child actor who managed to make the transition to an adult career. Cooper was the first child actor to receive an Academy Award nomination...
, who played the title role.
From 1928 to 1937, Crosby produced 3,650 Skippy strips, ten books of fiction, political and philosophical essays, drawings and cartoons, as well as numerous pamphlets, while also mounting a dozen exhibitions in New York City, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
of his oils, watercolors and other paintings and drawings. With its success, he befriended a pantheon of famed creators, including the author Marc Connelly
Marc Connelly
Marcus Cook Connelly was an American playwright, director, producer, performer, and lyricist. He was a key member of the Algonquin Round Table, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930.-Biography:...
, the humorist Robert Benchley
Robert Benchley
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
editor Harold Ross
Harold Ross
Harold Wallace Ross was an American journalist and founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from the magazine's inception in 1925 to his death....
, Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine editor and future Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning playwright Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
, and the cartoonists and painters George McManus
George McManus
George McManus was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Irish immigrant Jiggs and his wife Maggie, the central characters in his syndicated comic strip, Bringing Up Father....
, H. T. Webster and Guy Hoff.
Personal life
Crosby's marriage to Gertrude Volz had become strained during the 1920s, and after a few years of legal separation the two were divorced in 1927. She received custody of Patricia, their only child. Croby later dated the torch singerTorch Singer
Torch Singer is a 1933 film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Alexander Hall and George Somnes, and starring Claudette Colbert, Ricardo Cortez and David Manners and Lyda Roberti.The screenplay was written by Lenore J...
and stage-musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
actress Libby Holman
Libby Holman
Libby Holman was an American torch singer and stage actress who also achieved notoriety for her complex and unconventional personal life.-Early life:...
and became friends with such actresses as Colleen Moore
Colleen Moore
Colleen Moore was an American film actress, and one of the most fashionable stars of the silent film era.-Early life:...
, Elsie James and Marilyn Miller
Marilyn Miller
Marilyn Miller was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, but it was the combination of these talents that endeared her to audiences. On stage she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who...
. But during this time, making the rounds of speakeasies and night clubs, Crosby began developing an alcohol addiction
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
. Crosby was a member of several private clubs&dmdash;the Players Club, the Salamagundi Club, the Dutch Treat Club
Dutch Treat Club
The Dutch Treat Club is a society of illustrators, writers and performers based in New York City. Primarily social in nature, the club has had as members such leading literary figures and humorists as Robert Benchley, Rube Goldberg, Robert M. McBride, and Ogden Nash.-Founding:In 1905, Tuesday was...
and the Coffee House Club at the Hotel Seymour, where he lived, dining with George Abbott
George Abbott
George Francis Abbott was an American theater producer and director, playwright, screenwriter, and film director and producer whose career spanned more than nine decades.-Early years:...
, Jerome Kern
Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...
, Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
, John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
, Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...
, Heywood Broun
Heywood Broun
Heywood Campbell Broun, Jr. was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, now known as The Newspaper Guild. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and...
and Frank Crowninshield
Frank Crowninshield
Francis Welch Crowninshield , better known as Frank or Crownie , was an American journalist and art and theatre critic best known for developing and editing the magazine Vanity Fair for 21 years, making it a pre-eminent literary journal.-Personal life:Crowninshield was born June 24, 1872 in Paris,...
. After nights at these clubs, he sometimes would awaken with no recollection of the previous evening.
Regardless, Crosby continued to explore numerous creative realms, writing Skippy prose vignettes for Life that led to a Skippy novel for G. P. Putnam's Sons
G. P. Putnam's Sons
G. P. Putnam's Sons was a major United States book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.-History:...
. He fell in love with the secretary assigned to him, Vassar
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
graduate Agnes Dale Locke, and the two were married on April 4, 1929. While on vacation in Europe, Crosby stopped drinking alcohol, becoming a teetotaler for the next seven years. Weathering the stock market crash
Stock market crash
A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a significant cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic as much as by underlying economic factors...
of that fall, Crosby and his wife moved to McLean, Virginia
McLean, Virginia
McLean is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. The community had a total population of 48,115 as of the 2010 census....
, where Crosby bought an estate called "The Beeches". They later moved to an even larger estate in the area, "Ridgelawn". The couple would have four children: son Percy Jr., nicknamed Skippy, the eldest, and daughters Barbara Dale, Joan, Carolyn and Carol, who were, respectively two, three and four years younger. During this time, Crosby patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
ed a firearm that incorporated a pistol in the stock of a rifle. With his wife and an agent handling his business affairs, Crosby oversaw a Skippy empire that included a radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
show, three novels, a series of 34 posters for Standard Oil
Standard Oil
Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational...
, and the aforesaid movie and a sequel, Sooky. To assist him on the Skippy strip, Crosby hired an old friend, artist Richard Reddy, who continued with him through the end of Crosby's career.
In the late 1930s, Crosby began drawing more overtly political and philosophical Skippy strips. Following his third Skippy prose-fiction book, the essay collection Skippy Rambles, Crosby began using his writing as primarily a vehicle for his beliefs. His 1931 memoir A Cartoonist's Philosophy was found to be too polemical for eight publishers, and Crosby published it himself, in a money-losing venture; his future books were all privately published under his own name or Freedom Press, which he founded in 1936. Life dropped him when Crosby agreed to do humorous cartoons only if the magazine agreed to publish his political work as well; the rival magazine Judge obliged. Of the nine books and pamphlets published from 1932 on, only Sports Drawings (1933) and the poetry collection Rays (1937) were not political or philosophical. Speeches, articles and cartoons would appear as paid ads in the Washington Herald
Washington Herald
The Washington Herald was an American daily newspaper in Washington, D.C., from October 8, 1906, to January 31, 1939. The Herald merged with the Washington Times on February 1, 1939, to become the Washington Times-Herald, which was purchased and merged with The Washington Post in 1954....
, the Washington Post, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
.
Although he had voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
in the 1932 U.S. Presidential election, Crosby opposed Roosevelt's controversial Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937
Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937
The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, frequently called the court-packing plan, was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Roosevelt's purpose was to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that...
. Crosby's vitriolic editorials called the president "crazed for power", and referred to Roosevelt's Fireside Chats as "talking from the Moscow room of the Spite House". He also fired editorial broadsides at the gangster
Gangster
A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster....
Al Capone
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...
. When the Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
brought a tax claim against Crosby and his corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
Skippy, Inc., for more than $67,000 in 1937, Crosby—who fought the decision for years, ultimately unsuccessfully—claimed it was in retaliation for his political writing.
The previous year, Crosby had begun drinking again, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. His marriage suffered, and after a violent episode in February 1939, Crosby left for Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
for two weeks. When he returned, repentant, his family had decamped, and his wife had filed for divorce. He never again saw his children, then aged five to nine. A devastated Crosby moved back to Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and eventually entered Presbyterian Hospital for an extended stay for exhaustion and an infection. There he met nurse Carolyn Soper, whom he took on a first date to the 1939-40 New York World's Fair
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...
. The two were married in May 1940, and they honeymooned in Venice, Florida
Venice, Florida
Venice is a city in Sarasota County, Florida, United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007 estimates, the city had a population of 21,015. It is noted for its large snowbird population. Its newspaper is the Venice Gondolier Sun...
.
About the same time, a California food packer, Joseph Rosefield, began to sell his newly developed hydrogenated peanut butter, which he labeled "Skippy" without Crosby's permission. Years of expensive litigation followed, which Crosby's heirs have continued into the 2000s.
His finances dire due to tax claims, the divorce settlement, legal fees, and alimony
Alimony
Alimony is a U.S. term denoting a legal obligation to provide financial support to one's spouse from the other spouse after marital separation or from the ex-spouse upon divorce...
, Crosby sold Ridgelawn for a fraction of its value; his 1500 acres (6.1 km²) farm and other Virginia real-estate were awarded to his second wife. His beloved strip Skippy suffered; as his biographer, Jerry Robinson
Jerry Robinson
Jerry Robinson is an American comic book artist best known for his work on DC Comics' Batman line of comics during the 1940s.He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004.-Career:...
, wrote:
Later years (1945–64)
In his later years, Crosby's alcoholismAlcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
contributed to the cartoonist being unable to find employment. His wife Carolyn returned to work as a nurse and dietitian
Dietitian
Dietitians supervise the preparation and service of food, develop modified diets, participate in research, and educate individuals and groups on good nutritional habits. The goals of dietitians are to provide medical nutritional intervention, and to obtain, safely prepare, serve and advise on...
. Efforts to revive Skippy went nowhere.
In December 1948, Crosby was committed to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital after attempting suicide following the death of his mother. In January 1949, he was transferred to the mental ward at Kings Park Veterans' Hospital
Kings Park Psychiatric Center
The Kings Park Psychiatric Center, known by Kings Park locals simply as 'The Psych Center', is a former state-run psychiatric hospital located in Kings Park, New York...
, in Kings Park, New York
Kings Park, New York
Kings Park is a census-designated place in the town Smithtown, Suffolk County, New York, United States, on Long Island. The population was 17,282 as of the 2010 census....
, where he was declared a paranoid
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
schizophrenic
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. His confinement was authorized by Arthur Soper, an uncle of Crosby's wife.
Though he would spend spent the last 16 years of his life institutionalized, Crosby continued to produce artwork and manuscripts, though no work was published and it is uncertain how much was sent to publishers by the hospital staff, through whom all mail had to be vetted. Carolyn, a diabetic whose workday began at 5:30 a.m., was unable to obtain legal counsel or the help of friends to try to secure Crosby's release.
Crosby's estranged daughters Barbara and Joan had graduated from Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
, and Carol from the Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...
, without having known of their father's whereabouts; son Skip had become a geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
. Crosby had received infrequent visits from his two sisters, and from his cartoonist friend Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...
. Carolyn, whose failing health had eventually precluded visits, died November 8, 1949.
On December 8, 1964, after a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
that had left him in a coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
for months, Crosby died in the asylum on his 73rd birthday. He was buried in Pine Lawn Veterans' Cemetery on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
.
External links
- Percy Crosby at the Lambiek Comiclopedia. Archived October 18, 2011.