There is not a lot about drawing for a living that is action-filled. It
is a quiet, sedentary life, bent over your drawing board. No
dashing in front of trains, committing armed robbery or escaping the
police. Unless you are cartoonist Clyde Lamb.
Here's Dick Buchanan with an explanation and sixteen great Clyde Lamb cartoons:
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CLYDE LAMB
GAG CARTOONS
1946 - 1965
Born in
Sidney, Montana, Clyde Lamb was drawing while he was in the Montana
Industrial School of boys at 17. After one year of high school he left
Montana and wound up in Memphis, Tennessee where he was convicted of
armed robbery and sentenced to 5 years. He escaped after 18 months and
was working as a sign painter in 1934 when he was once again arrested
for armed robbery in Hammond, Indiana. Allowed to visit his pregnant
wife in Chicago, he escaped his escorts by dashing in front of an
oncoming train. He was recaptured a few months later, suffering a
gunshot wound. He wound up in the Indiana State Penitentiary, to serve 2
Consecutive 25 year terms.
Lamb began drawing in prison,
just has he had done in reform school. At first he painted and then
began drawing cartoons for the amusement of his fellow prisoners. The
prison arts and craft director encouraged him to submit his efforts to
magazines. Lamb gave it a try and began to sell cartoons. His early
efforts appeared in Judge, later his drawings appeared Collier’s, This
Week, The Saturday Evening Post, True, Argosy and others.
In
one year Clyde Lamb reportedly earned $11,000—an impressive income for
anyone in the mid-forties. National attention was focused on Lamb and he
was pardoned in June 1947, returning to Montana to pursue a career
drawing simple cartoons.
1. Judge March 1946.
3. The Saturday Evening Post June 14, 1947.
4. The Saturday Evening Post August 7, 1948.
6. The Saturday Evening Post September 8, 1951.
7. Boys’ Life February 1951.
8. Judge October 1953.
9. American Legion Magazine June 1954.
10. The Saturday Evening Post December 10, 1955.
11. American Legion Magazine March 1956.
12. 1000 Jokes Magazine August-October, 1955.
13. True Magazine March 1949.
14. Boys’ Life August 1950.
15. Lamb was a Boys’ Life regular. Millicent, a panel cartoon featuring a mischievous elephant, appeared in the monthly until 1966. Boys’ Life August 1955.
16. Lamb created a panel cartoon, "Open Season" for the Iowa Tribune & Register Syndicate in 1957. Brown & Bigelow subsequently reprinted some of these cartoons in a booklet called Call of the Wild. Call of the Wild circa 1950’s.
-- Edited from a blog entry originally published on June 13, 2018.
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2 comments:
I remember Millicent in Boys' Life when I was a Scout in the 1960s.
Seems some of those cartoons with a crime theme might have an autobiographical element.
Lamb certainly had a different perspective on crime. And it certainly helped when he submitted to the numerous men's interest magazines of the 1950's, which is where he made a lot of his sales.I suppose he was maybe the last professional gag cartoonist who began his career as a sign painter.
Of course, I have many Millicent panels. Sometimes she was in the jungle, other times with the circus or in a zoo setting. But she was always Millicent. I'll try to dig my Boy's Life magazines out of storage and scan them in the near to distant future. I, as you may suspect, was not a scout. I attended one meeting in 1955 and became a conscientious objector.
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