Mike Lynch Cartoons: From the Dick Buchanan Files: Kate Osann's "Tizzy" 1953

There were a number of comic features -- Hazel by Ted Key, Little Lulu by Marge Henderson Buell, Henry by Carl Anderson -- that started out as regular cartoons in magazines and then migrated to other formats. Some, like Hazel and Henry, became syndicated newspaper comics. "Tizzy" by Kate Osann is another. "Tizzy" was an exclusive feature about a teenage girl that appeared in Collier's Magazine. When the magazine folded, Tizzy lived on as a newspaper panel. Here's Dick Buchanan with more information and many samples of Ms. Osann's Tizzy from the pages of Collier's. Thanks and take it away, Dick!

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KATE OSANN’S TIZZY 1953—1956

Kate Osann was born in St. Louis and grew up in New York City where she graduated from Hunter College. After working for a while as an advertising artist, she became a gag cartoonist in the late 1940’s when her drawings appeared in Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post. She was one of the very few women to manage to forge a successful career in the male dominated gag cartooning world.

Osann’s "Tizzy" cartoons first appeared in Collier's. The redheaded Tizzy was a typical teenage American girl who wore horn-rimmed glasses with triangular lenses. When Collier’s folded in 1957, Tizzy was syndicated by NEA, running until 1970. The cartoons were in color in Collier's but black-and-white in syndication and paperback reprints.

During the late 1950s and 1960s, three Tizzy paperback books were published: Tizzy: That Loveable, Laughable Teen-Ager (Berkeley, 1958), More Tizzy (Berkeley, 1958), and Tizzy (Scholastic Book Services 1967). Tizzy cartoons illustrated Baby-Sitter's Guide, by Sharon Sherman (Scholastic Book Services, 1969).

1. KATE OSANN. Collier’s May 9, 1953.