Harry Hanan (14 December 1916 - 19 January 1982) was a British cartoonist, best known as the creator of the pantomime comic strip ''Louie'' which he began in 1947. Louie was a small chap, a loser who was constantly annoyed by life's little vicissitudes and minor moments. Hanan described his mild-mannered character as "the anti-Superman".''Louie'' at
Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...
Biography
Born in
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, Harry Hanan went to the
Liverpool School of Art
The John Lennon Art and Design Building (formerly the Art and Design Academy) in Liverpool, England, houses Liverpool John Moores University's School of Art and Design. The school was formerly located at the Grade II listed Liverpool College of ...
and found employment doing layouts and illustrating articles for the ''Liverpool Evening Express'', plus an occasional bonus for drawing a daily
cartoon
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...
, eventually writing film reviews and serving as the newspaper's features editor. He also designed posters and stage sets in Liverpool.
An infantry commander during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Hanan experienced six years of military service. In post-Second World War London, he became an editorial cartoonist with ''
The People
The ''Sunday People'' is a British tabloid Sunday newspaper. It was founded as ''The People'' on 16 October 1881.
At one point owned by Odhams Press, The ''People'' was acquired along with Odhams by the Mirror Group in 1961, along with the ...
'', London's weekly tabloid with a circulation of four million. Meeting his weekly deadline in short order, Hanan created ''Louie'' in his spare time, and it was first published in ''The People'' in March 1947. When H. R. Wishengrad, head of Press Features, saw Hanan's strip, he decided to syndicate it in the United States. With Hanan drawing both the
daily
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
and the
Sunday strip
The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers, almost always in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies.
The first US newspap ...
s, ''Louie'' found a large readership in more than 100 American newspapers, initially distributed by the
Hall Syndicate
Publishers-Hall Syndicate was a newspaper syndicate founded by Robert M. Hall in 1944. Hall served as the company's president and general manager. Over the course of its operations, the company was known as, sequentially, the Hall Syndicate (1944 ...
and later by the
Chicago Tribune Syndicate
Tribune Content Agency (TCA) is a syndication company owned by Tribune Publishing. TCA had previously been known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (CTNYNS), Tribune Company Syndicate, and Tribune Media S ...
. Because ''Louie'' had visual gags with no words to translate, it also appeared in more than 100 publications in 23 countries, including Turkey and Japan. Some newspapers ran it on their editorial pages.
With the success of the strip, Hanan and his family left London in November 1948 and moved to the United States, where they settled in
Westfield, New Jersey
Westfield is a town in Union County, New Jersey, United States, located southwest of Manhattan. As of the 2010 United States census, the town's population was 30,316,
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
22 January to 22 February 1968.
Hanan's paintings were exhibited at the
Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
History of the Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...
and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
and were in the permanent collection at the William Allen White Foundation. Hanan was also a judge at juried art exhibitions.
The popularity of ''Louie'' was indicated by its inclusion in the ''Newspaper Comic Strip Stars Drawing Tablet'', published in 1959 by Hytone, a division of the Western Tablet & Stationery Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.
Archives
The Harry Hanan Papers are in the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Library. This consists of 128 original daily ''Louie'' strips (1953–64) (traces of graphite, Zipatone, pen and ink on illustration board, approximately 4¾ x 17½ inches), a dozen newspaper and magazine clippings about Hanan and his work (including family pictures) (1947–50), reader correspondence (1947–63), an undated photograph of Hanan and one family picture (1948), plus 27 ''Louie'' proof sheets (1964–66) (six daily strips per newsprint sheet, 9 x 16½ inches).Special Collections, Syracuse University Library: Harry Hanan /ref>
Henry
Henry may refer to:
People
*Henry (given name)
* Henry (surname)
* Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry
Royalty
* Portuguese royalty
** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal
** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...
''
*''
The Little King
''The Little King'' is a 1930-1975 American gag-a-day comic strip created by Otto Soglow, telling its stories in a style using images and very few words, as in pantomime.
Publication history
Soglow's character first appeared on June 7, 1930, in ...