Vincent Trout Hamlin (May 10, 1900 – June 14, 1993), who preferred the name V. T. Hamlin, was an American comic strip cartoonist. He created the popular, long-run
comic strip ''
Alley Oop
''Alley Oop'' is a syndicated comic strip created December 5, 1932, by American cartoonist V. T. Hamlin, who wrote and drew the strip through four decades for Newspaper Enterprise Association. Hamlin introduced a cast of colorful characters an ...
'', syndicated by the
Newspaper Enterprise Association
The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news ...
.
Biography
Early life
Born in
Perry, Iowa
Perry is a city in Dallas County, Iowa, United States, along the North Raccoon River. The population was 7,836 at the time of the 2020 Census. It is part of the Des Moines– West Des Moines Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Formerly a major r ...
to Erma Trout Hamlin and Dr. Frederick Clarence Hamlin, a dentist. Vincent began drawing at an early age; he first drew the character that became Alley Oop at age 11. Four years later, his first cartoons were published in the ''Perry Daily Chief''. At Perry High School, he went by the nickname Snick, which he used as his signature on cartoons he drew for his high school yearbook, ''The Eclipse''.
World War I
Lying about his age, Hamlin enlisted in the Army at 17 to fight in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. He shipped out as part of the Sixth Army's Motor Transport Group, arriving in France where he served with the
American Expeditionary Forces
The American Expeditionary Forces (A. E. F.) was a formation of the United States Army on the Western Front of World War I. The A. E. F. was established on July 5, 1917, in France under the command of General John J. Pershing. It fought along ...
in 1918. Recovering from a poison gas attack in France, Hamlin began illustrating the letters of fellow soldiers, and a newspaper man he met in the Army convinced him he could make a living from his art abilities.
[Stiles, Steve. "The Man Who Walked with Dinosaurs", Collecting Channel.]
/ref>
After World War I
After his discharge, Hamlin returned to Perry High School in 1919. He then attended college, first a term at the University of Missouri
The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...
in 1920, followed by studying journalism at Drake University
Drake University is a private university in Des Moines, Iowa. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs, including professional programs in business, law, and pharmacy. Drake's law school is among the 25 oldest in the United States.
His ...
in 1922.
His college experiences ended after a quarrel with an art teacher, as he recalled: "Then the teacher took out my drawing and she stood up with it before the class and announced: 'Now here's a man with a wonderful talent and he wants to waste it on being a cartoonist!'"[
He traveled around the US, working at various jobs as a sign painter, animator, window dresser, card writer, movie projectionist and semi-professional boxer. After employment in 1922 as a journalist at the ''Des Moines News'', Hamlin worked for the ''Texas Grubstakers'' newspaper and the ''Fort Worth Record''. His income in 1922 was $910.
By 1923, he was a staff photographer, cartoonist and writer at the '']Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The ''Fort Worth Star-Telegram'' is an American daily newspaper serving Fort Worth and Tarrant County, the western half of the North Texas area known as the Metroplex. It is owned by The McClatchy Company.
History
In May 1905, Amon G. Carter ...
'', where he created his first comic strip, ''The Hired Hand'', and a sports feature, ''The Panther Kitten''. Cartoonist Steve Stiles noted:
The job only lasted a year. It was the Prohibition era and Hamlin and a friend were discovered using the paper's engraving equipment to make counterfeit labels for bootleg whiskey bottles. Hamlin moved on to doing art for an oil industry publication and one day, while wandering through the desolate landscape of the oil fields, began musing about the dinosaurs who had once roamed through the very same territory. Hamlin also acquired a lifelong interest in paleontology through conversations with geologist acquaintances.
On December 24, 1926, he married high-school sweetheart Dorothy Stapleton, who became the model for the character Ooola in ''Alley Oop''. Their daughter Theodora was born in 1927, followed by their son Jon in 1936. In 1928, he worked as a photographer for the ''Houston Press''.
When the oil industry magazine went defunct, the Hamlins returned to Perry, Iowa in 1930.Alley Oop: 75 Years of the Comic World of V. T. Hamlin
/ref>
/ref>
''Alley Oop'' begins
In Perry, Hamlin thought about those dinosaurs, and started drawing a comic strip titled ''The Mighty Oop''. He was not pleased with his creation, and destroyed it. A year later, he tried again, submitting ''Alley Oop'' to a small syndicate, Bonnet-Brown, which launched the strip as a daily, beginning December 5, 1932. A few months later, Bonnet-Brown collapsed, bringing the strip to an end. NEA picked it up, and it started again on August 7, 1933. Success led to a Sunday strip, added on September 9, 1934.[
Dorothy Hamlin also worked on the strip, creating color roughs and contributing story ideas, including the important plot device of time travel, introduced April 5, 1939.
Hamlin wrote and drew ''Alley Oop'' with the help of, Dave Graue, until his retirement in 1971. When Hamlin retired because of failing eyesight, Graue took over full-time. Graue had been assisting Hamlin since 1950, and he had been doing the daily solo since 1966, although it was co-signed by Hamlin. The last daily signed by Hamlin appeared December 31, 1972, and his last signed Sunday strip was April 1, 1973.
From his studio in North Carolina, Graue wrote and drew the strip through the 1970s and 1980s until Jack Bender took over as illustrator in 1991. Graue continued to write the strip until his August 2001 retirement. On December 10, 2001, the 75-year-old Graue died in Flat Rock, North Carolina in a traffic collision. The current ''Alley Oop'' Sunday and daily strips are created by writer Joey Alison Sayers and artist ]Jonathan Lemon
Jonathan Dee Lemon is an English-born American cartoonist and former musician. He is best known for drawing the Alley Oop comic strip.
Lemon was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, England in 1965, and earned an art degree at the University of Brig ...
Later life and death
The Hamlins moved to Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota () is a city in Sarasota County on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is located in the sou ...
, after his retirement. He wrote his autobiography, ''The Man Who Walked with Dinosaurs'' and a novel ''The Devil's Daughter''. ''Four Rivers'' is his fishing memoir.[
Dorothy Hamlin died in 1985, and V. T. Hamlin died in Brooksville, Florida, in 1993 at the age of 93.
]
Archives
Theodora Hamlin Dewalt donated the V. T. Hamlin Collection to the University of Missouri-Columbia Libraries on December 22, 1990. It includes 126 original cartoons and 436 personal and career photographs, along with newspaper and journal articles about Hamlin's work, contracts and correspondence with Newspaper Enterprise Association, personal and family papers, correspondence and memorabilia.
References
External links
''Des Moines Register'', "Famous Iowans: V. T. Hamlin"
''Caveman: V. T. Hamlin and Alley Oop'', a documentary film about Hamlin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hamlin
1900 births
1993 deaths
American comic strip cartoonists
United States Army personnel of World War I
People from Perry, Iowa