Russell Channing Westover (March 8, 1886 – May 3, 1966) was a cartoonist best known for his long-run comic strip ''
Tillie the Toiler
''Tillie the Toiler'' is a newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Russ Westover who initially worked on his concept of a flapper character in a strip he titled ''Rose of the Office''. With a title change, it sold to King Features Syndicate ...
''.
Early life
Westover was born in
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
. He recalled, "When the time came... to make a living, father put me in one of the stores he owned. I used to wrap parcels, and I'd draw pictures on them. The customers liked it, but my father didn't. We talked it over and came to an agreement. I went into the railroad business."
[
After a job as a clerk with the Southern Pacific Railroad, Westover headed for San Francisco, where he studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute). After four months, he dropped out after an instructor said, "Young man, the drawing of Caesar is good, but that caricature you made of me on the border is terrible".Danger Trail]
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Career
Westover was 18 years old when he landed a job as a sports cartoonist with the ''San Francisco Bulletin
The ''San Francisco Evening Bulletin'' was a newspaper in San Francisco, founded as the ''Daily Evening Bulletin'' in 1855 by James King of William. King used the newspaper to crusade against political corruption, and built it into having the highe ...
''. He also contributed to the ''San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...
'', the ''San Francisco Post'' and the ''Oakland Herald''. His first comic strip, ''Daffy Dan'', about a baseball player, was published in the ''Post''.[Wheeler, Christopher. "Russ Westover".]
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Relocating to New York, he was at the '' New York Herald'' when he drew his first nationally syndicated strip, ''Snapshot Bill'' (1914), followed by ''Ginger Pop'', ''Fat Chance'', ''Looie and His Tin Lizzie'' and ''The Demon Demonstrator''. He also worked as an illustrator for ''Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' and '' Judge'' (1918–21).
''Tillie the Toiler''
Westover worked on his concept of a flapper character in a strip he titled ''Rose of the Office''. With a title change to ''Tillie the Toiler'', it sold to King Features Syndicate. Leaving the ''Herald'', he began ''Tillie the Toiler'' for King Features in 1921, and the working-girl strip quickly established a wide readership, leading to a 1927 film adaptation by Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures with Marion Davies
Marion Davies (born Marion Cecilia Douras; January 3, 1897 – September 22, 1961) was an American actress, producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist. Educated in a religious convent, Davies fled the school to pursue a career as a chorus girl ...
as Tillie.
During the late 1920s, more than 600 papers were carrying ''Tillie The Toiler''. In 1926, he added another strip, ''The Van Swaggers'', to his Sunday page
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 ...
as a topper. Cupples & Leon
Cupples & Leon was an American publishing company founded in 1902 by Victor I. Cupples (1864–1941) and Arthur T. Leon (1867–1943). They published juvenile fiction and children's books but are mainly remembered today as the major publi ...
published a series of at least eight ''Tillie the Toiler'' reprint collections beginning in the 1920s and continuing into the 1930s. Westover profited from another movie when Kay Harris appeared in the title role of Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
' ''Tillie the Toiler'' in 1941.
When Westover retired in the early 1950s, Bob Gustafson continued ''Tillie the Toiler'' until 1959.
Death
Westover was 80 when he died in 1966 in San Rafael, California
San Rafael ( ; Spanish for " St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's populatio ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Westover, Russ
1886 births
1966 deaths
American comic strip cartoonists
Artists from Los Angeles
San Francisco Art Institute alumni