When I saw this story, I wondered about Herblock's career's length.
http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/34112/al-jaffee-sets-record-longest-career-comics-artist
Herb "Herblock" Block worked as an editorial cartoonist from 1929-2001, for 72 years. Jaffee definitely worked longer with over 73 months and counting.
However, I think Al Hirschfeld's tenure still beats Jaffee's. According to the Library of Congress, "In fact, Hirschfeld's first published caricature was for a Warner Brothers film in April 1925; his first theatrical drawing appeared in December 1926." Hirschfeld was still working for the New York Times when he died in January 2003. This would be either 77 years and 9 months (from the poster), or 78 years in newspapers, but either of them beat Jaffee's "record of 73 years and three months" unless one defines a comics artist as working only in comic books.
As He Celebrates 95th Birthday
by Milton Griepp on April 1, 2016 http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/34112/al-jaffee-sets-record-longest-career-comics-artist
Herb "Herblock" Block worked as an editorial cartoonist from 1929-2001, for 72 years. Jaffee definitely worked longer with over 73 months and counting.
However, I think Al Hirschfeld's tenure still beats Jaffee's. According to the Library of Congress, "In fact, Hirschfeld's first published caricature was for a Warner Brothers film in April 1925; his first theatrical drawing appeared in December 1926." Hirschfeld was still working for the New York Times when he died in January 2003. This would be either 77 years and 9 months (from the poster), or 78 years in newspapers, but either of them beat Jaffee's "record of 73 years and three months" unless one defines a comics artist as working only in comic books.
However Al Jaffee is still alive, so more power to him.
From David Leopold:
ReplyDeleteHirschfeld's first published drawing was in 1920 and he worked steadily until his death in January 2003. Hirschfeld worked for a variety of studios including Goldwyn, Universal, Selznick, RKO, and Warner Bros between 1920 and 1925 (as well as many other smaller ones) and it was for a Warner Bros film that he published his first caricature in April 1925. He continued to do both caricatures and straight drawings for another seven years for film studios for both posters and print advertising, while he only ever did caricatures for the theater beginning in December 1926. His first drawing for the NY Times was in January 1928 and for the next 75 years (less a few weeks) he was, on average, in the paper every other week. Until 1943, he was in at least three NY newspapers. I explore much of his work for film studios, newspapers, record covers, TV Guide, murals, etc, in my book THE HIRSCHFELD CENTURY (Knopf, 2015), but suffice to say that Hirschfeld had an active 82 year career, never losing ability or popularity, and appearing in the leading publications or print media of whatever field he was in, and was drawing for publication up until the day before he died at 99 1/2. He had a mutual admiration society with Herblock, and I would not be surprised if he knew Jaffe.
David Leopold
Creative Director
Al Hirschfeld Foundation
archive@alhirschfeldfoundation.org
Visit www.AlHirschfeldFoundation.org
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