Decline and Fall of the Editorial Cartoonist ... from 1957!

By Bruce Guthrie 

Billy Ireland Museum description: Letter from John Stampone to John Milt Morris describing the group's founding.  1957?

Cartoons by John Stampone letterhead 

Dear Milt -

This is a brief history of the AAEC.
In 1957, January was the month, I read an article in the Saturday Review called 'The Decline And Fall Of The Editorial Cartoonist'.

Needless to say, I didn't like what the article said -- so my first thought was to form an association of editorial cartoonist [sic] and hope that it would help to restore some prestige to the profession.

Jim Berryman, Gib Crockett, Hal Talburt and Dan Dowling agreed to endose [sic] my plan. Jim wrote a letter to send out to a list of cartoonists that I had put together, and I got my boss Mel Ryder to underwrite the expenses -- and we were off!

The response from the return camos [?] was so great -- in one month we had our charter and in three months our first convention in Washington, D. C. — The rest is history!

Thanks
John

--

Bruce Guthrie
Photo obsessive
http://www.bguthriephotos.com