Blondie's Father

At the annual dinner of the National Cartoonists' Society last week, everybody recognized President Milt (Steve Canyon) Caniff and Chief Speaker Al (Li'l Abner) Capp at the head table. But most of the 200 guests did not know the big, sandy-haired fellow in the place of honor. Murat Bernard ("Chic") Young, on his first visit to Manhattan in ten years, looked more like a small-town businessman than the $300,000-a-year creator of the world's most widely syndicated comic strip (Blondie), and the cartoonists' choice as best cartoonist of the year.

Chic Young has a simple explanation for the success of Blondie, which appears in 1,085 U.S. and Canadian papers and 178 foreign ones,* has been the foundation for 25 movies and a radio program, and has furnished names for countless dresses, dolls, sandwiches, shampoos, kazoos and mops. Cartoonist Young regards himself as a kind of chronicler of "the common man." Says he: "Blondie appeals to people because it is about simple things--eating, sleeping, the business of raising children, happenings around the house."

Purely Coincidental. To confirmed Blondie fans, Mr. & Mrs. Dagwood Bumstead, their son Alexander ("Baby Dumpling"), their daughter Cookie, their dog Daisy and her puppies are as real as the folks next door. When Cookie was "born," 431,275 readers suggested names for her. If Blondie fries an egg in a new-type pan, letters flood in from readers who want to know where she got it.

The Bumstead family life has been a succession of major joys and minor frustrations. Dagwood is forever getting locked out of the house, losing the soap in the bathtub, or flattening the mailman while rushing frantically for the last bus to the office. But nothing really unpleasant ever happens to the Bumsteads.

Like Dagwood, Chic Young has a wife (a redhead), two children and a dog. But the Youngs are not models for the Bumsteads, because Young has found that "one family doesn't turn out enough humor to keep a strip going year in & year out." Instead, he keeps a sharp eye peeled for ideas, stores them up for future use.

Highly Profitable. Chic Young has been drawing as long as he can remember. In McKinley High School, in St. Louis, he used to sketch his classmates, and soon after graduation got a job cartooning in New York. He made the big time with Dumb Dora, then sold Hearst's King Features Syndicate on the idea of Blondie. After 1 8 years of drawing Blondie, 48- year-old Cartoonist Young still finds it a chore. To help him meet deadlines, he quit Manhattan in 1939 for the quiet of a small fruit ranch in Van Nuys, Calif. There, he settles himself before a drawing board every Thursday at 9 a.m. and works for 1 6 hours. At bedtime, he has almost finished five daily Blondie strips. A neat, fast worker, he rarely changes a line. Even with two assistants, it takes Young two more days to finish the first five strips, do a sixth, and turn out a Sun day Blondie page and a short Sunday strip called Colonel Potterby and the Duchess. He usually spends a couple of days swim ming, woodworking and loafing before he puts in two more days personally answer ing his fan mail (he sends every fan a card cartoon, often adds a note), and taking care of the business side of the highly profitable Blondie enterprises. Unlike many cartoonists, Young owns all the rights to Blondie, and looks over every contract. Says Chic: "Being a cartoonist these days is getting to mean you don't have time to draw."

* For further news of Blondie, see FOREIGN NEWS.

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