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THOMAS E. POWERS

Critical reception
In the weeks after the film's release, the production received largely very positive reviews from critics representing both large and small newspapers. Janet Maslin, in her July 24, 1981 assessment in The New York Times, states:{{quote|

THOMAS E. POWERS (cartoonist)
{{short description|American cartoonist {{other people||Thomas Powers (disambiguation) {{Use mdy dates|date=April 2024 {{Infobox people }}
 * name         = Thomas E. Powers
 * image        =
 * image_size   =
 * caption      = The Moving Picture World, 1916
 * birth_name   = Thomas Edward Powers
 * birth_date   = {{birth date|1870|7|4}}
 * birth_place  = Milwaukee, Wisconsin United States
 * death_date   = {{death date and age|1939|8|14|1870|7|4}}
 * death_place  = Long Beach, New York United States
 * occupation   = Editorial cartoonist, comic-strip and animation artist, landscape painter
 * years_active = 1889–1937
 * spouse      = Louise Hyde Powers (m.1895{{ndash}}1939; his death)

https://archive.org/details/movingpicturewor27newy/page/250/mode/2up

Thomas E. Powers (credited T. E. Powers, Tom Powers and T.E.P.; July 4, 1870{{spaced ndash}}August 18, 1939) was an American editorial cartoonist, comic-strip artist, and caricaturist whose drawings were published in newspapers throughout the United States between 1889 and 1937. The Wisconsin native's pen-and-ink drawings were also used in various advertisements in the early 1900s, and he was reported in many publications to be President Theodore Roosevelt's favorite "political cartoonist". Between 1915 and the early 1920s, Powers worked too as either a writer, artist, or supervisor in the production of at least 18 animated shorts that were widely distributed to cinemas. Many of the cartoon characters and storylines in those shorts had been developed earlier by Powers for his newspaper comics. During a career that spanned nearly a half century, he was employed for 41 years by the vast newspaper chain of William Randolph Hearst and was recognized in political and journalistic circles to one of the nation's leading satirical artists of the early 20th century.

Early life and initial jobs
Thomas Powers was born in 1870 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In his youth he moved with his parents and siblings to Kansas City, Missouri, where he obtained the remainder of his public-school education as well as his first jobs. Thomas demonstrated at an early age a natural talent for drawing cartoons, an ability that got him in trouble at school for decorating blackboards in his classrooms with portraits of his teachers. His playful artwork also cost him his first job as a clerk in a local grocery, where he was fired for sketching unflattering caricatures of his boss on sheets of the store's wrapping paper. He was then employed by a lithographer in Kansas City. Over 50 years later, in its 1939 obituary for Powers, the New York Herald Tribune quotes the cartoonist's comments about that job, recollections he shared originally during an interview with the news magazine Editor & Publisher in 1906:""When I was about seventeen years of age, I went to work for a lithographer who estimated that I was well worth $2 a week. I also received a goodly supply of advice on the subject of saving money. But, in spite of all he said, I squandered my money, with carelessness, recklessness and negligence...My employer said that I would never be able to draw. I was offended and resigned....""

By 1889, however, after obtaining another position in Kansas City, Powers finally managed to save sufficient funds to leave Missouri and relocate to Chicago to enroll in art school and to secure a better-paying job as an illustrator or cartoonist. While attending art classes at night, young "T. E." worked days for the Chicago Daily News under the direction of Victor Lawson, who hired the cartoonist after seeing some of his pen-and-ink drawings. Powers then did additional work for the Chicago Herald before he accepted a "lucrative offer" in 1894 from newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane to move to New York City to join the staff of The World, which was owned by Joseph Pulitzer. Two years later, Brisbane joined the Hearst Corporation's newspaper chain and transferred to the New York Evening Journal. Powers soon followed Brisbane, marking the successful recruitment of yet another popular journalist by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who remained locked in ongoing circulation wars with Pulitzer and other publishers.

Hearst newspaper chain
When Powers joined the staff of the New York Evening Journal in 1896, it was the beginning of the artist's 41-year career of employment with Hearst's newspaper empire. Powers quickly became one of the publisher's favorite artists.

Page 97 Hearst was evicted, but the raid continued. In the reorgani- zation made necessary by Goddard's departure, PuUtzer raised City Editor Richard A. Farrelly to direction of the morning edition and arranged a banquet to honor Farrelly. Farrelly went over to Hearst the day before the banquet, which was suspended. 10 With Outcault now drawing yellow kids for the Journal, and another artist, George Luks, drawing yellow kids for the World, the term "yellow journalism" was born. Among the many World men Hearst kidnaped was a cartoonist, T. E. Powers. Pulitzer immediately rehired Powers on a contract, whereupon Hearst got him back again on a better contract. Resolving to settle the issue with the Western guerilla, Pulitzer sued for Powers' services, and the cartoonist was enjoined from working for either. Both Pulitzer and Hearst paid him his salary during the litigation, so that Powers became the envy of newspaperdom, a man paid two handsome salaries for doing nothing. When Hearst finally won the suit, Powers stood for drinks in a Park Row saloon, a convivial affair that inspired a skit paraphrasing a line from Uncle Tom's Cabin. While a friend belabored him harmlessly with a roll of paper. Powers, on his knees, groaned, "You can beat this poor old body but my soul belongs to William Randolph Hearst."

Comic strips
Powers developed a series of assorted comic strips that through syndication in the Hearst chain were published in newspapers across the United States. His single-panel cartoons and strips regularly portrayed the everyday challenges in the city of coping with parenthood, confrontations with troublesome neighbors, keeping up with fashion trends, urban transportation woes, and lampooning various local political and social opinions. During the early 1900s, Powers also regularly depicted living in urban communities as well as the problems faced by the growing number of city workers living in rural locations, where they often struggled commuting to work and with other recurring problems such as swarms of mosquitoes. He began drawing "How'd You’d Like to be Charlie?" in 1900 and many other cartoon titles over the next two decades, such as Our Moving Pictures", "Mike and Mike", "Mr. Nobody Holme", "Mrs. Trubble", "Never Again," "The Down-and-Out Club", "Sam the Drummer", "Married Life From the Inside", "Charlie and George", and "The League of Husbands".
 * [Example of comic strips]

He also drew a comment on fellow artist George Herriman, speculating on how he invented the famous 'Krazy Kat' comic. T.E. Powers also did political illustrations for the Political Round-Up column in Hearst's Magazine, July - Dec 1913. His political cartoons had a wide following and two elf-like characters, Joy and Gloom, became one of the trademarks of his work. Among his other cartoon series are

The two strips speak to both ends of America: the relatively normal and the relatively rebellious.

Powers' distinction was the first American to draw a newspaper color comic strip.

Caricaturist
W.W. Denslow (by T.E. Powers).jpg by Powers, 1900

Powers' cartoons were admired by his contemporaries not only for their humor but also for their uncomplicated style. In its obituary for the artist in August 1939, The Sun newspaper in Baltimore alludes to the deceptive simplicity of his drawings and reveals the cartoon that was Powers' personal favorite:"Using a relatively simple line-drawing technique, which looked easy to duplicate but was not, Mr. Powers had a gift for caricature. His own favorite cartoon was one he drew of President Calvin Coolidge sawing wood. Mr. Coolidge liked the drawing and his request for the original, on White House stationery, was one of the cartoonist's most cherished mementos...While conceding that few caricatures were flattering, Mr. Powers once observed that he had encountered few men who objected to being caricatured. "In fact," he said, "most of them seem to like it.""

James Hazen Hyde https://www.newyorkhistoryblog.com/2013/01/james-hazen-hyde-a-gilded-age-scandal.html

Political cartoonist
Powers was reportedly Theodore Roosevelt's favorite newspaper cartoonist during the Republican president's term of office from 1901 to 1909. During that period, Powers regularly produced editorial cartoons that championed Roosevelt's efforts to enact and enforce anti-trust legislation, federal food and drug safety inspections, and to advance other progressive policies. His editorial drawings also frequently showcased the investigations of many reform-minded reporters or "muckrakers", who sought to uncover both corporate and government corruption in the United States and to encourage their prosecution. Overall, Powers' drawings actively promoted the political and economic interests of the Hearst newspaper chain and reflected the personal opinions of its owner, William Randolph Hearst, on matters affecting the direction of United States foreign and domestic policies.

https://archive.org/details/williamrandolphh00benp/page/41/mode/2up?q=Powers

https://archive.org/details/williamrandolphh00benp/page/61/mode/2up?q=Powers

https://archive.org/details/williamrandolphh0000litt/page/180/mode/2up?q=Powers

economic interests and military power globally, establish tighter health and safety standards for food production and distribution in the United States.

https://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2006/09/ep-1939-te-powers-obituary.html

Mr. Powers first attracted the attention of Theodore Roosevelt when he pictured the President threatening tall, silk-hatted figures labeled "The Trusts" with the then famous "big stick." His satirical thrusts at "grafting politicians" or others whose right to public office he challenged, however, usually were tempered with broad humor. Powers' 1901 caricature of New York City's police chief William Stephen Devery being "perfumed" at a beauty parlor to mask the stench of the official's widespread reputation for bribery and extortion.

Sued for libel, 1907
For criticizing and graphically lampooning well-connected political officials and wealthy industrialists in the United States, Powers and publisher Arthur Brisbane were periodically threatened physically or targeted with legal actions. One example of the latter is the 1907 lawsuit filed by Chicago mayoral candidate Frederick Busse, who included the two journalists in his $150,000 libel case ($ today) against the Hearst Corporation. In his action, Busse alleged that Hearst and his "cartoonist from New York" [Powers] not only maliciously damaged the Republican candidate's reputationdepicting him during the political campaign as a "gunfighter" with images associated with violence and banditrybut also that Hearst and his employees outside the state of Illinois had "taken charge of the Democratic newspaper campaign" in Chicago.

"Joy" and "Gloom"

 * [Example of J and G]

https://archive.org/details/movingpicturewor11newy/page/423/mode/1up

In the early 1900s, the popularity of Powers' political cartoons and comic strips quickly spread among American newspaper readers. To enhance the theme and establish the emotional tone for the intended messages of his pen-and-ink drawings, he began adding to them two elf-like characters: an ever-grinning, round-headed female figure he named "Joy"; the other, a male figurehe called "Gloom"who sports a pointed black beard, black hat, and a glum expression. At times the pair appear together in Powers' cartoons and sometimes separately, occupying spaces in the foreground of his comic panels or tucked into corners of scenes. Soon the small characters evolved into widely recognized trademarks of Powers' work and were "generally employed", as described by The New York Times, "as pictorial footnotes to his editorial cartoons."

The characters "Joy" and "Gloom" which he used so often, cavorted in the corners of his cartoon. If optimism was in order, "Joy" chased "Gloom," and vice versa. "Gloom" was a mournful imp with a black beard, and "Joy" wore an eternal grin.

"Living comic strips", 19151921
In 1914, William Randolph Hearst expanded his International News Service wire syndicate into the International Picture Service, a syndicate formed to create newsreels, when newsreels were an entirely new idea. The success of the Hearst Newsreel led the media magnate to create International Film Service (IFS) in 1915. The purpose of this company was to translate Hearst's top comic strip properties into "living comic strips", to be added to the tail-end of the newsreels. For Hearst, the purpose of these cartoons was to be the same as the comics: to increase the circulation of his newspapers. The fact that former Hearst employees Winsor McCay, George McManus, and Bud Fisher were all doing very well with animated cartoons based on their Hearst comic strips ("Little Nemo", The Newlyweds, and Mutt and Jeff) may have had something to do with it as well, since Hearst was a sore loser.

To lead this new studio, Hearst did what he usually did: lured the best talent away from his competitors with the promise of the kind of huge salary only a Hearst could afford. The supervisor was Gregory La Cava, who had animated for the Raoul Barré studio. La Cava was given director credit for all of the IFS cartoons. IFS cartoons were the first comic strip properties to give proper credit to the director and animators, as opposed to just the creator of the comic (their credit was in tiny print on the screen, but it was there). With him came William Nolan and Frank Moser, the fastest animators in the business. Hearst even hired Raoul Barré, head of another animation studio, to animate his first series and teach the new hires how animation was done.

IFS jumped into eight different series right from the start. This was possible only because of La Cava's extraordinary organization skills. On the other hand, the quality suffered. IFS cartoons are indeed "living comic strips", with little motion and many dialog balloons instead of the intertitles used by most other animation studios. As a result, they are not very interesting to look at today. The studio did give birth to one enduring series, however: Krazy Kat. IFS was also the first studio for a whole host of future animation talent: Vernon Stallings, Walter Lantz, Ben Sharpsteen, Jack King, John Foster, Grim Natwick, Burt Gillett and Isadore Klein.

World War I proved the death-knell for IFS. Hearst had been pursuing an aggressive pro-German position for decades under the assumption that German immigrants were the core of his newspaper consistency. As a result, International News Service lost its credibility. The spiraling debt this created forced Hearst to cut out his least-profitable business, and that was IFS. The entire staff was laid off on July 6, 1918, a date referred to in animation history as "Black Monday". But Hearst still cared about his animated properties, so he licensed them to John C. Terry's studio. When that studio folded a year later, he licensed his former competitor, Bray Productions, to make the IFS cartoons. The deal lasted from 1919 to 1921, when the IFS-Bray agreement broke off; with the final few cartoons released in early 1921.

By 1914, Barré and Nolan felt confident enough to start their own studio, totally independent of Edison and dedicated 100% to animation. This Barré-Nolan Studio was probably the first of its kind (although Bray Productions also had a good claim to the title). The main title produced by the new studio was a series of inserts for the mostly live-action Animated Grouch Chaser series, distributed by Edison.

International Film Service (IFS) was an American animation studio created to exploit the popularity of the comic strips controlled by William Randolph Hearst. In 1916, William Randolph Hearst, multi-millionaire and newspaper magnate, started a rival animation studio called International Film Service and hired most of Barré's animators, including Bill Nolan, by paying them more money than Barré could provide. Barré was reduced to being a contractor for IFS, animating the series Phables. After seven cartoons, he quit.



Between 1915 and 1921, Powers is credited with drawing, writing, or supervising the production of at least 18 silent animated cartoons, which IFS also marketed in those years as "living comic strips". "animated satires" based on his characters. In January 1916, the International Film Service released the silent animated cartoon Mr. Nobody Holme Buys a Jitney. Those shorts were regular features in Hearst-Vitagraph newsreels, which were distributed semi-weekly and presented in thousands of theaters across the United States.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0694632/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1

https://www.loc.gov/item/00694018/


 * Raoul Barré
 * Leon Searl

Later, in the early 1920s, another series of cartoons based on T. E. Powers' popular comic-strip characters Joy and Gloom were distributed to theaters. Drawn by John Coleman Terry in consultation with Powers, one example of those animated comedies is preserved in the UCLA Film and Television Archive and is available for viewing on the streaming service Youtube.

[?] International Newsreel Corporation or International News Reel Corporation? production. / From a comic strip by T.E. Powers. Animation by John C. Terry (John Coleman Terry). / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.

Examples of Powers' drawings used in advertising
Tobacco insert card, 1910, from the "Mutt and Jeff" series (T88), issued with Sweet Caporal Cigarettes by Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company. The comic strip was created by Bud Fisher, and the backs of the cards state they were illustrated by Bud Fisher, T.E. Powers, R.L. Goldberg, Tad (Dorgan), and Gus Mager. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/785127?sortBy=Relevance&amp;ft=Thomas+E.+Powers&amp;offset=0&amp;rpp=40&amp;pos=8

used in Carbons

Landscape artist
[[File:ArmoryShow poster.jpg|thumb|180px|Armory Show poster

Cartoons in various formats were not Powers only interests artistically. He was also an accomplished painter, particularly in landscapes, and over the years his works were displayed in prestigious national and international exhibitions. Two of his landscapes, for example, were included in the International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York City in 1913. Also known as the "Armory Show", that event showcased the contemporary works of notable American painters and sculptors as well as European masters in those media.

Association of American Painters and Sculptors

Personal life and death
Powers married only once, in 1895, to Louise Hyde, a native of Stafford, Connecticut. Subsequent federal census records and the cartoonist's obituaries indicate that the couple had no children, and that during their 44-year marriage the Powers resided at various locations in New York as well as in Connecticut. While they resided in New York City for many years, Tom and Louise by 1910 had moved to Norwalk, Connecticut, to a farm situated approximately 50 miles northeast of downtown Manhattan. There Powers continued to produce his drawings and send them to the city for printing and release. The rural environment in Norwalk provided the popular cartoonist with welcomed relief from his relentless publication schedules. He and his wife maintained their farm as a second residence even after they returned later to live in New York, at 323 West Pine Street in Long Beach. In 1939, the New York Herald Tribune quoted Powers' earlier writings about the enjoyment he derived from his home in Connecticut, as well as the enjoyment veteran farmers in the area had watching him "work the soil":"My favorite recreation is farming. It's the best kind of sport in the world and is real fun, not only for myself but for the neighbors as well. They seem greatly amused. I don't know why but that's the status of the situation."

By the mid-1930s, after decades of producing many thousands of drawings for publications, Powers began to curtail his work substantially due to failing health. He finally retired in 1937 to his and Louise's Long Island home, where until September the following year he continued to produce occasional cartoons for publication. By early 1939, however, he quit drawing entirely and was confined to a wheelchair or bed. Then on the morning of August 14, 1939after battling what Powers' obituaries describe as a "two-year illness"Powers died at home in his sleep. Obituaries also report that his butler and caretaker, Nicholas Russell, found the retired artist dead in bed. After a brief memorial service, Powers' body was cremated at the New York and New Jersey Crematory in Union City, New Jersey. He was survived by his wife Louise, two brothers, and his sister. Louise remained in New York City until her death in the Bronx on December 27, 1944.

Preservation of Powers' work
Powers produced more than 15,000 drawings for publication during his long career. Many of them survive in printed form in numerous archival copies of newspapers and journals that originally circulated between the late 1890s and 1930s. Some of his original pen-and-ink drawings also survive in public and private collections throughout the United States. For example, 14 of his India ink political cartoons are part of the Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature & Cartoon that is preserved in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. One of those drawings, titled "Banquet Scene", depicts, as described in that collection, "Men and animals gather at banquet tables in a hall labeled 'Down & Outs.' They are political losers associated with incompetence, corruption, scandal, and electoral defeat, about to feast on crow."

Other archived examples of Powers' in either original or published works are held in repositories across the United States. In New York, at the Syracuse University, selections of his editorial cartoons and comic strips form part of the "General Cartoon Collection" preserved in the campus library. Full copies of Powers' 1912 volume Joys & Glooms: A Book of Drawings are also readily available in both digitized formats and in hard-copy editions in library collections. That 72-page publication features an array of the cartoonist's most popular characters, showcasing foremost his little "mood" figures Joy and Gloom.

https://www.loc.gov/item/00694015/

Born to Kill
In addition to being barred by various review boards and prompting revisions to the Production Code, the film became a central issue in a highly publicized murder that occurred outside Chicago in October 1947. That homicide involved a 12-year-old boy, Howard Lang, who used a switchblade and a block of concrete to kill a seven-year-old playmate. During Lang's trial, his lawyers argued that the boy had watched Born to Kill less than three weeks prior to the killing and that the film's violence triggered in their young client a form of temporary insanity. Although the boy was found guilty and sentenced to 22 years confinement in the state penitentiary, the Illinois Supreme Court later overturned his conviction, ruling that he was too young to understand his actions. Lang was then retried and acquitted on those grounds. The presiding judge in that second trial recommended the establishment of laws to censor violent films like Born to Kill and to hold theater managers criminally liable for showing them.

—————

In 1948, 12-year-old Howard Lang was convicted for using a switchblade and a piece of concrete to kill a seven-year-old boy outside Chicago the previous year. Lang's lawyers argued that he had watched Born to Kill less than three weeks prior to the homicide and that the film's violence triggered a form of temporary insanity. The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Lang's conviction, finding that he was too young to understand his actions. He was then acquitted following a retrial, but the judge recommended laws to censor violent films and hold theater managers liable for exhibiting them.

Early life
Born in 1899 in Providence, Rhode Island, George Macready was the elder of two children of Grace C. (née Clark) and George Peabody Macready Sr., who worked as a superintendent at a local cotton mill. Young George graduated from the Classical High School in Providence in 1917 and then enrolled at Brown University, where he majored in mathematics, was a member of Delta Phi fraternity, and earned a letter serving as the school's football team manager. While attending Brown, Macready on September 12, 1918 registered for military service during World War I, although the conflict ended before he was inducted. Later, prior to his graduation from the university in 1921, Macready was seriously injured in an automobile accident when the Ford Model T in which he was riding skidded off an icy road and hit a telephone pole. In the collision he was hurled through the windshield of the car and sustained a long gash to his right cheek, which was stitched up by a nearby veterinarian.[source] The injury left Macready with a permanent scar that gave him a distinctive appearance, one that would later influence the types of acting roles he was offered by casting directors in film and television productions. The scar, coupled with Macready's deep voice and his precise diction, often made him an ideal, if not stereotypical, choice to portray authoritarian or villainous characters.[source]

After graduating from Brown, Macready initially employed at a bank in Providence before moving to New York City to work as a newspaper reporter. There he soon became involved in stage acting, a career He claimed to have been descended from the 19th-century Shakespearean actor William Macready.