User:Teblick/Jolly Bill Steinke

Jolly Bill Steinke (died January 29, 1958) was an American newspaper cartoonist and radio personality.

Early years
Steinke was born in Rextown, Pennsylvania, near Slatedale, Pennsylvania. He and his family moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, when he was a small boy. As a teenager, Steinke sold cookies from a wagon, and he traveled across the United States with a National Biscuit Company crew that decorated windows of stores selling Nabisco products.

Career
Steinke's newspaper career began in 1908 at The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania. An agreement with the newspaper's publisher allowed him to us a room in the newspaper's building as a commercial art studio while he drew one or two cartoons per week for the newspaper in lieu of rent. He gained clients for his art business, and he became a reporter and cartoonist for the Morning Democrat in Allentown.

In August 1912, he went to Scranton, Pennsylvania, and became a cartoonist for The Scranton Republican. He left Scranton in 1918, going first to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and then to Newark, New Jersey. There he worked for The Star-Ledger newspaper, writing a daily column accompanied by his drawings, both of which came from interviews that he did on the street in Newark.

In 1929, he became cartoonist for the radio pages of the New York Daily Mirror, in particular drawing illustrations for a daily radio column by Nick Kenny.

Steinke first became involved with radio in 1922. Each day when he worked as a Santa Claus in a Bamberger's department store in Newark, he read children's letters to Santa on a radio broadcast. In 1924, he began the Jolly Bill radio program on WOR in Newark. He gained national exposure via the Jolly Bill and Jane program on NBC radio. He was with NBC 34 years. In 1929, Steinke and co-star Jane took the program to vaudeville, performing for three weeks at Radio-Keith-Orpheum theaters in New York City and Jersey City, New Jersey. Steinke designed the sets for the stage performances.

In 1943, Steinke began a USO tour to entertain military personnel across the United States. The tour was initially scheduled to last six weeks, but it went on for three years.

Steinke also worked on television, beginning with a program on WNBC-TV in New York on which he drew on a sketch pad. He went to San Francisco in 1946, becoming "an overnight hit with West Coast audiences" on TV programs there. His 30-minute Monday-Friday program there had him portraying a tugboat captain and drawing pictures,. It ended on August 28, 1953.

Personal life and death
Steinke was a charter member of New York's Circus Saints & Sinners, "a non-sectarian, non-political association of successful professionals dedicated to fellowship and community service through charitable giving".

Steinke and his wife, Alice, had a son and three daughters, including artist Bettina Steinke.

Steinke died on January 29, 1958, in a convalescent home in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

Papers
Steinker's papers are housed at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The collection includes original artwork, pages from scrapbooks, posters, programs from personal appearances, and scripts from radio programs. A limited amount of material about his personal life is also available.