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| Original "Papa Who Pays!" comic strip by Jimmy Murphy. |
Toots and Casper is a family comic strip by Jimmy Murphy, distributed to newspapers for 37 years by King Features Syndicate, from December 17, 1918 to December 30, 1956. The strip spawned many merchandising tie-ins, including books, dolls, paper dolls, pins, bisque nodders and comic books.
Comics historian Coulton Waugh commented on the strip's portrait of a happy, idealized family life: "Like Blondie, Toots is the picture of contentment, and if all homes were like these, the American Dream would be nearly realized."
The cartoon's creator, Jimmy Murphy, was born in Chicago but he grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. When he was 15 he began selling political cartoons to the local newspapers, including the Omaha Examiner. He briefly attended Creighton University in Omaha, but he left home in 1910, spending the next eight years drawing political cartoons for the Inland Herald (Spokane, Washington), the Oregon Journal (Portland, Oregon) and the San Francisco Call & Post.
In the summer of 1918, William Randolph Hearst beckoned, and Murphy arrived in New York for a job with Hearst's New York Journal and the New York American, where he decided to try a comic strip. For the New York American Murphy created Doc Attaboy, a strip about a middle-aged doctor more concerned with writing the bills instead of curing his patients. That short-lived strip continued until December 1918.
The same month he dropped Doc Attaboy, he began Toots and Casper for the American, using his wife, Matilda Katherine Crane Murphy, as the model for Toots. The strip was picked up by King Features Syndicate in 1919, and by 1925, it was being carried in numerous newspapers. He left New York and moved to California, living for decades in Beverly Hills. His hobbies of motoring and golf often interfered with his deadlines, and his business records from the 1930s revealed that he often was so late that he shipped strips east by air express. The daily Toots and Casper ran until 1951, with the Sunday strip continuing until 1956.
Beginning in 1926, he drew another Sunday comic strip, It's Papa Who Pays!, which ran above Toots and Casper as a topper until 1956. Toots and Casper remained a popular favorite with newspaper readers for decades. Between 1932 and 1941, he began including collectible stamps and paper dolls in his Sunday page. These features were so popular they were subsequently imitated by other cartoonists.
In 1942, Murphy joined other King Features cartoonists in donating art for a World War II booklet on nutrition, Eat Right to Work and Win, published in Toronto by Swift Canadian Co. Ltd. The booklet was created through several contributors, the National Nutrition Program, Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services, King Features and the Office of Civilian Defense.
There was a wave of Toots and Casper licensing and merchandising, with items that ran the gamut from pins and dolls to comic books. The daily continued until 1951, and the Sunday strip lasted until 1956. Murphy's illness near the end of the run prompted the recycling of earlier strips and the hiring of ghost artists. Wikipedia
Comics historian Coulton Waugh commented on the strip's portrait of a happy, idealized family life: "Like Blondie, Toots is the picture of contentment, and if all homes were like these, the American Dream would be nearly realized."
The cartoon's creator, Jimmy Murphy, was born in Chicago but he grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. When he was 15 he began selling political cartoons to the local newspapers, including the Omaha Examiner. He briefly attended Creighton University in Omaha, but he left home in 1910, spending the next eight years drawing political cartoons for the Inland Herald (Spokane, Washington), the Oregon Journal (Portland, Oregon) and the San Francisco Call & Post.
In the summer of 1918, William Randolph Hearst beckoned, and Murphy arrived in New York for a job with Hearst's New York Journal and the New York American, where he decided to try a comic strip. For the New York American Murphy created Doc Attaboy, a strip about a middle-aged doctor more concerned with writing the bills instead of curing his patients. That short-lived strip continued until December 1918.
The same month he dropped Doc Attaboy, he began Toots and Casper for the American, using his wife, Matilda Katherine Crane Murphy, as the model for Toots. The strip was picked up by King Features Syndicate in 1919, and by 1925, it was being carried in numerous newspapers. He left New York and moved to California, living for decades in Beverly Hills. His hobbies of motoring and golf often interfered with his deadlines, and his business records from the 1930s revealed that he often was so late that he shipped strips east by air express. The daily Toots and Casper ran until 1951, with the Sunday strip continuing until 1956.
Beginning in 1926, he drew another Sunday comic strip, It's Papa Who Pays!, which ran above Toots and Casper as a topper until 1956. Toots and Casper remained a popular favorite with newspaper readers for decades. Between 1932 and 1941, he began including collectible stamps and paper dolls in his Sunday page. These features were so popular they were subsequently imitated by other cartoonists.
In 1942, Murphy joined other King Features cartoonists in donating art for a World War II booklet on nutrition, Eat Right to Work and Win, published in Toronto by Swift Canadian Co. Ltd. The booklet was created through several contributors, the National Nutrition Program, Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services, King Features and the Office of Civilian Defense.
There was a wave of Toots and Casper licensing and merchandising, with items that ran the gamut from pins and dolls to comic books. The daily continued until 1951, and the Sunday strip lasted until 1956. Murphy's illness near the end of the run prompted the recycling of earlier strips and the hiring of ghost artists. Wikipedia
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| A "Papa" paper doll by Jimmy Murphy. |
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