Tony Garel-Frantzen - Slow Ball Cartoonist: The Extraordinary Life of Indiana Native and Pulitzer Prize Winner John T. McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune

Copyright 2016 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.

Cataloging-in-Publication data on file at the Library of Congress.

Cover image courtesy of the Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special
Collections Research Center, Purdue University Libraries.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55753-730-0
ePub ISBN: 978-1-61249-433-3
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-61249-432-6

M Y GREAT-GREAT GRANDFATHER, Andrew McNally, was among the industry leaders in the late 1800s who helped transform Chicago into a world-class business center. He cofounded Rand McNally & Co., which would become famous for maps and other travel-related products. Another giant from that era who shared a passion for travel was Chicago Tribune cartoonist John T. McCutcheonthe plainspoken Indiana native and Purdue University graduate whose charming and delightful cartoons graced the pages of the newspaper from 1903 until his retirement in 1946. I am pleased to introduce readers to the story of his fascinating life.

More than a cartoonist, McCutcheon was a veteran world traveler, combat artist, and foreign correspondent whose drawings and illustrations provided readers with commentary and reflections about the days scientific, political, commercial, and human progress at a time before television, Internet, and e-mail.

The gentle soul from rural Indiana quickly became a favorite among Tribune readers. His longtime friend, George Ade (a noted humorist and playwright), summed up why readers were so fond of McCutcheon in a 1903 book titled Cartoons by McCutcheon that was published by Chicago-based A. C. McClurg & Co.:

Those who have studied and admired John McCutcheons cartoons in the daily press have been favorably impressed by the two eminent characteristics of his intent: First, he cartoons public men without grossly insulting them. Second, he recognizes the very large and important fact that political events do not entirely fill the entire horizon of the American people.

When McCutcheon did cover politics, it was with gentle humor, clever artistic execution, and considerate treatment of the public figures he targeted with his pen. His style was in marked contrast to contemporary cartoonists who attacked public figures with a vicious wickedness. Noted his friend Ade: McCutcheon tried to avoid hackneyed political subjects and give his readers pictures of their real interesteveryday life.

At the beginning of McCutcheons career, the process for reproducing photographs in newspapers was not yet widely adopted. So, papers relied on a cartoonist to be a sort of graphic reporter, illustrating major news events by making sketches on scene. In the beginning, sporting events, courtroom trials, fires, and crime scenes were all part of McCutcheons typical days work. Eventually, however, he settled into cartoons exclusively.

McCutcheon may have had the soul of a poet, but his heart was all adventurer. He sketched General Pancho Villa as the Mexican Revolution leader sat menacingly holding a pistol. He was aboard Commodore George Deweys flagship at the start of the Spanish-American War. He was likely the first civilian to fly in a warplane over a World War I battlefield. He hunted big game in Africa with Theodore Roosevelt. He rode horseback through Persia and Chinese Turkestan, explored the jungles of New Guinea, traveled the Gobi Desert in a motor car, and made two airplane trips to South America. The list goes on. All this before commercial airlines, ATMs, and cell phones.

John T. McCutcheon also likely crossed paths with Andrew McNally.

In 1889, an executive committee was formed to secure a location in Chicago for the Worlds Columbian Exposition. In addition to McNally, the committee included such famous members as industrialist George Pullman, steel magnate Charles H. Schwab, publisher Joseph Medill, and Chicagos thirty-third Mayor DeWitt C. Cregier. McCutcheon was assigned to provide sketches of the construction, opening, and ongoing events. The Chicago Daily News prominently featured his work. Thus, it seems likely that McNally and McCutcheon at least knew of each other.

In Slow Ball Cartoonist, Tony Garel-Frantzen chronicles all of McCutcheons adventures, from his birth on a small rural farm near Lafayette in 1870, to his rise as the Dean of American Cartoonists and winner of the first-ever Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Tribune for McCutcheons cartoon about bank failures in the Great Depression. I hope you enjoy reading the story of this great Indiana native, Purdue University graduate, and iconic Chicago figure.

Andrew McNally IV
Former Chairman and CEO
Rand McNally & Co.

December 2015

A FEW WORDS ABOUT how this book came to be. Early in my career I worked as a newspaper reporter and editorial cartoonist. On the reporting side, one of the beats was a high school district in the suburbs of Chicago. Shortly before I arrived at the newspaper, that high school district endured a bruising teachers strike. In my view, several colleagues in the newsroom had deliberately, and perhaps unfairly, painted the administration in a poor light. So when I took over the beat, I tried instead to find positive stories to tell. The beleaguered high school officials were grateful. One day, after I no longer covered the high school, a box arrived with a copy of Drawn From Memory, by John T. McCutcheon (hereafter, JTM), the Chicago Tribunes longtime cartoonist. A handwritten note was inside:

To Tony Garel-Frantzen, a promising cartoonist:

From my collection of books by Hoosier authors

a cartoonist worthy of emulation.

Best wishes from Gilbert R. Weldy, March 8, 1982

After a few pages of reading, I realized why I never completed Drawn From Memory. To borrow a phrase from JTM himself, the autobiography can best be described as rambling memoirs. But by applying a little patience and imagining that JTM was personally telling me the story of his life, I came to realize what an extraordinary, kind, and gifted man he was. I became fascinated with how a boy born in 1870 on a farm in rural Indiana could end up as a war correspondent, cartoonist, and author. A graduate of Purdue University, he worked at the Chicago Daily News from 18891901 and at the Chicago Record-Herald from 19011903, before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1903, where he drew cartoons until his retirement in 1946. Along the way, he married Evelyn Shaw in 1917 and they had four children: John T., Evelyn, Shaw, and Barr.

JTM traveled the world extensively, hunting wild game, crossing deserts, riding in zeppelins across the Atlantic, and serving as a war correspondent. The list of famous (and notorious) people that he personally knew or met includes Theodore Roosevelt and his two sons, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Booth Tarkington, Pancho Villa, Ring Lardner, Billy Mitchell, Winston Churchill, and Carl Sandburg, to name a few. His 1931 cartoon, A Wise Economist Asks a Question, won the