| |
Early Career
Judge,
Standard Oil/Advertising
Marriage and career, however, did not come quickly.
Ted needed to earn a living before he could think of
a life with Helen. He decided that he could make a living
as a cartoonist and was thrilled when one of his submissions
was published in The Saturday Evening Post.
His work caught the eye of the editor for Judge,
a New York weekly, and Ted was offered a staff position.
Many of the characters from these sketches resemble
the more-familiar characters of his books: Horton-esque
elephants, turtles that look like Yertle, Nizzard-like
birds, etc.
Standard Oil recognized Ted’s talent—or
at the very least, his obsession with Flit, the pesticide
Standard was manufacturing at the time—and offered
him a job in their advertising department. Flit’s
competitor, Fly-Tox, offered Ted a similar contract
and in true Ted Geisel form, he flipped a coin to make
the decision. As a result, the phrase “Quick,
Henry, the Flit!” was introduced into the American
vernacular. (Morgan, p. 65) In all, Ted spent over 15
years in advertising, primarily with Standard.
World War II
While Ted was not an advocate of war, he knew that war
against Japan and Germany was imminent. Ted contributed
anywhere from 3–5 urgent political cartoons each
week to PM magazine, considered by many to be
a liberal publication. Despite the steady work from PM,
however, Ted wanted to contribute more to the war effort.
At 38, Ted was too old for the draft, so he sought a commission
with naval intelligence. Instead, he wound up serving
in Frank Capra’s Signal Corps (U.S. Army) making
movies relevant to the war effort. He was introduced to
the art of animation and developed a series of animated
training films, which featured a trainee called Private
Snafu. At first, many balked at the idea of a “cartoon”
training series, but the younger recruits really responded
to them. The Private Snafu assignments that Ted oversaw
included scripts set to rhyme. (Morgan, p. 109)
Ted also contributed to two Academy Award–winning
films during his stint as a soldier. Few copies of the
films under their original titles remain (Your Job
in Germany and Your Job in Japan), and it
is unknown whether any copies of the Oscar-winning remakes,
Hitler Lives and Design for Death, exist.
(Morgan, pp. 118–120, and Cohen) Publishing
Ted was still contributing to Life, Vanity
Fair, Judge, etc., when an editor at Viking
Press offered him a contract to illustrate a collection
of children’s sayings called Boners.
While the book received bland reviews, Ted’s illustrations
were championed; he considered the opportunity his first
official “big break” in children’s
literature, and another turning point in his career.
(Morgan, p. 72)
By this time, there was no question that Ted could make
a living as an illustrator and cartoonist—but
he also enjoyed writing. While traveling on the luxury
liner M.S. Kungsholm, Ted became bothered by
the rhythm of its engines. At Helen’s urging,
he applied the incessant rhythm to his first children’s
book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
Though Mulberry Street is a delightful peek
into the vivid imagination of a child, publishers in
1937 were not receptive; in fact, Ted presented his
manuscript to 27 publishing houses and received 27 rejections.
Discouraged, Ted literally bumped into an old Dartmouth
friend who happened to work at Vanguard Press, a division
of Houghton Mifflin. His friend offered to show the
manuscript and illustrations to key decision-makers.
Vanguard wound up publishing Mulberry Street,
which was well received by librarians and reviewers.
His next career turning point was in response to Rudolf
Flesch’s book and John Hersey’s article,
both entitled Why Johnny Can’t Read;
the premise for both article and book was that children’s
books were boring. Hersey was outraged with the current
primers, calling them “antiseptic” and the
children in them “unnaturally clean.” He
called for illustrations “that widen rather than
narrow the associative richness the children give to
the words,” and concluded that the work of artists
like Geisel and Walt Disney would be more appropriate.
(Morgan, pp.153–54)
Previous
| Next
|
|
