Hector Breeze (1928-2018)

Cartoonist Hector Breeze died in December 2018, shortly after his 90th birthday. Rupert Besley, writing on the Professional Cartoonists Organisation website, says, "Hector Breeze developed what was surely the perfect cartooning style for the kind of pocket-sized gags he churned out so prolifically and successfully over so many years (since the late 50s). With their robist lines, economy of detail and strong use of solid blacks, HB cartoons were instantly recognisable as his and stood out a mile off as funny. Central to them were his stock characters, ever charming, ever bewildered. Tramps, army chaplains, oddballs, kings. You had to warm to them. 'Gentle humour' is a damning phrase, usually coded for 'not funny'. Hector Breeze cartoons were never savage or angry, but they were funny. Damned funny."


In 1996, Ralph Steadman wrote in Art Review that Breeze's "clumsy, bewildered characters restore my faith in the seriously daft." Pete Dredge, naming him his favourite cartoonist in 2011, described him as "A master of the pocket cartoon. Out of the mouths of the mundane, benign, chunkily drawn characters comes the sharpest of captions." Ian Banx picked the following cartoon from Punch as one he loved on Breeze's 90th birthday.

Hector L. Breeze was born in London on 17 November 1928. He was educated at Dartford Technical College and found employment in a government drawing office, studying art at evening classes. He sold his first drawing to Melody Maker in 1957.

Breeze subsequently worked in advertising while selling cartoons to Punch, Evening Standard, Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, The Spectator and the Guardian letters page. He sold his first cartoon to Private Eye in 1963, and continued to sell to them regularly for three decades. In 1973 the magazine published a collection of 100 of his best jokes in Private Eye: Cartoon Library 2. Breeze was also a contributor to The Hamlyn Cartoon Collection (1978) and illustrated Terry Wogan's The Day Job (1981).

Breeze featured in a one or two minute item on The Roy Hudd Show for Yorkshire TV (1969) and appeared on Quick on the Draw in the 1970s.

He became the Daily Express's pocket cartoonist in 1982. He was awarded the CCGB Feature Cartooist of the Year in 1984 and 1985 and was voted Pocket Cartoonist of the Year in the Cartoon Art Trust awards in 2004, but was sacked by the Daily Express six months later in 2005.

One of his hobbies was letter-carving in stone.

Breeze lived in Hastings, Sussex, before moving to Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria, in the mid-2000s. He is survived by his wife Johanna (nee Bywater), whom he married in 1960 and sons Alexander and Julius.

Smilby (Francis Wilford-Smith) (1927-2009)

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, whose is the largest...
(original artwork sold at Christie's, New York, in December 2003)

Francis Wilford-Smith, better known as cartoonist and advertising artist 'Smilby', died at a nursing home in Ledbury, Hertfordshire, on 4 December 2009, aged 82. His work included over 350 full-page cartoons for Playboy and hundreds of others published in the UK, America, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Norway.

Born Francis Wilford Smith--the hyphen was added by deed in 1983--in Rugby, Warwickshire, on 12 March 1927, he was the second son of Wilford Smith, a chemist and businessman who owned a number of chemist shops, and his wife Frances Eleanor (nee Hunt), who died shortly after her son's birth, aged only 36.

A fan of cartoons following his dicovery of bound volumes of Punch magazine in the school library at Warwick School, Wilford-Smith's first choice of career was, in fact, the sea. At the age of 14 he ran away from home only to be picked up by the dock police at Bristol. Poor eyesight meant that he was turned down by the Royal Navy in 1943 and, aged 16, he became a trainee at the Marconi Radio School in London. Qualifying as a Radio Officer, he joined the Merchant Navy, serving on convoys to Africa and across the Atlantic and on supply ships to Cherbourg following the D-Day landings.

After being demobbed in 1946, he attended Camberwell School of Art, studying under John Minton, Edward Ardizzone and others. His romancing of fellow student Pamela Kilby (whom he married in 1949) earned them the collective nickname 'Smilby', a pen-name he would later use on his cartoons. They married in 1949 and had one son and one daughter.

His first work appeared in British Farmer, Melody Maker and the News Chronicle whilst he was studying, specialising in his last two years in illustration and wood engraving. After graduating, he worked briefly for Halas & Bachelor but was unable to obtain a union card. Instead he became an assistant display manager for the women's clothing chain Richards Shops and assistant to industrial designer Ian Bradbury.

Shall I come in, my sweet -- are you ready for me yet?
(original artwork sold by Bloomsbury Auctions in July 2009)

In 1951 he was granted a £100 Punch scholarship and began selling to Punch, Lilliput, London Opinion and Men Only. Turning freelance, he sold to a wide range of magazines and newspapers. When markets began to disappear in the UK, he decided to concentrate on American and European magazines following his successful debut in Playboy in 1960. His work has been widely exhibited.

Wilford-Smith's interests also included blues and gospel music (his home in Sussex included a recording studio and he broadcast on the subject on Radio 3's Bluebird Blues), collecting and gardening. In 1994, he was diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson's Disease.

Obituaries: The Independent (7 January).

PUBLICATIONS

Non-fiction (as Francis Smilby)
Stolen Sweets: The Cover Girls of Yesteryear. Chicago, Playboy Press, 1981.

Illustrated Books (as Smilby)
Phogey! or, How to Have Class in a Classless Society by Malcolm Bradbury. London, Max Parrish, 1960.
Les Anglais: Are They Mad? by Corinne. London, Arthur Barker, 1961.
No Mother to Guide Her by Anita Loos. London, Arthur Barker, 1961. [dust jacket]
The Love Investigator by Ernest Gebler. London, Arthur Barker, 1961.

Terry Challis (1935-2009)

Cartoonist Terry Challis has died at the age of 74, reports the Watford Observer (7 October). Challis was a local cartoonist who produced weekly sporting cartoons and illustrations for the Observer for over 30 years. He was a strong supporter of Watford Football Club and well-known to fans. "Some people are lucky enough to be born with one God-given talent -- Terry was blessed with two: he was an incredible artist and a naturally funny man," says Watford FC communications manager Andrew French. "Watford supporters were able to enjoy both those skills through his famous cartoons, the like of which were -- and still are -- unrivalled. He had a knack of empathising with fans, sharing their highs and lows. I cannot think of anyone who made me laugh harder."

Elsewhere, Ian Grant paid tribute to Challis: "For me, Terry Challis' name will always ring loudest in the largely barren nineties. It was one of the times when Watford Football Club most needed some wry commentary... but also when it needed the essentially positive tint he applied with great subtlety to his work, even at the gloomiest of times. It needed that ethos, an ethos that he so helped to shape and represent."

Terence G. S. Challis was born in Watford in 1935, the son of George Challis and his wife Evelyn (nee Gledhill). He donated some of his cartoons to the Watford Museum for display in their "Goal-den" exhibitions in 2002 and 2003.

Publications
The History of West Herts Golf Club 1890-1989 by R. G. Simon, illus. Terry Challis. Hitchin, West Herts. Golf Club, 1988.
Drawn Game. 1995.

(* Photograph from Watford Observer; cartoons from You Are My Watford (2002) produced to raise money for the Watford Supporters Trust.)

A Day in the Life of a Cartoonist

I stumbled across this recently when I was sorting through a pile of books. It comes from a pocket book magazine entitled Winter Pie, published in November 1946. The 'Pie' series was published quarterly--plus an additional Christmas number--by Hutchinson for a few years during and after the war (1943-50) and is probably best remembered these days because it contained a number of stories by Frank Richards featuring the exploits of the boys of Carcroft School. But the magazine was a real miscellany of features, stories, photos, cartoons and profiles.

Here we have a day in the life of cartoonist Leslie Starke whose work appeared in Punch, Lilliput, John Bull, Men Only, Sketch, Illustrated, etc. A Scot, Starke was born in Fife in 1905 and died in 1974.

(* Winter Pie probably © Hutchinson & Co.)

Cartoonists meet their creations

The November-December 1951 issue of Lilliput magazine carried a brief piece entitled "Joint Consultation; or, the Personnel problems of the Cartoon Industry" in which some of Britain's most famous cartoonists met with their creations. I've seen the Jack Monk image before, without knowing where it had originally appeared. Of the four images it's the best staged, featuring Zola from Monk's "Buck Ryan" strip in the Daily Mirror. That said, the meeting of Giles and some of the younger members of the 'Giles family' will bring a smile to your face. Something to get you off to a cheery start this Monday morning.

(* My thanks to Norman Boyd of the Frank Bellamy Checklist for sending these scans over.)

W. Heath Robinson's wartime inventions

Found this amongst the bosoms during my recent trek through some old copies of Mayfair.

For clarity, here's the cartoon split across two of the above pages, captioned "Capturing a thirst detatchment of blackshirts in the desert. Heath Robinson's Oasis Trap was a great deal kinder than the genuine article."

(* article © probably Paul Raymond Publications)

Paul Rigby (1924-2006)

Paul Rigby, Australian political cartoonist who moved to London to work on The Sun in 1969, returning to Australia in 1975 and then moving to the New York Post in 1977, died on 15 November. Many readers will remember Rigby's habit of hiding a small boy and his dog in all of his cartoons.

Obituaries have appeared in a number of Australian, British and American newspapers, including The West Australian (with a follow-up including comments from Rigby's son and a full obituary) and The Australian (plus follow-up full obituary). The London Times obituary appeared today.