COMICS Magazine Interview...

The career of Stan Drake has many facets to it - from illustration to commercial art to comic strips - and all done with great skill, putting him right into the "A" class with Hal Foster and Alex Raymond. The chat that follows is very special - it captures the fin and charm of a terrific guy. It also highlights the long and varied - even romantic - life he has led - star quality! Stan is very protective of his time but was most obliging in getting together with me to do this interview. It is a rare exclusive. I'm especially proud of this piece. Enjoy!

SHEL DORF: We 're at the Hotel San Diego in San Diego, California, talking with Stan Drake. Stan, what occupies your time these days?

STAN DRAKE: Professionally speaking, what occupies my time is work... at my craft. I draw THE HEART OF JULIET JONES. I draw KELLY GREEN for a publishing company from France, Dargaud International. I draw pictures for GOLF DIGEST magazine. I am just about to start working for Marvel Comics, doing a story every six months or so. What occupies my time is work.

I get up about 6:00 and I go downstairs and make some coffee. I do not eat breakfast. I go to my little studio in the house, by the swimming pool out back, and I start working around 6:30. I work until about 9:00, at which point I bring my wife a cup of coffee in bed and kiss her goodbye. I then walk half a mile, down this long hill, to my office in the heart of Westport, Connecticut, where I start work. Having worked from 6:30, I start working at the studio and work there until noon, at which point I have lunch. I'm back at work at 1:00, and I work there until 6:30. Then I walk up the hill, and I sit down - and I have a martini. That's what occupies my time every day, seven days a week.

SHEL: Let's go back a few years and see how you got to this point. Where were you born, Stan?

STAN: I was born in Brooklyn, New York - Peck Memorial Hospital - at a very early age

SHEL: Were there other artists in the family?

STAN: Yes. I never met them. My uncle on my mother's side was an artist, and I had another uncle who was an artist, and another uncle who was a doctor. All on my mother's side. Apparently, whatever genetics are involved here I guess I got from my mother's side of the family - as far as art goes.

SHEL: The name "Drake " is famous in radio and show business, isn't it?

STAN: Alan Drake was a radio actor. He was my father - I guess he still is. He was alive until 1967, died at the age of 87. He was a radio actor from 1934 until about 1944.

SHEL: The golden age of radio.

STAN: Yes.

SHEL: What were some of the shows he was on?

STAN: He was on GANGBUSTERS, He was Chief Niles on GANGBUSTERS. He was on the Helen Menken show called SECOND HUSBAND. He was on every soap opera - and radio had a lot of soap operas: YOUNG WIDOW BROWN, HELEN TRENT - Dad was on all those shows.

SHEL: BACKSTAGE WIFE?

STAN: Oh, yes.

SHEL: STELLA DALLAS?

STAN: Yep - uh-huh. All those shows. He was a character actor. He was on THE KATE SMITH HOUR. Every week Kate Smith would have as a part of her one-hour show a fifteen-minute segment where Ho1lywood actors would be on her show. They would do these fifteen-minute sketches that was her “Hollywood Actors Showcase” - and Dad was always a supporting actor. He had a hundred different dialect voices. He could do any dialect - all the high, low - vocally, he was unmatched. Finally, Ted Collins. who was managing Kate Smith in those days, said, "Al, why don't you do a guest spot on our show?" So he did.

I guess the highlight of Dad's career was appearing on THE KATE SMITH HOUR and being ballyhooed as "Alan Drake, the man of a thousand voices," extolling, really, the talents of all character actors in radio at that time. There was no television then, no visual thing, just the radio - so they used their voices - changed their voices. So, Dad did this fifteen-minute thing where he went from one dialect to another. Dad really amazed me.

SHEL: As a child, did you go down to the radio stations and watch him?

STAN: Oh yeah. I grew up in Radio City. (Laughter.) I really did! I met them all. Well. Art Carney - who else did I meet? Oh, I met so many people in radio in those days who are now doing television and movies. They all started out in radio. Dad knew everybody. I used to follow him around - and I was a real cheap date because my Dad would get me free tickets to all these radio shows. You'd say to a girl, "How'd you like to got to New York and watch a radio show being made?" and that is like asking today if you'd like to see a movie or a television -show being made. I had a lot of dates.

SHEL: Did you meet Kate Smith?

STAN: Oh gosh, yes.

SHEL: What kind of lady was she?

STAN: Very heavy. (Laughter.)

SHEL: Come on. I hate those “fat Kate Smith" jokes. She was such a sweet person...

STAN: Oh. hold on now - no-no-no! The Steel Butterfly, kid. Kate Smith was no dummy. She was not all smiles and flowers. Kate Smith was her own lady. She was a lady - and she was tough! Believe me, that was a big act - the smiles and the voice. That was Kate Smith for the world.

SHEL: But backstage?

STAN: Don't get me wrong - she was a delightful woman. I'm not saying there was anything wrong with Kate Smith, nothing wrong. But, boy, she ran that show! -

SHEL: Was she hard on,the people that worked for-her? Abbott and Costello worked for her at one time, didn't they?

STAN: Yes, that's right. And she was hard on 'em - tough lady.

SHEL: Why?

STAN: She expected perfection. She was a perfectionist, and she expected it. Her attitude was that if you're a professional you should be perfect, and if she'd wanted amateurs she'd've hired 'em.

SHEL: But she never showed this to the public?.

STAN: Never. Kate Smith was "God Bless America" and this wonderful woman - and she was a wonderful woman. Nothing wrong with Kate Smith - it was just that on actors. boy, she was tough! And listen, if I was Kate Smith I would have expected these people I'd hired to work - she paid good bucks.

SHEL: I got the impression that Ted Collins was the tough one.

STAN: Yeah, he was tough. But, he'didn't run Kate, boy! He didn't run Kate Smith! He was tough on everybody else, but if he started to get tough on Kate she'd give him a look like you wouldn't believe. I saw it many times. She'd just turn around and look at him, and he would direct his thing at someone else. He was tough, but he didn't get tough with Kate. He treated her very nicely,

SHEL: I have a lot of her records. Her voice.. .

STAN: Oh, what a pure, bell-like voice she had. Well, those were the good old days.
SHEL: When did you become interested in drawing?

STAN: First grade. I drew a whole little Santa Claus thing, with little reindeers, and I remember Miss Barkman, my first grade teacher... See, I can go back that far because all this information is stored in my old brain. (Laughter.) Anything you want to get out of my cortex like yesterday's meals, forget it. But the old memories I can go back. Anyway, Miss Barkman hung up my little Santa Claus thing - first grade. I never passed math in my life, ever, in any grade or school. Finally, they figured they had to get me out of junior high school and into high school some way, so they just decided to make a special exception in my case. They kept me back one year, that was the tragedy of my life, because I couldn't pass math. I had a block there. Finally, the teachers came over to my Mother and said, "We're going to put Stanley into high school anyway, even though he hasn't passed math. He’s good in everything else." So, anyway, I got into high school against the rules.

SHEL: Were you drawing at the time?

STAN: Oh, yeah. Drawing drawing drawing drawing...

SHEL: What kind of things did you draw?

STAN: Well, of course, comics...

SHEL: Was it cartooning, or was it more realistic?

STAN: It was realistic - more realistic. Just drawing anything: faces, funny characters, a serious man holding a gun, Mickey Mouse, Popeye. I copied and traced a lot of things.

SHEL: What were the leading comic strips of the day?

STAN: WASH TUBBS. BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES. FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS. I remember being enamored of WASH TUBBS. Oh boy, was that my strip!

SHEL: These were cartoonists. Did you also admire the illustrators?

STAN: No, not yet. I was too young in those days. I'm talking about ten-years-old, eleven-years-old.

SHEL: When did you realize that there might be a career for you in comic strips?

STAN: Not until I got out of the Army in 1946. My father was an actor and, of course, I wanted to be like Dad. When I was twenty - it was very strange - I had nothing to do with it - a girlfriend of mine entered my picture in a contest in Hollywood for a Paramount Pictures screen test. And - I won this contest over thousands, hundreds of thousands of people! I went to Hollywood and I made a Paramount screen test. Of course, obviously, I was just absolutely smitten by this. I mean, there I was in Hollywood. My God! I was at the Tracadero nightclub. I was Susan Hayward's date... and she was just a starlet at the time! I made a screen-test with Claudette Colbert! I was - well, wouldn't you have been like just knocked out of your socks on a thing like this?

So I was - boy, was I gonna be an actor! I was out there in Hollywood and I made this test and Mark Sandridge, who produced and directed most of - well, some of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, saw my test. They were looking for a group of youths to be in a series called JANIE, which was to be in competition with ANDY HARDY, which was M-G-M at the time. Paramount wanted a thing like ANDY HARDY. They figured, Stan Drake, this kid is a nice, good-looking kid, we think he's got enough on the ball to put him in our dramatic school and-get him into this JANIE series as one of the - not a leading star -just one of the gang. One of the nice kids. Maybe I was gonna be a badguy or something - I don't know. Mark Sandridge himself knocked on my hotel room door. I remember, the night after I made this test, I opened the door and there stood Mark Sandridge. I was only twenty-years-old. I didn't know what to say to this great man. I just wondered what he was doing there. He told me that he had seen the rushes of the test, and he told be about the JANIE thing and asked could I stay out there. And I said, "Boy, I'll stay out here!- And he said, -We'll send you to our dramatic school at Paramount. " And the next day the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

So, there went my career. I had to go home. I called up my parents and they said, "Listen, you better come home. Every,body's going to be drafted. If you wanna get into the Service you want, you better join up." That was the end of Hollywood for me.

SHEL: What branch of the Service did you join?

STAN: I joined the Engineers because they told me that it was a camouflage section that required painting and things like that. So, the first job I got in the Camoulleurs, as they called them, was directing a gang of guys
out on an airport runway with these huge vats of paint. We painted the runways - that was my contribution to World War II - so they couldn't be seen from the air. I stayed in the unit for 3 1/2 years. Finally, they sent us over to the Marianas Islands where they flew the atomic bombs from the island of Tinian. The Enola Gay was sitting right there. We saw it every day. We didn't know... it was just another plane - but there it was.

SHEL: Did you do any drawing for the camp newspapers or anything?

STAN: Yeah. To make a long story short, my outfit was scheduled to go overseas and I got appendicitis and was kept in the hospital. While I was in the hospital my whole unit moved overseas and they were all killed at Anzio (Italy). The 936 Engineers was decimated. and I was saved because I had an appendicitis attack and was still in the States. So. while I was there I was attached to the base newspaper at the Columbia Army Airbase. I did a little feature called PENNY PX, about a girt who worked in the PX.
It was my first real published work.

SHEL: Did you have MALE CALL in your paper?

STAN: Oh. yes. Every week. Milton Caniff's MALE CALL - we couldn't wait, we could not wait to get his MALE CALL.

SHEL: After you got out of the Army, the camouflage unit of the Engineer Corps, what did you decide? Were -you going to pick up your acting career?

STAN: Well. yes. I got out of the Army and at first I didn't give a damn what I was going to do. I just was out of the Army and I had fun for a week or so, and I was married. I got married during the war, before I went overseas. to a southern girl in Columbia. South Carolina. When I first met her she told me, "You know, mah brother's name is Stanley and mah father's name is Stanley, so Ah'mm gonna call you Drake. (Laughter.) So, for our whole marriage she called me Drake.

Anyway, I got out of the Army and met my wife in Columbia, South Carolina, and took her up North to my poor family living in Hackensack. New Jersey. Now, Betty Lou Smith was from a very wealthy Southern family - huge house with columns in front - and she didn't know where this soldier was gonna take her. So, I brought her up to Hackensack. New Jersey, to this walk-up flat on Lehi Street, and she almost shit a brick! I thought that she was gonna leave me right there! But anyway, we moved out to a Levittown house on Long Island and my life began.

That was when I met with Art Carney and My father, and I said. "Listen, I don't know whether I want to be an actor or an artist. " Carney advised me that 85 % of all actors in Actor's Equity are out of work at any one time, and that it's a very precarious life. and that if you're going to be smart, with a wife, you better not fool around acting because you could go five years without a job. You might get one, or you might not - so I heeded his advice and went into the art business.

I did some samples and took 'em to a job placement agency. Right after the war we had these job placement agencies because there was nobody in New York. You could get a job anywhere. Everybody wanted artists for advertising agencies because everybody was still in the Army - so when I got out, I got a job right away.

SHEL: I imagine you were pretty good, too...

STAN: No.

SHEL: No?

STAN: No. I've always been able to draw, but not well. At that stage, boy, was I learning! I didn't know anything about how to draw. I had this basic gut talent, but a professional I was not. I learned on the job, got a job in an advertising agency and I learned by looking at other guys' stuff what I had better learn how to do.

SHEL: Did you ever take classes under an art teacher?

STAN: Well, before the war, in '38-'39, 1 did take life drawing classes with George Bridgman, anatomical instruction.

SHEL: This is the famous Bridgman?

STAN: Famous Bridgman books? Yeah, that's George. There he was, 85 years old.
SHEL: What school was he with?

STAN: Art Students League.

SHEL: A world-famaus place of study. Very respected.

SHEL: I had anatomy at the Chicago School of the Art-Institute. What we did, we had kind of a scientific approach. We looked up in the anatomy books and were instructed to copy the skeleton, every bone. Draw every bone in the skeleton...

STAN: Oh, wow! Oh. God!

SHEL: Then draw every muscle, and where it begins and ends and where it's attached to the bone. Then we'd put the flesh on. What was Bridgman's approach?

STAN: Nothing like that. Bridgman's approach was to come into the room in his black suit and the gold chain across the vest and the watch in the pocket, dressed a la 1890. He would stand there and would snap his fingers like this (snapsfingers authoritatively) and the class monitor, the guy who was in charge of the class, would then go out and bring in the model. She would have a robe on. Bridgman would direct her up to the podium and she would sit on this stool or stand there or assume a pose, and - remove her robe. She was naked. We.had our pads and our charcoal. Then Bridgman would go down to the comer of the room where, up above him, was this big blackboard, and he would take this long stick - it must have been three-feet long, with a little clip on the end where you could put a piece of chalk - and he would stand there and with this long stick make sketches of this body in the position that he wanted to be posed that day. He would just zoom-zoom-zoom, zoom zoom-zoom, and all the muscle would be
right there. A flick of the finger and the whole gluteus maximus would be in. Then he'd go down and the calf muscle would be in. Then, we would begin drawing and he'd disappear. This was Monday morning. He wouldn't come back until Friday. That model would assume that position all week long, and everybody would draw that figure from any position they wanted to - three or four different drawings.

SHEL: When he came in on Friday, would he critique the drawings?

STAN: Yeah. He would go around and take a chamois and wipe everybody's work off - and show them how it should have been done. Very tough. That was my art instruction. I figured about halfway through this course that this was not art instruction for me. I wasn't learning a goddamm thing about illustration Bridgman was just erasing my stuff at the end of the week!

SHEL: What a strange approach.

STAN: Yeah, very.

SHEL: Maybe his books were better than he was.

STAN: I would say so. As an instructor, I would say so. Lousy instructor. But, he knew every bone, every muscle. He knew how it connected, and he would show you. And it didn't mean anything - and to this day I haven't drawn a nude figure.

SHEL: I wouldn't say that. I’ve seen KELLY GREEN.

STAN: Oh. Well, those aren't muscles. That's flesh - a lot different. That's the image of the female rather than what Brigdman was teaching.

SHEL: Stan, let's go back to when you got out of the Army and you started looking for a job in the commercial art world of New York. What was your first job?

STAN: My first job was with a studio, Perlowin Studios. Paul Perlowin and George Perlowin, his father, ran this commercial art studio. Anything the salesmen went out and got they would bring in: products, people, cartoons. They noticed that my penchant was for people - gestures and things - presenters. So, they had me doing that, and then a Little color.

SHEL: Did these ads ever appear in LIFE MAGAZINE or some of the other more renowned publications?

STAN: No-no-no. This was kind of a second-class studio, as opposed to the better, big studios in New York City. A smaller studio - and they had smaller accounts. Their accounts were house organs and things like that.

SHEL: How long did you work for them?

STAN: A little over a year.

SHEL: And then where did you go?

STAN: I went to a highly respected place called Johnstone and Cushing. They did these advertising strips for newspapers - like PETER PAYNE and so on. Pretty soon I was making $20,000 a year - and $20,000 a year in those days is equivalent to about $100,000 a year now. So I was really, boy, going great! I had a house. I owned a house.

SHEL: So, here you are, living the life of a prosperous commercial artist. Had you any thoughts about doing a comic strip at this point?

STAN: No. I was working for Johnstone and Cushing - I worked for them for two years. Then, I got into a ruckus with Tom Johnstone. I brought in an account worth thousands of dollars, and I felt that I should get a finder's fee for this account.

SHEL: Of course.

STAN: He said, -You'll get just what you always get." So, I picked up the work I had just brought in and said thank you very much, and I turned around and walked out of the studio. So. he got nothing. That finished me with Johnstone and Cushing. So, I got together with Bob Lubbers, who was doing comic books for Fiction House at the time, and John Celardo, who was also doing comic books, and ...

SHEL: Where did you meet these fellows?

STAN: Oh, I knew Bob from art school, and Johnny Celardo. So, there the three of us were on 45th Street and Fifth Avenue, in a studio, and they were turning out comic books and I was doing advertising spots and things.

SHEL: Pretty girls talking on the phone - things like that?

STAN: Yeah. Holding up boxes of Rinso, stuff like that. Palmolive Soap ads - little girl figures dancing around a cake of soap. I got very very busy and made a lot of money and decided, "This is crazy - I'm gonna open my own studio where I'm gonna hire and let people make me money - where I don't have to do it all with my hands." So, I opened up a studio called Drake-Kittelsen with a fellow named Harry Kittelsen. He was a lettering man. We had this studio where we specialized in lineart - spots and things. There was a lot of it in newspapers in those days, and there's none of it today. Clip-art today. In those days it was all original art from the studio. I got so busy. I was getting better and better in my techniques and my methods. Everybody'was buying my stuff. I was deluged with work. I'm talking about 1950...

SHEL: And were you now getting in LIFE MAGAZINE?

STAN: Oh, yes. Now it was in all publications, big newspapers. I had a whole Nescafe account - big newspapers - NEW YORK TIMES. By this time it was really going national.

SHEL: Were you known? I mean, you couldn't sign your name...

STAN: Oh, I signed my name. I figured if Al Dorn and those guys could sign their names, I was gonna sign my name. So I did. Anyway, I got very very busy. In those days, I was making $1500 a week. You're talking about making $5000 a week today - with inflation and stuff. But, I was working 20 hours a day. I had a nervous breakdown. Well, I don't know if it was a nervous breakdown. It was a physical exhaustion.

I just absolutely could not get out of bed one morning, and I couldn't talk. I couldn't move my arms. It was nature saying, "You are immobilized." The brain was saying, "I'm not gonna do this for you anymore." I've got this theory that every part of the body, other than our brain, every part of our body was built just to carry the brain around. The legs, the arms, everything is subservient to the brain. Without the brain, everything else you've got, man, is totally useless. The brain was telling my body, "Hey!" and I had the nervous exhaustion attack. I was in bed for two weeks. I couldn't speak. I got spastic colitis. I got everything you can imagine. I was like this from all this work - just work work work work work - and Bob 'Lubbers, my old friend from art school, called me up one day, he was doing TARZAN at the time, and he said, "Listen, why don't you get smart? Don't commute to New York from Long Island anymore. Don't go through that rat race. You're killing yourself already, at age thirty!" And he said, "Why don't you take some of those samples up to King Features? It's the biggest syndicate in the world. Get a comic strip. You could do a comic strip, and you could work at home, and you could relax.- So, I took his advice.

SHEL: Had you created a comic strip?,

STAN: No-no-no.

SHEL: All you brought to them was your ability as an illustrator, then?

STAN: Well, yes, as an illustrator. But, don't forget, at Johnstone and Cushing I had done a lot of comic strips for advertising - PETER PAYNE, stuff Uke that. Colgate toothpaste, Ipana tootpaste - it would be John meets Mary, but John's teeth are black. so then he uses Ipana toothpaste, and now he wins the girl. This used to be in the Sunday comics. They looked like a comic strip. so I took those up to King Features and said, "I can adapt this to a comic strip."

SHEL: Did you talk to Sylvan Dyck?

STAN: Yes, of course. He was the comics editor. He loved my work. He thought it was fabulous. He put it in a drawer and said, "Listen. go home and write a story about something - maybe a couple of girls and their father, living in a small town." He knew what he was talking about because he knew that was what Ward Greene had wanted to do. He was simply passing on to me the hint - what kind of a story to write. Ward Green had been dickering fifteen years previously with Margaret Mitchell, who wrote GONE WITH THE WIND, and he had conned Margaret Mitchell into writing a soap opera for the Hearst newspapers. They were gonna pay her a prodigious sum. Ward Greene wanted a strip called THE HEART OF something, the final name hadn't been figured out yet. Margaret Mitchell had about 30 pages written when she was struck by a car and killed. For fifteen years Ward Green, who wrote LADY AND THE TRAMP and SCAMP - a great jourrialist, a fine Southern gentleman, a wonderful man, a hell of an intelligent journalist - was looking for somebody to do this feature. When he saw my work, he said, "This is the man I want." So, Sylvan Byck got the word from up above. from Ward Greene.

SHEL: They didn't use those 30 pages Margaret Mitchell wrote?

STAN: No. I don't know whether they had intended to or not. But, in the meantime, I tried to write. I was 30 years old, and I had never written anything in my life. I figured, "I'm not gonna be successful - this has got to be a cal I for a pro." I asked Gil kox if he knew of anybody that we could go to. Gil said, "Why don't you try Elliot Caplin? He's doing BIG BEN BOLT. He's writing ABBIE AN' SLATS for his brother, Al, who used to write it for Ray Van Buren. " I went up to Elliot Caplin's office, and Elliot liked my stuff very much and said, "Okay. I'm gonna go over to King Features Syndicate, and I'm gonna tell 'em about you." So, he went over there. He said to Sylvan Byck, "Listen, I've got a guy here - I'm gonna write a story for this man. We're gonna do a strip. " And Sylvan Byck says. "No. 'You haven't got a guy. I've got the guy." Elliot said, -No -no! Wait a 'minute, please. I don't want to see your guy. I've got the guy for the strip." Sylvan said, "No, you don't. I've got the guy!" Sylvan
opens his drawer and Elliot opens his satchel, and they both put Stan Drake's work on the table. (Laughter.) That's the truth - true story. So, they said, "Voila! We've got the guy for “THE HEART OF... and “JULIET JONES” was decided upon. Juliet for romance, as in ROMEO AND JULIET, and Jones, a typical American name. So, it became THE HEART OF JULIET JONES.

SHEL: Amazing story! How much of a lead time did you get on this strip before it appeared in the papers?

STAN: Twelve weeks.

SHEL: Twelve weeks? Were.you able to do six dailies and a Sunday very fast? What was your schedule?

STAN: I had no schedule in those days. They just told me to get ahead - "We'll tell you when to stop. Do it as fast as you can. Just do it. - So, I started out just doing it. I didn't have any schedule. I just tried to do this work. How would I know how long it was going to take? I did it until I got it done. and then they wanted me to be twelve weeks ahead.

SHEL: In the writing, did Elliot actually tell you what the composition should be for each panel ?

STAN: No. No-no-no. Elliot writes a script that goes like this:

THE HEART OF JULIET JONES - DATE: 07/16/58

PANEL #1: EVE: BUT, JULIE, I DIN'T KNOW YOU FELT THAT WAY.
JULIE: EVE,YVE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU FOR THREE WEEKS...

PANEL #2: JULIE: ... THAT I AM NOT GOING TO SEE THE DOCTOR!
EVE: OH. JULIE. FOR CRYING OUT .LOUD. DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?

PANEL #3: EVE LEAVES THE ROOM, THROWING A MOCKING HAND. AT JULIE.

That's all that he says. That's the way he writes a script. Or, you'll open the second page: LONG SHOT OF NEW YORK CITY. So. what I do is I'll draw a head of Eve looking out the, window, saying ' "Wow! What a beautiful city.' . 'Cause. there’s no way I'm gonna draw, a long shot of New York City. (Laughter.) Anyway. that's the way he writes.

SHEL: How many papers did You have when you started?

STAN: We started ... before it was published we had 98 papers.

SHEL: Whew! That's good!

STAN: Well, it was a good lead in those days. In those days it was a tremendous advance. It was the second best after the one Caniff got for STEVE CANYON.

SHEL: Oh. I've heard the name.

STAN: Well. there's this fellow I know named Shel Dorf who works with Caniff, and I think he knows me. Anyway, I had no idea where it was going - no one did. But, it kept going up and up and up. I was getting a report every month on sales and I was picking up 20 and 30 papers a month. And it went up and up. It went up to 100 - 200 - 300 - 400 - 500 - 600 papers.

SHEL: Was this because of the efforts of the King Features salesmen going around the country to different papers? How did you do it?

STAN: It was their efforts. But. it was also the day of editors wanting the kind of art I was doing. being enamored of it. Having seen it. and liking it - beautiful girls and a good story - they were all in favor of it. Hardly any paper was turning us down. It was just great. They were selling like crazy. So, I was getting more and more money, more and more money, and I finally figured, at age 30, that I'd hit the jackpot. "I've got THE HEART OF JULIET ]ONES, and it's gonna go an for 20 years". Well, it's gone for 31 years now. But. actually, 20 years was the money that was worthwhile - the Jackpot. The last ten years the money has been going downhill.

SHEL: There’s something very magical about looking at the comic page and the most beautifully drawn strip is THE HEART OF JULJET JONES. Your eye goes right to it. It's really an illustrator's work on the comic page. You, Milt Caniff and Hal Foster - and Leonard Starr, when he was doing ON STAGE - are really the only illustrators working on the comic page.

STAN: I wonder if it's the place for it.

SHEL: Of course not.

STAN: No?

SHEL: Of course not. You're being shrunk You're being chopped to pieces...

STAN: Yeah. They're just killing us!

SHEL: The trend, nowadays, is for the gag-a-day strip.

STAN: Gag-a-day - and the editors are staying away from story strips. They're dropping them, and it's going down and down. But, it was a helluva good ride. I have no regrets.

SHEL: Stan, as - you were doing this strip, were you also doing commercial accounts?

STAN: As I look back on those early days of JULIET, I didn't need to do it. The money was so good. I remember that I didn't do any thing else. I played golf. I was living a good life in those days. I had an assistant doing the backgrounds. I would to the layouts and the figures, and have this guy do all the chairs and trees and tables and houses and lamps. I’d just draw the people, and We would get it done in three days - the whole week. The dailies and the Sunday page - three days. Then, we’d play golf for the rest of the week. Those were the good ol’ days.

SHEL: Did you have much rapport with the other cartoonists in the area where vou lived?

STAN: Yeah. The area had all kinds of cartoonists - loaded with 'em.

SHEL: And your marriage to Betty Lou?

STAN: We divorced in 1960, so I was with her for fifteen years.

SHEL: Let's talk a little about your technique - does your wife model for the strip ?

STAN: Oh. yeah. Yes. I've used all of my wives as models. (Laughter.) Any girl that's around me at the time that I need a model, I’ll use 'em. I found out very quickly that speed was of the essence in this work, because it was so relentless. It's absolutely relentless - week after week after week - it was a deadline - a newspaper deadline, and there was no surcease. No let up. That was it.

SHEL: Do you have anny shortcuts that you use to get around this?

STAN: The problems that an artist has, if he's doing the kind of work that I do, is winding up with the finished product that looks real and has a realistic touch - which is beyond just scribbles and drawing and trying to make somebody look real. In my feature, I wanted these people to be really real. If a guy was sitting in a chair with a suit on, I didn't want this stiff-looking thing of a cement suit sitting in a chair. I wanted it to look real. So, the Polaroid camera helped me immeasurably. I buy Polaroid film by the case. I have a self-tinier on the camera. I'll use that, or I'll have my wife or somebody photograph me, for the men. I would sit in a chair in the attitude required by the strip. and then I would have a Polaroid shot, just like that. In less than a minute we'd have this picture of a man sitting in a chair. absolutely perfect, all of the folds in the suit, to be used as a guide. My work took on a look of authority that it needed. There*s just no way that you can do that. When the drawing lines are correct, then we know that the technique on top of it is correct.

SHEL: You made a statement once, that no matter how good the technique is, if the drawing isn't there, then it's still lousy.

STAN: Yeah. and it becomes boring. You've got to have good drawing. If you've got the good drawing there, you can ink it in with a toothbrush. So. I made up my mind that I wanted my stuff to look real, and I would have gestures I would photograph. If I was saying to the guy, "You go out that door and turn that way," I'd pose myself like this and take that picture. That's just some kind of a pose you would never think of. You'd exaggerate - but here's my old acting thing. I was directing myself as though I were an actor. I would pose myself. I was trying to get some motion and action into the gestures, which is all I had, really. Soap opera is gestures and action. And so, I took the Polaroid camera and put it to use, and used up a lot of bucks on Polaroid film.

SHEL: You said something earlier - you have an attitude about women's hair that you were telling me, about.

STAN: Okay, Shel - we were talking about portraying sexiness in women. The typical approach to drawing sexy women is to draw them with large busts and round, protruding fannies and shapely legs - but that's kind of gotten to be a cliche. It can be crass, and it can be caricactured. I say that you don't need to do all that. You can just draw a pretty girl with natural proportions, but boy, you give her nice, fluffy hair.. "Fluffy” is my term - draw the hair so that it looks like real hair that's blowing in the wind. When a woman walks, her hair does not sit still. Most guys, when they draw a woman's hair..it's like it's been sprayed with plastic - it doesn't move. Hair moves. The most movable part of a woman's body, besides her ass. is her beautiful hair. If you're gonna draw hair, learn how to do it with thin strokes. Make it flufty. not just shaped. Guys draw hair that, it's well done. it looks great. but it's not alive. Bouncing - a woman's hair should bounce and be fluffy. Practice that. because that is very sexy. Tell you what - shave a woman’s head and have her walk down the street with a bald head. There's nothing erotic there. But take a wig, a nice, soft, blond wig, and have that flowing bhind her, and that's sexy boy! You can do it with hair. You don't have to do it with big breasts!

SHEL: I understand that you share a studio with Leonard Starr, who is writing and drawing ANNIE. How did the two of you come to share a studio?

STAN: Well, Leonard lives in the same town, and we're old friends. He would call me up - I would be sitting in my studio and he would be sitting at home, having. been in the house for the last nine years, 24 hours a day. Cabin fever was starting to get to Leonard, and he'd say, - Do you mind if I come down and just sit there and maybe do some sketches this afternoon?" He did that for several days. Finally. I just said, "Lenny, why don't you just move all your stuff down here and share the place with me?" So, he did, You see, Leonard is very much the organized. He’s very disciplined.

SHEL: When I knew him, he had a studio in Greenwich Village, He was doing ON STAGE, and he played classical music constantly. Does he still do that?

STAN: Not when I'm there. I told him that I really love him, but I don't want to listen to classical music all day long because it puts me to sleep. I'm not there to sleep. so I told him, "if you want to play some rock 'n' roll so I can stay awake, fine." Leonard is the world's greatest music buff. He is an opera music fanatic.

SHEL: Have you ever helped him out on ANNIE, if he gets behind...

STAN: Never! No. I don't think he would ask me to do that. He handles that. Man, he doesn't want anybody to touch his stuff!

SHEL: Obviously, he could do your stuff.

STAN: Oh. yeah. But. we don't have time to do each other's stuff. My God, we*ve got our own stuff to do! We're both behind! Helping him, I'd lose on mine. Then he'd have to help me. Then I'd have to help him. We might as well just stay doin' what we*re doin'.

SHEL: Have vou ever talked about the change he made from the illustrator style to a real big-foot carroony style?

STAN: Yeah. right. Speaking of which. I’ll tell you something - wait'll you see what I've got to do!

SHEL: What?

STAN: I can’t talk about it just yet.

SHEL: Why the secret?

STAN: Well, the deal isn't exactly down. Know what I mean?

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IN PART TWO.

The secret deal revealed! Plus: the naked truth about KELLY GREEN and much more! All in our next issue!