Who Was Johnny Gruelle?
Johnny Gruelle is best known for creating the world famous rag doll
characters, Raggedy Ann and Andy. While the Raggedys were the
indisputable centerpiece of Gruelle's career, in his heart of hearts,
Johnny was a dyed-in-the-wool freelance artist, who felt most at home at
his drawing board, crafting illustrations and features for newspapers
and magazines.
John Barton Gruelle was born
in Arcola, Illinois in 1880. At the age of two, his family moved to
Indianapolis, where his father, R.B. Gruelle, became known as one of the
Hoosier Group of Impressionist artists. By his early teens, John
Gruelle already knew he was a cartoonist. During a train-hopping
adventure to Cleveland, Ohio in 1894, his caricature of a beat cop named
Tom McGinty so impressed the officer that he supposedly offered to stake
Gruelle while the boy sought cartooning work at a local newspaper. As
it turned out Gruelle did not stay on in Cleveland (although he would
return to live there years later). But after this experience, a career
spent painting landscapes and portraits like those his father rendered
seemed far less appealing than one spent turning out pithy little
funnies for a living.
In 1901 the 20-year-old
Gruelle landed his first newspaper job, at an Indianapolis tabloid
called the People. There he worked for several months creating
rough-hewn "chalk-plate" portraits. By April 1902, Gruelle had moved on
to the more mainstream Indianapolis Sun, while managing also to
do work for the Detroit-based Peninsular Engraving Company.
In June 1903, Gruelle was
hired at the brand-new Indianapolis Star as the paper's first
assistant illustrator. His three years at the Star were
interrupted by nine-months spent at the rival Indianapolis Sentinel.
Once back at the Star, in 1905, Gruelle accepted a freelancing
job with World Color Printing Company of St. Louis to produce four-color
Sunday comics, a connection he continued after relocating to Cleveland
in 1906 to work for the Cleveland Press and the Newspaper
Enterprise Association. During these years, Gruelle would turn out as
many as ten cartoons each week, his style steadily growing more expert
and refined.
Although most of his early
newspaper work was aimed at adults, by 1908, Gruelle had begun producing
features for children. After winning a national comic drawing contest,
Gruelle went to work for The New York Herald in early 1911.
Although he would continue creating for adults, his most important
audience became children, whom he kept entertained with colorful "Mr.
Twee Deedle" Sunday comic pages. Once "Mr. Twee Deedle" was in print, it
wasn't long before Gruelle was receiving commissions from a broad array
of monthly and weekly magazines. His distinctive cartoons,
illustrations, and illustrated stories appeared regularly in well-known
publications including John Martin's Book, Physical Culture,
Illustrated Sunday Magazine, McCall's, The Ladies'
World, and Judge.
It was his illustrating work
that led him to create a distinctive, whimsical design for a doll named
"Raggedy Ann," which he patented and trademarked in 1915. Gruelle was
soon pitching book ideas, and ultimately, he connected with the P.F.
Volland Company, a juvenile publisher in Chicago. In 1918 Volland
published Gruelle's Raggedy Ann Stories and also introduced a
matching character doll, and the rest is history. More Raggedy books
and dolls followed, and Gruelle eventually became known as "The Raggedy
Ann Man."
Johnny eventually entered the
arena of juvenile book illustrating and writing and achieved fame as
creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy. However, Gruelle's newspaper and
magazine work remained vital outlets for him, providing him not only
with welcome income, but also a forum in which to explore an extensive
range of illustrating and writing interests, in full view of hundreds of
thousands of readers of all ages and persuasions.
In 1922, Gruelle's serialized
"Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy" stories premiered in newspapers
across the country. He continued providing artwork to adult magazines
such as Life, Cosmopolitan, and College Humor, and
kept up with his illustrated juvenile features, which appeared in
Woman's World and Good Housekeeping. In 1929, Gruelle's
full-color Sunday comic "Brutus" began what would be a nine-year run,
and by 1934, his illustrated "Raggedy Ann" newspaper proverbs were in
national syndication.
By the time of his death in
1938, Gruelle's Raggedy characters, dolls, and books were known
throughout the world. However, his fanciful newspaper and magazine
works had also kept Americans amused for nearly four decades, and
Gruelle had become extremely well-regarded in cartooning and
illustrating circles. Throughout his life, and in his heart of hearts,
Johnny Gruelle was ever and always -- an artist.
©2001 Patricia Hall |
