In his home near Hollywood last week, the gentlest, most poetic of U.S. popular artists laid down his pen at last. George Herriman, 63, creator of the sovereign comic strip, Krazy Kat, died after a long illness. Hundreds of thousands of readers, who knew the love-daft Kat and his curious companions as well as they knew their own dreams, knew little or nothing of their inventor. But as friends and colleagues talked of this modest little man, as he never on earth would have talked of himself, a figure of almost Franciscan sweetness emerged. "If ever there was a saint on earth," said warmhearted Harry Hershfield (Abie the Agent), "it was George Herriman."
Willie Was Right. Herriman wandered into newspaper cartooning because a fall from a scaffold made house painting too strenuous. He wandered into his greatest comic creations because an office boy named Willie, amused by a casually drawn cat & mouse playing marbles, suggested that Herriman flatly reverse the traditional cat-&-mouse relationship. Once Krazy Kat had made Herriman's fortune (around 1922), he left Manhattan, settled down in the West. For the past 22 years he lived near Hollywood. After his wife's death a decade ago in an automobile accident, he stayed much at home with his daughter Mabel, his dogs, his work.
Herriman believed that animals are superior to human beings. He would never ride a horse. He tried to be a vegetarian, had to give it up when he became too weak. To the end of his life nearly all his ration points for meat went to satisfy the sleek gang of stray dogs and cats he took care of.
Poker and Solitude. He was rather a dandy, in a loud way. His favorite sport was poker. He could be a wonderfully entertaining host. William Randolph Hearst loved him. His own close friends were chiefly comic-strip artists — Hershfield, Ru dolph Dirks (The Captain and the Kids}, Jim Swinnerton (Little Jimmy), the late TAD Dorgan (Indoor Sports). His best friend was the late H. M. (Beanny) Walker, Our Gang comedies director.
Toward "serious" artists he felt very humble. He used to try painting and, according to Dirks, invariably underestimated his own work. He never got over feeling that his $750-a-week salary was more than he was worth, never got over trying to make each strip a little better than the last.
He loved solitude, would often sit among people for hours without saying a word. The one thing Herriman could always talk about fluently and without shyness was Krazy Kat.
Minor Master. Herriman was crazy about Krazy Kat. In all his years of inti macy with him, he never got tired of the Kat. In Herriman's 30-odd years of work — always wearing his hat and usually improvising fresh from the pen — he must have drawn something like 1,500 full-page Kats and 10,000 strips. An amazing number of them are the keenest, dizziest kind of inspiration. Wrote Critic Gilbert Seldes of Herriman's work 20 years ago: "In the second order of the world's art it is superbly first rate — and a delight!" Delight was Herriman's strongest point in a world where most artists had lost it.