George Booth (cartoonist)

George Booth (born June 28, 1926) is a New Yorker cartoonist. Over time, his cartoons have become an iconic feature of the magazine. In a doodler's style, they feature everymen beset by modern complexity, goofballs perplexing their spouses, cats, and very often a fat dog.

Biography
Born in Cainsville, Missouri, Booth was the son of schoolteachers; his mother, Irma, was also a musician and fine artist and cartoonist, and his father, William, became a school administrator in Fairfax, Missouri, where Booth grew up on a vegetable farm. Booth attended, but did not graduate from, the Corcoran College of Art and Design, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the School of Visual Arts, and Adelphi College.

Drafted into the United States Marine Corps in 1944, Booth was invited to re-enlist and join the Corps' Leatherneck magazine as a staff cartoonist; when re-drafted for the Korean War, he was ordered back to Leatherneck.

As a civilian, Booth moved to New York City where he struggled as an artist, married, then worked as an art director in the magazine world. During this era he worked on the comic strip Spot in 1956.

Fed up, Booth quit and pursued cartooning full-time, beginning a successful phase in 1969, with his first New Yorker cartoon sale. One signature element of Booth's cartoons is a ceiling light bulb on a cord pulled out of vertical by another cord attached to an electrical appliance such as a toaster. Most of the household features in his cartoons are taken from his own home, such as the rugs, chairs, ferns, and cats. One of his own cats, adopted later in his career, was described as being "more like my drawing than the drawings... when he lies down, his back feet go out in back — straight out."

Booth also created the comic strip Local Item in 1986.

Personal life
Booth lived for many years in Stony Brook, New York with his wife Dione; he now lives in Brooklyn, where he continues to be a cartoonist and a collector of local artwork from artists in the area.

Awards
The National Cartoonists Society recognized his work with the Gag Cartoon Award in 1993 and the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.

Sources consulted

 * Booth, George. 1989. Booth Again!: More of George Booth. Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMee. ISBN 0-8362-1843-4.
 * Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1.