Our Own Hall of Fame
MILTON CANIFF
METICULOUS RESEARCHER
Caniff’s China Lore Came from Library
DAYTON DAILY NEWS FEBRUARY 20, 1961
BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH
Daily News Staff Writer
Sixteenth of a Series
The best advice Milton Caniff ever got came from the managing editor of the Columbus Dispatch 30 years ago. It was “Always draw your stuff for the guy who buys the paper. The kids will never see it unless the old man likes it well enough to bring it home.”
Today ex-Daytonian Caniff’s slick, sophisticated strip, “Steve Canyon,” appears in upwards of 600 daily newspapers.
Caniff created his first comic strip, “Si Plug,” strictly for family consumption when he was an eighth grader at Ruskin school.
He already had a career behind him as a Western Union messenger boy in his native Hillsboro and as a Hollywood bit player when the Caniffs settled in Dayton in 1918. (His father, John W. Caniff, a printer by trade, died last year. His mother still lives here.)
AT STIVERS high school Milt branched out drawing first for the school paper, then for the Journal Herald where he also worked as an office boy.
In school, “Sniff” Caniff was a busy debater, student council member and cheerleader. All this, plus Eagle Scout, Cricket Holler counselor and part-time art teacher at the YMCA.
MILT TOOK a yellow slicker and an open Ford to Ohio State. There he majored in fine arts, pledged Sigma Chi (and today is a “Significant Sig” along with Booth Tarkington and others), carried spears in visiting road shows, drew for the Lantern and Sun Dial and picked up $17 a week as a retoucher on the Columbus Dispatch.
After graduation in 1930 he married his Stivers steady, Esther Parsons, and settled down as a full-time artist on the Dispatch.
BUT TWO YEARS later depression cutbacks lopped off Caniff’s job and he put in a stint as an advance man for a Broadway road company, before snaring a $60-a-week job with the Associated Press in New York.
First he was a general artist, then got his own strip, a kids’ adventure type called “Dickie Dare.” Two years later Caniff’s break came.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE—New York News syndicate, which represented the big time for cartoonists, wanted a suspense-adventure strip with a China setting. Caniff was tapped to do it and, in 1934, “Terry and the Pirates” was born.
A meticulous researcher, he had never been to China, so he went to the next best place—the public library. He steeped himself in China lore and goofed only a few times (once he called Hong Kong a U. S. Naval base) during his 13 years with “Terry.”
USING LIVE models and sharp dialogue, Caniff added a new ingredient to the comic page—glamour. From his pen flowed the Dragon Lady, Burma, Lace, Raven Sherman.
(When he killed off Raven he received 1,400 sympathy letters and countless floral offerings.) Caniff picked up fans like Margaret Truman, John Steinbeck and the Duke of Windsor. He also picked up a reputation as the best draftsman and most accurate workman in his profession.
WHEN HE QUIT “Terry” in 1947, the strip had a readership of 31 million.
A week later Caniff opened up shop—for a weekly paycheck of $2,000—at the Chicago Sun-Times syndicate and “Steve Canyon” made his bow. (Caniff made the change principally because he would own the copyrights to “Canyon” himself. “Terry,” still drawn by another artist, is owned by The Tribune-News syndicate.)
SOME OF his episodes, such as an Allied paratroop invasion of Burma and speculation that the Russians were prefabricating sub marines in warm water ports, have proved prophetic. So have some of his words. In college, he considered tackling a career in the theater but decided to go on drawing for awhile because, as he told a friend: “There’s no telling where it might lead to.”
Return to "Our Own Hall of Fame" Main Page
