Уолт Келли: Американский аниматор и создатель «Пого»

American animator and cartoonist

Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. (August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973), commonly known as Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. In 1941, at the age of 28, Kelly transferred to work at Dell Comics, where he created Pogo, which eventually became his platform for political and philosophical commentary.

Kelly was born of Irish American heritage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Walter Crawford Kelly Sr. and Genevieve Kelly (née MacAnnula). When he was two years old, the family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. After graduating from Warren Harding High School in 1930, Kelly worked at odd jobs until he was hired as a crime reporter on the Bridgeport Post. He also took up cartooning and illustrated a biography of another well known figure from Bridgeport, P. T. Barnum. Kelly was extremely proud of his journalism pedigree and considered himself a newspaper man as well as a cartoonist. In 1951, Kelly divorced DeLacy and married Stephanie Waggony; the two remained married until Waggony died of cancer in 1970. Kelly met Selby Daley in the late 1960s while working on The Pogo Special Birthday Special, a television special based on the Pogo comic strip. Kelly and Daley continued to collaborate professionally, and got married in late 1972. A fourth child, Kathryn Barbara, died before her first birthday, an event he commemorated in the Pogo strip for several years thereafter with a bug character attempting to deliver a cake with one candle.

Kelly began a series of comic books based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes along with annuals celebrating Christmas and Easter for Dell Comics. Kelly seems to have written or co written much of the material he drew for the comics; his unique touches are easily discernible. He also produced a series of stories based on the Our Gang film series, provided covers for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, illustrated the aforementioned adaptations of two Disney animated features, drew stories featuring Raggedy Ann and Andy and Uncle Wiggily, wrote and drew a lengthy series of comic books promoting a bread company and featuring a character called "Peter Wheat", and did a series of pantomime (without dialogue) two page stories featuring Roald Dahl's Gremlins for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #34–41. Kelly also then wrote, drew, and performed on children's records, children's books, and cereal boxes. So highly regarded was his work that the introduction, likely written by Dell editor Oskar Lebeck, to Fairy Tale Parade #1 spoke of him as "the artist who drew all the wonderful pictures in this book." Although his health would not allow him to serve in the military, during World War II, Kelly also worked in the Army's Foreign Language Unit illustrating manuals, including several on languages, one of his favorite topics. One manual depicted his friend Ward Kimball as a caveman. This period saw the creation of Kelly's most famous character, Pogo, who first saw print in 1943 in Dell's Animal Comics. Pogo was almost unrecognizable in his initial appearance, resembling a real possum more closely than in his classic form. Kelly's work with Dell continued well into the successful run of the newspaper strip in the early 1950s, ending after 16 issues of Pogo Possum (each with all new material) in a dispute over the republication of Kelly's early Pogo and Albert stories in a comic book titled The Pogo Parade.

He returned to journalism as a political cartoonist after the war. In 1948, while serving as art director of the short lived New York Star (successor to the afternoon liberal tabloid PM), Kelly began to produce a pen and ink daily comic strip featuring anthropomorphic animal characters that inhabited the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. The first Pogo strip appeared on October 4, 1948. After the New York Star folded on January 28, 1949, Kelly arranged for syndication through the Hall Syndicate, which relaunched the strip in May 1949. Kelly eventually arranged to acquire the copyright and ownership of the strip, which was then uncommon.

The Pogo comic strip was syndicated to newspapers for 26 years. The individual strips were collected into at least 20 books edited by Kelly. He received the Reuben Award for the series in 1951. The principal characters were Pogo the Possum, Albert the Alligator, Churchy LaFemme (a turtle; cf. Cherchez la femme), Howland Owl, Beauregard Bugleboy (a hound dog), Porkypine, and Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah (or Miz Mamzelle Hepzibah, a French skunk). Kelly used the strip in part as a vehicle for his liberal and humanistic political and social views, and satirized, among other things, Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti Communist demagogy (in the form of a shotgun wielding bobcat named "Simple J. Malarkey") and the sectarian and dogmatic behavior of communists (in the form of two comically doctrinaire cowbirds). The setting for Pogo and his friends was the Okefenokee Swamp. The Okefenokee Swamp Park near Waycross, Georgia, now has a building housing Kelly's relocated studio and various Pogo memorabilia. Additionally, Kelly illustrated The Glob, a children's book about the evolution of man written by John O'Reilly and published in 1952.

Kelly died on October 18, 1973, in Woodland Hills, California, from diabetes complications, following a long and debilitating illness that had cost him a leg. During his final illness, work on the strip had fallen to various assistants and occasionally reprints, and Kelly characteristically joked about returning to work as soon as he regrew the leg. He is sometimes listed as having been interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn, New York, but there is no actual grave for him there. He is believed to have been cremated.

His influences included cartoonists George Kerr, Frederick Opper, E. W. Kemble, A. B. Frost, John Tenniel, George Herriman, and, especially, T. S. Sullivant. Volume two was released in November, 2012, and three was released in November 2014. Four was released in January 2018 and five was released in October 2018. Volume six was planned for release in November 2019 but was delayed until January 2020. Volume seven was released in November 2020. In 2013 Hermes Press began reprinting the comic book series of Pogo that predated the comic strip, originally published by Dell Comics. The first two volumes were nominated for the 2015 Eisner Awards, and the third volume came out in late 2015; followed in 2016 by the fourth volume. The fifth volume was released in 2017, with the sixth and final volume appearing in 2018. Carolyn Kelly, having worked extensively on The Complete Pogo, died on April 9, 2017. In Nickelodeon's animated series The Loud House, the Loud Family's canary was named after Walt Kelly. Joe Murray, (creator of Rocko's Modern Life and Camp Lazlo) cited Kelly's work as his inspiration to create wacky anthropomorphic animal characters.