Word: mauldin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1944-1944
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sergeant George Baker's "Sad Sack" is a hilarious caricature. But Sergeant Bill Mauldin's weary, grimy, unshaven "Joe," the "Old Bill" of World War II, is by G.I. testimony grimly true to life. Quiet, babyfaced, 23-year-old Cartoonist Mauldin can draw the infantryman truthfully because he has been one himself since he was 18. He has fought and drawn his way through the campaign in Sicily, wears the Purple Heart for wounds received in Italy. "Joe" is beside, behind and ahead of him right now on the southern front in France...
...Army and the U.S. home front have been quick to appreciate Mauldin's veracity. First the 45th Division News, then the Army Times, the Stars & Stripes and the Yank printed his cartoons. He became a G.I. favorite overnight. When Ernie Pyle called Mauldin the finest cartoonist produced by the war, United Feature's George Carlin promptly signed him to a long-term contract. His saturnine "Up Front with Mauldin" is now syndicated to over 100 U.S. civilian newspapers...
...Learns about War. Farm-born in New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains, Bill Mauldin started drawing when he was three. At eight, he moved with his mother and brother to a homestead near Phoenix, Ariz., at nine wrote an anti-war poem. He got his first job as an artist at twelve, drawing posters for a rodeo. While in high school at Phoenix, he took a correspondence course in cartooning, sold his first cartoon for $10. He left high school without graduating, went to Chicago, worked variously as a truck driver, dishwasher and menu designer to pay for his studies...
...Hates It. Syndicator Carlin says "Joe" lives because Mauldin's native integrity has made him shun the vaudeville or adventure-story techniques that rob other comic war heroes of reality. Mauldin's explanation is simpler. He says "Joe" is just the average U.S. combat soldier, leading a life he hates so bitterly that he is fighting a war to get it over with...
...Sergeant Mauldin has been at the front in Sicily and Italy. His battle-weary "Joe," confusedly making the best of his hard, humorless life, began as a diversion for Mauldin's 45th Division, quickly spread to the North African edition of Stars & Stripes...