Clifford McBride (January 26, 1901 – May 21, 1951) was an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip '' Napoleon and Uncle Elby''.

Biography

Born in

Minneapolis, Minnesota Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

, McBride was twice expelled from school because of his drawings in the school paper. His first professional cartoon was published in 1917 in ''The

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''. When he graduated from Occidental College, he moved to

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commerci ...

, beginning his career in 1923 as a staff artist for ''The Los Angeles Times''. The following year, he illustrated humorous fiction for the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

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Comic strips and ''Napoleon''

After drawing such features as ''Insect Life'', ''McBride's Cartoon'' (1927), and ''Clifford McBride's Pantomime Comic'' (1932), he created Elby, a character based on his uncle, Henry Elba Eastman. He soon began to add situations involving Elby's dog, Napoleon.
/ref> Drawing for a minor syndicate, LaFave Newspaper Features, McBride began ''Napoleon'' as a daily strip on June 6, 1932, adding a Sunday strip in 1933. The following year the title was changed to ''Napoleon and Uncle Elby''. McBride's cartoons appeared in such magazines as ''

Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

'' and ''Cosmopolitan'', and he profited from hardcover reprints, comic books and the licensing of his character as a spokesdog during the 1940s for Red Heart Dog Food. Merchandising included a stuffed toy of Napoleon. ''Napoleon and Uncle Elby'' was a 1945 hardcover collection of 116 of McBride's strips. McBride's assistant on the strip was Roger Armstrong (1917–2007). After McBride's 1951 death in Altadena, California, his second wife, Margot Fischer McBride, wrote the strip, and she hired Armstrong as the illustrator. In 1952, the team switched to the Mirror Enterprises Syndicate in Los Angeles, keeping the strip going for the next eight years.Knoll, Erwin. "''Napoleon'' Strip Moves To Mirror Syndicate," ''Editor & Publisher'', September 20, 1952.
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Films

Although Napoleon was an Irish Wolfhound, McBride's own dog was Ace, a 190-pound St. Bernard. Ace was sometimes used for promotional purposes with McBride, including two short films, ''Unusual Occupations'' (1941) and ''Artist's Antics'' (1946).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macbride, Clifford American comics writers American comics artists American humorists 1951 deaths American comic strip cartoonists Chicago Tribune people 1901 births 20th-century American writers Writers from Minneapolis