Cartoonist
Leo Aloysius Callum was one of the most frequent contributors to The New Yorker , publishing more than 800 cartoons . He began his career in drawing after serving as a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and flying commercial aircraft for Trans World Airlines and American Airlines.
Callum was born in Newark, New Jersey, grew up in North Bergen, New Jersey, and received his bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963, where he majored in English. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating from college, earning the rank of second lieutenant. After completing flight training in Pensacola, Florida, Callum was sent to Vietnam, where he flew more than 200 combat missions, mainly ground attacks in support of infantry, as well as attacks on the Viet Cong supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos… Although the missions over Laos were not officially recognized, Callum was baffled by the need to maintain secrecy, stating that “the North Vietnamese definitely knew that it was not the Swiss who bombed them.”
After completing his military service, Callum became a pilot for TWA, which was later transferred to American Airlines, where he worked until his retirement in 2001. In between flights, he began to draw, continuing his early interest in drawing cartoons. He said, “I bought some tutorials explaining the format and started studying the work of various cartoonists.” He always hoped that he would be published in The New Yorker, which rejected a series of his early articles. The magazine liked some of Callum’s concepts for cartoons, which were passed on to Charles Addams. To illustrate: The first of Callum’s ideas, which appeared in print in 1975, depicts a couple paddling in a canoe, and their reflection in the water shows a vision of a man attacking a woman. Addams convinced Callum to take up his craft, and his first sale was made in Air Line Pilot Magazine. He later published cartoons in Argosy, Saturday Review and Sports Afield magazines.
During his career at The New Yorker, the magazine published 819 of his cartoons, many of which depicted animals. His first successful recording was published on January 3, 1977, and it depicted a man in a bathrobe at an office desk in a room filled with chickens. [1] The cartoon with the title “This island is not big enough for two cliches” shows a flock of fish trying to crawl onto the shore of an uninhabited island inhabited by a man and a lonely palm tree. [2][3] Cartoon editor Robert Mankoff called him “one of the most popular” cartoonists in The New Yorker. in the 1980s and 1990s and “one of the most consistently funny cartoonists we’ve ever had.” Callum’s cartoon was the first cartoon included in the first illustrated issue printed after the September 11 attacks, with the headline “I thought I’d never laugh again. And then I saw your jacket.” One of his most popular cartoons depicts a man lecturing a cat, with the inscription “Never, never think outside the box.” His last published cartoon appeared in the October 25, 2010 issue.
His published books include collections about doctors and birds with the corresponding pun titles Suture Self and Tequila Mockingbird. In other books there were his caricatures of cats, dogs and business people.
A resident of Malibu, California, Callum died of cancer at the age of 68 on October 23, 2010 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.He is survived by his wife Katie, a former flight attendant whom he met on a flight to Boston, as well as his daughters Caitlin Callum and Kimberly Callum, both of whom were child actresses.
Reference: Wikipedia, 2010
