ALLEY, CALVIN LANE (1915-1970) American artist born in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 10, 1915. Cal Alley was raised in an artistic environment—his father, J.P. Alley, drew editorial cartoons for the Memphis Commercial Appeal and created the Hambone panel—and attended the American Academy and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1935-36.
For two years thereafter Alley was a cowboy and sketch artist in Arizona and Texas. In 1939 Alley became editorial cartoonist of the Kansas City Journal and remained there until its demise in 1942. He then held a similar position on the Nashville Banner until 1945, when he joined his father’s paper, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, as editorial cartoonist. Here he remained until his death on November 10, 1970.
The younger Alley, along with his brother Jim, inherited the Bell Syndicate panel Hambone’s Meditations in 1934. Their method of working was largely unknown to the general public: they alternated weeks, drawing it in a virtually indistinguishable style. The stereotyped title character, a philosophical “darky,” no matter how sympathetic, sage and harmless, was nevertheless deemed offensive by many in the race-conscious 1950s, so the panel died in 1954.
That same year Cal Alley began a family comic strip, The Ryatts, modeled on his own home life. Picked up by the Hall Syndicate, it premiered in October 1954 in 24 papers and soon, thanks to its empathy, engaging drawing style and thematic appeal, ran in several hundred papers.
In 1967, because of ill-health and the crush of daily editorial cartoon production, Alley relinquished the strip to Jack Elrod, who also assists on the Mark Trail strip for the successor syndicate, Field.
Alley had an extremely attractive, old-time pen-and-ink drawing style reminiscent of his father’s and the Chicago Tribune school’s. He very seldom used crayon shading. In politics he was a conservative.
The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 1980
