1885–1948
Cartoonist, cartoonist, comics artist, writer
Green Bert, american cartoonist and animator born in England in 1885. Bert Green was taken to the United States by his parents when he was a child. After studies in art school, he went on to work as a cartoonist on several New York newspapers before being promoted to art department manager on the Chicago Examiner in 1914. When Hearst International Film Service was established in 1916, Bert Green became one of its earliest animators and scriptwriters, working notably on The Katzenjammer Kids.
After the closing of Hearst’s animated film operation in 1918, Green went on to create the comic strip Kids for the Chicago Tribune, and the feature lasted through the 1920s. He also produced training cartoons for the U.S. Navy through the Vocafilm Corporation during World War I, and he later wrote hundreds of humorous articles and stories for Liberty, the Saturday Evening Post and others. His satires on Prohibition (illustrated by himself) were later collected in book form under the title Love Letters of an Interior Decorator.
During World War II Green served as a member of the U.S. Coast Guard and was assigned to antisubmarine duty. After the war he returned briefly to cartooning. He died after a long illness at the Bronx Veterans Hospital on October 5, 1948. His contributions to the early art of animation deserve recognition.
Reference: The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 1981
