Stanley George Cross, Stan Cross for short, was born in Los Angeles in 1888, as the son of English parents who eventually settled in Perth, Australia in 1892. He was employed by the Railway Department when he was sixteen and studied art at the Perth Technical College. He left his job to study for a year in London, where his first cartoons were published by Punch magazine. When he returned to Australia, Cross became a freelance artist, contributing cartoons and illustrations to The Western Mail and The Sunday Times. In 1919 he got hired for a job at the new magazine, Smith's Weekly, where he worked for twenty years specializing in single-panel cartoons.
Stan Cross also created several comics, such as 'Smith's Vaudevillains' (started 1928) and 'You & Me', which was later renamed 'The Potts' and continued by Jim Russell in 1939. He started his cartoon column 'For gorsake, stop laughing: this is serious!' in 1933, and it became one of the most popular cartoons in Australia. In 1939, Stan Cross left Smith's Weekly to work for The Melbourne Herald, where he created the comic 'Wally and the Major', later taken over by Carl Lyon. He retired from comics in 1970 and died 16 June 1977, at the age of 88.
In November 1985 the Stanley Awards were established, an annual Australian comics award in several disciplines, named after Mr. Cross.
Stan Cross (left) and Jim Russell at
The Potts' 50th anniversary in 1970
