Boston Globe, 11 October 1929.
Charles ("Chas" or "Charlie") A. Donelan was a Boston sportswriter and cartoonist, as well as a radio broadcaster, during the 1920s. Donelan's career as a newspaper cartoonist began in 1914 in Providence, Rhode Island at the Providence Journal. He was hired by the Boston Traveler in 1918, where he remained for most of the 1920s. In addition to creating cartoons about what happened during the baseball games, he also invented several fictional characters. One of these was 'Ernest N. Dever', that was syndicated to newspapers throughout the USA from August 1919 to April 1920. His best-known character, which appeared mainly in Massachusetts, was called 'Russett Appul'.
From 1922, it initially appeared as a character in a humorous column on the sports page of the Boston Traveler, in which readers could get the latest "news" through Russett's eyes. The character appeared in a comic strip in the Boston Globe from October 1929 to April 1930, but Donelan has also performed as Russett at vaudeville theaters and local civic and charitable events since the early 1920s.
Sports section of the Boston Traveler (21 March 1921).
In early 1924, he made his radio debut, playing Russett Appul on two Boston radio stations. But Charles Donelan was first and foremost a sports expert, and in April 1925, he was given his own sports program on radio station WEEI (then owned by the Edison Electric company). That year, he was also hired by another Boston station, WNAC, to do some play-by-play of Boston Braves baseball games.
Donelan also created several other characters, including one named 'Sid Sprigley'. This character was inspired by his younger brother Paul, who often did the voice for Sid when Charles was performing as Russett Appul. Charles Donelan left the Traveler to work at the Boston Globe, but he eventually operated as a freelance cartoonist for a number of publications. He also continued to perform his various characters in person well into the 1940s.
Ad for one of Donelan's performances from the mid-1920s (image courtesy of Donelan's grandchildren)