'Little Eve' (30 December 1956).
Jolita Haberlin was an American cartoonist, who spent her early years in in the Dutch Indies (Indonesia), China, Hawaii and Switzerland, before moving to New York and marrying her second husband, the cartoonist John Henry Rouson. Also turning to cartooning, she created the pantomime gag strip 'Little Eve' (1954-1975), about a housewife.
Early life and career
Jolita Ann Coughlin was born in 1928 in the Weltevreden suburb of Batavia, on the isle of Java, back then part of the Dutch East Indies, but nowadays the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Her parents were Americans of Irish and Austrian descent, and her father worked as the editor of a large Dutch magazine. The family later moved to Shanghai, China, where they lived until the Second Chinese-Japanese War (1937-1945) forced them to leave. Resettling in Honolulu, Hawaii, Jolita Coughlin graduated with honors from the Punahou private school in the class of 1945. During this period, she made special artwork for the magazine Paradise of the Pacific (the predecessor of Honolulu magazine), of which her father was the general manager. Awarded a scholarship, she then spent two years studying art and poster techniques at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. On 22 August 1947, Coughlin traveled on the Mauretania from New York to Europe, where she studied advanced art, German and philosophy in Zürich, Switzerland.
On 4 November 1943, Ponahou student Jolita Coughlin was portrayed in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser during a campus ceremony.
During her studies in Europe, Coughlin also did modelling work, for instance for the American photographer Edward Weston. In 1948, she married the Swiss photographer Peter Werner Häberlin, with whom she travelled constantly throughout Europe and Africa. The couple also had a daughter, named Kathi according to one newspaper article. However, in the Staten Island Advance of 10 August 1969, Mrs. Jolita Haberlin Rouson announced the engagement of her daughter Madeline Merah Rouson, the biological daughter of the late Peter Haberlin.
While she was visiting her parents in the USA, Coughlin's husband was killed in an accident in Zürich on 9 July 1953. Jolita Coughlin then settled in New York, where in November of the same year she remarried to the English-born comic artist John Henry Rouson. Living on Staten Island, the couple collaborated on Rouson's comic strip 'Little Sport' for the General Features Syndicate. Although going by the name Jolita Rouson, she kept using her late husband's name for her artistic work, although she mostly signed with just "Jolita".
'Little Eve' (1959).
Little Eve
By helping her husband, Jolita Rouson began to conceive ideas for her own comic strip, resulting in the pantomime gag comic 'Little Eve' (1954-1975), also for General Features. In the Evening Standard of 5 March 1956, Jolita and John Rouson were named "the most successful husband-and-wife cartoon team in the world". By then, 'Little Eve' ran in about 250 newspapers all over the world, making about 50,000 dollar a year (and 'Little Sport' making the same amount). The title character Little Eve was a housewife featured in domestic sitcom comedy.
In many papers, the strip didn't run in the regular comics pages, but was featured in articles and columns directed at female readers. Since 'Little Eve' was often printed in a small format, Haberlin used very little dialogue. Interviewed in The Herald Times (Bloomington, Indiana, 18 May 1962), Haberlin explained: "If a housewife looking at 'Little Eve' recognizes the sequence and feels it has, or could have, happened to her, that is just what I want." The series also ran in French ('La Petite Femme', and as 'Eve, Cette Ineffable') and Spanish ('Siempre Eva').
Although the 'Little Eve' strip was marketed as a joint production of Haberlin and Rouson, it has been speculated that the actual artist was John Rouson, using his wife's first name as a pseudonym. While Jolita Haberlin appears to be the feature's initial artist, according to several news reports, 1970s newspaper articles mention "Jolita" as a pen name for John Henry Rouson. So it is possible that by then her husband had taken over. In the guidebook 'American Newspaper Comics' by Allan Holtz, it is suggested that Rouson continued the strip after the couple divorced in 1955. Further information about the end of their marriage is unknown, but 1955 seems an unlikely year, as in 1962 Jolita Haberlin was still interviewed as the creator of 'Little Eve'.
Later life and death
Jolita Haberlin died in 1993 in Manhattan, New York City. Her (ex?) husband survived her for seven more years.
Jolita and John Rouson in the Evening Standard of 5 March 1956.