'Us Boys'.
Tom McNamara was a newspaper cartoonist and an artist for early comic books. He was born in 1886 in San Francisco, California, and studied at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. He began his career as an illustrator for the Chronicle from San Francisco at the turn of the century. He had a vaudeville act with Myer Marcus called 'Mack and Marcus', with which he toured through Europe and the USA around 1908.
McNamara's comic strip 'Us Boys' (1910-1928) was published through the International Feature Service. In the 1920s, McNamara worked in Hollywood and worked as a writer for the 'Our Gang' series by Hal E. Roach Studios and as a director of Mary Pickford in the films 'Little Annie Rooney' and 'Sparrows', among other things. He also drew Sunday comics like 'Teddy Jack and Mary' and 'On Our Block' in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Throughout the 1910s up until the 1930s, Tom McNamara has done artwork for humorous cigarette pins, given away with packs of cigarettes.
Pin designed by Tom McNamara.
Between 1935 and 1946, McNamara drew for comic books such as New Fun, Buzzy and All Funny by National Allied Publications (later DC) in New York. He illustrated features like 'After School', 'Alix in Follyland' and 'Silly Willie', as well as humorous fillers starring 'Grandpa Peters'. Nearly blind, McNamara spent his last ten years in San Francisco at the Laguna Honda Hospital, where he died in 1964.
'Alix in Follyland'.