Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 20 February 1992. John Milt Morris seated next to the U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
John Milt Morris was an American cartoonist and comic strip artist. He was just thirteen years old and during the third week of his job as a newsboy when he was hit by a truck in 1920. He spent the next two years in bed, and he picked up drawing and sketching while recovering. A career of more than fifty years as a nationally known political cartoonist followed.
He had his first jobs with the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the New York Journal American. He first gained the public's attention with a cartoon regarding Al Capone's sentence to Alcatraz for tax evasion. He joined the Associated Press in 1937, that syndicated his work to over 125 daily newspapers until his retirement in 1987.
Besides political cartoons - he made over 14,000 - Morris also drew some comic strips. He succeeded Oscar Hitt on the village life feature 'Neighborly Neighbors' between 1938 and 1955. He also made feature called 'Christmas with Dot and Dick' in the December weeks of 1935. Morris was additionally the final artist to draw 'Scorchy Smith', succeeding George Tuska from June 1959 until December 1961.
'Scorchy Smith'.