Jules Feiffer: cartoonist with intellectual leanings
the centennial university DAILY KANSAN serving k.u. for 76 of its 100 years 76th Year, No. 112 Tuesday, April 12, 1966
A graduate of the Art Students League of New York and Pratt Institute, Feiffer worked for several comic strip artists, including Will Eisner, creator of "The Spirit" before taking up a two-year stint with the Signal Corps in cartoon animation at its film center.
would sell, Feiffer stuck to his conviction to make cartoons that will speak his message whether anyone buys them or not. That was the time he lived on unemployment insurance.
But in 1956, the Village Voice, Greenwich Village's weekly newspaper, accepted his cartoons on an unpaid contributor's basis. His simple drawings, with captions in the form of dialogue or soliloquys, became an immediate hit.
HE LEFT the corps with a new character called Munro, the four-year-old boy drafted into the army by mistake. But there was no customer for Munro. Rather than create something else that
Critic Gilbert Millstein describes him as being "alone and unafraid in a world made of . . . just about all of the intellectual
CARTOONIST JULES FEIFFER
Speaks at 4 p.m. today
Jules Feiffer, syndicated cartoonist whose drawings appear in Playboy magazine, the Village Voice in New York City and other publications, will speak on American humor at 4 p.m. today in Hoch Auditorium at a student colloquium.
The individuality in Feiffer has brought him near to failure in the past. Born in the Bronx area of New York City in 1929, Feiffer showed his talent for drawing when at the age of five he won a gold medal from a New York department store. The drawing? It was of Tom Mix arresting some outlaws.
PLAYBOY MAGAZINE is one of the publications that uses Feiffer's cartoons. Hall Syndicate distributes a weekly Feiffer cartoon to some 40 American newspapers, including the New York Post, the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune, the London Observer, and papers in Rome and Stockholm. His cartoons are sold with the understanding that not a word will be changed in the course of publication.
Participating in a panel discussion after Feiffer's talk will be Ashley Montague, anthropologist and author, Robert Lewis Shayon, television critic, Sylvester L. Weaver, former chairman of NBC-TV, and Dwight MacDonald, film critic for Esquire magazine.
shams and shibbooleths to which our culture subscribes."
FROM EOOKS—ranging in title from "Sick, Sick, Sick" to "Passionella" to "Boy, Girl"—to cartoon characters such as Munro and the Explainers, Feiffer has gone on to win critical acclaim in his "Crawling Arnold," a play which had its premiere at Gan-Carlo Menotti's Festival of "Two Worlds in Italy.
from long experience in the medium.
Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, president of Subscription TV, Inc., and former president of NBC-TV, and Robert Lewis Shayon, documentary film maker and TV critic for Saturday Review, are expected to attack the dependence of television on the rating system in a colloquium at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow in Swarthout Recital Hall.
To focus on TV ratings
AS EXECUTIVE producer for CBS radio, Shayon created "You Are There," a documentary series which described historical events as if reported from the scene. He produced "The Big Story," an NBC series dealing with actual adventures of newspapermen. He has also written and produced such outstanding documentaries
as "The Eagle's Brood" and "Operation Crossroads."
The play, like typical Feiffer cartoons, deals with topics such as air-raid shelters, sibling rivalry, social workers, and Negro nationalists.
SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE
Described by Richard MacCann, visiting professor of speech and drama, as "probably the best critic now writing" in the TV field, Shayon has been TV critic for Saturday Review since 1950.
Both men are familiar with TV
He is critical of the sameness of television shows and he feels that many of them are aimed at teenagers and children.
Colloquium—"The Nonsense of the Non-Western Label for Latin America," 3:30 p.m. Harry Bernstein, professor of history, Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Union.
Inter-Century Seminar—"Prospects for Humanity," 2 to 3:20 p.m. R. Buckminster Fuller. Hoch.
Centennial calendar
TODAY
Colloquium-3:30 p.m. Clovis Shepherd, program director National Training Laboratories, Adult Education Association Washington. Union.
Official Inter-Century Seminar dinner, 6 p.m. Public invited.
Tickets purchased before event at Union ticket center for $4.
Colloquium-4 p.m. Jules Feiffer, cartoonist and columnist. Hoch.
Inter-Century Seminar—"Man and the World Community in the Century Ahead," 8 to 10 p.m. Arthur Larson. Union Ballroom.
Inter-Century Seminar—"Has the Theatre a Future?," 10:30 a.m. to noon. Harold Clurman. Hoch.
Colloquium—"Has Network TV Reached an Automatic Dead End?"1:30 p.m. Robert Lewis Shayon, radio and TV critic and professor, Annenberg School of Communications; and Sylvester L. Weaver, Chairman of Subscription TV, Inc. Murphy.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13
Weaver was vice-president in charge of television for NBC from 1949 to 1953, president from 1953 to 1955 and chairman of the board from 1955 to 1956.
He invented the program "Wide Wide World" and was the first to produce the one-and-a-half hour special program of drama or music.
MACCANN describes him as a "creative executive and a great innovator."
In 1964, his Subscription TV, Inc., began service in California. It was fought by theater-owners of the state, who succeeded in placing the issue of pay TV on the ballot, and was finally defeated. The Supreme Court has since ruled the election a suppression of free speech.
When he was fired by NBC, he returned to advertising, in which he had earlier experience.
MacCann calls Weaver "a bigthinking person, full of ideas," and expects him to join Shayon in attacking the dependence of TV producers on rating systems and mass audiences.
MEETS THURSDAY
Alumni council to ponder drive for private aid
Conceived in the minds of its founders more than one-hundred years ago, KU has grown from a cluster of buildings on Mount Oread to a university with a tradition and a purpose. In 1966, on the eve of its second century, alumni and friends of KU concerned with its progressive development, meet, as did the early founders, to chart the University's future course.
The KU Council for Progress is the official group of approximately 300 alumni and friends of KU appointed by Chancellor W. Clarke Wecoce to study the objectives of KU during the next 100 years and to make financial recommendations needed to carry out the timetable of goals.
THE GENESIS OF the idea for the establishment of the council came in 1962 during discussions outlining the centennial program for 1966. The discussions and a survey of KU alumni and friends showed that a large percentage of persons were interested in the future of KU, that they were willing to support it and that they were willing to encourage the support of others in a capital gift funds campaign.
From 1962 to 1966, a committee appointed by Chancellor Wescoe under the leadership of James Surface, provost and dean of faculties, considered KU's master building plan, current salary levels, student aid needs and other costs which might develop in the future.
Planning by the Council for Progress and its executive committee realistically notes that today the distinction between privately-supported and publicly-supported institutions has in large measure vanished. Private schools are supported more and more with tax funds and public schools receive more and more aid from private funds. To improve its educational facilities and increase its academic opportunities, public schools will have to be supported by the funds of more individuals than in past years.
From the detailed report made by this planning committee, the Council for Progress will try to formulate a plan for a fundraising campaign to start this fall.
THE FIRST CONCERN of the faculty committee studying the objectives for the second century was the student. The planning committee noted that outstanding programs in undergraduate education, coupled with the rapid growth of graduate schools and research, would be the basis of KU's distinction in the future. Among the committee's recommendations are increased loan funds, more fellowships and scholarships.
The second area concerning the planning committee was that of the faculty and its support. More general research funds, visiting professorships, additional summer research scholarships and additional distinguished professorships are major objectives.
The third category studied by the faculty committee is supporting resources and physical facilities. Objectives identified by the committee as "immediate needs" of the University include:
- New art museum.
- Children's institute (speech, hearing and mental difficulties).
- Law center.
- Radiation therapy center.
- Medical research and graduate study center in Kansas City.
- Acquisition funds for libraries, music, natural history and other cultural departments.
- Residence colleges.
THE FACULTY COMMITTEE also recommended 22 additional projects, including a graduate center, a seminar campus and a continuing education center.
Another matter of immediate concern to the University is the opportunity fund—unrestricted money, not particularly set aside for special use, which would be used to start various pilot programs of an educational or cultural nature.
"This fund would provide the opportunity to buy a special collection, a special piece of art, a special piece of research apparatus or to bring a visitor to the campus," the committee said.
Since the October meeting when these proposals were submitted to the council, members of the council executive committee have studied these faculty recommendations. At the meeting this Thursday, during the Inter-Century Seminar on Man and the Future, members of the council will discuss the executive committee's recommendations for a fund-raising program.
Members of the Council executive committee include chairman Stanley Learned, Bartlesville, Okla., and seven persons from Lawrence: Chancellor Wescoe, Maurice Barker, Odd Williams, James R. Surface, Dolph Simons, Dick Winternote, Irvin Youngberg and Paul Gilles.