Bill Mauldin

The incomparable cartoon biographer of the ordinary GI in World War II, Bill Mauldin (born 1921) earned two Pulitzer prizes and syndication in over 250 newspapers for his mordant drawings.

The son of Sidney Albert and Edith Katrina (Bemis), Bill Mauldin was born on October 29, 1921, in Mountain Park, New Mexico. He attended public schools in New Mexico and Arizona, depending upon where his father happened to be unemployed. A scrawny boy, often confined to bed by rickets, he expressed his daydreams in drawings of himself as a cowboy or other heroic figure. While in high school, Mauldin took a correspondence course in cartooning. In 1939 he studied cartooning at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Mauldin then worked in Phoenix, drawing gag cartoons for Arizona Highways.

Awarded Purple Heart in WWII

In September 1940 he enlisted in the Arizona National Guard, which five days later was federalized. A member of the U.S. Army's 45th Division, Mauldin went overseas in 1943 to Sicily, where he joined the Mediterranean edition of Stars and Stripes, the Army's wartime newspaper. Mauldin covered the fighting in Sicily, Salerno, Monte Cassino, and Anzio and then in France and Germany. He was wounded at Salerno and received the Purple Heart.

Mauldin's cartoons for Stars and Stripes pictured the ordinary, unheroic GIs, wearily slogging on, getting a job done, and wanting to go home. Like Ernie Pyle's prose, they vividly portrayed what GI life was really like and intimately expressed the Gl's hopes and dreams, fears and hardships. For many Americans, Mauldin's combat-weary team of Willie and Joe became the archetypical GIs of the war in Europe. Disenchanted yet dignified, dirty and bearded, the battle-hardened Willie and Joe were more interested in dry socks than in the lofty rhetoric of war aims, and they hated officers almost as much as they hated the war.

Cartoons Portrayed Real Army Life

While most of the Army hierarchy approved of Mauldin's cartoons as a healthy outlet for the average conscript's emotions, some officers—particularly Gen. George S. Patton—objected to the grimy, realistic public image Willie and Joe were projecting of the U.S. Army. Nevertheless, Mauldin's melancholy pen-and-ink commentaries on Gl life were brought together in several published collections, including Star Spangled Banter (1941 and 1944), Mud, Mules and Mountains (1944), and Up Front (1945), which earned Mauldin a 1945 Pulitzer Prize.

Released from the army in June 1945, Mauldin went to work for United Features Syndicate, which distributed his cartoon strips to more than 180 newspapers in the United States under the evolving titles "Sweating It Out," "Back Home," and "Willie and Joe." Although his first postwar collection, Back Home, won critical acclaim, the angry, bitter tone of Mauldin's liberal cartoons soon led him to be dropped by one newspaper after another.

In 1950 he went to Hollywood to try his hand as an actor and technical advisor in several films, and early in 1952 he went to the war front in Korea. His report of the experience was published as Bill Mauldin in Korea (1952). In 1956 he ran as a Democrat for Congress in New York's heavily Republican 28th Congressional District and was easily trounced by the incumbent, Katherine St. George.

Cartoons Syndicated to Newspapers

Mauldin joined the staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as editorial cartoonist in 1958 and won another Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons the next year. His wry satires on the politics of Eisenhower's last years in the presidency were collected in What's Got Your Back Up? (1961). I've Decided I Want My Seat Back (1965) summed up his liberal commentaries on the desegregation struggles of the early 1960s. In June 1962 Mauldin moved to the Chicago Sun-Times, where his editorial cartoons were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers. Continuing "to buck power," as he put it, to satirize the high and mighty, Mauldin earned the reputation as a worthy successor to Herblock, the editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post. His books included The Brass Ring (1971) and Mud and Guts (1978). An avid flying buff, Mauldin described his air experiences in articles for Sports Illustrated. His honors included the 1962 Cartoonist of the Year award of the National Cartoonists Society and the Sigma Delta Chi journalism fraternity's 1963, 1969, and 1972 awards for editorial cartooning.

Mauldin's work was part of an exhibit at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. in 1992. The exhibit, called "Draw! Political Cartoons From Left to Right," featured Mauldin and five other prominent political cartoonists. A fiftieth-anniversary edition of his classic Up Front was published in 1995.

Further Reading

Bill Mauldin's best known books are Up Front (1945); Back Home (1947); What's Got Your Back Up? (1961); and I've Decided I Want My Seat Back (1965); His wartime cartoons are analyzed in John Morton Blum, V Was For Victory, Politics and American Culture During World War II (1976); Biographical data appears in Who's Who in America (1964-1965). Also see American History Illustrated (March/April 1992); and The Atlantic Monthly (June 1995). □

MAULDIN, BILL 1921-

Cartoonist

Army Cartoonist

Bill Mauldin became one of the best-known cartoonists of the 1940s on the strength of his World War II series Up Front. Syndicated in addition to their publication in his division newspaper and later the Stars and Stripes, his cartoons about army life were a favorite of enlisted men and civilians alike. In 1945 he received the Pulitzer Prize, at age twenty-four the youngest person to do so.

Civilian Life. Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico, and by the time he was a teenager he was drawing posters for local merchants. At his Phoenix high school he worked on the school newspaper. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts with money borrowed from his grandparents. He had no trouble securing work as a freelance cartoonist, but during the Depression he found it difficult to support himself, so in 1940 he joined the National Guard. Almost immediately his unit was activated as part of the U.S. army, with Mauldin serving first in a truck unit and then in the infantry. He began submitting cartoons to his division's newspaper, in the process creating his two most memorable characters.

An Unsentimental View of War

Willie and Joe, Mauldin's everyman GIs, allowed him to explore the humorous as well as darker aspects of war; they also allowed him to poke fun at the military brass, some of whom would have kept his cartoons from publication were they not so popular with the enlisted men. Their popularity with the American public also helped to ensure their continued publication, and they moved to Stars and Stripes in 1944.

Postwar Career

After the war ended Mauldin received a lucrative contract to continue Up Front as Willie and Joe, which dealt with the characters' return to civilian life. Though his collections Up Front (1945) and Back Home (1947) sold well, the newspaper cartoons did not prosper, and in 1949 he left cartooning for nine years in order to pursue other interests, including acting and aviation. In 1958 he became an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; the following year he won his second Pulitzer Prize. In 1962 he moved to the Chicago Sun-Times, where he has spent the remainder of his career as a respected editorial cartoonist.

Source:

Dennis Wepman, "Bill Mauldin," in The Encyclopedia of American Comics, edited by Ron Goukrt (New York & Oxford: Facts On File, 1990), pp. 253-254.

Mauldin, Bill [William] (1921–), trained through correspondence classes as well as a year spent at the Chicago Academy of Art, American editorial cartoonist of World War II.Mauldin was unable to gain steady employment as a newspaper cartoonist, so the New Mexican native enlisted in 1940 in the Arizona National Guard. Mauldin's talents were first recognized during his assignment to the 45th Division's newspaper staff. Still he served as an infantryman once the United States entered the war.

In 1944, Mauldin joined Stars and Stripes and developed the distinctive characters of “Willie” and “Joe” to depict the drudgery and misery faced by the average G.I. in the European theater. Filthy, aged beyond their years, irreverent in their attitudes toward officers and rear echelon personnel, Willie and Joe became among the most widely recognized symbols of the American combat infantryman. Mauldin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, and the United Features Syndicate distributed his cartoons to hundreds of newspapers. In his book Up Front (1945), an instant bestseller, Mauldin interpreted his cartoons and the experiences of the average soldier.

After the war, Mauldin continued his career as a cartoonist, satirizing a variety of political and social topics. During the Korean War, he visited the front and described his experiences in Bill Mauldin in Korea (1952). Mauldin spent much of his postwar career with the Chicago Sun‐Times.
[See also Culture, War, and the Military; Illustration, War and the Military in.]

Bibliography

Frederick S. Voss , Reporting the War: The Journalistic Coverage of World War II, 1994.

G. Kurt Piehler

Bill Mauldin (William Henry Mauldin), 1921–2003, American cartoonist, b. Mountain Park, N.Mex. During World War II, in which he served as an infantryman-cartoonist in Italy, France, and Germany, Mauldin achieved fame with his sardonic cartoons. He depicted the squalid yet often funny reality of the enlisted man's life mainly through the portrayal of two cynical and unkempt G.I.'s, Willie and Joe, who appeared in Stars and Stripes, the soldiers' newspaper, and elsewhere. Mauldin's cartoons won him two Pulitzer Prizes (1945 and 1959). He was also a political cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Sun-Times. Among his principal books of cartoons are Up Front (1945), A Sort of a Saga (1949), Bill Mauldin in Korea (1952), and The Brass Ring (1971). Mauldin appeared in the movies The Red Badge of Courage and Teresa (both: 1951).

Bibliography: See biography by T. DePastino (2008).

Mauldin, Bill (William H. Mauldin) (1921– ),New Mexico‐born cartoonist, famous for his realistic, bitterly humorous drawings of front‐line soldiers in World War II, printed with his complementary text on army life and war in Up Front (1945). After the war he extended his subjects in Back Home (1946), wrote A Sort of a Saga (1949), about his youth, and treated from high school to his mid‐twenties in The Brass Ring (1971). His career as a cartoonist has been for the Chicago Sun Times since 1962. He received two Pulitzer Prizes (1944, 1959) for cartooning and has collected work in such books as What's Got Your Back Up? (1961) and Let's Declare Ourselves Winners and Get the Hell Out (1985).

Mauldin, Bill (1921–) cartoonist, born William Henry Mauldin in Mount Park, New Mexico. Mauldin gained fame during World War II for his sardonic depictions of the enlisted man's life in the military. Mauldin joined the army as a private in 1940 and in 1943 was assigned to the Stars and Stripes, for which he covered the fighting in Italy, France, and Germany. His most famous characters were Willie and Joe, two riflemen. Mauldin was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, in 1945 and again in 1959, for his work as an editorial cartoonist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.