FEIFFER, Jules (Ralph) 1929-

PERSONAL: Born January 26, 1929, in Bronx, New York; son of David (held a variety of positions, including dental technician and sales representative) and Rhoda (a fashion designer; maiden name, Davis) Feiffer; married Judith Sheftel (a film production executive), September 17, 1961 (divorced); married Jennifer Allen (a journalist); children: (first marriage) Kate; (second marriage) Halley, Julie. Education: Attended Art Students League, New York, NY, 1946, and Pratt Institute, 1947-48 and 1949-51.

ADDRESSES: Home—325 West End Ave., New York, NY 10023. Office—c/o Universal Press Syndicate, 4900 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64112.

CAREER: Assistant to cartoonist Will Eisner, 1946-51, and ghostwriter for Eisner's comic book The Spirit, 1949-51; author of syndicated cartoon strip, Clifford, 1949-51; held a variety of positions in the art field, 1953-56, including producer of slide films, writer for Columbia Broadcasting System's Terry Toons, and designer of booklets for an art firm; author of cartoon strip (originally titled Sick, Sick, Sick, later changed to Feiffer), published in Village Voice, 1956-97, published weekly in London Observer, 1958-66, and 1972-82, and regularly in Playboy, beginning 1959, New Yorker, beginning 1993, and New Statesman & Society, beginning 1994; syndicated cartoonist, beginning 1959, including syndication by Universal Press Syndicate, Kansas City, MO. Yale University, faculty member at Yale Drama School, 1973-74. Columbia University, senior fellow in National Arts Journalism Program, 1997-98. Military service: U.S. Army, Signal Corps, 1951-53; worked in cartoon animation unit.

MEMBER: PEN, American Academy of Arts and Letters (member of board of directors), Authors League of America, Authors Guild (life member), Dramatists Guild (member of council), Writers Guild of America East.

AWARDS, HONORS: Special George Polk Memorial Award, Department of Journalism, Long Island University, 1962; named most promising playwright of 1966-67 season by New York drama critics; London Theater Critics Award, 1967, and Obie Award from Village Voice, 1969, both for Little Murders; Outer Circle Critics Award, 1969, for Little Murders, and 1970, for The White House Murder Case; Antoinette Perry Award nomination, best play, 1976, for Knock Knock; Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, 1986.

WRITINGS:

cartoon collections

Sick, Sick, Sick, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1958, published with introduction by Kenneth Tynan, Collins (New York, NY), 1959.

Passionella, and Other Stories (also see below), McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1959.

Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl, Random House (New York, NY), 1961.

Feiffer's Album, Random House (New York, NY), 1963.

The Penguin Feiffer, Penguin (New York, NY), 1966.

Feiffer's Marriage Manual, Random House (New York, NY), 1967.

Feiffer on Civil Rights, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (New York, NY), 1967.

Pictures at a Prosecution: Drawings and Text from the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1971.

Feiffer on Nixon: The Cartoon Presidency, Random House (New York, NY), 1974.

(With Israel Horovitz) VD Blues, Avon (New York, NY), 1974.

Tantrum: A Novel in Cartoons, Knopf (New York, NY), 1979.

Popeye: The Movie Novel (based on the screenplay by Feiffer), edited by Richard J. Anobile, Avon (New York, NY), 1980.

Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan, edited by Steve Heller, Knopf (New York, NY), 1982.

(Coauthor) Outer Space Spirit, 1952, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1983.

Marriage Is an Invasion of Privacy and Other Dangerous Views, Andrews & McMeel (Fairway, KS), 1984.

Feiffer's Children, Andrews & McMeel (Fairway, KS), 1986.

Ronald Reagan in Movie America: A Jules Feiffer Production, Andrews & McMeel (Fairway, KS), 1988.

The Complete Color Terry and the Pirates, Remco, 1990.

published plays

The Explainers (satirical review; produced in Chicago, IL, at Playwright's Cabaret Theater, 1961), McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1960.

Crawling Arnold (one act; first produced in Spoleto, Italy, at Festival of Two Worlds, 1961; first produced in United States in Cambridge, MA, at Poets' Theater, 1961), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1963.

Hold Me! (first produced off-Broadway at American Place Theater, 1977), Random House (New York, NY), 1963.

The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler (one-act; first produced in Los Angeles, CA, at Mark Taper Forum, 1967), Random House (New York, NY), 1965.

Little Murders (two-act comedy; first produced on Broadway at Broadhurst Theater, 1967; first American play produced on the West End, London, England, by Royal Shakespeare Company at Aldwych Theater, 1967; also see below), Random House (New York, NY), 1968, reprinted, Penguin (New York, NY), 1983.

(With others) Dick and Jane (one act; produced in New York, NY, at Eden Theater as part of Oh! Calcutta!, devised by Kenneth Tynan, 1969; also see below), published in Oh! Calcutta!, edited by Kenneth Tynan, Grove (New York, NY), 1969.

Feiffer's People: Sketches and Observations (produced as Feiffer's People in Edinburgh, Scotland, at International Festival of Music and Drama, 1968), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1969.

The White House Murder Case: A Play in Two Acts [and] Dick and Jane: A One-Act Play (The White House Murder Case first produced off-Broadway at Circle in the Square Downtown, 1970), Grove (New York, NY), 1970.

Knock Knock (first produced in New York, NY, at Circle Repertory Theater, 1976), Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1976.

Elliot Loves (first produced on Broadway, 1989), Grove (New York, NY), 1989.

Anthony Rose, Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1990.

unpublished plays

The World of Jules Feiffer, produced in New Jersey at Hunterdon Hills Playhouse, 1962.

God Bless, first produced in New Haven, CT, at Yale University, 1968; produced on the West End by Royal Shakespeare Company at Aldwych Theater, 1968.

Munro (adapted by Feiffer from story in Passionella, and Other Stories), first produced in Brooklyn, NY, at Prospect Park, 1971.

(With others) Watergate Classics, first produced in New Haven, CT, at Yale University, 1973.

Grownups, first produced in Cambridge, MA, at Loeb Drama Center, 1981; produced on Broadway at Lyceum Theater, December, 1981.

A Think Piece, first produced in New York, NY, at Circle Repertory Theater, 1982.

Carnal Knowledge (revised version of play of same title originally written c. 1970; also see below), first produced in Houston, TX, at Stages Repertory Theater, 1988.

Also author of Interview and You Should Have Caught Me at the White House, both c. 1962.

screenplays

Munro (animated cartoon; adapted by Feiffer from story in Passionella, and Other Stories), Rembrandt Films, 1961.

Carnal Knowledge (adapted from Feiffer's unpublished, unproduced play of same title written c. 1970), Avco Embassy, 1971.

Little Murders (adapted by author from play of same title), Twentieth Century-Fox, 1971.

Popeye, Paramount/Walt Disney Productions, 1980.

Also author of the unproduced screenplays, Little Brucie, Bernard and Huey, and I Want to Go Home.

for children

The Man in the Ceiling, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.

A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

Meanwhile, Harpercrest (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Daniel M. Pinkwater) Five Novels: The Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, The Snarkout Boys, The Avocado of Death, The Last Gur, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1997.

I Lost My Bear, William Morrow (New York, NY), 1998.

Bark: George, HarperCollins Juvenile Books (New York, NY), 1999.

other

(Illustrator) Robert Mines, My Mind Went All to Pieces, Dial (New York, NY), 1959.

(Illustrator) Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth, Random House (New York, NY), 1961.

Harry, the Rat with Women (novel), McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1963.

(Editor and annotator) The Great Comic Book Heroes, Dial (New York, NY), 1965, published with new illustrations and without original comic-book stories), Fantagraphics (Stamford, CT), 2003.

Silverlips (television play), Public Broadcasting Service, 1972.

(With Herb Gardner, Peter Stone, and Neil Simon) Happy Endings (television play), American Broadcasting Companies, 1975.

Akroyd (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977.

(Author of introduction) Rick Marshall, editor, The Complete E. C. Segar Popeye, Fantagraphics (Stamford, CT), 1984.

Feiffer: The Collected Works, Volume 1: Clifford, Fantagraphics (Stamford, CT), 1989.

Feiffer: The Collected Works, Volume 2: Munro, Fantagraphics (Stamford, CT), 1989.

Feiffer: The Collected Works, Volume 3: Sick, Sick, Sick, Fantagraphics (Stamford, CT), 1991.

Feiffer: The Collected Works: Passionella, Fantagraphics (Stamford, CT), 1993.

(With Ted Rall) Revenge of the Latchkey Kids: An Illustrated Guide to Surviving the '90s and Beyond, Workman Publishing Company, 1998 (New York, NY).

(Illustrator) Florence Parry Heide, Some Things Are Scary, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

ADAPTATIONS: The Feiffer Film, based on Feiffer's cartoons, was released in 1965; Harry, the Rat with Women was made into a play and produced in Detroit, MI, at Detroit Institute of Arts, 1966; Passionella, and Other Stories was adapted by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick into "Passionella," a one-act musical produced on Broadway as part of The Apple Tree, 1967; Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan was adapted by Russell Vandenbroucke into a play titled Feiffer's America; What Are We Saying?, a parody on Feiffer's cartoons, was produced in Rome, Italy.

SIDELIGHTS: On learning that Hudson Review contributor John Simon described Jules Feiffer's play Little Murders as "bloody-minded," and made reference to its "grotesque horror" and "hideous reality," those who only know Feiffer as a cartoonist and not as a playwright might be more than a little surprised. Such brutal words are unexpected when used to characterize the work of a cartoonist—whom we might imagine would only want to make us laugh.

Feiffer revealed the origins of his somewhat black humor in a Washington Post interview with Henry Allen: "Back then [in the 1950s], comedy was still working in a tradition that came out of World War I…. Comedy was mired in insults and gags. It was Bob Hope and Bing Cosby, Burns and Allen, Ozzie and Harriet. There was no such thing as comedy about relationships, nothing about the newly urban and collegiate Americans. What I was interested in was using humor as a reflection of one's own confusion, ambivalence and dilemma, dealing with sexual life as one knew it to be." His cartoons presented a mixture of social commentary and political satire previously reserved for the editorial page of the newspaper.

From the beginning of his career Feiffer avoided the silliness expected of a nonpolitical cartoonist. His characters include people who are odd enough to be humorous but who at the same time can elicit a painful, empathetic response from his readers: Passionella, who achieves movie stardom because she has the world's largest breasts; Bernard Mergeneiler, known for his romantic failures; and an inventor who creates a "Lonely Machine" that makes light conversation and delivers sympathetic remarks whenever necessary.

Feiffer's concerns as a cartoonist have followed him to the stage, but some critics have faulted Feiffer's plays for being too dependent on his cartoons for inspiration. In the Village Voice Carll Tucker, for example, commented: "Feiffer's genius as a cartoonist is for dramatic moments—establishing and comically concluding a situation in eight still frames. His characters have personality only for the purpose of making a point: They do not have, as breathing dramatic characters must, the freedom to develop, to grow away from their status as idea-bearers."

Other critics voiced their approval for what they have seen as the influence of Feiffer's cartoons in his work for the theater. In Alan Rich's New York magazine review of Feiffer's play, Knock Knock, for example, the critic noted: "What gives [the play] its humor—and a great deal of it is screamingly funny—is the incredible accuracy of [Feiffer's] language, and his use of it to paint the urban neurosis in exact colors. This we know from his cartoons, and we learn it anew from this endearing, congenial theater piece." Other commentators on New York's theatrical scene, such as Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Thomas Edward Ruddick, have been able to separate Feiffer's dramatic work from his other creative efforts. "Feiffer's plays show considerable complexity of plot, character, and idea, and command attention," Ruddick noted, "not dependent upon Feiffer's other achievements. His plays, independently, constitute a noteworthy body of work."

Those who enjoyed Feiffer for his adults-only satire may have been surprised to see the cartoonist venture into the children's book market in the 1990s. For his part, Feiffer is the father to essentially three generations of girls; in 1993, when The Man in the Ceiling was published, he had thirty-one-year-old Kate, eleven-year-old Halley (to whom that book is dedicated) and fifteen-month-old Julie. "I'm glad they're girls," the author told Publishers Weekly writer John F. Baker. "Boys are terribly active and geared toward just the sort of sports I was never any good at."

Feiffer's attraction to the youth market arose "from a combination of his fond recollections of reading to Halley as a small child … and an illustrator friend's interest in doing a book," according to Baker. In The Man in the Ceiling, Feiffer writes and illustrates the tale of Jimmy, a little boy who dreams of being a cartoonist. His aptitude for drawing underscores the fact that the boy is "not much good at anything else, including such boyish but un Feiffer-like pastimes as sports," Baker continued.

"Yes, I did cartoons as a kid, just like Jimmy," Feiffer admitted in the Publishers Weekly piece. "And I rediscovered some of them while I was working on [the book]. But those drawings of Jimmy's were the toughest part; I had to get the tone just right—they mustn't be too satirical—and it terrified me for a long time. I left them right to the end."

Feiffer's caution was rewarded by the favorable reviews that greeted The Man in the Ceiling. Jonathan Fast, in fact, singled out Jimmy's artwork, noting in his New York Times Book Review piece, "the adventures of Mini-Man, Bullet head and The Man in the Ceiling, Jimmy's magnum opus, are reprinted in glorious pencil and run as long as six pages." Evidently Feiffer's efforts also reached a younger audience: Nine-year-old reviewer Erin Smith told the San Francisco Review of Books that the work "has great pictures. The story is just as funny. The best pictures are the comics that Jimmy drew."

In 1995 Feiffer released his second children's book, A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears. The volume is comprised of fairy tales with a slightly acerbic air meant to appeal to children and parents alike. Featuring King Whatchamacallit, who speaks in spoonerisms: "My son, when you're around, no till gets soiled—er, no soil gets tilled; no noo gets shailed—that is, no shoe gets nailed." Another urbane character, J. Wellington Wizard, amused children's author Daniel M. Pinkwater. "Written with conviction, not to say innocence, Mr. Feiffer's ebullient story renders the reader capable of maximum suspension of disbelief—and what would be corny is touching instead," Pinkwater declared in the New York Times Book Review.

As Feiffer revealed to Baker, the best part of being a children's author is the honest response from his young readers: "It's much more direct even than in the theater, so much more heartening. You create something out of love and devotion, and when you get it back, you can't believe it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Anobile, Richard J., Popeye: The Movie Novel, Avon (New York, NY), 1980.

Cohen, Sarah Blacher, editor, From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Jewish-American Stage and Screen, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1983.

Contemporary Dramatists, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1988.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 2, 1974, Volume 8, 1978, Volume 64, 1991.

Corliss, Richard, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 1974.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 7: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, 1981, Volume 44: American Screenwriters, Second Series, 1986.

periodicals

American Cinematographer, January, 1971, p. 37.

American Film, December, 1980; July-August, 1987, p. 36.

Chicago, April, 1988, p. 32.

Chicago Tribune, June 29, 1979; November 2, 1982.

Commonweal, December 1, 1989, p. 676; August 10, 1990, p. 455.

Harper's, September, 1961, pp. 58-62.

Hudson Review, summer, 1967, John Simon, review of Little Murders.

Library Journal, July, 2003, pp. 69-70.

Los Angeles Times, November 13, 1988.

Newsweek, June 18, 1990, p. 58.

New York, February 2, 1976, Alan Rich, review of Knock Knock; May 16, 1976; December 21, 1981, pp. 81-82; May 25, 1987, p. 108; November 26, 1990, p. 33; December 3, 1990, p. 148.

New Yorker, May 18, 1987, p. 87; November 2, 1992, p. 55.

New York Times, January 21, 1977; December 15, 1981; May 7, 1987.

New York Times Book Review, December 19, 1982, p. 8; November 14, 1993, Jonathan Fast, review of The Man in the Ceiling, p. 57; December 31, 1995, Daniel M. Pinkwater, review of A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, October 25, 1993, John F. Baker, review of The Man in the Ceiling, p. 62; November 20, 1995.

San Francisco Review of Books, April-May, 1994, Erin Smith, review of The Man in the Ceiling.

School Library Journal, February, 1994, p. 102.

Time, June 18, 1990, p. 85.

Village Voice, February 2, 1976, article by Carll Tucker.

Washington Post, August 17, 1979, interview by Henry Allen.*