Here's a cute Sunday strip from 1902. Hardy Hiram ran from 3/2 to 4/13/1902 in the New York Tribune. At first glance you'd think that the cartoonist failed to sign the strip, but if you look at the chicken on the right in the last panel you'll see that its tailfeathers spell out V E T. So the question is, who is VET? Anyone know?
Hey folks -
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There was a "Vet" Anderson that kicked around animation for a number of years. He animated for one or more of the small shops that produced the silent Mutt & Jeff cartoons in the teens under Bud Fisher's name. I believe that he also worked at the Fables Studio for Paul Terry during the 1920's. He was at Max Fleischer's New York studio in the early thirties and then moved to Walter Lantz's studio in California. He seems to have been a bit older than most of the kids in that business. If memory serves, he was called Vet because he served in the Spanish-American War.
ReplyDeleteSome animation histories confuse him with Carl Anderson (of Henry fame) who was an animator for the Bray Studio in 1916 or so.
Hey Frank -
ReplyDeleteGreat thought there! I hadn't thought of Vet Anderson - guess I was stuck on the idea that the letters were initials. Anderson has one known newspaper comic strip credit at the NY World in 1908, so he was interested in doing newspaper work.
Unless someone has reason to believe this isn't Vet Anderson, I'm going with that.
--Allan
That is Vet Anderson's signature. (My wife is one of his grandaughters.) He was a political cartoonist at the New York Herald Tribune and the Detroit Free Press. He also sculpted two bas-reliefs in Golden Gate Park - San Francisco near the Horseshoe Pits - a Horseshoe Pitcher and Horse.
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