Franklin “Frank” Robbins was born on September 9, 1917, in Boston, Massachusetts, according to his World War II draft card and Social Security application (transcribed at Ancestry.com).
In the 1920 United States Census, Robbins was the only child of Archibald (salesman born in Russia) and Laura (born in Austria). They were Boston residents at 3144 Washington Street.
Famous Artists and Writers of King Features Syndicate (1949) profiled Robbins and said
... Robbins was a Grade-A prodigy of the drawing board in his native Boston at the age of four, won several art scholarships at 9, painted giant murals for his high school at 13 ...
Who’s Who in American Art 1976 said Robbins studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School.
The 1930 census counted twelve-year-old Robbins and his widow mother in Boston at 121 Chambers Street.
In Famous Artists Robbins said
“I began life back of the North Station in Boston … precisely on the wrong side of the tracks! At fifteen [around 1933], my family came to New York, lived on the East Side and I began my professional career.”After kicking around as errand boy in ad agencies, Frank, at the age of sixteen, came under the eagle eye of Edward Trumbull, well-known muralist. Trumbull was then color director of the Radio City project, and through him Frank met the architects and contractors for the buildings being erected. He immediately received commissions to do pencil portraits of all the architects and other personalities connected with the construction project. Upon completion of this lengthy and challenging job, Frank met the Rockefellers and received a grant from them to study and paint. A year later, in a studio given to him in the Graybar building, Frank was busy working on a series of mural sketches for the then proposed Children’s Broadcasting Studio in the RCA building. The sketches were approved when then NBC studios opened for a full schedule of broadcasting. Since the murals were to be painted directly on the walls this gave Frank the choice of working for three months in the wee hours between midnight and early dawn or forgetting the whole deal. Due to his health at the time Frank had to regretfully drop the project.
Art Digest, March 15, 1936, mentioned Robbins’ prize.
… the Thomas B. Clarke prize of $100 was awarded to Franklin Robbins’ “Sixth Avenue ‘L’.”
In The World Encyclopedia of Comics, Volume 5 (1999), Maurice Horn said “In 1938 he flirted briefly with the comic book medium.” In The Encyclopedia of American Comics from 1897 to the Present (1990), Ron Goulart said Robbins “even put in time in Bert Whitman’s comic book shop.”
In 1939, Robbins accepted the Associated Press’s offer to produce Scorchy Smith which began in 1930 with John Terry who was followed by Noel Sickles (1934), Bert Christman (1936) and Howell Dodd (1938). American Newspaper Comics (2012) said Robbins did the strip from May 22, 1939 to March 11, 1944 with a small gap in 1943 by other hands.
In the Encyclopedia of American Comics, Goulart said
At about the same time he’d been doing Scorchy Smith, Robbins also drew Lightnin’ and the Lone Rider, a thinly syndicated cowboy strip. This poor man’s Lone Ranger had originally been drawn by Jack Kirby.
According to the 1940 census, Robbins and his mother resided in Manhattan at 840 Third Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets. He was a freelance artist who had four years of high school.
On August 20, 1940, Robbins, aboard the steamship Mexico, returned from Veracruz, Mexico to the port of New York. The passenger list said his address was 11 West 52nd Street in Manhattan.
Robbins signed his World War II draft card on October 16, 1940. His employer was the Associated Press. Robbins was described as five feet nine inches, 147 pounds, with brown eyes and hair. Apparently he did not serve during the war.
The Artists League of America’s 1943 exhibition, “This Is Our War”, was at the Wildenstein Galleries in New York. Robbins was one of 89 painters and 12 sculptors represented. His painting, “This Is Our War, Too”, was published in the Springfield Sunday Union and Republican (Massachusetts), March 7, 1943. (The painting was sold in 2019.)
American Newspaper Comics said Robbins was a ghost artist on The Green Hornet (1941) for the Bell Syndicate. For the King Features Syndicate, Robbins created the adventure strip Johnny Hazard. The daily and Sunday series ran from June 5, 1944 to August 20, 1977. Alberto Becattini says the strip was ghost written by Howard Liss from 1951 to 1971, and Jack Kirby drew six weeks of dailies in 1956.
On April 30, 1945, Robbins and Bertha Greenstein obtained, in Manhattan, marriage license number 10025. Robbins’ lettering is evident on the affidavit. They married on May 17.
Famous Artists said
Frank is now married, and his lovely wife, Berta, helps him on research and the more pleasant matters of life. “Frankly,” Frank confided to me, “Any similarity between my comic strip heroines and my wife are pure coincidence!”
National Cartoonists Society
On October 15, 1947, Robbins and his wife flew on American Airlines from Mexico City to San Antonio, Texas. Their address on the passenger list was 418 West 20th Street in Manhattan.
The same address was recorded in the 1950 census. Robbins, his wife and son, Michael, lived on the second floor.
Robbins and his wife departed New York, January 20, 1951, aboard the steamship Queen of Bermuda for a week’s vacation in Bermuda. Their address was 10 West 86th Street.
Robbins was one of 239 cartoonists in the 1951 exhibition, “American Cartooning”, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A photograph of Robbins, at the museum, was published in the Daily Bulletin (Endicott, New York), May 29, 1951.
On September 9, 1953, Robbins took his family on a two-month vacation in Europe. They sailed on the steamship Ile de France bound for Le Havre, France.
Robbins’ 1954 painting “Orchestra” was accepted in the 1955 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The catalog said Robbins lived at 285 Central Park West in Manhattan. Who’s Who said Robbins’ paintings were exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, National Academy of Design, and Audubon Artists in 1957 and 1958.
Something About the Author, Volume 32 (1983) said Robbins’ magazine illustrations appeared in Life, Look, Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post.
In the 1970s, Johnny Hazard appeared in fewer newspapers which affected Robbins’ income. He found work in comic books, first at DC then Marvel. Johnny Hazard ended in August 1977. Robbins’ final comic book contributions appeared in 1979. He and his second wife, Ida Hecht, whom he married in 1977, moved to Mexico. She passed away on January 27, 1989 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Co-incidentally, Robbins’ first wife passed away the same year on March 4 (Social Security Death Index).
Robbins’ third wife, Fran, was interviewed in Comic Book Creator #1, Spring 2013.
“I taught English there,” she said. “I met Frank while I was directing a play reading of Amadeus.”“His wife had died two years before I met him … We were together for about five years. We had a wonderful marriage. It was a big loss when he died, let me tell you.”
In addition to his artistic talent, Robbins was an audiophile according to Fran.
“We had a sound system that was second to none. ... He created a single cone speaker that was astonishing. It was very pure sound, very clear. wonderful, wonderful. He knew a lot about sound. He had boxes and boxes of research about sound.”
Robbins passed away on November 28, 1994 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He was laid to rest at Panteón de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.
Further Reading and Viewing
More Heroes of the Comics: Portraits of the Legends of Comic Books (2016)
Fabulous Fifties, Frank Robbins’ comics and advertising
Art Digest, May 1951, Met Surveys U.S. Cartooning
Heritage Auctions, Frank Robbins original art
Syracuse University, Frank Robbins Cartoons
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