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Thomas F. Darcy

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Thomas F. Darcy
Born(1932-12-19)December 19, 1932
Brooklyn, New York
DiedDecember 6, 2000(2000-12-06) (aged 67)
East Meadow, New York
NationalityAmerican
Area(s)Editorial cartoonist
AwardsPulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, 1970
Cartoon has an L-shaped coffin of which a military general exclaims, "Good news, we've turned the corner in Vietnam!" A U.S. flag stands in the left corner.
"Good news, we've turned the corner in Vietnam!"

Thomas Francis Darcy (December 19, 1932[1][2][3] – December 6, 2000[4]) was an American political cartoonist. While working at Newsday, he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

Thomas was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City and served in the U.S. Navy from 1951 to 1953.[1] He attended the Terry Art Institute in Florida from 1953 to 1954 and graduated from the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now the School of Visual Arts) in New York in 1956,[2] where he studied under Jack Markow and Burne Hogarth.[3] He started at Newsday in 1956 in the advertising department and became a cartoonist for the paper the following year.[4] He left for the Phoenix Gazette in 1959, but he was too liberal for that newspaper,[3] so the next year he headed back east to become an art director for the advertising agency Lenhart & Altschuler. He returned to editorial cartooning with brief stints at the Houston Post (1965-1966) and the Philadelphia Bulletin (1966-1968).[1]

Publisher Bill Moyers brought Darcy back to Newsday,[5] where he would remain until his retirement 1997.[4] Moyers gave him the "latitude" he needed to work.[6] According to the New York Times, he "was the first in a new wave of editorial cartoonists, who abandoned stylized cartooning and went straight for the jugular."[4] He said that his work was "not for the amusement of the comfortable" and that "If it's big and struts through the door, hit it hard."[5] In the World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, Rick Marschall compared Darcy to Herblock and Paul Conrad, noting his bold lines and his use of "facial expressions and emotions to advantage in depicting his characters."[3]

His Pulitzer submissions primarily concerned the Vietnam War and inner-city problems.[1] He drew a cartoon featuring an L-shaped coffin over which a general exclaims "Good news, we've turned the corner in Vietnam!"[2] In other cartoons, Darcy featured President Richard Nixon grabbing the White House columns as if they were jail bars, captioned "Prisoner of War," and another featuring two robed street prophets about to collide, carrying signs reading "Doomsday Is Coming!" and "The Mideast Is Here!"[5] In addition to the Pulitzer, Darcy also won the Thomas Nast Award from the Overseas Press Club in 1970 and 1972[7][8] and a National Headliner Award.[3]

In 1977, Darcy left editorial cartooning and created a weekly page of social commentary and reporting called "Tom Darcy on Long Island". He said "After Nixon, Vietnam and civil rights, what's left to attack? I had too much of the sixties and seventies."[3] In 1986, he was one of nine Pulitzer winners and over fifty cartoonists to participate in a collective protest, publishing cartoons against war-oriented toys during the Christmas shopping season.[9][10]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Elizabeth A. Brennan; Elizabeth C. Clarage (1999). Who's who of Pulitzer Prize winners. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 151. ISBN 978-1-57356-111-2. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
  2. ^ a b c Heinz Dietrich Fischer; Erika J. Fischer (October 2002). Complete biographical encyclopedia of Pulitzer Prize winners, 1917-2000: journalists, writers and composers on their ways to the coveted awards. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 52–. ISBN 978-3-598-30186-5. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Marschall, Rick (1980). "Thomas Darcy". In Horn, Maurice (ed.). The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons. Chelsea House. p. 184. ISBN 0-87754-088-8.
  4. ^ a b c d "Tom Darcy, 67, Prize-Winning Cartoonist". New York Times. December 11, 2000. p. 9.
  5. ^ a b c Woo, Elaine (December 9, 2000). "Tom Darcy; Won Pulitzer for Editorial Cartoons". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 12, 2011.
  6. ^ "Biographical Sketches of Persons Chosen for 54th Annual Pulitzer Prizes". New York Times. May 5, 1970. p. 48.
  7. ^ "The Thomas Nast Award 1970 | Overseas Press Club of America". opcofamerica.org. Archived from the original on 2012-03-20.
  8. ^ "The Thomas Nast Award 1972 | Overseas Press Club of America". opcofamerica.org. Archived from the original on 2012-03-20.
  9. ^ Whitworth, Steve (December 3, 1986). "Top cartoonists enlist in 'toy wars'". United Press International.
  10. ^ Helms, Nat (December 3, 1986). "Cartoonists To Urge Boycott of War Toys". Associated Press.
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