Background
He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Fontaine Talbot Fox and Mary Pitkin Barton. Both his father and paternal grandfather were judges.
He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Fontaine Talbot Fox and Mary Pitkin Barton. Both his father and paternal grandfather were judges.
Upon graduation from high school in Louisville, he was hired as a reporter and part-time cartoonist by the Louisville Herald.
With a perceptive eye for the local scene, Fox poked fun, in homely, unstylized drawings, at Louisville's Brook Street trolley line, which was known for its haphazard schedule and failure to run during foul weather. The drawings became so popular with readers that Fox continued to draw a weekly cartoon even after he left the paper to attend Indiana University in 1904. The work indirectly reinforced his interest in railroads, since he had to stay up to put his cartoons on a train that left Bloomington at 1:10 A. M. He sent the cartoons to Louisville by train, according to one account, because they "were too large to put into first-class mail boxes. "
His preoccupation with cartooning was responsible for his indifference to his studies, Fox later said, so he left the university in 1906 to return to the Herald as a full-time cartoonist. In 1907 he moved to the Louisville Times, for which he worked until 1911. From 1911 to 1915 he was a cartoonist for the Chicago Post.
Afterward Fox sold his work to feature syndicates until his retirement in 1955. His cartoons were handled by the Wheeler Syndicate from 1915 to 1921, the McNaught Syndicate from 1921 to 1926 and 1942 to 1949, and the Bell Syndicate from 1926 to 1942 and 1949 to 1955.
Fox was one of the few cartoonists of that day to own his own copyright. Known mainly for his witty comic strip "Toonerville Folks, " which traced its origins to his early trolley sketches, Fox produced a lively and inventive commentary on the people and places along the tracks of a mythical trolley line that went from rural environs through suburbs into a large city.
At the height of its popularity, "Toonerville Folks, " which centered on the rickety "Toonerville Trolley" with its nameless skipper and a twisted current collector, appeared in more than 200 daily newspapers with circulations in the millions.
Fox's outlandish, rustic characters were followed by readers as if they were actual people--like actors in movie serials and radio or television soap operas. They were so easily recognized that Fox could drop them in and out of the strip for weeks or months without using their names yet be entirely sure that the readers would know who they were when they reappeared.
Fox based his characters on people he had known as a boy. In addition to the Skipper they included the Terrible Tempered Mr. Bang (said to be based on his father), Aunt Eppie Hogg (the fattest woman in three counties), Suitcase Simpson, Powerful Katrinka (who sometimes single-handedly hoisted the wayward trolley back on its tracks), and Mickey (Himself) McGuire (a little tough guy). Mickey McGuire was so popular that a child actor named Joe Yule, Jr. , tried to cash in on the name's public acceptance.
He used it until Fox went to court and proved that he owned the copyright on the character. The actor subsequently changed his stage name to Mickey Rooney. The Toonerville strip began in 1915 as a daily gag cartoon distributed by the Wheeler Syndicate. The trolley first appeared in the strip in 1916, and the various characters were added in the 1920's and 1930's, when the cartoon was most popular.
Toy replicas of the trolley were manufactured, and Educational Pictures produced Toonerville Comedies by Fontaine Fox. Books of Fox's collected strips also were published. Although the trolley line was based on the Louisville system and on one in Pelham Manor, New York, several other cities claimed to have inspired Fox's creation. It was the gentle, comedic style of the drawing and the antics of the "Toonerville Folks" that most charmed and amused readers.
To William C. Murrell, historian of American graphic humor, the Fox characters played "boisterously and humorously upon the whole gamut of human ambitions and passions from childhood to old age. " They were "part and parcel of the daily lives and laughter of thousands in every section of the country. " Fox poked fun at life-as-usual and such varied issues as spring tonic and the country store. Cartoonists like W. T. Webster (creator of Caspar Milquetoast) and Clare A. Briggs (creator of "When a Feller Needs a Friend") also worked in this tradition.
The genre of comic art produced by Fox and his contemporaries was truly a product of American culture. Its themes reflected a nation suffering the growing pains caused by the shift from an agrarian to an urban society.
Fox was among the earliest comic observers of suburbia, although the suburbia he viewed had little in common with the sprawling communities that grew up after World War II. Ironically, Fox decided to bring his strip up to date in 1953 by removing the trolley from the strip and replacing it with a gas-driven bus.
Three months before his retirement in 1955, he restored the trolley to the strip--readying it, he said, for its final run. At his death the New York Times estimated that he had earned more than $2 million from the cartoons. In 1939, Fox briefly visited the European war zone and wrote a series of humorous articles about his "escape" for the New York Sun.
He died in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Its themes reflected a nation suffering the growing pains caused by the shift from an agrarian to an urban society.
During World War II he was a member of the War Department's Division of Pictorial Publicity while continuing to draw the strip.
On April 22, 1915, he married Edith Elizabeth Hinz; they had two daughters.