Frank Henry Willard was born on September 21, 1893 in Anna, Ill. , the son of Francis William Willard and Laura Kirkham. His father, who was a dentist, thought that Frank should aspire to medicine or the law, but the youth's ambitions were not professional.
After being "tossed out of the local high school for something or other, " he had a similar experience at the Union Academy of Southern Illinois, also in Anna. He attended night classes at the Illinois Academy of Fine Arts in 1913.
He tried a run of odd jobs that included working at a mental hospital and operating a sandwich stand at county fairs, where he was fascinated by the ballyhoomen, tattoo artists, and other carnival types. In 1909 his father moved to Chicago. Later the family followed and Frank was a claim tracer in a department store. In the summer of 1914 Willard noted that the outbreak of World War I caught the Chicago Tribune temporarily lacking the services of a political cartoonist. He drew a caricature of the God of War as a chauffeur touring the battlefields with Death and Devastation as passengers. He entitled it "Touring Europe" and sold it to the managing editor of the Tribune for $15. When his cartoon appeared prominently on the front page, four columns wide, Willard left the department store and "spent the day walking around looking at Tribunes on the news stands. " He also volunteered a cartoon on the White House death of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. Certain that he had been ordained to be a political cartoonist, Willard continued as a freelance cartoonist while seeking a steady position. Since there was no full-time opening on the Tribune, he applied at the Chicago Herald, only to be rejected as lacking in education and experience. Willard then proposed drawing a comic strip, and it was accepted. Employed in 1914 at $20 a week, he produced "City Life, " "Mrs. Pippin's Husband, " and a children's attraction, "Tom, Dick and Harry. " He stayed with the Herald until he was drafted into the army in October 1917. Assigned to the Eighty-sixth Division as an infantryman, he was transferred in May 1918 to its road-building engineers, and served with the Allied Expeditionary Forces from September 1918 to July 1919. After settling in New York City, Willard drew a strip called "The Outta Luck Club, " the "Penny Ante" series, and an occasional cartoon for the King Features Syndicate (1920 - 1923).
A new venture in journalism at the time was a picture-style tabloid, the New York Daily News, begun in 1919. Its publisher, Joseph M. Patterson, wanted a different comic strip for his new readership - one that would be frankly "low life-roughneck. " Willard heard about this desire and went to see him. After discussing the chief figure, a tough fellow utterly without manners, they searched for a name. Patterson suggested Moonshine, slang for the illegal whiskey currently circulating, then shortened it to Moon. Next he looked under "Plumbers" in a classified telephone directory and happened onto the firm of Mullins Brothers. With that, Moon Mullins was conceived. Willard did the rest. He developed an uninhibited, impolite denizen of poolrooms who looked and acted the part - with banjo eyes; cigar stump issuing from a face half-slaphappy, half-insolent; a derby hat worn defiantly indoors as well as outside; baggy, checked trousers; and showing no sign of interest in gainful employment. Moon Mullins made his bow on June 14, 1923, and Willard forthwith joined the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. There was a good deal of Frank Willard in Moon, including a deliberate similarity in appearance and a sharing of generally low-level preferences, although both were completely at home in more refined company. One of the characters who came into the strip was Moon's delinquent but likeable little brother, Kayo, who slept in a bureau drawer. Kayo was Willard's embellished recollection of his own boyhood in Anna. Other inhabitants of Moon's world were Uncle Willie, a former hobo; his wife, Mamie, who more or less ran the boarding house for the social-climbing Lady Plushbottom, née Emmy Schmaltz, and her outwardly bookish husband, Lord Plushbottom; Mushmouth, the chauffeur; and Little Egypt, the burlesque queen. It was a cast that appealed, as one publisher put it, "to the highest of the highbrows and the lowest of the lowbrows. " Production of the strip was a series of ordeals for Willard, who made a rule of procrastination. Instead of building a backlog and turning out a strip a day, he would wait until hard pressed by the syndicate for a week's work at a time. Then he shut himself up with his drawing materials, wearing a heavy sweat shirt, smoking cigars, and drinking coffee. Sharing these hotbox sessions, which ran as long as thirty-six hours, was Willard's friend and co-worker from 1930, Ferd Johnson. A combination of Willard and Moon, Johnson took over in emergencies during their long association. While working in New York Willard lived near Greenwich, Connecticut, and maintained a summer home at Poland Springs, Me. , but for most of his career Los Angeles was his home. After his death, in Los Angeles, the comic strip, then appearing in 250 newspapers with a circulation of 15, 000, 000, was carried on by Ferd Johnson.
He is best known for his syndicated newspaper comic strip Moon Mullins which ran from 1923 to 1991, working alongside assistant Ferd Johnson. Willard also created a four-panel Sunday feature, "Kitty Higgins, " which ran from 1930 to the early 1960's. Willard's $100, 000 gross salary made him one of the highest paid among comic artists of his time.
Frank Willard was one of the first members of the National Cartoonists Society.
In 1923 he married Priscilla Mangold; they had two children. On January 7, 1933, he married Marie O'Connell.
