Background

Frederick Burr Opper was born on January 2, 1857, at Madison, Lake County, Ohio, the oldest of three children and only son of Lewis and Aurelia (Burr) Opper. His father, a native of Austria, came to America as a young man and engaged in various mercantile businesses. His mother was descended from Benjamin Burr, one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut.

Education

Opper's education was scanty: he attended public schools in Madison until he was fourteen; his later artistic training consisted of a term at Cooper Union, New York City, and some months as pupil-assistant to the cartoonist and illustrator Frank Beard.

Career

After leaving school Frederick worked for about a year in the printing office of the Madison Gazette, then moved to New York City, where he found employment in a dry goods store. He had been interested in drawing since he was a small boy, and he soon began sending drawings to Wild Oats and similar comic magazines, that journal publishing his first cartoon in 1876. In 1877 he joined the staff of the magazine publisher Frank Leslie, where he remained for four years, doing regular illustration and humorous items. In 1881 he gladly accepted the offer of a position on Puck, the humorous weekly published by Joseph Keppler, where he was employed solely in comic work. After eighteen years on Puck, which he served well but without distinction or brilliance, he accepted a tempting offer from William Randolph Hearst in 1899. It was with the Hearst connection that Opper, at the age of forty-two, began the work that was to raise him to front rank as a great American comic artist. Hearst, early in his long rivalry for circulation with Joseph Pulitzer, raided the staffs of Life, Puck, and Judge, luring away many of their best comic artists, but few were able to meet the demands and tempo of newspaper work. Hearst took a strong personal interest in his "Comic Section, " and in Opper he found a man who quickly adapted himself and his technique and who developed great latent abilities. Members of the comic staffs of the rival papers passed back and forth as the bidding for their services rose to fabulous figures, but Opper remained with Hearst from 1899 until forced to retire by failing sight in 1932.

Although he was not primarily a political cartoonist, Opper's two series for the presidential campaign of 1900, "Willie and Teddy" (on McKinley and Roosevelt) and "Willie and His Poppa" ("Poppa" being "the Trusts") are unique in sustained and cumulative effect. Appearing daily in the Hearst papers throughout the campaign, these hilarious yet hard-hitting cartoons are masterworks of their kind. Equally memorable is his "Alphabet of Joyous Trusts, " in which each of the gigantic top-hatted, obese, and grinning trusts from A to Z beat, kick, rob, and variously assault a bewildered little Mr. Common People. But it is as a comic artist of the grotesque school that Opper is best known. When he left the Puck staff he had perforce to abandon the fine lines and the cross-hatchings of the engraving technique for the broader and more exaggerated characterizations of the newly popularnewspaper style. Also, with the rise of the new comic-strip form - a form in which he and Richard F. Outcault were among the pioneers - he had to conceive and develop whole series of extravagant and fantastic sequences of comic adventures. In this he was prodigiously successful. "Happy Hooligan" was his most important comic strip; it began in 1899 and lasted well over a quarter of a century. Among his other famous series were "Alphonse and Gaston, " "Our Antediluvian Ancestors, " and "Maude the Mule. " Of these and others a dozen separate collections appeared in book form between 1900 and 1910.

It has frequently been written that Opper, both in his cartoons and in his comics, owed much to the suggestions of Arthur Brisbane. Opper himself privately gave credit to the personal interest of Hearst. Whatever the origins of the matter, the manner was entirely Opper's, and that manner is outstanding. His record of more than fifty years of comic production is probably unequaled, although in quantity, variety, and quality he never matched his own output in the first decade of the century. In addition to the considerable number of "Opper Books, " Opper illustrated Bill Nye's Comic History of the United States (1894), by Edgar Wilson Nye, Mr. Dooley's Philosophy (1900), by Finley Peter Dunne, George Vere Hobart's Dinkelspiel, His Gonversationings (1900), and editions of Mother Goose and Aesop's Fables (1916). He died of heart disease in New Rochelle, New York. His ashes were buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City.

Achievements

• Frederick Opper's most notable work was his comic strip Happy Hooligan. His other famous series: Willie and Teddy, Willie and His Poppa, Alphabet of Joyous Trusts, Alphonse and Gaston, Our Antediluvian Ancestors, Maude the Mule, etc. Opper also illustrated: Comic History of the United States (1894); Mr. Dooley's Philosophy (1900); Dinkelspiel, His Gonversationings (1900), and editions of Mother Goose and Aesop's Fables (1916).

Works

More photos

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  • Happy Hooligan (Forever Nuts: Classic Screwball Strips)

    ( Opper was already a quite successful cartoonist/illustr...)

  • The Complete Tribune Primer

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Willie and his Papa, and the Rest of the Family: 2

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes - Scholar's Choice Edition

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Complete Tribune Primer

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The Early Comics of F. Opper

    (The Early Comics of F. Opper consists of Happy Hooligan (...)

  • Comic History of the United States

Connections

In 1882 Opper had married Nellie Barnett, by whom he had three children, Lawrence, Anna, and Sophia.

Father:

Lewis Opper

Mother:

Aurelia (Burr) Opper

Wife:

Nellie (Barnett) Opper

Daughter:

Anna Opper

Daughter:

Sophia Opper

Son:

Lawrence Opper