Background
Gross was born on March 4, 1895, in New York City, the son of Samuel Gross and Rose Spivak.
(Fiction Book with Yiddish overtones in which a character ...)
Fiction Book with Yiddish overtones in which a character named Mr. Figgits nearly starts WWIII by refusing to eat a chocolate eclair.
https://www.amazon.com/shoulda-Ate-Eclair-Milt-Gross/dp/B0007ELFLC?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0007ELFLC
(Cartoons tell the story of a young trapper whose crafty p...)
Cartoons tell the story of a young trapper whose crafty partner steals their profits and convinces the trapper's girlfriend, a beautiful singer, that the trapper is dead
https://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Gold-Great-American-No/dp/0896593673?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0896593673
( • In a mind-blowing, laugh-filled, freewheeling tour of...)
• In a mind-blowing, laugh-filled, freewheeling tour of New York, Gross’ character Pop and his sidekick son blast through the East Side, The West Side, China Tow,n and Harlem. The demented-duo roar through Yankee Stadium, The New York Public Library, and Coney Island! • A "lost" graphic novel from one of the FIRST and MOST BRILLIANT graphic novelists: Milt Gross! Listen to what Big Shot cartoonists say about Gross: "I love all his work-what a goofball!" - R. Crumb; "Still Great!" - Jules Feiffer; "He frees you up!" - Patrick McDonnell; "Dig!"- Matt Groening. • Animation Resources says of this uber-rare book from 1939: "It’s an amazing time capsule into life in the Big Apple in its golden age. If Weegee’s Naked City depicts the front page view of this marvelous time and place, Gross’ Cartoon Tour tells the Funny Pages version." • Animation Resources concludes: "Milt Gross is one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived. His drawing style is direct and funny with absolutely flawless staging, composition and expression...there’s still plenty of joy in every panel!"
https://www.amazon.com/Milt-Gross-New-York/dp/1631401734?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1631401734
animator cartoonist illustrator author
Gross was born on March 4, 1895, in New York City, the son of Samuel Gross and Rose Spivak.
Gross attended high school in Kearney, New Jersey, for a year and a half.
At the age of twelve Gross took a job as a copyboy on William Randolph Hearst's New York American. He expressed an interest in drawing and was assigned to the paper's art department, which was headed by the popular comic artist Thomas A. Dorgan, with whom he established a warm relationship. Because many of the paper's artists were late with their work, young Gross was often asked to ghost and retouch cartoons and other artists' work. In 1913, when he was eighteen years old, Gross was hired as a staff artist by the American Press Association. In 1915, he returned to Hearst's employ, this time on the New York Evening Journal where he created his own comic strip, called "Henry Peck, A Happy Married Man. " Gross left the Evening Journal in 1917 after a salary dispute with editor Arthur Brisbane. After serving briefly in the U. S. Army during World War I, Gross became a producer of animated cartoons for Bray Studios. By 1922 he was back in the newspaper business, working for the New York World, where he created two popular comic strips, "Banana Oil" and "Count Screwloose from Toulouse, " in which the zany inmate of an asylum came out into the world to observe humanity, only to find that things were saner in the asylum. In 1926 what was to become Gross's bestknown work began to appear in the World. Both strips became books and had considerable influence in popularizing Yiddish dialect, making way for the popular Jewish entertainers of the 1930's and 1940's. In 1930 Gross created a new genre with He Done Her Wrong, a parody of a Hollywood movie story. Gross based the wordless novel on his experiences in animation in Hollywood, where he worked with Charlie Chaplin on The Circus and wrote screenplays based on "Nize Baby. " With the demise of the New York World in 1931, Gross, who had maintained his Hollywood connections, moved west to work for both the film industry and King Features. In the latter assignment he created two popular comic strips, "Dave's Delicatessen, " and "That's My Pop. " The first of these was based on the daydreams of customers in a New York delicatessen; the second, the glee that a small boy found in the absurdities of his father's daily routine. Gross's drawings were scenarios, usually with nine panels and drawn in a crude comic style wherein both facial expressions and body shapes were exaggerated. Even though much of Gross's urban humor seemed distant from the experiences of many Americans who knew nothing of Yiddish-American dialect, its universal message was powerful enough to make the artist's books best sellers. Gross popularized numerous slang expressions; many have gone out of fashion, but such memorable phrases as "drop dead, " "break a leg, " and "you should live so long" (which he translated from the Yiddish) remain a part of modern speech patterns. As an artist Gross worked in a burlesque pen-and-ink style in contrast to the angry grease-pencil drawings of his socially conscious contemporaries Art Young, Boardman Robinson, and Robert Minor. While his drawing had obvious political implications, it was notably nonpolitical in tone. Gross retired in 1945 after suffering a heart attack. He died eight years later of a coronary occlusion while aboard a trans-Pacific liner on his way home to Los Angeles from Hawaii.
( • In a mind-blowing, laugh-filled, freewheeling tour of...)
(Cartoons tell the story of a young trapper whose crafty p...)
(Fiction Book with Yiddish overtones in which a character ...)
(American humor.)
In 1920 Gross married Anna Abramson; they had three children.