Background
Percy Lee Crosby was born on December 8, 1891 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He was the son of Thomas Francis Crosby and Frances Greene. His father was a dealer in art materials and painted as an avocation.
https://www.amazon.com/story-Skippy-Percy-1891-1964-Crosby/dp/B007GAD71Q?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B007GAD71Q
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
https://www.amazon.com/rookie-Squad-Percy-1891-1964-Crosby/dp/117496183X?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=117496183X
Percy Lee Crosby was born on December 8, 1891 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He was the son of Thomas Francis Crosby and Frances Greene. His father was a dealer in art materials and painted as an avocation.
Percy attended public schools in Queens, New York. He left high school in his sophomore year and found a job in the art department of the Delineator (edited by Theodore Dreiser). He attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and the Art Students League in Manhattan.
He worked for the New York Call and at the age of seventeen for the New York Globe, where he was a sports and political cartoonist, court sketcher, and comic artist. While with the Globe he received first prize in a cartoonist contest, which helped him obtain a position with the New York World.
Between 1915 and 1917 Crosby drew a comic strip called "The Clancy Kids, " distributed by the McClure Syndicate, which reflected his fascination with the antics of children, a lifelong obsession.
During World War I Crosby served overseas in the infantry with the 77th Division and achieved the rank of first lieutenant. He became a captain in 1919. While a soldier, he published two books of war cartoons, Between Shots (1919) and That Rooky of the 13th Squad (1919).
After the war Crosby's cartoons began appearing in the humor magazine Life, for which, in 1923, he introduced a "Skippy" series. In 1925 "Skippy" became a daily comic strip distributed by Hearst's King Features, although Crosby owned the copyright. The pranks, philosophy, and boyhood nonsense of this cartoon imp found a wide audience among both youngsters and adults in the United States and later abroad. In 1926 the artist Charles Dana Gibson wrote: "Skippy is one of the truest and most thoroughly sympathetic characters that I have ever known. He deserves to be placed with Kim, Huck Finn, and Penrod in the gallery of real boys. " Skippy's escapades were featured in the motion pictures Skippy (1931), starring Jackie Cooper, and Sookey (1932). By the early 1930's, Crosby's considerable income from "Skippy" enabled him to live on a large farm in McLean, Virginia, employ two secretaries, keep racing horses, and use five rooms of a large house as studios.
Besides cartoons, Crosby did drawings, lithographs, etchings, watercolors, and oils. He achieved an international reputation as an artist. His first exhibition was in New York in February 1928 and included some 300 works prepared over the preceding ten years. According to a New York Times art critic, the works covered "an astonishing range of subjects and techniques. But more significant than the versatility they reveal, is the faculty here attested for catching life in motion. " Crosby proceeded to perfect his talent for reproducing motion.
From the summer of 1934 to the summer of 1935 Crosby's works were exhibited in Europe--Paris, London, and Rome. Pictures were purchased by the Luxembourg Museum, by the Italian government, and by Lord Duveen for the British Museum. Crosby also wrote over sixteen books and pamphlets. His books about Skippy and his associates, either cartoons or fiction, were best received. He also wrote on controversial, contemporary, and patriotic subjects, such as Prohibition (in his personal life he was a dry but politically he was a wet) and Communism, which he opposed. Failing to find a commercial publisher, he brought out most of these opinionated works himself. On occasion he would purchase newspaper space and advertise his views; in the December 8, 1931, edition of the New York Times, he placed an advertisement entitled "A Letter to George Bernard Shaw and His Brother Communists Who Are Now Guests of the Nation's Capital. "
Crosby retired about 1952 because of ill health. He died in New York City.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
One contemporary described him in 1931 as "a solidly built young man, thirty-nine years old of medium height, with thick blond hair and a stout jaw. He is constantly on the hop, like Douglas Fairbanks. "
On July 7, 1917, Crosby married Gertrude Volz; they had one daughter. Crosby divorced his first wife in 1927 and on April 4, 1929, he married Agnes Dale Locke. They had four children. Crosby and his second wife separated in 1939 and were divorced in the spring of 1940. On May 17 of that year he married Carolyn E. Soper.
