Background
Reit was born in New York City on 11 November 1918 (Armistice Day).
Reit was born in New York City on 11 November 1918 (Armistice Day).
He attended DeWitt Clinton High School and New York University, where he drew cartoons for humorous college magazines. He attended New York University with future Captain Marvel writer William Woolfolk. And helped launch Woolfolk"s career as a writer of comics by introducing him to Jerry Iger and Will Eisner.
Reit was the creator, with cartoonist Joe Oriolo, of the character Casper the Friendly Ghost. Reit started his career working for Fleischer Studios as an animator. He also worked for Jerry Iger and Will Eisner as a cartoonist, and for Mad Magazine and several other publications as a humorist.
He worked as an in-betweener and inker on the 1939 animated film Gulliver"s Travels, and later became a gag writer for the Popeye and Betty Boop cartoon series, among others
He also anonymously produced comic strips for Jerry Iger under the Fiction House label. He later wrote a book, The Amazing Camouflage Deceptions of World World War II, drawing on his wartime experience.
lieutenant contains a version of the urban legend which claims that British aviators taunted the German Army by dropping a wooden bomb on a decoy airfield the Germans had built. After the war, Reit did cartoon work for Archie and Little Lulu, and wrote gags for some of the new Casper animated shorts that were being produced.
He also wrote for the television series Captain Kangaroo.
In 1950 he started working for the publications department of the Bank Street College of Education in New York, and also scripted industrial films and radio shows. In the late 1950s, he began submitting work to Mad Magazine, ultimately contributing over 60 pieces. One of Reit"s articles for Mad, "The "Down-To-Earth" Coloring Book," appeared in the summer of 1960 and anticipated (or helped inspire) the faddish publishing boom of "adult" coloring books
Reit served in World World War II in a United States. Army Air Force camouflage unit tasked with defending the West Coast from a Japanese invasion, and later served in Europe after Doctorate-Day.