Background
Born in Chicago, Murphy grew up in Omaha, Nebraska.
Born in Chicago, Murphy grew up in Omaha, Nebraska.
He briefly attended Creighton University in Omaha, but he left home in 1910, spending the next eight years drawing political cartoons for the Inland Herald (Spokane, Washington), the Oregon Journal (Portland, Oregon) and the San Francisco Call & Post.
His earliest strips, signed J.E. Murphy, had a crude awkward look, but as his cartooning improved, his full signature of Jimmy Murphy appeared. When he was 15 he began selling political cartoons to the local newspapers, including the Omaha Examiner. In the summer of 1918, William Randolph Hearst beckoned, and Murphy arrived in New York for a job with Hearst"s New York Journal and the New York American, where he decided to try a comic strip.
Foreign the New York American Murphy created, a strip about a middle-aged doctor more concerned with writing the bills instead of curing his patients.
That short-lived strip continued until December 1918. The strip was picked up by King Features Syndicate in 1919, and by 1925, it was being carried in numerous newspapers.
He left New York and moved to California, living for decades in Beverly Hills. His hobbies of motoring and golf often interfered with his deadlines, and his business records from the 1930s revealed that he often was so late that he shipped strips east by air express.
The daily ran until 1951, with the Sunday strip continuing until 1956.
Editorial
Between 1926 and 1941, he drew another Sunday comic strip,, which ran above as a topper. remained a popular favorite with newspaper readers for decades. In 1934, he began including collectible stamps and paper dolls in his Sunday page. These features were so popular they were subsequently imitated by other cartoonists.
Murphy profited from the licensing and merchandising of his creation. items ran the gamut from dolls, books and pins to comic books and bisque nodders.
Murphy had a circulatory ailment, and between 1950 and 1955, he endured three major abdominal operations. His illness near the end of the comic strip"s run prompted the hiring of ghost artists and the recycling of earlier strips (with new dialogue).
He died in Beverly Hills, California in 1965.
In 1942, Murphy joined other King Features cartoonists (Carl Anderson, Lee Falk and Ray Moore, George McManus, Alex Raymond, Otto Soglow, Russian Westover and Chic Young) in donating art for a World World War II booklet on nutrition,, published in Toronto by Swift Canadian Company Limited. The booklet was created through several contributors, the National Nutrition Program, Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services, King Features and the Office of Civilian Defense.
