An editorial is 90 percent idea and 10 percent drawing
Bob Staake
Bob Staake met Paul Conrad at the State Journalism Write-off at El Camino College in 1975. Staake was a sophomore editorial cartoonist for the West Torrance High paper. Because there wasn’t an editorial cartoon division, during the writing competition he drew a cartoon.
Perhaps influenced by the fact that Conrad was the keynote speaker, the judges awarded Staake’s cartoon first place.
Conrad presented Staake with a copy of The King and Us, his then latest, and what many still consider his best collection of cartoons.
Inside the book he wrote, “To Bob Staake, who already knows one picture is worth a thousand editorials. All the Best, Paul Conrad, 2/15/1975.”
Time Magazine named Staake’s New Yorker magazine cover of Barack Obama the Best Magazine Cover of 2008.
“I wanted to name our firstborn Paul Ryan, but Paulette, my wife, wanted Ryan Paul. Paulette won the naming honors, but undaunted, Paul and Kay gave us a silver-plated cup inscribed, ‘Paul Ryan – 1984.’
“When I was 18, I got up the balls to ask Conrad if he would look at my stuff. He said yes, which is what all cartoonists did, they helped pass down the art.
“Looking back at them now, they were awful. But I was a voracious student of editorial cartoons, which was unusual for a kid, and Conrad saw that in my work, he saw the germ of something.
“He’d impart his wisdom in a very Zen way. I’d walk away thinking, ‘What did that mean?’ It meant the world to me to have him look at a stack of my cartoons and say, ‘That’s brilliant, why didn’t I think of that.’
“At first, I’d visit him at the Times. Then I started going to his house. There was a poker table in the dinette area, where he had his two Pulitzers on the wall. He’d smoke a pipe and drink vodka and I’d drink beer and we’d talk cartooning.
“He told me an editorial cartoon is 90 percent idea and 10 percent drawing. I took it a step further. For a period, I made it 95 percent idea and 5 percent drawing. I felt that the drawing was nothing more than a hieroglyphic to impart an idea, or point of view.
“I celebrated my 21st birthday at the home of my girlfriend Jackie Mathys. Her parents were good friends with the Conrads. Paul and Kay surprised us by coming over that night. He gave me a check for $21 and we played pool that night until he won back every dollar of that check.
“Con could take a Volkswagen Beetle apart blindfolded. One morning, I was coming home after a date and my bug broke down about a mile from the Conrads. And even though it was a Sunday morning, I had no hesitation about calling up my then two-time Pulitzer prize-winning friend and mentor and asking if he could come over to PV Drive West help me get the car started. He fiddled with the coil and the plugs, and soon I was on my way home to Torrance.
“When I left West High I got syndication offers from King Features and United Universal, but Conrad said that would be the biggest mistake of my life, that I needed to go to college.
“I wanted to go to USC because they had a journalism school, but I was working at the Wild West store and couldn’t afford it. To keep my skills up, I went to the Daily Trojan and asked if I could do two cartoons a week until I could afford to enroll.
“During this time, Conrad was invited to speak at the school. He asked what the fee was and they said they didn’t normally pay a fee. He said he wanted a fee and it was a full scholarship for Staake. At least, that’s the story he told me and I got the scholarship.
“I majored in international relations. I never took an art class. After two years, I was going to accept a syndication deal or get on a newspaper. But my timing was rotten. In 1970, there were 100 newspaper editorial cartoonists in the country. Post-Watergate, the ranks swelled to 200. The only way to get on a newspaper was for someone to die. I had Conrad, MacNelly, Auth, Schorr all working to get me on a newspaper, but everything was locked up.
“This is about 1980. So I left USC after three years, moved to Hermosa Beach and started doing cartoons for Easy Reader because I knew if I stopped, I’d lose it.
“That’s when I found it was easier to get work doing illustrations. By 1984, Paulette and I had Ryan and I had to make a commitment and I made the commitment to illustrations.
[Editor’s note: In 1984, Staake illustrated a story for Easy Reader about a book called Missile Envy, by peace activist Helen Caldicott. The color illustration showed with a color drawing of Reagan and Soviet Premier Constantine Cherenkov squaring off with ICBM missiles erecting from their pant flies. I called Conrad and asked if he thought the paper should print Staake’s illustration. “Of course you should,” he said. “Would the Times print it?” I asked. He laughed and said, “I wouldn’t even show a cartoon like that to my editor.” “So why should I print it?” I asked. “Because you can,” he said. Your job is to step up as close to the line as you can. And that means sometimes stepping over the line.”]
When I made the shift to illustrations, Conrad was not pleased. He thought I was squandering my skills.
“He once told a mutual friend he thought I wouldn’t become an editorial cartoonist, but would instead join the French Foreign Legion. It had to be explained to me that the legionnaires were known for being mercenaries. He pretty much viewed illustrators as mercenaries.
“Conrad didn’t understand that illustrations can transcend the art form, the way his cartoons did.
“I think he would have been proud of my New Yorker stuff because they are very editorial cartoon-like. Everything he taught me is manifested in my New Yorker covers.
But I don’t know if he ever saw them. He wasn’t the type to call up and say, That Obama cover was brilliant.’ That’s my big regret.
Matt Wuerker
Matt Wuerker is the editorial cartoonist for the Washington D.C. website Politico.com. His cartoons also appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times and Easy Reader.
“I met Conrad through that vast conspiracy, the League of Women Voters. My mother Scotty knew Kay. I was a freshman at Palos Verdes High and was drawing cartoons for the Sea King.
“His best advice to me was, ‘It’s more about read, read, read than about draw, draw, draw.”
“In high school my brother and I had a produce delivery business. We’d drive his Toyota pick-up down to the LA produce market in the morning and delivery the groceries to neighbors in the afternoon. I tried to time our route so we’d arrive at the Conrads around 7 p.m. when Cronkite came on TV. I’d bring the sack of vegetables into the kitchen and sometimes Kay would give me a glass of lemonade and plop me down next to Paul. I’d get to watch his reaction to the Vietnam War and Nixon, who had put him on his enemies list. Paul was at the height of his power and notoriety and I got a window into that.
“After college, I’d visit him at the Times. You knew he was in because you could smell his pipe down the hall. That’s where I saw the righteous, ego-big-as-a-skyscraper Paul. But I got the PV Paul, the sweetheart dad who was nice to all the neighborhood kids.
“He was stern, but encouraging. He’d look at my cartoons and say, ‘You’re drawing too much.’”
In contrast to Conrad’s spare style, Wuerker’s cartoons are frequently wordy and can be as complicated as a Rube Goldberg contraption.
“When I went away to college he said, ‘Don’t major in art. Major in something that will fill your head with ideas, so I majored in International Affairs.”
“Conrad’s signature is righteous indignation. I don’t do that well. For me, being funny communicates better. Conrad is mostly vinegar.
“It took me a long time to get over my love of Conrad, to realize you don’t have to be indignant all of the time.
“But he could be funny. I saw him speak about 25 years ago to the World Affairs Council, accompanied by a slide show of his hate mail. He didn’t show any of his cartoons, except ones angry readers had written rude words on. He was hilarious.”
Bill Schorr
Bill Schorr met Paul Conrad in 1971 when he was a student at Long Beach State. He called Conrad to ask if he’d look at some of his Forty-niner and LA Free Press cartoons.
“He told me what he told Tony Auth. ‘Sure kid, come on down.’
“He pointed out what worked and what didn’t work. I’d visit him every few months. Then he recommended me to the Kansas City Star and I got the job.
He told me ‘Get ready to fight. Back down once and they’ll keep backing you down.’
“When Jim Bellows, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner editor was looking for a cartoonist, Conrad got me my second job.
“But the most important thing he did for me had nothing do with drawing. Of course, I loved my kids, but he set an example for how to raise kids. He and Kay would take in people like pregnant girls who had no where else to go. One night he had a fundraiser for a battered women’s center and he auctioned off everything on his walls. There was some important work – his water colors, paintings by Tony Auth, Mel Lazarus and the Interlandi twins, Frank and Paul … He really was a Christian.
“One night we went to Chez Mélange with [Warner Brothers animation director] Chuck Jones and [editorial cartoonist] Mike Peters. Paul was friends of the owners Michael Franks and Robert Bell. He did their menus. It was late and we were getting loud. Paul was smoking a pipe. A couple at another table was getting really annoyed. So Paul drew a Reagan cartoon and Jones drew Pepe Le Pew on napkins, and Peters walked over to the couple and gave them the cartoons.”
Keith Robinson
Keith Robinson’s cartooning career began with his entry in the 1985 Easy Reader Cartoon contest, “Making it at the Beach.” His cartoons were carried by Universal Press Syndicate and appeared regularly in Playboy, and continue to appear in Easy Reader.
“I met Conrad several times at Impolitic, a Santa Monica gallery owned by my friend Josh Needle, which sold originals of editorial cartoons. I never felt that Conrad remembered who I was. The night Impolitic closed; there was a party at the gallery. Someone passed around a sketchbook and we all did cartoons about the closing. Afterward, the sketchbook was presented to Josh at dinner in a restaurant down the street. Most of the people had done hilarious cartoons poking fun at Josh. Mine was just a drawing of a confused Normy, looking through the window of the closed and darkened gallery, asking softly, “Josh?” When Josh saw it, he started to cry. Conrad looked over Josh’s shoulder, then up at me and said, “Good cartoon, Keith.” That meant a lot.
Roman Genn
In 1990 Easy Reader John Pine met Roman Genn on a visit to Moscow when the 18-year-old was selling his political cartoons on Moscow’s Arbat Street. When Pine returned Easy Reader began publishing “Cartoon Wars,” featuring Genn’s and Palos Verdes’ cartoonist Matt Wuerker’s take on common subjects. Genn transmitted his cartoons over a phoned line in the BBC’s Moscow office. The cartoon series led to an hour-long KCET special by Huell called “Hello Moscow, Hello L.A. In 1991, Genn and his mother Ludmilla immigrated to the United States.
“I called Conrad up and asked if he’d look at my cartoons. I didn’t speak English, so we just shouted and pointed a lot at my drawings.”
“I can’t tell you any other stories.” Pen
