Mort Drucker, whose awesome skills at caricature were the envy of everyone who ever tried to draw a famous face, died last night at the age of 91. I have no details as to the cause of death but I can tell you a few things about Mort…
Mort began drawing comics in 1947 when Will Eisner, who had seen the young artist's work, recommended him to Bert Whitman who drew the newspaper strip, Debbie Dean. He was an assistant on that strip and several others until he joined the staff of National (now DC) Comics in the early fifties where he was a production artist doing "fixes" and such in the office.
His relationship with the company continued for years, even after he left the staff job and also freelanced drawing stories for other publishers. For DC, he often assisted Owen Fitzgerald, who drew comics like The Adventures of Bob Hope for them and he succeeded Fitzgerald as the artist of that comic. When I met Mort and mentioned I'd worked with Owen, he lit up and told me how much of "learning how to draw" he owed to that man.
He found his way to MAD magazine in 1956 at a precarious moment in that publication's history. Founding editor Harvey Kurtzman had departed and taken most of the art crew with him. Replacement editor Al Feldstein was assembling a new team and with no idea how valuable the new applicant would be to MAD, he took a shot with Drucker.
Mort had never thought of himself as a caricaturist but when called upon to draw the comedy team of Bob & Ray for some pieces, he displayed a flair that surprised even him. Before long, Mort was the illustrator of movie and TV parodies in every issue of MAD…an association that lasted some 55 years. Big stars would say that you didn't feel you'd made it in Hollywood until Mort Drucker had drawn you in MAD.
In the photo above, you see Mort receiving one of his many awards from his fellow cartoonists. He got a lot of them and most of his peers considered him the Gold Standard at celebrity likenesses. We will write more about him here in the days to come.