"D. D. Degg" <dddegg@comcast.net> wrote in message news:1161171494.629484.95300@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...> N.Y. Sun obit:> http://www.nysun.com/article/41781>
I don't want to diminish the dead, or the rep of a woman with seemingly charming eccentricity and a pioneering spirit. But, it seems to me that Dale Messick started "Brenda Star" at least a year before Hilda had a strip. And that if we're including non-strip cartoonists, there were several women before her, in the New Yorker even ignoring lesser publications.
So I wonder how she got to be the first woman cartoonist in the NCS as the article states. As the group's premiere historian, DD, I wonder if you have some insight into this. Were earlier female cartoonists turned-off by the boys-club nature of the NCS, and refrained from applying? Or, did the NCS actuallty refuse to admit, say, Dale Messick or other women, until they relented in 1950 with Hilda Terry?
"D. D. Degg" <dddegg@comcast.net> wrote in message news:1161304723.238715.259770@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...>
Ted Kerin wrote:> > So I wonder how she got to be the first woman cartoonist in the NCS as
article states.>
From a June 7, 2000 article archived on R. C. Harvey's pay site> ( http://www.rcharvey.com/main.html ) he goes into how the first> women were admitted into the NCS.>
THe NCS was originally set up as an all-male club (a la The Friars)> for cartoonists. The NCS constitution, at that time, specified that> membership was restricted to> "any cartoonist (male) who signs his> name to his published work".>
As the "club" became more of a professional organization it became> detrimental for the careers of women cartoonists to be excluded;> and Hilda Terry said so in a letter she wrote to the NCS in 1949.> (At this time her husband, Gregory d' Alessio was secretary of the> NCS.)>
With the issue raised the NCS took the matter up, with the Membership> Committee agreeing that women should be allowed. A vote later in 1949> resulted in Terry Hilda and Barbara Shermund (who had also applied)> being blackballed. Several male members walked out in disgust.>
After several more meeting and the threat to change the constitution,> women were allowed into the National Cartoonists Society.> In June of 1950 Hilda Terry, Barbara Shermund, and Edwina Dumm> (who by then had also applied) became members of the NCS.>
The above is a very condensed version of the whole story as told by> R. C. Carvey at the above url. His site is available for a few bucks a> month and includes five years of archives and is well worth the $$$.>
ps: Don't know when Messick became a member.>
D.D.Degg>
Thanks for the history, DD -- interesting, as always!
