1957.03.21 Mopsy By Gladys Parker

1957.03.21 Mopsy
By Gladys Parker (1908-1966)
6.4 x 8 inches, ink on drawing board
Coppola Collection

The May 21, 1957 date is Parker’s 49th birthday (and one month after I was born). One of the few women cartoonists working through the time of the 1950s, Parker developed Mopsy in 1939, and modeled the character on herself. In 1946, she recalled, "I got the idea for Mopsy when the cartoonist Rube Goldberg said my hair looked like a mop. That was several years ago, and she has been my main interest ever since." When she retired in 1965, Mopsy retired with her.

Parker’s own cartoon style was striking in its use of design tropes. Her lines were thin and clean. She favored geometric shapes and had a great sense of symmetry to her panels. Her characters often expressed sentiment through dramatic poses, much like a runway model. Not coincidentally, she was a master of the pantomime cartoon. Many of her Sunday Mopsy strips were wordless, where panel progression, design and expression told the whole story.