Don Wright, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist whose trenchant work cut through duplicity and pomposity and resonated with sensible readers, died March 24 at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. He was 90 years old.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Carolyn Wright, a fellow journalist.
In his 45-year career, Mr. Wright drew approximately 11,000 cartoons for The Miami News, which folded in 1988, and then for The Palm Beach Post, where he worked until his retirement in 2008. But he reached a readership far beyond Florida: his cartoons appeared through syndication in newspapers nationwide.
Mr. Wright’s readers knew where he stood and, most importantly, what he was against, whether it was the Vietnam War; Israel’s military support for the pro-apartheid regime in South Africa (he depicted a menorah with rockets instead of candles); sexual abuse by clergy; the John Birch Society, the anti-communist fringe group; and segregationists, particularly the violent Ku Klux Klan.
The morning after his first Pulitzer win in 1966, Mr. Wright received a telegram from George C. Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama. “Sometimes even the meanest cartoonists are inexplicably recognized for their work,” it said. “If the shoe fits, wear it.” Mr. Wright kept the framed telegram in his home.
The first award-winning cartoon, published during the Cold War, when the world feared nuclear Armageddon, showed two men in rags encountering each other in a barren, bomb-cratered landscape. “You mean,” one asks the other, “you were just bluffing?”
His 1980 Pulitzer Prize-winning piece showed two Florida state prison guards carrying a body away from the electric chair. One asks, “Why did the governor say we were doing this?” The other replies, “To make it clear that we value human life.”
Mr. Wright was also a five-time Pulitzer finalist and the author of three books, including “Wright On!” A Collection of Political Cartoons” (1971) and “Wright Side Up” (1981).
His cartoons were distributed first by The Washington Star, then by The New York Times, and finally by Tribune Media Services.
For all the ink, graphite and crayon he meticulously combined on a board of illustrations late into the night to imbue prominent posers from politics, sports and beyond, Mr. Wright often said that the only cartoon that was the most powerful reaction from readers, “a sentimental picture he drew after the death of Walt Disney in 1966. It showed Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters in tears.
Mr. Disney’s widow, Lillian Disney, requested Mr. Wright’s original drawing for the cartoon and bequeathed it to the Library of Congress after her death in 1997.
In 1989, The New Yorker reported that Mr. Wright was among several American cartoonists whose work had helped inspire Chinese intellectuals and businessmen to support that year’s Tiananmen Square student uprising.
Donald Conway Wright was born on January 23, 1934 in Los Angeles to Charles and Evelyn (Olberg) Wright. His father was an airline maintenance manager and his mother ran the household.
The family moved to Florida when Don was a child. He always enjoyed drawing and, after graduating from Miami’s Edison High School in 1952, he applied for a job in the art department of The Miami News. Instead, the newspaper hired him to work in the photography department and gave him a camera, even though he was already excited about cartoons.
He went on to take classic images of a triumphant Fidel Castro entering Havana, a glowing Elvis Presley, an imposing Cassius Clay in a Miami Beach gym before converting to Islam and changing his name to Muhammad Ali, and an ambitious Senator John F . Kennedy in a hotel room, wearing a jacket, tie and boxer shorts.
A self-taught photographer as well as an illustrator, Mr. Wright combined the craftsmanship and attention to detail of a photographer with the creativity of an illustrator.
“He was always drawing, he was always doodling,” recalled Ms. Wright, his wife, who was a reporter at The Miami News when they met.
After his military service, Mr. Wright returned to The Miami News and, when the paper’s editors feared he would leave if not transferred, began publishing some of his cartoons and sent him to the art department as graphics editor. From 1963 onwards his cartoons appeared regularly on the editorial page.
In 1989, he was hired by The Post, which, like The News, was owned by Cox Newspapers.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Knight’s survivors include a younger brother, David.
Mr. Wright acknowledged that not every one of his cartoons was a hit.
“You have a deadline,” he told The Times in 1994, “and you have three ideas, and you scrap the first, and you scrap the second, and you run out of time, and you run out of it.” You know, that Cliche looks better.”
When he retired from The Post, he explained that while his cartoons often contained a punchline, his goal was not to be humorous.
“I’m sometimes amazed at how many readers believe that cartoons should be light and entertaining ‘weird,'” Mr. Wright said. “Humor has many relatives – ironic, subtle, slapstick and even black – all aimed at the endless Iraq war, incompetent and corrupt politicians, rising unemployment, recession, Americans losing their homes, and so on.”
“But think about it for a moment,” he added. “How funny are they?”
Source link
2024-04-14 22:07:19
www.nytimes.com
