POP PERSON - CROCKETT JOHNSON

CROCKETT JOHNSON (DAVID JOHNSON LEISK, 1906-1975, USA)

David Johnson Leisk, better knoen as Crocket Johnson, grew up and studied art in New York. After doing advertising work and freelance magazine art, he drew a weekly comic strip for Collier’s Agency in the early 1940s. It was untitled, but usually called ‘The Little Man with the Eyes’. In 1942 he created “Barnaby” for the experimental newspaper PM. This whimsical, fairly ale strip soon became one of the classics.

On October 20, 1906, in New York City, David Johnson Leisk was born to David and Mary Leisk. Although born on East 58th Street, the young David grew up in Elmhurst , Long Island, where he went to high school and enjoyed sailing his boat in Long Island Sound. He studied art at Cooper Union in 1924, and at New York University in 1925. After his studies, he worked "in an ice plant, and in Macy's advertising department, played professional football, art-edited several magazines and contributed to others ," as he told the authors of Illustrators of Children's Books, 1946-1956 (1958).

Leisk wrote under the name "Crockett Johnson" because, he said, "Crockett is my childhood nickname. My real name is David Johnson Leisk. Leisk was too hard to pronounce -- so -- I am now Crockett Johnson!" (Hopkins 124). According to the Third Book of Junior Authors (1972), he was "six feet tall, tan, husky, and blue-eyed" (153). Like Barnaby and Harold (his two most famous characters), Johnson was bald. Referring to his hairless head, he once remarked, "I draw people without hair because it's so much easier! Besides, to me, people with hair look funny" (Hopkins 121).