George Booth took life and laughed

Life is hard and damn unfair! cartoonist George Booth liked to recite, in a booming voice, thenlaugh!crack. It was a line he had first heard from his former boss at the trade publication consortium.rubber world, Modern tire dealer, fast foodwhere Booth served as art director before settling in the pages of the new yorker, in 1969. Publishers sneaked into the boss’s office, begging for time extensions, only to be yelled at. Booth, on the other hand, was there because he liked to nap on the boss’ couch and enjoy the show.

Booth, who died this week at ninety-six (a year younger than this magazine), was a man who took life, drew it, then laughed and laughed. A Brief Biography: He was born in the boonies of Missouri, a depression-era child with parent teachers, who passed on their cheeky sense of humor to him. Mom called him Pa Billy, Dad called him Bill, the boys called him Maw Maw; we get to know her best as the comic book avatar, Mrs. Ritterhouse, who, by contract, could only appear in the pages of the new yorker (rights the magazine didn’t negotiate for, say, the Addams Family). After high school, Booth was drafted into the Marines and apparently hoped that service would lead to a career in comics. As many of his comrades were returning home from Pearl Harbor, he re-enlisted; he was offered a position drawing for leather neckthe Marine Corps magazine.

He married Dione Babcock, who died days before Booth after seeing her in an all-female stage production of Twelve Angry Men. (You’ll never guess how they renamed it.) The couple lived in Stony Brook, Long Island, until they relocated to Brooklyn, to their daughter, Sarah’s apartment. There Sarah coexisted magnanimously with Booth’s studios, towers of sketches, scribbles, and annotated journals that slowly encroached on her living room.

I met Booth about five years ago when I became New Yorkers cartoon editor, the fourth Booth had worked with at the magazine. He walked into my office on the first day where he submitted cartoons to his deeply intimidated new boss and brandished his cane, towering (inevitably, six-foot-three) above my desk. I shivered. You are a ray of sunshine! he shouted, then blurted out that feature laugh! I always imagined that the lines of Booth’s drawings ended up so wonky because of their creator’s uncontrollable amusement.

Booth had come from the antechamber where the cartoonists waited, and in which he would meticulously rework his submissions moving a dog here, adding a car tire as well as Scotch Taper cut-out pieces of cartoons he’d probably been happy with when he left the house. But, despite this frenzy of membership, there has always been time for a cartoonist in search of encouragement or advice. He was a Pied Piper to many, not only to budding artists, but also to neighborhood kids, who followed him to block parties, begging him to draw something with sidewalk chalk. He was of an unlimited generosity towards those who were in his wake; after a visit I paid him and Sarah, he chivalrously insisted on walking me to the door, then had to be socratically persuaded not to walk me to the subway, because he was in his pajamas.

For New Yorker Readers, the name George Booth immediately conjures up a world of people with insane names (Reverend Dr. Clapsattle? Judy Klemesrud? Youbetcha?) porch keepers, mechanics, cave dwellers, bathers, military men, yokels, and churchgoers. Booth’s universe is a place full of trash, cats and bull terriers that his admirers have happily revisited over the years. The reams of fan letters he received during his long tenure included at least one marriage proposal.

In the days after 9/11, when a return to normal life seemed incredibly difficult, Booth provided the only cartoon in the issue following the attacks: a drawing of Mrs. Ritterhouse, her violin on the floor, the eyes closed in prayer, a nearby cat covering its face with its paws. Booth was just nine years old when he joined the real Maw Maw for her first chalk speech on the stage of a Methodist church in Missouri, scribbling funny pictures as she monologues to a crowd of devout biddies. His advice: you stand there and act like you know something, whether you do or not! The day I met Booth, I copied that maxim onto a Post-it note and taped it to my office wall, where it sat, suddenly inert without the accompaniment laugh!