Here's a story about Marcus in the Danbury News-Times, by Susan Tuz:

Jerry Marcus made up his mind to become a cartoonist after scratching his first drawings on the sidewalks of Brooklyn as a child.

"I always wanted to be a cartoonist," Marcus told The News-Times in a 1972 interview. "Even when I was little. I sold my first cartoon at 13 to a Brooklyn bank and the year before that won a cartoon contest sponsored by a New York newspaper."

Marcus, who went on to syndicate a daily comic about a put-upon housewife named Trudy, died on July 22 in Waterbury Hospital following a long illness. He was 81 years old.

"Trudy" appeared internationally, distributed by King Features Syndicate. She was called "Estelle" in France and "Maria" in Italy, but in every language Trudy was a young housewife with a dry wit.

Marcus said Trudy recalled his strong-willed mother. His father died when he was 3, and his mother, while suffering from crippling arthritis, raised four children in a cold-water flat in Brooklyn.

"Trudy," a daily single panel that debuted in 1963, is distributed to more than 75 newspapers.

After serving in the Navy during World War II, where he saw action as a Seabee in the Philippines, Marcus attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City. He began submitting magazine cartoons in 1947 and made his first professional sale to "Argosy" magazine, eventually supporting himself with free-lance work for magazines and trade journals.

Cartoons by Marcus appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker magazine, Look, McCall's and the Ladies' Home Journal.

"Dad was world-renowned," said Marcus' daughter, Jeremia Beucheimaier. "We'd travel around the world when I was growing up. We'd go to Denmark and Holland and he was like a superstar there. His cartoons run today poster-size in subway stations in Tokyo. He did a series for the Tokyo subway system five years ago."

Later in his career, Marcus became interested in acting, and joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1970. He was an extra in the movie Exodus and had a bit part in Loving with Eva Marie Saint and George Segal. He did a number of commercials for major brands like McDonald's, Rice Chex and Timex.

But his main source of income was always his cartoons.

"Jerry and I would take the train into New York City every week in the 1960s through the 1980s making the rounds. That was when cartoonists went into the city to see editors. We'd see up to 25 in a day," recalled cartoonist Joseph Farris, who lives in Bethel. "A groups of us would go: Dana Fradon, Orlando Busino, Lee Lorenz, Jerry and me. It was a rough business. The odds were against you. Editors would see several thousand cartoons a week and they'd buy maybe 20 or 25." [Click on links above for NYer cartoons by Farris, Fradon, and Lorenz.]

Marcus lived in Ridgefield at that time. In later years, he would move to Danbury and then to Waterbury for medical reasons.

"We stood out in Ridgefield," Buecheimaier recalled. "Dad would drive around in his Cord, a classic car from the 1930s that had been totally refurbished. It wasn't the norm. As I look back on it, I'm grateful that I had such interesting and unique parents but at the time, as a kid, I just wanted us to fit in."

Marcus had a roster of well-known cartoonists for friends. A group met at Nick's restaurant in Danbury for years, eventually moving the meeting to Bethel restaurants. For the past several years, they have met weekly at Plain Jane's in Bethel.

"Jerry Marcus was an artist with a great natural sense of humor," said long-time friend and fellow cartoonist Orlando Busino. "He was a true friend and we'll miss him very much."

Among Marcus' many fans were comedian Jackie Gleason, presidential adviser Bernard Baruch and presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, who had Marcus original cartoons hung in the White House.

Marcus is survived by his daughters Jeremia Buecheimaier of Brookfield and Julie Marcus of Phoenicia, N.Y., two sons, Julius Marcus of Westport and Gary Marcus of Palm Beach, Fla., and three grandchildren, Alex, Philip and Bridget Buecheimaier.

Contributions may be made in his memory to The Ridgefield Library.

Editor and Publisher adds:

It was Marcus who suggested the last name of Bailey for the title character in "Beetle Bailey" by Mort Walker of King. Saturday Evening Post cartoon editor John Bailey had published some of the early work of Marcus and Walker.

Marcus's wife, the radio broadcaster Delphine Marcus, died in May; she had a fascinating life, too. (There's a photo here.) Her mother's name was Estelle, which suggests it was the inspiration for Trudy's French alias. A bit more about Marcus's White House presence and his life in Connecticut, from the Ridgefield Press:

In 1960, Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane flight was shot down over Russia and Premier Nikita Krushchev cancelled a summit meeting. Soon after, President Eisenhower made a speech in Portugal that began, "Have any of you seen that recent cartoon that said: 'The next speaker needs all the introduction he can get?" The cartoon was by Jerry Marcus, and thereafter it hung in the White House, the first of two to be so honored. The other, which appeared just after John-John Kennedy was born, showed two guards outside an otherwise darkened White House, with a single brightly-lit window. "It's probably the 2 o'clock feeding," one guard says. Since 1947, Jerry Marcus's gag cartoons have appeared in every major magazine, from The New Yorker to the Paris Match. While most successful cartoonists stick to either magazine gags or newspaper strips, Mr. Marcus is unusual: he's been successful at both.... He came to Ridgefield in 1956 and worked here more than 40 years before moving to Danbury. He often appears with fellow cartoonists in programs at schools and libraries in the area, and hundreds of his cartoons have appeared in The Press, especially during the 1960s and 1970s when his work ran weekly.

Jerry Marcus drawings [Cartoon Bank] [Update: the first drawing above is from The New Yorker (the September 23, 1991, issue); the third is not.]
Jerry Marcus, 1924-2005 [The Comics Reporter, via The Great Curve]
Comic creator: Jerry Marcus [Comiclopedia]
Trudy [About and archives, King Features Syndicate; also from King, a longer bio of Marcus.]

Categories: NYer, Cartoons, Obits