All You Need is Ed Love

As a child I was frequently in the hospital for a variety of aliments, from asthma and Bronchitis to pneumonia. I eventually outgrew them and one could argue the sickness moved from my body to my mind but that is a tale for another time. In January 1966 I was in the hospital with the famous cartoonist Ed Love. Mr. Love animated everything from Mickey Mouse for Disney to Woody Woodpecker, The Flintstones and a variety of T.V. commercials. Scroll down on the link for a brief discussion and example of his work.

Mr. Love and I only shared a room for a day or so, but in that time he drew a few sketches on a piece of school paper, shown here by a rather poor photograph. It includes Pluto, Mickey and the Hamm’s Beer Bear. My first talent as a child was drawing. I was always drawing pictures at home and at school. I did not mind sitting at the back of the class because it gave me the opportunity to draw pictures. Early on I decided I wanted to be a cartoonist when I grew up so you can imagine the thrill of discovering you share a hospital room with one of the premier cartoonist of the era.

Later that year I was seriously bit by the music bug and it became my life long passion. I still drew pictures at school to kill time and at home while I listened to music. I once created a character called “Haskell”, named after the street we lived on. But Haskell only starred on my desk and never made it to the comic section or television. Still I went through High School and College as an art major even though the passion was gone. By this time the cartoon industry was increasingly being outsourced to places like Japan so jobs were becoming scarce so the writing was on the wall. I still love the art and I still have my yellowed school paper with the sketches of Mr. Ed Love, one of the masters of the last great era of cartooning.