Dale Messick was the creator of Brenda Starr, Reporter, which at its peak during the 1950s ran in 250 newspapers.
19 Facts About Dale Messick
2.
Dale Messick's father, Cephas Messick, was a sign painter and vocational arts teacher.
3.
Dale Messick's mother Bertha was a milliner and seamstress; her work inspired some of the glamorous hats used in the Brenda Starr strip.
4.
Dale Messick studied for one summer at the Ray Commercial Art School in Chicago, but left to begin a career as a professional artist.
5.
Dale Messick began working for a Chicago greeting card company and was successful but quit when her boss lowered her pay during the Great Depression.
6.
Dale Messick began assembling a portfolio of comic strip samples.
7.
Dale Messick was not the first female comic strip creator; Nell Brinkley, Gladys Parker and Edwina Dumm had all achieved success in the field, but there was still a bias against women.
8.
Dale Messick created a variety of comic strips, but none was selected for publication.
9.
Dale Messick created the character of Brenda Starr in 1940, naming it after 1930s debutante Brenda Frazier, and basing her appearance on Rita Hayworth.
10.
Dale Messick wanted to produce a strip with a female protagonist; she decided a career as a reporter would allow her character to travel and have adventures, albeit adventures more glamorous than those actually experienced by most reporters.
11.
Dale Messick's break came when she came to the attention of another woman, Mollie Slott, who worked as a "girl Friday" for New York Daily News publisher Joseph Medill Patterson.
12.
Dale Messick stopped drawing the strip in 1980 and ended her role writing the script two years later.
13.
Dale Messick worked on other comic strips, but none achieved the success of Brenda Starr, Reporter.
14.
On May 5,1960, Dale Messick appeared as a contestant on To Tell the Truth.
15.
In 1995, Brenda Starr, Reporter was one of 20 comic strips honored by a series of United States postage stamps; Dale Messick was the only living creator.
16.
Dale Messick received the National Cartoonists Society's Story Comic Book Award for 1975 and their Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 for her work on Brenda Starr, Reporter.
17.
Dale Messick was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2001; she and Marie Severin were the first women to be so inducted.
18.
Dale Messick continued to work, creating a strip, Granny Glamour, which ran in Oakmont Gardens Magazine, a local weekly magazine.
19.
Dale Messick died on April 5,2005, in Sonoma County, California.