Jules Feiffer, Famed Cartoonist and ‘Carnal Knowledge’ Screenwriter, Dies at 95
Jules Feiffer, the provocative satirist, cartoonist, playwright and 1960s counterculturist who wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’ classic Carnal Knowledge and Robert Altman’s Popeye, has died. He was 95.
A Pulitzer Prize winner, Feiffer died Friday of congestive heart failure at his home in Richfield Springs, New York, his wife, JZ Holden, told The Washington Post.
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The Bronx native joined such luminaries as Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, John Lennon and Robert Benton in contributing material to the bawdy 1969 Broadway musical revue Oh! Calcutta!, and he earned a Tony nomination for best play in 1976 for Knock, Knock. Starring Judd Hirsch, it was “a wild spree of jokes, pratfalls, word games, collapsing scenery, falling bodies and burlesque sight gags,” according to The New York Times.
In 1967, his original comedy Little Murders made its Broadway bow with a cast that included Barbara Cook, Elliott Gould and David Steinberg, and Feiffer wrote the screenplay for the 1971 film adaptation that starred Gould and was directed by Alan Arkin.
While serving in the U.S. Army, Feiffer wondered what would happen if a 4-year-old were drafted into the service. He wrote it up and included the tale in his 1959 book, Passionella and Other Stories, then adapted it for a screenplay (and voiced the sergeant) in the nine-minute short Munro (1961), which received an Oscar nom.
“Passionella” — a retelling of Cinderella set in Hollywood — then become the basis for the third act of the 1966 Broadway musical The Apple Tree, directed by Nichols and starring Tony winner Barbara Harris and Alan Alda.
A stark exploration of men’s sexual attitudes and how they impact their relationships with women, Feiffer’s Carnal Knowledge (1971) was conceived as a theatrical presentation as well. But when the writer sent it to Nichols, the filmmaker immediately saw its cinematic possibilities.
The critically hailed film, starring Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret and Candice Bergen, became a touchstone in the sexual revolution, and Feiffer was nominated for a WGA Award.
Carnal Knowledge “sets out to tell us certain things about these few characters and their sexual crucifixions, and it succeeds,” Roger Ebert wrote in his review. “It doesn’t go for cheap or facile laughs, or inappropriate symbolism, or a phony kind of contemporary feeling.”
In 1956, Feiffer, who had trained under the pioneering cartoonist Will Eisner, joined The Village Voice — then just a year old — as a contributor, and his edgy comic strips would grace its pages for more than four decades.
His strips also appeared in newspapers around the country, and as the events of the 1960s unfolded, Feiffer’s pointed criticism of the establishment and his desire to shake things up made him a must-read among the younger generation.
“During the height of the civil rights and Vietnam years, virtually no one else was doing this kind of commentary. On civil rights, the only other cartoonist that I know of who was white and making strong comments was Bill Mauldin, and he was losing lots of newspapers. So it was very exciting to be out there,” Feiffer told Sage Stossel in a 2010 interview for The Atlantic.
“This was a time when Martin Luther King was thought of as an extremist by the very respectable mainstream white press. So my target was the well-meaning white liberal who was saying exactly the wrong things to the civil rights movement.
“I found it exciting to go against the grain of established liberal opinion. I was doing the same thing on Vietnam, which was, after all, a liberal war. We, who were the war protesters, were always being told that our protests were in ignorance, and that the insiders — the Pentagon and State — had access to information that we didn’t. But with all their access, it turned out the experts were wrong and the protesters were right.”
Jules Ralph Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929. His father, David, was a salesman who, like many, had trouble finding work during the Depression. His mother, Rhonda, was a fashion designer who sold watercolor drawings of her designs to clothing manufacturers throughout Manhattan. Feiffer credits her for his interest in art, and when he was a teen, she helped him get into the Art Students League of New York.
In 1946, Feiffer convinced Eisner to hire him to work on “The Spirit,” a hugely popular comic book insert that appeared in newspapers around the country. Eisner didn’t think much of Feiffer’s artistic ability but admired the teenager’s enthusiasm and gave him jobs no one else wanted — coloring, clean-up, etc. — at a salary of next to nothing.
Feiffer eventually took on more storytelling and drawing responsibilities, but his career was interrupted in 1951 when he was drafted into the Army Signal Corps during the Korean War. His two years in the service fueled his disdain for authority and bureaucracy and triggered his lifelong calling toward dissent.
After his release, Feiffer struck out on his own with original material. But in an atmosphere where the gentle Peanuts was the cartoon hit of the day, there were no takers for his radical cartooning that satirized the neuroses and hypocrisies of society — until the Voice was launched.
His first strip for the paper was “Sick, Sick, Sick” (later titled “Feiffer’s Fables” and then just “Feiffer”). In 1958, a collection of his work became a best-selling book, and soon he was contributing to The Observer in London and Playboy.
Hall Syndicate signed him to a deal, and his cartoons began appearing all over the U.S. Feiffer had become an important voice in the day’s events.
His straightforward drawing style always featured an empty background; the power was in the message and the way the characters delivered it, their faces emotionally transforming as they relayed the point their creator wanted to make.
Presidents were a popular target: Lyndon Johnson lamented about the struggles to implement his Great Society. Richard Nixon called for football to be outlawed when a protest against Vietnam erupted during halftime at an NFL game. Ronald Reagan morphed into Mickey Mouse when he stated that he was going to turn America into Disneyland.
Feiffer’s cartoons also appeared in Esquire and The New Yorker, and in 1986, his work in the Voice was awarded the Pulitzer for editorial cartooning. A decade later, he became the first cartoonist to appear on The New York Times‘ op-ed pages.
In 1961, Feiffer created illustrations for the Norton Juster children’s classic The Phantom Tollbooth. More than 30 years later, he added another page to his eclectic career when he wrote and illustrated a series of children’s books, starting with The Man in the Ceiling and including 1995’s A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears; 1998’s I Lost My Bear; 1999’s Bark, George; 2001’s I’m Not Bobby; and 2014’s Rupert Can Dance.
“Writing for young readers connects me professionally to a part of myself that I didn’t know how to let out until I was 60,” Feiffer wrote in his biography for publisher HarperCollins. “That kid who lived a life of innocence, mixed with confusion and consternation, disappointment and dopey humor. And who drew comic strips and needed friends — and found them — in cartoons and children’s books that told him what the grown-ups in his life had left out. That’s what reading did for me when I was a kid. Now, I try to return the favor.”
Feiffer helped illustrate a number of children’s books written by his daughter Kate, including 2007’s Henry the Dog With No Tail, 2009’s Which Puppy? and 2012’s No Go Sleep!
He also wrote Feiffer’s People (1969), The White House Murder Case (1970) and Grown Ups (1981) for Broadway.
In addition to his screenplay for Altman’s quirky live-action version of Popeye (1980), Feiffer penned the comedy I Want to Go Home (1989), about a cartoonist, for director Alain Resnais and wrote the independent film Bernard and Huey (2017).
He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the WGA in 2010.
Feiffer married and divorced Judy Sheftel, a book editor who worked on Mommie Dearest and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Jenny Allen, a writer and stand-up comic, before his September 2016 wedding to author JZ Holden.
Survivors also include two other daughters, Julie Feiffer and Halley Feiffer, a screenwriter and actress (Bored to Death, What’s Your Emergency, The Squid and the Whale), and two granddaughters.
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