Cartoonists: Down Under to Denver

Lyndon was unmistakably Lyndon, right down to the bifurcated chin. Barry was incontrovertibly Barry—box jaw, brow wrinkles, horn rims and all. Few U.S. cartoonists have so deftly distilled the spirit of these two men as Australia’s Patrick Bruce Oliphant, 29, a recent arrival who has not yet set eyes on either Johnson or Goldwater and who took over the editorial cartoonist’s drawing board at the Denver Post only last month.

Pat Oliphant came to the Post from Australia at the end of a six-month search for a worthy successor to Cartoonist Paul Conrad, who left Denver for a better-paying job on the Los Angeles Times (TIME, Jan. 31). Although the Post passed over a field of 50 domestic applicants to hire Oliphant, the choice had a certain inevitability. His draftsmanship bears comparison to Conrad’s, and he has the same flair for tapping the comic vein. To make sure that the Post got his point, Oliphant, who had read of Conrad’s resignation in TIME, wasted no time bidding for the job, sending along samples of his work from the Adelaide Advertiser.

Penguin Puns. A self-taught, left-handed cartoonist, Pat Oliphant since 1955 had amused the 200,000 subscribers of the Advertiser, where he had moved up from copy boy. But he had long pined to pack up his pen and take it to the U.S. Both he and his trim, Dutch-born wife Hendrika (winner of the South Australian breaststroke championship in 1955) have boned up on American mores and politics against the day that one of Oliphant’s endless job applications to U.S. papers paid off.

The Denver Post’s new employee soon showed he could deftly lampoon such American practices as commercialized sports TV. Embedded in each Oliphant panel is a kind of sub-cartoon featuring a penguin called Punk. Punk’s antics lured even children to the Advertiser’s editorial page. They may well do the same in Denver, where they are already earning a reputation as “Oliphant jokes.”

Gentle Restriction. The Republican-oriented Post has pledged Oliphant the same within-bounds latitude that Democrat Conrad enjoyed. “He’s not allowed to contradict editorial policy,” said Editorial Page Editor Mort Stern, “but he’s within broad limits. It’s never a question of ‘do this.’ ” Cartoonist Oliphant is not likely to chafe at this gentle restriction. The Post endorsed Kennedy in 1960 and will back Johnson this year; Oliphant’s attitudes are similar. “I tend to lean Democratic now,” he said. “But I don’t believe a cartoonist should come out one way or another.” Newcomer Oliphant’s first-blush impression of U.S. politics: “Very cartoonable.”