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Author(s)

• Bil Keane

  
  Bil Keane never formally studied art, but by
  faithfully re-creating the world around him, he developed the
  phenomenally successful cartoon panel The Family Circus.

  The
  panel records the lives of an average American family, made up of Mommy
  and Daddy, and their four children: Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and PJ. Their
  two dogs, Barfy and Sam, Kittycat and grandparents round out the cast.
  The daily panels are routinely drawn within a circle, underscoring the
  sense of closeness between the characters. The panel has been embraced
  by people the world over, as The Family Circus continues to show us how
  the American family lives now. King Features Syndicate distributes the
  panel to more than 1,500 newspapers worldwide, making it the most widely
  syndicated panel in America today.

  Keane was born Oct. 5, 1922,
  in Philadelphia. He taught himself to draw while at the Northeast
  Catholic High School. Keane started out imitating the drawing styles of
  some of The New Yorker magazine cartoonists of the late 1930s, such as
  George Price, Richard Decker, Peter Arno, Robert Day and Whitney Darrow.
  After years of imitation, Keane’s own drawing style began to emerge.

  In
  the late ’30s, Keane was working with a group of friends putting out a
  satire magazine, The Saturday Evening Toast, when he decided to drop the
  second L in “Bill.” “I really did it just to be different,” he says.

  “I
  thought it was a little more distinguished and started signing my
  cartoons that way, and it stuck.” His first job after high school was as
  a messenger at the Philadelphia Bulletin. While serving in the Army,
  1942-45, he drew for Yank magazine, and he created the At Ease with the
  Japanese feature for Pacific Stars and Stripes while in Tokyo.

  After
  the war he returned to the Bulletin and got a job drawing spot cartoons
  and caricatures for the entertainment section. He did a weekly Sunday
  comic for the Bulletin called Silly Philly, which was about a Quaker
  character based on William Penn. He also edited a weekly supplement in
  the Sunday paper called “Fun Book.”

  In 1948 he married Thelma
  Carne, an Australian he had met during the war. The Keanes lived for 10
  years in Roslyn, Pa., where their real-live family circus was born.

  In
  1954 Keane launched his Channel Chuckles television humor cartoon for
  newspapers, and it was distributed by The Register and Tribune Syndicate
  of Des Moines, Iowa, for 23 years. He sold gag cartoons regularly to
  most major magazines before creating The Family Circus.

  When the
  income from Channel Chuckles and his free-lance work enabled him to
  leave the Bulletin, Keane and his family moved to Arizona. Keane quickly
  realized that one of the beautiful things about the cartoon business
  was that it allowed him to live anywhere there is a mailbox.

  “Working
  at home for the first time with our five children under foot, I
  discovered that most of the magazine cartoons I was selling had to do
  with family life and small children. I then decided to produce The
  Family Circus,” he says.

  For six months the feature was called
  The Family Circle. Then the magazine of that name objected and the “le”
  was changed to “us.”

  Through the years, Keane has made his family
  life the center of his professional world. The first Family Circus
  cartoon, in February 1960, showed Mommy surrounded by a roomful of toy
  clutter, answering the door to a survey person who asked, “Any
  children?”

  Keane does not always try to make his cartoons
  especially funny. “I would rather have the readers react with a warm
  smile, a tug at the heart or a lump in the throat as they recall doing
  the same things in their own families,” he says.

  Keane says he believes that the family is the source of a lot of happiness, a lot of love and a lot of laughs.

  “I
  like to feel that what I’m doing portrays this: a family where there is
  love between mother, father and the kids. It’s a subject that is dear
  to me,” he says. Since 1978, Keane has created three animated specials
  for television. All have been ratings successes.

  He is the author
  of more than 60 books, most recently The Family Circus, By Request,
  published by Guideposts Books in 1998. New collections of Keane’s
  cartoons have been published regularly by Fawcett Books. There are 14
  million paperbacks in print.

  The characters also appear on
  calendars and other products. More than 5,000 elementary schools in the
  United States and Canada subscribe to a series of biweekly Family Circus
  Spirit posters, which promote self-esteem, respect for teachers and
  school pride. The Family Circus regularly rates No. 1 in newspaper
  surveys and has won several awards. In 1982 Keane was named “Cartoonist
  of the Year” by the National Cartoonists Society, and he received the
  prestigious Reuben Award.

  Keane has always tried to portray the
  typical American family. His Family Circus characters are based on his
  own family: himself, Thel and his five children, Gayle, Neal, Glen,
  Christopher and Jeff.

  Glen Keane is now a prominent animator for
  Walt Disney Pictures, having created the characters of Ariel (The Little
  Mermaid), the Beast (Beauty and the Beast), “Pocahontas,” and most
  recently, “Tarzan.”

  Jeff Keane, now 41, works as his father’s
  assistant. Daughter Gayle, model for Dolly, handles the volumes of mail,
  requests from charities for originals and myriad other duties, and
  travels from her home in California to her parents’ home in Arizona, one
  week each month to do the filing and support work for their
  corporation.

  Today, nine grandchildren provide the cartoonist
  with a whole new generation of ideas. Mommy of the cartoon resembles
  Thel Keane, who acts as model, critic and editor of her husband’s work.
  Like her cartoon counterpart, Thel is involved in community affairs,
  parent-school activities and all the things important to a suburban
  family.

  Even though the Keanes live in a sunny climate, the
  cartoonist shows the family living in a typical, Middle-American
  split-level house. He uses snow scenes each winter, drawing from
  memories of his Pennsylvania boyhood.

  Rather than pinpointing any
  part of the country as the place where the family lives, he prefers to
  have readers feel The Family Circus lives right down the street from
  their home.

  The popularity of The Family Circus is found in the
  fact that the cartoon reminds people of all ages about themselves, their
  kids and their parents.

  “If The Family Circus has any social
  value,” Keane says, “it shows parents that their children are normal.
  And if there is a philosophy behind the feature, it’s this: A home
  filled with love and laughter is the happiest place in the world.”

• Jeff Keane

  
  Jeff Keane was born in 1958. Two years later, his
  father Bil Keane started chasing him around every day begging that he do
  something funny, so he could incorporate it into his daily comic strip
  “The Family Circus.” As the inspiration for the Jeffy character, Keane
  now works alongside his father on the comic strip.

  Raised in
  Arizona, Keane moved to California to attend college. In 1981, he
  received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama from the University of
  Southern California. After graduation, Keane returned to his cartoon
  work.

  In 2007, Keane was nominated President of the National
  Cartoonists Society. Keane lives in California with his wife Melinda and
  their three children. Keane now chases his kids around begging them to
  do something funny, proving that “The Family Circus” really does come
  full circle.