George Lichty

• Birth Name — George Maurice Lichtenstein • Born — 16 May 1905 • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois, U.S. • Died — 18 July 1983 • Place of death — Santa Rosa, California, U.S. • Cartoonist — y • Alias — Lichty • Children — 2 • Notable Works — Grin and Bear It • Awards — National Cartoonists Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award., 1956, 1960, 1962, 1964

Born George Maurice Lichtenstein to Julius and Ella Hirsh Lichtenstein in Chicago, Illinois, Lichty was 16 years old when he launched his art career by selling his first cartoon to Judge. He attended the Chicago Art Institute (1924–25) and was the editor of the University of Michigan's humor magazine, The Gargoyle. Graduating from the University of Michigan in 1929, he began his newspaper career doing spot cartoons and sports drawings for the Chicago Daily Times. Lichty and Eleanor Louise Fretter married on January 5, 1931. A member of the San Francisco Press Club, Lichty performed as a percussionist with the Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band. Lichty lived with his wife and their two daughters in Santa Rosa, California, and later on Apple Ranch in Sebastopol, California. At age 78, he died July 18, 1983, of a heart attack in the Santa Rosa Hospital in Santa Rosa, California.

After he created his Grin and Bear It series in 1932, it was syndicated at first by United Feature Syndicate and later by the Field Newspaper Syndicate in Chicago. Lichty also contributed to Collier's during the 1930s. His artwork had a hastily drawn, loose appearance. Frequent subjects included computers, family life, excessive capitalism and Soviet bureaucracy. Scenes in his cartoons were often set in the offices of commissars or the showrooms of "Belchfire" dealers with enormous cars in the background. His series Is Party Line, Comrade! also skewered various Soviet bureaucrats, who usually were drawn wearing a five-pointed star medal labeled "Hero". The "gags" for Grin and Bear It were written by Arthur Erenberg; he would describe the scene and write the joke and then Lichty would draw the cartoon.

George Lichty is recorded as cartoonist.