Roger Price

• Name — Roger Price • Born — March 6, 1918 • Birthplace — Charleston, West Virginia, U.S. • Died — 31 October 1990 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California • Occupation — Humorist, author, publisher, actor • Known for — Droodles, Mad Libs, Price Stern Sloan • Education — University of Michigan (1934–36) American Academy of Art in Chicago (1936–38) • Notable Works — In One Head and Out the Other • Children — (with Bettina Lerfield) Roger Taylor Price III (b. 1943), Sandi Price (b. 1944)

Price was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and grew up in the mining town of Widen, West Virginia. He graduated from Greenbrier Military School in 1934, then attended the University of Michigan (1934–1936) and the American Academy of Art in Chicago (1936–1938). During the 1940s, he wrote for The Bob Hope Show and worked with Hope on a newspaper humor column. On Broadway he performed in Arthur Klein's musical revue Tickets, Please! (1950), and he contributed sketch material to Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952. Price hosted the television panel show How To (1951), and he was a panelist on other game shows of the early 1950s: Who's There? What Happened? That Reminds Me, The Name's the Same and What's My Line?

In 1953, Price invented Droodles, a syndicated feature which he described as "a borkley-looking sort of drawing that doesn't make any sense until you know the correct title." When Simon & Schuster published Price's Droodles in 1953, the book launched a Droodle craze that was fueled by a series of ads in college newspapers offering cash prizes for Droodles created by college students. In 1954, Price hosted a Droodles television game show with panelists Marc Connelly, Denise Lor and Carl Reiner. More Droodles were gathered in follow-up books, The Rich Sardine (1954) and Oodles of Droodles (1955). Over the years, many of the drawings (minus the author's droll commentary) have been reprinted in collections such as Classic Droodles. One of Price's original Droodles serves as the cover art for Frank Zappa's 1982 album Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch. Price's other captions for that drawing include "Mother pyramid feeding her baby." In 2000, after Stern and Sloan launched another publishing company, Tallfellow Press, they acquired the rights to Droodles and reissued it as Droodles: The Classic Collection.

Price had four articles in Harvey Kurtzman's Mad in 1955–1956 and later contributed to Kurtzman's 1960s magazine Help!. In the introduction to Mads first paperback collection, The Mad Reader (Ballantine Books, 1954), he described Kurtzman's appearance: He is 5 feet 6 inches tall and has a physique that is just barely noticeable and a long expression. In fact, Harvey looks like a beagle who is too polite to mention that someone is standing on his tail. This Beagleishness has certain compensations – he is never ordered off the grass in Central Park and Pretty Girls frequently stop on the street to scratch him behind the ears.

The same year the Droodle was born, Price and Stern invented Mad Libs (although the first book in the series was not published until 1958). The title came about when the two were in Sardi's and overheard an actor arguing with his agent. The actor wanted to "ad-lib" an interview, but his agent thought such an approach was "mad". According to Stern, the concept was hatched accidentally. Stern was scripting an episode for The Honeymooners in 1953 when Price came by. Stern recalled, "I was trying to find the right word to describe the nose of Ralph Kramden's new boss. So I asked Roger for an idea for an adjective and before I could tell him what it was describing, he threw out 'clumsy' and 'naked'. We both started laughing. We sat down and wrote a bunch of stories with blanks in them. That night we took them to a cocktail party and they were a great success... We were turned down by every publisher in the New York area. Publishers told us it wasn't a book and suggested we approach game manufacturers, but they also rejected us and advised us to talk to publishers. It became a well-worn path." A Publishers Weekly article described the rise of Mad Libs after the initial 1958 publication:

• Illustration — Don Silverstein illustration for Grump, edited and published by Roger Price in 1965–67 During the 1960s, Price opened the first New York art gallery devoted solely to cartoons. In 1965–1967 he published and edited the short-lived humor publication, Grump, which featured such contributors as Isaac Asimov, Christopher Cerf, Derek Robinson, Susan Sands, Jean Shepherd, and cartoonists Don Silverstein and David C. K. McClelland. He was the co-creator with Stanley Ralph Ross of the short-lived 1977 NBC situation comedy The Kallikaks, and he also wrote for the show.

Price was married four times; all the marriages ended in divorce. He had two children with his second wife, Bettina Lerfield. At the time of his death in 1990, Price lived in Studio City, California.

• Mame (1974) – Ralph Divine • Mixed Company (1974) – The Doctor • The Strongest Man in the World (1975) – Roger • At Long Last Love (1975) – Alfred • The Day of the Locust (1975) – Guest #3 • I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? (1975) • Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) – Senator • Pete's Dragon (1977) – Man with Visor • The Cat from Outer Space (1978) – 1st E.R.L. Expert • Just You and Me, Kid (1979) – Mailman • The Devil and Max Devlin (1981) – Old Man

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