George Booth, one of The New Yorker‘s true originals, has died at age 96 according to his daughter, Sarah Booth. Mr. Booth passed away less than a week following the death of his wife, Dione.
Above: George Booth’s first New Yorker cartoon, in the issue of June 14, 1969. Below: Mr. Booth’s last published New Yorker cartoon, in the issue of July 4, 2022. His last New Yorker cover was published January 24th of this year..
With Booth’s passing,The New Yorker has lost one of its true giants. His was one of three wildly different sensibilities brought into the magazine’s stable of cartoonists in 1969. Sam Gross and Charles Barsotti were the other two.
Of the trio, Booth brought the wider cast of characters: the energetic senior citizen, the cave people, Mrs. Ritterhouse, the man in the claw-foot tub, and of course, most famously, the Booth dog, and cat. And then the settings: the wainscoted room with rumpled rug, and the swung hanging ceiling lamp. Booth visited and revisited all until we knew, in an instant, where we were and who we were with.
Booth is among the handful of New Yorker cartoonists of whom it could be said that the artist closely resembled the artist’s work (Charles Addams and Steinberg are among the others). Meeting Booth was like meeting a character in his cartoon world. It was tempting to think of what he said as audio Boothian captions—captions that would work only in a Booth cartoon. 
As in the above drawing (published in The New Yorker, January 13, 1973) I can easily picture Booth himself as the auto mechanic speaking to a customer: “We’ll have to keep your car another day. There’s a devilled egg in the carburetor.”
His drawing style was at once both new to our eyes and seemingly always there – an honest original. Seeing a Booth published drawing one might marvel at the intricacies of people, places, and things. Look at the original art and you’ll see cut-out chairs, and plants and dogs, etc., etc., placed and arranged as on a theater set. He was a master of design, and a master of humor. Everything was funny. The way he drew a piano was funny. His humor transferred directly to the page where the drawings’ good vibrations continued.
The man himself: tall, with a Will Rogers-like tuft of hair falling onto his forehead. A gentle man, with a touch of Missouri accent (that makes sense: it’s where he was born). Booth was a real character. Spend any time with him and you would be treated to his bursts of laughter – perhaps a snort! Laughing full out loud when he was surprised by humor in others. He wasn’t the least bit shy about laughing at his own work – an honest reaction to absurdities he’d laid down on paper. When Booth appeared along with Lee Lorenz, Frank Modell, and Charles Addams on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1976, it was Booth who laughed the loudest at his colleagues cartoons shown to the audience. His laughter, like his cartoons, providing moments of contagious pure joy.
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More Booth…Coverage of his passing:
Harrison Smith’s Washington Post Booth obit, November 3, 2022, “George Booth, Whose Cartoon Dogs Became A New Yorker Staple, dies at 96″
Robert McFadden’s New York Times Booth obit, Nov. 2, 2022: “George Booth, New Yorker Cartoonist Of Sublime Zaniness, Dies at 96”
The New Yorker has reposted a Jan. 5, 2022 piece by David Owen (his Booth Profile is cited below) introducing the Booth documentary film, “Drawing Life.”
The cartoonist Mike Lynch has posted “George Booth 1926-2022”
The cartoonist Jason Chatfield has posted “Artist Spotlight: George Booth (1926-2022)”
The Daily Cartoonist‘s D.D. Degg has posted “George Booth — RIP”
Three Booth must-reads:
Lee Lorenz’s The Essential George Booth (Workman, 1998).
From The New Yorker: “Booth Country” by David Owen, in the issue of November 29, 1998.
From a collection of pieces on New Yorker cartoonists, I Only Read It For The Cartoons, by Richard Gehr (New Harvest, 2014). “King Of The Scrapyard: George Booth”
Must-Have George Booth Collections:
From The Spill’s A-Z:
George Booth Born June 28, 1926, Cainesville, MO. New Yorker work: June 14, 1969 – July 4, 2022. Key collections: Think Good Thoughts About A Pussycat (Dodd, Mead, 1975), Rehearsal’s Off! (Dodd, Mead, 1976), Omnibooth: The Best of George Booth ( Congdon & Weed, 1984), The Essential George Booth, Compiled and Edited by Lee Lorenz ( Workman, 1998).
Photo at the top of this post taken in NYC 2016, courtesy of Liza Donnelly
Note: Thurber Thursday will return next week.
A huge loss to cartooning, but very grateful for his prolific output.
George was a gem. I always enjoyed seeing him in the offices when he would make the trek. Consistently affable and kind to me. Never forget that smile. Easily the most charming cartoonist I’ve met. Lucky for the time I had with George.
My condolences to his family and friends.
I’ll never forget the time he complimented me on my socks! He had a long life and a great smile!
In 2006 I was showing cartoons to Robert Mankoff for the first time. I was waiting in a crowded side room when George Booth came in. He noticed they were no places to sit so I stood up and offered my seat. He said, “Oh, no no. Please. I’ll wait in the hall.” He left the room. One beat. Two beats. Then George came back in, grabbed my arm, and growled, “Get up!” General laughter, with the loudest coming from me. Rest in peace George and thanks for the story.
I had the great fortune and privilege to be at the Pergola lunch table with George one Tuesday. He was a very dear and gentle man with a wonderfully wicked sense of humour. A cartooning master and a mensch.
George Booth leaves an incredible legacy of art and humor. He gave people countless moments of joy with his drawings, me included. I feel honored to have met him and shared time and stories with him, those moments are priceless. I love the story he told me (and to many more) that he joined the Marines to draw cartoons for their magazine. A gentle soul, unpretentious, down to earth, a great human being.
I remember asking him what pen he used. He said, “Oh, whatever’s Lyon’ around.”
“Wow. And for your finishes?”
He said, “Oh, I’m not sure what it is. All I know is it has an “F” on it.”
For the following three years I’m searching around the world for this mysterious “F” pen.
Turns out it’s a Faber Castell artists Pitt pen. Black. Nothing fancy.
But let’s be honest, the man could have used a pair of garden shears and come out with something exquisite.
He’ll be greatly missed.
Thank you, Michael, for this lovely tribute to the one and only. There never was and never will be anyone like George Booth.
I was a longtime New Yorker reader, from twelve or thirteen until I felt it was drifting from the magazine I loved, a few years ago; but I always looked in on the website for the cartoons—and Mr. Booth, whenever he appeared, was always a highlight. I agree with the other commentators that his world is both uniquely his own and universal.
I’ve studied George’s drawings since I was very little. All dogs are his dogs for me–Or I wish they were! Admiration and respect for his life and work.
I was privileged to have met George through the Long Island chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. What a charming, easygoing, funny man. His drawings are one of a kind. His New Yorker cartoon after 9/11 made me cry.
And Sarah, to lose your parents within a week of one another. Such sweethearts.
Thanks, Michael for the tribute to George Booth.
For some reason, I was checking The Spill – and was saddened by the news – but at the same time, George was blessed to be active with an alert mind and a genius sense of humor. Of course, my favorite video was the CBS Sunday Morning interview with Faith Salie.
I saw George interviewed by David Sipress one priceless night at a small venue on the Lower East Side. I’d never met George till that time and didn’t know what to expect. Well, he was delightful, in both senses: he delighted the audience, and he himself was full of delight. He cracked himself up. What a gift he gave us, sharing his self-delight with the world.
One story that sticks with me is a contest he had with fellow cartoonist Henry Martin (who himself passed away at 95 only a couple years ago) over which of them could get the longest caption into the magazine. As I remember the story (Michael or David can correct me), George won, with a caption that was simply pulled from a letter that Henry had written to him. (Maybe the reason I don’t remember the details of the story so well is that George kept laughing uproariously while telling it.)
Two cartoons among many come quickly to mind: Captionless—a crowd gathers to watch an execution, waiting to see whether the guillotined head will knock down all the bowling pins at the bottom of the sloping ramp. And a Brooklyn scene, as a 30-ish schlub loafs on the front stoop of a brownstone, gawking at a pretty girl walking by. His impatient mother stands at the top of the stoop and yells at him, “Whistle, you dumb bastard!”
He was a truly great man. And his work was just the very best. -s