Fontaine Fox - Inspiration

Inspiration

No less than two cities claim to be the inspiration of Toonerville Folks: Louisville and Pelham, New York. The folks of Louisville claim the experiences were based on the short Brook Street Line in 1915, which ran until 1930. For years, this route had been getting the cast-off equipment from the trunk lines until it became the joke of the town. Finally, the managing editor of the Louisville Herald asked the young Fox to draw some sketches caricaturing the antiquated vehicles, which is said to have cast the germ for the Toonerville Trolley.

However, the Pelham populace insists the comic strip was based in part on the artist’s experience during a trolley ride on a visit to Pelham in 1909. They alleged that Fox repeatedly said that he was inspired to create the Toonerville Trolley and its skipper based on a trolley ride he took in Pelham. During that ride, he observed the trolley car operator gossip with passengers and, once, stop the vehicle to pick apples in an adjacent orchard. One piece of that evidence is an article that appeared in The New York Times on July 30, 1937, the day before the last journey of the Pelham trolley due to its replacement by a bus route. The article reported, among other things, that Mr. Bailey piloted the Pelham trolley from 1900 to 1914. According to the article:

Back in 1909, when Mr. Fox took a ride on the Pelham line, then served by a rickety little car, he watched the "skipper" gossip with the passengers and stop the car to pick apples for them; thus he drew his inspiration for his Toonerville Trolley comics.

Fox continued the Toonerville Folks comic panel until 1955, changing syndicates twice, eventually gaining all rights to his comic panel. He later moved to New York. During the 1940s, he lived at One West Elm Street in Greenwich, Connecticut, spending winters at 610 North Ocean Boulevard in Delray Beach, Florida. Jack Morley, an assistant with Fox, also worked with Crockett Johnson on Barnaby.

Apart from drawing comics, he was an author and a fervent golfer, winning several tournaments. His cartoons ran for 42 years and were honored in a 1995 U.S. postage stamp series. Upon retirement, he refused to let his brainchild pass into another cartoonist's hands. Fox died at the age of 80 in Greenwich in 1964. His epitaph reads, "I had a hunch something like this would happen."