Robert Quillen - Syndicated Journalist

Syndicated Journalist

By 1932 his work, which included editorials, paragraphs, cartoons, and one-liners, was regularly appearing in four hundred newspapers in the United States, Canada, England, and the Far East. Quillen wrote for such major periodicals such as the Baltimore Sun, the Saturday Evening Post, and The American Magazine, and he "took the greatest pride" in one-liners picked up by Literary Digest. According to a biographer, he was known as the best "paragrapher" of his day. With the assistance of Chicago newspaper executive Eugene P. Conley, Quillen also syndicated two single-panel cartoons (drawn by John H. Striebel), "Aunt Het" and "Willie Willis"—the latter of which was translated into Dutch as "Pimmie Pimmel." As early as 1924, Quillen's income from syndicated material alone was probably more than $25,000—easily ten times that amount in early 21st century dollars.

In 1934 Hollywood screen writer Lamar Trotti and producer George Marshall visited Quillen to use him as a prototype for a Will Rogers film, Life Begins at Forty, in which Rogers played a small-town newspaper editor. The film credits mentioned Quillen for "contributing dialogue."

Facile with words, Quillen took inconsistent political, economic, and racial positions; but he was "not afraid to bare his soul, express personal views, and even vent scorn and anger." For instance, he hated patent medicine, people who put on airs, late night noises (both human and natural), and the cats and jays that killed his beloved song birds. Although a shy man who refused to speak in public, he became something of a "one-man welfare and relief agency for the poor and needy of Fountain Inn."