This article is a combination of a slightly edited version of an article that appeared in the Miami Herald shortly after the death of Quin Hall in 1968 and an earlier profile in Editor and Publisher, May 31, 1941.
Both the above articles cover his newspaper career but omit entirely his work in the 1910s and 1920s illustrating Chicago-based magazines The Red Book, The Blue Book (including at least one Edgar Rice Burroughs story, Out of Time’s Abyss, a sequel to The Land That Time Forgot), and The Green Book. In addition Quin illustrated articles for Photoplay, Motor Age, Judge, some items by Ring Lardner and achieved some fame as a gag writer for The New Yorker.
An article at The Stripper’s Guide lists his newspaper strips.
Quin Hall, whose sprightly cartoons of mischievous boys, coy girls, portly politicians and playful animals appeared in The Miami Herald for over 25 years, is dead at 84.
Mr. Hall, of 1595 Bay Road, Miami Beach, died late Tuesday in a hospital, which he had entered a week ago. He had been ill for several weeks and unable to occupy his accustomed place before his drawing table at The Herald, but had insisted on continuing to work at home.
His final cartoon strip, “Drawn From the Headlines,” appeared in the Miami Herald on Sept. 23.
A visitor, who called on Quin at his home the day before he was to go into the hospital, found him sitting in bed with a drawing board in his lap, and his devoted miniature Doberman, Mindy, beside him. Mindy barked fiercely at the intruder until Quin could reassure her that the visitor would do him no harm. Unfortunately Mindy was not at the hospital when the ultimate intruder arrived.
He was born in Lacon, Ill., on Feb. 15, 1884, where his ashes will be buried near the remains of his parents. He attended the University of Illinois, but dropped out in his sophomore year after “falling out” with engineering.
In the last 50 years (maybe more, maybe less), Hall, a big jolly fellow, has been printer, meat packer, dry goods salesman, shoe clerk, reporter, editor and cartoonist. He did a stint, too, at sports writing. He liked to remember having breakfast with world’s heavyweight champion Jim Corbett and the time he kept the box score on a 21-inning baseball game.
His first newspaper job was on the Lacon (Ill.) Home Journal, a weekly, for which he reported and set type while still attending school. “My salary started at 25 cents a week which was paid to me by the editor on Saturday night when he’d find me gazing hungrily at the ice cream soda fountain in the drug store,” Hall says. “Naturally, increased ability brought increased income and by the time I was graduated from high school I might have been making several dollars a week — maybe three.”
Hall’s first cartoon appeared in the Lacon paper during a Fourth of July week. It was on safety, he recalls, “something about a boy and a dog too close to a firecracker.” The response was not encouraging, so young Hall enrolled next year at the University of Illinois to study engineering. But soon after he gave up the calipers for the grease pencil and went at the art business in earnest. He has been at it more or less ever since.
After a turn at meat-packing and selling dry goods, Hall went to work for the Oklahoma City (Okla.) Times as a reporter, wound up as staff artist when he turned in a lively cartoon strip on some local gossip. For a time he also was sports editor. With funds again, he enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Art. His cartooning started in earnest from that date.
Hall worked successively on the Chicago Daily News, the old Chicago World, which notified him of its suspension while he was on assignment on the west coast and the Chicago Tribune. Later, he became cartoon instructor at the Chicago Academy of Art and a cartoonist in Seattle, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and New York where, finally, he joined the AP Feature Service.
For a time he did a story and picture a day, usually on sports or on a light subject which gave him ample leeway as a cartoonist.
Moving to Miami in 1939, in semi-retirement, Mr. Hall soon found he could not separate himself from the work that had given him so much pleasure, as well as thousands of newspaper readers. He applied for a job at The Herald in 1941 and was hired immediately by Lee Hills, then managing editor. His production of cartoons since then, if piled on top of one another, would make a small mountain.
Quin liked to say he “wrote” his cartoons rather than drew them. He used an old fashioned, highly flexible steel pen and a light, cheap staff which he held in the middle. He could exchange quips while working. You watched and marveled at the way he “wrote” his fat puppies, long-eared dogs, pompous hippopotamuses, or eager, curious, playful children; as you saw these creations come to life on white paper.
Quin, who did not drive, was driven to work by a chauffeur. The only other person working on The Herald who is driven to work by a chauffeur is publisher John S. Knight, whose weekly Editor’s Notebook Quin frequently illustrated.
Except for his wife, Marjorie, Mr. Hall leaves no immediate kin closer than nephews and cousins scattered from Maine to California.