Gladys Parker (b. 1908)

Born: 1908 March 21 in Tonawanda, New York, United States

Died: 1966 April 27 in Glendale, California, United States

Biography: Gladys Parker is best known as the creator of the cartoon feature Mopsy, which she drew from 1937 through 1966. By 1949 the comic strip was said to appear in about 300 newspapers, with syndication in eleven countries. Beginning in 1947, Mopsy also was featured in a series of comic books. But Gladys contributed other comic hits, most notably Flapper Fanny in the 1930s. In addition, she was a nationally recognized fashion designer during the 1930s and early 1940s, with a design studio on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Gladys became involved in sketching and fashion design in her early teens when she was confined to bed with osteomyelitis. In 1927 she went to New York City with a foot-operated sewing machine and the goal of becoming a designer. By the end of the year she had won a prize in a costume designing contest, and in 1928 began a nationally distributed comic strip Gay and Her Gang. To complement her comic strips and also the fashion features she contributed to newspapers, she introduced cut-out paper fashion models with accompanying clothing styles, first for Flapper Fanny and later for Mopsy. These stimulated an awareness of fashion among many teenage girls of the time.

Mopsy was patterned after Gladys, both in appearance and manner – pert and petite, topped off by a thick mop of dark hair. The concept and name originated from a casual remark by Rube Goldberg that Gladys’s own hair “looked like a mop.” At the time she began her career as a cartoonist, there were very few women in this profession.

She was married (from 1930 till her death) to cartoonist/illustrator Benjamin David "Stookie" Allen.

Parker was a member of the Society of Illustrators and the National Cartoonists Society. When she retired in 1965, Mopsy retired with her. She was 56 when she died of lung cancer in 1966.

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