JIM DAVIS | A profile 'Garfield' cartoonist wasn't always a fat cat
The farm boy's creation is now a big-screen star.
By LUAINE LEE
KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- When cartoonist Jim Davis was growing up on a farm in Indiana, he was asthmatic and allergic to everything -- everything, that is, except cats.
It's a good thing because Davis has built a small empire based on his basically orange and rascally cat character, Garfield.
Not only has Garfield presided over his own mega-merchandising, kids' morning show, TV specials and syndicated newspaper column, now he has his very own, self-titled movie.
All this success doesn't seem to faze Davis.
"I certainly learned the work ethic on the farm doing chores, baling hay," he says, seated on a beige tweed loveseat in a super-tidy hotel room here.
"To this day I feel like I'm semi-retired. Everything is easy once you've grown up on a farm ... "
He says, "Mom always put a pen and paper in my hand and encouraged me to draw. I was always using my imagination. Life was fairly simple back then. There were only three channels on the television," he laughs.
Football
Davis was painfully shy, a stutterer who mostly kept to himself. An off-hand suggestion by his father suddenly changed things for the teenager.
"One day I was working baling hay. A couple of neighbor kids were over helping out and they were going off for the first day of football practice at the high school. And dad said, 'Take Jim with you.' I was 5-foot-4, 100 pounds. I didn't even know the name of the positions. I got out there and, 'What position are you up for?' 'Uhhhh, I don't know.' I'd never even considered football. And the next thing I knew I was in their car and I was going off to football practice."
Davis attended Ball State and went to work as a paste-up artist at a commercial art studio.
Davis, 58, had conjured up his furry foil earlier, and for eight years had pitched the comic strip to newspaper syndicates. United Features finally relented. Fame and a sizable fortune followed.