Frederick Opper Dies at 80; Happy Hooligan's Creator
New Rochelle, N.Y., Aug. 27 - Heart disease brought death today to Frederick Burr Opper, 80, creator of Happy Hooligan, Alphonse and Gaston, and other comic strip characters read around the world.
He was forced by failing eyesight a few years ago to retire from active work for newspapers with which he had been connected since 1899.
Born in Madison, Ohio, the son of an Austro-Hungarian immigrant, Opper left school at 14 to work on the Madison Gazette, a weekly newspaper. A year later he went to New York.
When he submitted some of his sketches to magazines they were promptly purchased. Then Col. Frank Leslie hired him as a staff artist for Leslie's weekly. Three years later he went to Puck, with which he remained until engaged for the New York Journal.
With the rise of the syndicate system, his cartoons were circulated throughout the world.
In 1900 he created the tramp with the tin hat, Happy Hooligan, best known of his characters.
Opper for many years was an outstanding political cartoonist, during the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt campaigns. His "Willie and Teddy" series had the nation roaring.