Lee Falk
| Lee Falk | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Leon Harrison Gross April 28, 1911 St. Louis, Missouri |
| Died | March 13, 1999 (aged 87) New York City |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer and cartoonist |
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Notable works
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The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician |
| Awards | Adamson Award, Silver T-Square Award, The Yellow Kid Award, The Roman Lifetime Achievement Award |
Lee Falk, born Leon Harrison Gross (April 28, 1911 – March 13, 1999), was an American writer, theater director and producer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strips The Phantom (1936–present) and Mandrake the Magician (1934–2013). At the height of their popularity, these strips attracted over 100 million readers every day. Falk also wrote short stories, and he contributed to a series of pulp novels about The Phantom.
A playwright and theatrical director/producer, Falk directed actors such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Chico Marx and Ethel Waters.
Falk was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where he spent his boyhood and his youth. His mother was Eleanor Alina (a name he later, in some form, used in both his Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom story lines), and his father was Benjamin Gross. Both of his parents were Jewish. Lee was born and raised Jewish. Benjamin Gross died when Falk was just a boy, and after a time, his mother Eleanor married Albert Falk Epstein, who became the father figure for Lee Falk and his brother, Leslie. Falk changed his surname after leaving college. He took the middle name of his stepfather, but "Lee" had been his nickname since childhood, so he took that name also. His brother, Leslie, also took the name "Falk".
When Falk began his comic strip and comic book writing and drawing career, his official biography claimed that he was an experienced world traveler who had studied with Eastern mystics. In fact, Falk had simply made it up in order to seem more like the right kind of person to be writing about globe-trotting heroes like Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom. His trip to New York City to pitch Mandrake the Magician for publication by the King Features Syndicate was at that time the farthest that he had traveled from home in St. Louis. In later life, however, he became an experienced world traveler for real – at least partly, he said, to avoid the embarrassment of having his bluff inadvertently called by genuine travelers wanting to swap anecdotes.
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