Cartoonist: CARTOONIST Going West

After the death of the Los Angeles Times's Editorial Cartoonist Bruce Russell last month (of a heart attack at 60), Publisher Otis Chandler went hunting for a successor. Last week Chandler, who wants "the best of everything" for his paper and is prepared to pay the price, announced a considerable catch: the Denver Post's Paul Conrad, 39 (TIME, June 13, 1960), one of the best editorial cartoonists in the U.S.

Cartoonist Conrad is a registered Democrat who says he has "strayed from the path of righteousness and truth" only once—to vote for Eisenhower in 1952. But his pen knows no political party. In Los Angeles he will find much the same political environment that he is getting ready to leave. Both the Post and the Times are Republican papers. But Times Publisher Chandler has promised Conrad the same latitude that he enjoyed in Denver, where, despite occasional remonstrances from Post Publisher Palmer Hoyt, Conrad persisted in depicting former President Eisenhower as progressively senile and slightly vacuous.

Conrad's new three-year contract with the Times will not affect his distribution to some 81 papers through the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate under a contract that has four more years to run. Thus his work will continue to appear in the Denver Post—at least until Palmer Hoyt goes hunting for a successor.