Reginald Smyth (July 10, 1917 – June 13, 1998), best known by his Reg Smythe pseudonym, was a British cartoonist who created the popular, long-running Andy Capp comic strip.
Born in Hartlepool, England, Reginald Smyth (without the "e") was the son of Richard Oliver Smyth, a shipyard worker, and his wife, Florence (Florrie) née Pearce. Leaving school at the age of 14, he was unemployed for some years. He joined the Northumberland Fusiliers, serving ten years and rising to the rank of sergeant.
During World War II, Smyth saw active service in North Africa, where he developed a talent for cartoon drawing through creating posters for amateur dramatic productions. After being released from active duty, he settled in London and worked as a clerk for the GPO. He continued to draw poster art, but in the 1950s he moved to cartoon work, operating through an agent and adopting the pseudonym Reg Smythe.
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By the mid-1950s, he was working for the Daily Mirror, where his Andy Capp strip had its debut in 1957. It made its way to the United States in 1963. Smyth described Andy Capp as having been born "on the A1 road at 60 mph" after he had received, during a visit to West Hartlepool, a request from the Mirror Group chairman Hugh Cudlipp to create a cartoon to boost Northern readership. The characters Andy and Flo were based on Smyth's own parents.
Apart from its rapid success in the UK, Andy Capp became popular internationally in at least 34 countries and 700 newspapers. Andy became Tuffa Viktor in Sweden, Willi Wacker in Germany, Charlie Kappl in Austria, Carlo e Alice in Italy, André Chapeau in France and Kasket Karl in Denmark, though he remained "Andy Capp" in the US.
In the mid-1970s, Smyth returned to Hartlepool, where he died of lung cancer in 1998, aged 80.
Smyth was honored with numerous awards, including Best British Cartoon Strip every year from 1961 to 1965 and major awards in Italy (1969, 1973, 1978). In the US, he received the National Cartoonists Society's Best Strip award in 1974.[2]
In 2007, after years of local speculation and fundraising, a bronze statue commemorating Andy Capp was erected near to the Harbour of Refuge Pub in Smyth's hometown of Hartlepool. Measuring five feet, eight inches, the Statue cost £20,000 and was designed by Shrewsbury sculptor Jane Robbins.[3]
Andy Capp was adapted as a West End musical and a 1988 television series by Keith Waterhouse, without notable success.