Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, was the fourth – and last – woman cartoonist to be employed full-time on Smith’s Weekly . She was there from c.1942-50, i.e. after Rosaleen Norton and Mollie Horseman had left but while Joan Morrison was still around (pace Blaikie, who has Horseman there too – but Horseman does not appear in a photo showing Cullen with other 'Smith’s Artists’, published in Smith’s , 26 December 1942, p 15). According to Blaikie (p.98) Cullen 'set herself the curious wartime task of seeing how many American servicemen of officer rank she could get herself engaged to at the one time … [and] had actually to receive an engagement ring from the victim’. She ended up with seven, including a general whose silver stars she made into a brooch. 'Her true love, however, was a young Digger whom she married on his return from the war.’ Cullen was possibly the artist known briefly as 'J. Cullen Murphy’ at this time. A Theresa Elaine Cullen married Thomas Dowling Murphy in Sydney in 1945.

Cullen’s Smith’s Weekly cartoons include '“Hips 41!”/ “That’s a lie I’ve never been more than 38!”/ 'Girls will find that they fit you for comfort in the army’, included in a page of drawings of women in the forces by various Smith’s artists. “I never feel comfortable when that bearded lady from the circus walks into the dressing room” 21 March 1942, 1 (repeated 26/12/42), and 'If the Uniform Fits She’ll Wear It’ 21 March 1942, 16 (back page feature). The original of “Of course, the siren would go while I was in the middle of my bath!” (female covered only with towel entering shelter to shocked Air Raid warden), published 31 March 1942, 11, was collected by Thomas Finch Roy Ottaway and presented to the SLNSW in 1994 (PXD 619, in 1999 SLNSW b/w exhn), while Cullen’s 'It’s my wife, nurse – she doesn’t like me being alone with strange women’ (ML PXD 840) was donated in 1999 by the wife of a former reporter along with a final copy of Smith’s (28 October 1950) signed by all the cartoonists.

Newspaper reproductions only are known for '[female] “Ooh! Do you really come from Hollywood?”/ [USA soldier] “Sure, Missy! Clark Gable’s my buddy, and Dorothy Lamour brings Myrna Loy over to my house every Sunday”’, Smith’s Weekly 4 April 1942, 16 (on page of cartoons giving advice to Americans about Australia); INSPECTOR: “How do you like the zone system of bread deliveries, Madam?”/ HOUSEHOLDER: “Good-oh! Our baker knows all the scandal of the street!” 2 May 1942, 5 (also a small cartoon on p.4); (glamorous woman to soldiers) “I’m afraid you boys will have to entertain yourselves to-night – the girls are all in camp!” 16 May 1942, 10; 'Turnabout’ 4 July 1942, 5 (women going off to war and men weeping); 'The pinch-her movement’, 25 July 1942, 5 (officer and private(?) competing for a girl’s attention); 'VAD must not be all behind’ 12 December 1942, 20 (nurse scrubbing floor – used as Xmas greetings); 'Jean Cullen’s Page of Fun’ 26 December 1942, 20 (repeats air raid shelter nude gag and lots of others); “I’m not in mourning for anyone, darling. Coupons were off, so I thought of our black-out curtains!” 6 February 1943, 12.

Cullen also illustrated several of the popular wartime 'Its 'Ard’ booklets of 'naughty’ comic verses by 'Kay Grant’ (Nelle Grant Cooper), including Its 'Ard To Go Wrong in the Suburbs (Sydney: A&R, 1940) and (with Anne Drew a.k.a. Joan Dent , the major illustrator of the series) Its 'Ard to Go Wrong in the Cactus (New York: Morrow & Co., 1943). In 1945 Cullen’s 39-page comic book about a girl’s tribulations in wartime, Hold That Halo: or, How to lost it in ten easy lessons (Sydney: Allied Authors and Artists [1945]), was published. The only known copy in a public library, the Pearce copy in the NLA, has the pencilled note: “Prosecuted in Sydney (successfully) for its immoral implications’. According to Coleman (p.38), booksellers were regularly prosecuted for indecency at the time by the Crown in the person of Detective J.A. Vogelsang (a.k.a. Vogelesang) of Adelaide, who was especially commended in 1946 for his zeal in pursuing obscenity (e.g. the Ern Malley poems in Angry Penguins ), and N.S.W. and Victorian police were also avid prosecutors (see Rosaleen Norton ).

After Smith’s closed on 28 October 1950, Cullen moved to Brisbane. There she created the strip “Pam” for the Courier Mail , modelled on the US teenage strip Archie . It was almost immediately taken over by Mollie Horseman as Cullen suicided by putting her head in a gas oven [in 1951?]. Her suicide note, pinned on the exterior of the kitchen door is said to have been, 'Don’t light match’ – the ultimate gag (info. National Trust gallery guide, via Jo Holder).

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007