cartoonist, was born and bred in Adelaide. He began work as a copyboy on the Adelaide News in 1952 but soon left for a cadetship on the Advertiser . Seven months later, aged about 17, he joined its art department and afterwards claimed to be the youngest cartoonist ever employed by a metropolitan daily in Australia. In 1955 he became the Advertiser 's editorial cartoonist and remained in the position for nine years. By the time he was 22, his work was appearing six days a week. In 1958 – still in his early 20s – he won [or was placed second in] an international competition, 'The Great Challenge’, held by London’s Fleet Street to find the most popular [funniest acc. 1965 Year Book] cartoonist among 100 or so practitioners from all over the world. In 1960 he gained second place for Australia and New Zealand in a world newspaper cartoon competition conducted by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. (He worked with Peter Luck on the Advertiser then was apparently briefly in Canberra in the early 1960s when Luck too was drawing cartoons.)
In mid-1964 Oliphant moved to the USA to be editorial cartoonist on the Denver Post , Colorado. He became one of America’s most influential editorial cartoonists, winning a Pulitzer Prize for a cartoon depicting Peace (with doves) in 1976, the year he took up the position of daily cartoonist on the Washington Star . When the paper folded in 1981, he joined the Kansas-based Universal Press Syndicate, which distributed his cartoons to over 500 papers worldwide. By 1973 seventeen of his cartoons had been published in Time magazine, including several cover designs, and he was said to be the most widely syndicated and highest paid cartoonist in the world. In 1990 an exhibition of his representations of American Presidents was held at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington. Married with three children, he still lives in Washington D.C.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
