cartoonist, was a 'cheerful, hard-drinking Bohemian who had started his career at the piano of a Melbourne silent picture show’, according to George Farwell in Rejoice in Freedom . He studied art in Melbourne and drew caricatures for Table Talk before going to London in 1938, where he contributed to various papers and periodicals, including being the political cartoonist on the Sunday Pictorial . He returned to Australia in 1940, having been appointed staff cartoonist on Sydney’s Daily Mirror , edited by Ezra Norton, where he signed all his cartoons 'TAC’. In 1941, aged thirty, Challen’s 'How to Save Honourable Face?’ from the Daily Mirror was shown at the National Gallery of Canada in the exhibition War Cartoons and Caricatures of the British Commonwealth (cat.122).
In November 1940 Challen was one of a small group of leftwing journalists who produced the four-page, wartime Progress from a room in Sydney’s Trades Hall. It became the official organ of the NSW Labor Party, chiefly because it held a wartime newsprint license. Initially edited by Paul Moline, Progress was soon produced mainly by editor Bill (W.A.) Wood, son of the SU historian Professor Arnold Wood, George Farwell, Tom Challen (sole cartoonist) and Len Fox. Dedicated to ending fascism, its prime targets were PM Bob Menzies, leader of the United Australia Party, and 'Artie’ Fadden, leader of the Country Party, along with general topics such as capitalist war profiteers, food monopolies, political censorship of the Left imposed by Menzies’s colleague Archie Cameron, and the failure of politicians to provide adequate air-raid precautions. Challen’s cartoons on these topics, signed 'C.’ in a square box, were often accompanied by verses signed 'L.N.’, the pen-name Len Fox was then using. The original pen and ink cartoon 'Don’t bomb Rome!’ (published Progress 4 April 1944) was lent to the S.H. Ervin b/w exhibition by Len Fox. Progress continued to exist alongside the Communist newspaper Tribune after the Communist Party was legalised and amalgamated with the State Labor Party (in January 1944) until 28 April 1945. Then it announced it would henceforth appear in a new form as 'a weekly radio-news magazine’. In November it became a monthly cultural journal under new editorship but expired in July 1946. By then Challen had gone overseas (according to Fox), while Len Fox had found work on Tribune .
The Mitchell Library (PX*D62 1-2) has a number of Challen’s scrapbooks of Daily Mirror “TAC” cartoons 1942-c.56. Challen married artist Amy (Amie) Kingston in 1942. Challen died at St. Leonards, NSW, in 1964. In 1966 Mrs S.M. Challen had four volumes of cuttings of her late son’s work, including art cartoons for the Sunday Pictorial and the Tribune , copied for ML (neg FM4/2442). Challen was also a gifted pianist and violinist, according to Len Fox.
