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Ella. But Ella wasn't the sort to let that get her down. With her kid brother
Blackie as an ally, she wisecracked her way through the most depressing of situations, finding solace in sarcasm. Outside the house, she had a boyfriend with the improbable name of Waite Lifter. She was pretty enough, in a 1920s sort of way, with straight, black hair and as big and bright a pair of eyes as you'll find anywhere in comics. But she wasn't a raving beauty, and tended to dress down, especially in the early years. Her "fairy godmother" moment did come in the form of winning a beauty contest, but that was only because the guy judging it picked her photo at random. The prize was relocation to Hollywood and a glamorous job at a movie studio. When she got there she found the studio defunct, but at least she was out of the "Cinderella" situation. For the next few years, Ella and Blackie kicked around Hollywood, doing melodramatic continuity in the dailies and one-episode gags on Sundays. She never really prospered, but did okay for herself—in fact, she even got married, though her husband, Patches, spent a lot of time away, having adventures.
249:, which he called his permanent residence. He also traveled widely, and for some years, the syndicate received his work shipped from an island in the Pacific. Plumb and his wife had four children, Joanne, Barbara (who both lived in San Francisco), Peter (who was born in 1938) and Charles G. Plumb (who was a second-class petty officer in the Navy during World War II).
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Ella was the stepdaughter of Myrtle "Ma" Cinders, a formidable woman who assigned Ella to the household drudge work while her own daughters, Prissie ("pinched and acid", to quote
Conselman's description of his character) and Lotta ("fat and foolish") Pill spent their copious free time tormenting
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When
Conselman died in the mid-1940s, his estate took over the strip and employed several writers, while Plumb received sole credit on the strip. Fred Fox took over as the strip's artist in the mid-1950s, followed by Roger Armstrong.
141:, where his father, Carl H. Plumb, was a mining engineer in the Tri-state area of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. After attending Baxter Springs High School, Charlie Plumb studied journalism, art and advertising at the
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and then worked as an artist and political cartoonist for newspapers in
Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities. His parents eventually relocated to
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Plumb employed a number of assistants and ghost artists, including Fred Fox, Joseph
Messerli, Jack McGuire,
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story, but then it diverged into other plotlines, as noted by comics historian
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Charles Plumb with his wife and son Peter in Joplin, Missouri in 1943.
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over three decades. He usually signed his work with the signature
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In the early 1920s, while Plumb was employed as an artist at the
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best known for maintaining a high quality of artwork on the
97:(November 13, 1899 – January 19, 1982 ) was an American
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332:Galveston Daily News
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64:(1982-01-19)
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274:Final years
219:N. C. Wyeth
116:Chas. Plumb
103:comic strip
71:Nationality
378:Categories
368:Red Knight
283:References
256:(who drew
243:Cuernavaca
201:Influences
184:Cinderella
99:cartoonist
45:1899-11-13
74:American
301:Lambiek
177:(later
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122:strip
120:topper
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39:Born
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