To Celebrate the 100th 'The Cartoonists' Story: Grace Gebbie Wiederseim Drayton, Creator of the Campbell Kids and Comics Pioneer

"M'm, m'm good! M'm m'm good! That's what Campbell's soups are. M'm m'm good!" I remember hearing the young voices of a boy and a girl singing the Campbell's Soup song when I was a small girl in the 60s, watching their round, chubby smiling faces beaming from the television screen. The Campbell Kids have been cheerfully promoting the company's products since 1904, when Grace Gebbie first brought the famous cartoon duo to life with her pen. Grace was a pioneer in cartooning as one of the first women to successfully make her mark in the art form.

Grace was born to parents George and Mary Gebbie on October 14, 1877 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father was an art publisher who encouraged her early artistic talents. She had a sister, Margaret (who was also grew to be a skilled artist and writer). Grace's artistic career began at a young age, freelancing as a commercial artist by the time she was 18 years old. *(1) She married for the first time in 1900 to Theodore Wiederseim, an advertising executive for a Philadelphia streetcar company. During that time, Grace was creating comics for the Philadelphia Press entitled "Bobby Blake" and "Dolly Drake".

At her husband's urging, Grace designed two plump and adorable little kids for a series of streetcar ads for the Joseph Campbell Company. Campbell liked what they saw and began using the Kids in their marketing promotions on the streetcars. Their first magazine appearance was in the Ladies Home Journal in 1905. Before long, the beloved Campbell Kids were everywhere, in books, on pyjamas, postcards, games, dishes, banks, dolls and much more. *(2) Over time, Grace crafted more than 300 drawings for the Campbell Company. She worked with the company, assisting with ad campaigns until 1936.

As her work in cartooning expanded, Grace developed "The Terrible Tales of Captain Kiddo" in collaboration with her sister, then known as Margaret G. Hayes. (In the midst of this, Grace divorced her first husband in 1911 and married Heyward Drayton III.) Grace created "Dolly Dingle", a cartoon special that appeared in magazines as a line of tremendously popular paper dolls from 1912 to 1933.

Bursting with creativity, Grace wrote and illustrated children's books, drew magazine illustrations, designed dolls, created fine art and comic strips. Many of the books by Grace are now hard to find: *(3)

"Mother Goose Rhymes"
"Golden Hours with Mother Goose"
"Bobby Blake" and "Dolly Drake"

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