GOLDBERG, RUBE

GOLDBERG, RUBE
GOLDBERG, RUBE (1883–1970), U.S. cartoonist. Reuben Lucius Goldberg, satirist of American folkways and creator of improbable and outlandish devices and inventions, was born in San Francisco, Calif. His father insisted he go to college to become an engineer. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, Goldberg went to work for the San Francisco Water and Sewers Department. After six months, Goldberg joined the sports department of a San Francisco newspaper and kept submitting drawings and cartoons to its editor, until he was finally published. He moved to New York, drawing daily cartoons for The Evening Mail. At first he was a sports cartoonist and sportswriter, but one day, with a little space left over from his cartoon, he filled it with "Foolish Question No. 1," which showed a man who had fallen from the Flatiron Building being asked if he was hurt. "No, I jump off this building every day to limber up for business," he replied. The Foolish Question caught on, and Goldberg wound up doing thousands of them. Many of his ideas came from readers, fascinated with the nearly probable. As comic strips grew in popularity, Goldberg conceived the character Boob McNutt, a simple-looking fellow who was in love with a beautiful girl named Pearl. Their blunder-filled courtship went on from 1916 to 1933. Goldberg also created the strip Lala Palooza, about a woman of ample girth. His most enduring creation was Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, the inventor of marvelously complicated contraptions designed to accomplish fairly simple ends. An exhibition of these nonexistent and zany gadgets opened at the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in 1970. The Goldbergs of yesterday were catalogued under the show title "Do It the Hard Way: Rube Goldberg and Modern Times." There were cartoons, comic strips, and oddly ingenious doodads that might have been invented by Goldberg himself. The cartoonist's ludicrous inventions became so widely known that Webster's Third International Dictionary listed the adjective "rube goldberg" and defined it as "accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply." In the middle 1930s, comic strips declined in popularity and at the age of 55 Goldberg embarked on a career as an editorial cartoonist for The New York Sun and later the New York Journal-American, for which he drew 5,000 cartoons. One of his cartoons, "Peace Today," warning of the perils of atomic weapons, which appeared in The Sun, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948. (Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)

Encyclopedia Judaica. 1971.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Goldberg, Rube — ▪ American cartoonist byname of  Reuben Lucius Goldberg   born July 4, 1883, San Francisco, Calif., U.S. died Dec. 7, 1970, New York, N.Y.       American cartoonist who satirized the American preoccupation with technology. His name became… …   Universalium

  • Goldberg, Rube (Reuben Lucius) — (1883–1970)    US cartoonist. The Reuben is the annual award of the American National Cartoonists Society, so named in honour of the outstanding cartoonist Rube Goldberg. A versatile and widely syndicated artist, his interests ranged from… …   Who’s Who in Jewish History after the period of the Old Testament

  • Goldberg, Rube — (1883 1970)    American cartoonist. The Reuben is the annual award of the American National Cartoonist Society named after him …   Dictionary of Jewish Biography

  • Rube Goldberg — Nombre Reuben Lucius Goldberg …   Wikipedia Español

  • Rube Goldberg — (eigentlich Reuben Lucius Goldberg; * 4. Juli 1883 in San Francisco; † 7. Dezember 1970 in New York) war ein US amerikanischer Cartoonist sowie Mitbegründer und erster Präsident der National Cartoonists Society, der US amerikanischen Vereinigung… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Goldberg — Goldberg, Rube (1883 1970) a US ↑cartoonist (=an artist who draws funny pictures that tell a joke or say something humorous about the news) who drew strange and extremely complicated machines that are designed to do very simple jobs →↑Heath… …   Dictionary of contemporary English

  • Rube Goldberg — en 1928. Reuben Lucius Goldberg, né le 4 juillet 1883 à San Francisco et mort le 7 décembre 1970 à New York, est un dessinateur juif américain, spécialisé dans le dessin de presse, politique comme d humour, et la bande dessinée. Il a également… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Rube Goldberg Machine Contest — is sponsored by the Theta Tau Educational Foundation with financial support from Dell Computer and other sponsors. Local contests are held at various universities throughout the country, and local winners are eligible to compete in the national… …   Wikipedia

  • Rube Goldberg — Rube Gold•berg [[t]ˈrub ˈgoʊld bɜrg[/t]] adj. 1) having a fantastically complicated, improvised appearance: a Rube Goldberg arrangement of flasks and test tubes[/ex] 2) deviously complex and impractical • Etymology: 1955–60; after Rube (Reuben)… …   From formal English to slang

  • Rube Goldberg — ☆ Rube Goldberg [ro͞ob′ gōld′bərg ] adj. [after Rube (Reuben Lucius) Goldberg (1883 1970), U.S. cartoonist of comically involved contrivances] designating any very complicated invention, machine, scheme, etc. laboriously contrived to perform a… …   English World dictionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”