Milt Gross, Landscapist

Cigar-puffing, Bronx-born Milt Gross is mainly famous as the cartoonist who created the comic-strip sagas Dave's Delicatessen, That's My Pop! and Count Screwloose of Tooloose. But in his restless career among the fine and lively arts, Cartoonist Gross has also taken several whacks at writing (Nize Baby, Famous Fimmales from Heestory, etc.) and at serious landscape art. Last week Hollywood's Frank Perls Gallery was exhibiting the results of Cartoonist Gross's latest venture into fine art: 30 drawings of homely, tumbledown western farm and mining-town scenes. Artist Gross's work was conventional. It had some of the dashing draughtsmanship, little of the nutty imagination shown in his comic strippery. Five drawings were sold. The buyers: Cinemactors Charles Laughton and Thomas Mitchell, Producer Jed Harris.

Cartoonist Gross's recent excursion into landscape was prompted by Painter Fletcher Martin (TIME, Nov. 25, 1940), who was in Hollywood two years ago teaching Gross and an assortment of Hollywood columnists and photographers serious art.

Artist Gross found his favorite subjects in the deserted streets and ramshackle houses of Virginia City, Nev. Says he: "I think Van Gogh must have felt the same way when he first saw Arles as I did when I first saw Virginia City."

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