Celebrate Dick Tracy’s 80th birthday with NCTV17
October 6, 2011 — Source: Naperville Sun — Author: Jen Hannon
Happy birthday to America’s favorite cartoon police detective!
On Oct. 4, 1931, cartoonist Chester Gould debuted Dick Tracy, a yellow-fedora- and trenchcoat-wearing “good guy.”
In honor of Dick Tracy’s birthday, NCTV17 will air its documentary “Dick Tracy: The Man Behind the Ink” at 11:30 a.m., and 4 and 8:30 p.m. Sunday. Naperville also will host a special 80th birthday party from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at Naper Settlement
The documentary is part of the Naperville Recollections series and features Naperville resident Dick Locher, the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist who continued drawing the cartoon after Gould retired. The documentary contains interviews with Locher, his wife, Mary, Naperville Police Chief David Dial, Chicago Tribune editorial page editor Bruce Dold, and Gould’s daughter Jean O’Connell.
Locher is one of the Chicago Tribune’s longest-running political cartoonists and retired from the Dick Tracy cartoon in March.
Dick Tracy can be found throughout Naperville. See an image of Locher drawing the cartoon among “The World’s Greatest Artists” on the exterior of the Naperville Art Gallery, in the Century Walk piece “Everyone Loves a Parade,” and a 9-foot, 2,000-pound statue of the detective stands along the Naperville Riverwalk. All of the artwork is a reminder that “crime doesn’t pay.”