Busino,+Orlando

Biographical Information:
Dates: 1926-  Dates in Ridgefield: 1961 to present

 cartoonist, author, letterer

 Orlando Busino has been a cartoonist since he was a teenager in the early 1940s and he's still busy at the craft more than a half century later. "You can ask any cartoonist," he said. "They never retire -- they just keep drawing." Born in Binghamton, N.Y., in 1926, Mr. Busino started drawing as a child and by the time he was nine, planned to be a cartoonist. He graduated from the University of Iowa and studied at the School of Visual Arts, the premier institution for studying the illustrator's art. His work has appeared in //McCalls, Readers Digest, Good Housekeep, Saturday Evening Post//, and many other magazines. He has three times won the National Cartoonists Society's award for best magazine cartoonist. But to many, Mr. Busino is perhaps most famous for his long-running feature, “Gus,” a cartoon about a large dog that has appeared for 30 years in //Boys’s Life//, the Boy Scouting magazine. "I don't know how that translates into dog years, but it's been a long time," Mr. Busino said. His cartoons have been anthologized in two books, //Good Boy!// and //Oh, Gus!// Mr. Busino and his family came to Ridgefield in 1961, and he and his longtime friend, Jerry Marcus, have given countless cartooning demonstrations in classrooms and at libraries throughout the area. Aside from his wry sense of humor and his drawing ability, Mr. Busino is well-known in the field for his skill at lettering. In recent years, he has done all the lettering on one of the world's most popular serial strips, “Gil Thorp.” "I've never had a real job," he once joked with an interviewer. "Once in a while I daydream I might want to direct a movie. But that only lasts for a minute." However, in another, more serious interview, he said: "I've enjoyed it all the way. Cartooning is not something you go into unless you enjoy it."


 * Titles: **

//Good Boy!, 1980 // //Oh, Gus!, //1981

--Source: Notable Ridgefielders-Jack Sanders