Sy Reit

• Born 1918-11-11 · Died 2001-11-21

Seymour Reit is best known as the co-creator (with Joe Oriolo) of Casper the Friendly Ghost. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. He graduated from the New York University in 1938. He started work for Fleischer studios in Miami, as an in-betweener and inker - drawing the frames that made up each movement - on Gulliver's Travels (1939). He soon advanced to gag-writing on such famous cartoon series as Popeye and Betty Boop. He was part of a team of scenic painters that camouflaged the west coast of America against the threat of a Japanese invasion which was detailed in his book Masquerade: The Amazing Camouflage Deceptions Of World War II (1978). In the early 1940s, Reit also produced comic strips for the Iger Shop. His work appeared anonymously in a number of Fiction House titles, writing and drawing such long-forgotten characters as Auro, Cosmo Corrigan and Super American. After the war, he drew Archie and Little Lulu, and wrote gags for Casper shorts and for television shows such as Captain Kangaroo. He also scripted industrial films and radio shows. In 1950, he became an editor and author with the Bank Street College of Education in New York. In the late 1950s, he wrote for Mad magazine and in 1969, he became ghostwriter of the syndicated strip, There Oughta Be A Law. He is also the author of over 80 books on subjects ranging from historical non-fiction to Children's fiction.