Ward Greene

Ward Greene (December 23, 1892 – January 22, 1956) was an American writer, editor, journalist, playwright, and general manager of the comic syndicate King Features Syndicate. He is known for overseeing the works of Alex Raymond and other writers and artists at King Features Syndicate, as well as writing Raymond's Rip Kirby comic strip from 1946 until his death.

Greene wrote the magazine story "Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog" for Cosmopolitan in 1945, and this story was the basis for the 1955 Walt Disney Animation film Lady and the Tramp. Greene also wrote the spinoff comic strip, Scamp, featuring the young son of the Disney dogs, from 1955 to 1956.

Biography

Greene was born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1892. One of his ancestors was Gen. Nathanael Greene of the Continental Army, one of George Washington's most gifted and trusted officers.

Greene was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and later attended the Sewanee: The University of the South.

His first job was in 1913 for The Atlanta Journal as an assistant sports editor. Staying at The Journal for ten years, he moved from sports to the police beat to finally become the paper's star reporter. He covered the trial and subsequent lynching of the wrongly-accused Leo Frank after the murder of Mary Phagan in 1913. After a stint at the New-York Tribune in 1917, in 1918–1919 he went to the battlefields of France to cover the Great War for The Atlanta Journal from the perspective of Georgian troops.

Greene joined the Hearst Corporation in 1920, became a writer and editor of the magazine section in 1925, advancing to executive editor, and to general manager in 1946.

He wrote articles for The American Mercury from 1925 to 1931. His first novel, Cora Potts, was published in 1929. Greene's book Death in the Deep South (Avon Publications, 1936) was a fictionalized account of the Leo Frank case. According to reviewer William Rose Benét, Death in the Deep South "reveals with startling clarity how the law works and how the press works after a particularly horrible and brutal murder." It was adapted as the film They Won't Forget in 1937.

Greene's "Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog" (Cosmopolitan magazine, 1945) was the basis for the Disney film Lady and the Tramp, released in 1955. King Features immediately spun off "Scamp," a minor unnamed character from the movie, into his own comic strip, written by Greene and illustrated by Dick Moores. Scamp was soon taken over by other creators, but lasted more than 30 years, until 1988.

Greene also wrote under the pseudonyms Frank Dudley and Jean Greene.

A resident of Westwood, New Jersey, Greene died in Havana, Cuba, of a pulmonary edema brought on by pneumonia while en route to a family vacation in California.