Biography

Osann was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but grew up in New York City. She graduated from Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

.

Career

Early in her career, Osann worked on ads and illustrating for such magazines as Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....

and Saturday Evening Post. Osann was a regular contributor to Collier's, where her panel style cartoon, Tizzy, first appeared. After the demise of Collier's Weekly in 1957, Tizzy cartoons ran with Newspaper Enterprise Association, until 1970.

Tizzy, the title character, was a stereotypical teen-aged American girl. In Collier's, the Tizzy cartoons were in color and Tizzy's hair was red. The syndicated cartoons were in black and white, and Tizzy's hair was blonde. When the color cartoons were reprinted in black and white in the first Tizzy paperback book, Tizzy's red hair was rendered as black.

Tizzy wore horn-rimmed glasses

Horn-rimmed glasses

Horn-rimmed glasses are a type of eyeglasses. Originally made out of either horn or tortoise shell, for most of their history they have actually been constructed out of thick plastics designed to imitate those materials...

 with triangular lenses. In the Collier's cartoons, the temples of her glasses were clearly visible. In the syndicated cartoons, the temples were rarely seen, and the frames appeared to be resting on her nose alone.

Books

During the late 1950s and 1960s, three Tizzy paperback books were published: Tizzy: That Loveable, Laughable Teen-Ager (Berkeley, 1958), More Tizzy (Berkeley, 1958), and Tizzy (Scholastic Book Services 1967). Tizzy cartoons illustrated Baby-Sitter's Guide, by Sharon Sherman (Scholastic Book Services, 1969).

"Kate O'Sann"

Three books were published in the 1970s with her name spelled with an apostrophe, "Kate O'Sann."

The book Men!, edited by Kitty Clevenger and Aileen Neighbors, was published by Hallmark Editions in 1974. It was illustrated by Kate O'Sann. The rear flap of the dust jacket was devoted to a self-portrait of Kate O'Sann, and a brief biography of her which reads in part, "Illustrator Kate O'sann, a native of Missouri, grew up in New York City, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She makes her home in Orlando, Florida

Orlando, Florida

Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...

, with her husband, William O. Chessman, and 'two large and vocal children' - William and Kathy."

The books Kid's Cookery and Things Girls Like to Draw were written and illustrated by Kate O'Sann. They were
published in 1979 by International Media Systems, of Longwood, Florida

Longwood, Florida

Longwood is a city in Seminole County, Florida, USA. The population was 13,745 at the 2000 census. As of 2006, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 13,491. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee-Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area....

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O'Sann was written with a lower case letter "s" in Men!, but with a capital letter "S" in Kid's Cookery and Things Girls Like to Draw.

External links

• Kate Osann Cartoons 1966-1967 at Syracuse University (primary source material)