Irwin Caplan

Who was Irwin Caplan?

Irwin Caplan, nicknamed Cap, was an American illustrator, painter, designer and cartoonist, best known as the creator of The Saturday Evening Post cartoon series, Famous Last Words, which led to newspaper syndication of the feature in 1956.

Caplan grew up in Seattle's Madison Park neighborhood where his parents took note of his drawings and enrolled him in art classes. As a teenager, Caplan won $10 in a citywide poster contest, and at Garfield High School, he illustrated the 1935 yearbook, The Arrow. He painted murals of a circus and Paul Bunyan on walls of the school, where he graduated in 1937.

At the University of Washington, after he spent three years contributing to Columns, the University's humor magazine, the staff wanted him to be the editor. However, the faculty claimed the magazine needed "new blood" and designated as editor Lynn Scholes of Steilacoom, Washington, who had never worked on the magazine. This led to an emotional incident at the annual publications banquet in which the magazine's first female editor, Saxon Miller of Vancouver, refused to introduce Scholes and walked out, calling Scholes a "hand-picked editor" with no experience compared to Caplan.