In his forward to Price's 55-year Retrospective, Alistair Cooke quotes Price as vowing to "take a crack at all the joiners -- the Ku Klux Klan, the rednecks, those clucks who belong to all the fraternal organizations . . . I despise all these 'America -- love it or leave it' types. I'm not anti-anything, except anti-muttonhead."

Price was the son of a set-builder for silent movies and a seamstress. In his old age, he remarked to fellow New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, "No plumber has ever criticized my drawings." It's easy to see why. Yet Price reputedly never came up with his own gags.

Thanks to Susan and Adrienne Tchertkoff, two sisters who spent a considerable time in the Price household while growing up, for the following anecdote:

One time Susan and Adrienne's father, Vic, a pathologist, saved Price's wife's life by identifying the root of a serious illness for which she had been hospitalized. Price, bursting with appreciation, told Vic, "Vic, you saved Flo's life. The Rolls Royce Phantom is yours!" After Flo returned from the hospital, Price visited Vic in Vic's home. He had with him a brown paper bag, and said, "Vic, here, thanks a bunch!" The bag contained not the keys to the Rolls, as Price had promised, but rather a number of tomatoes. (Evidently, Susan relates, having Flo back home wasn't all it was cracked up to be.) As Price handed the tomatos to Vic, Vic's dog lifted his leg and took a leak on Price's leg. The family laughed about this incident for many years afterward.

Susan reports that Price had had all the paint removed from the Rolls. I have no further details. But Adrienne's provided me with portraits she took of both George and Flo. They're below. (Thanks, Adrienne!)