page_title: Bill Mauldin
section_title: Postwar activities
hierarchical_section_title: Bill Mauldin / Postwar activities
caption_attribution_description: English: An editorial cartoon captioned "I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?" It comments on the Soviet government's treatment of Nobel-winning author Boris Pasternak, who was coerced into declining the prize. This cartoon won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.
context_page_description: William Henry "Bill" Mauldin was an American editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He was most famous for his World War II cartoons depicting American soldiers, as represented by the archetypal characters Willie and Joe, two weary and bedraggled infantry troopers who stoically endure the difficulties and dangers of duty in the field. His cartoons were popular with soldiers throughout Europe, and with civilians in the United States as well. However, his second Pulitzer Prize was for a cartoon published in 1958, and possibly his best-known cartoon was after the Kennedy assassination.
context_section_description: In 1945, at the age of 23, Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for his wartime body of work, exemplified by a cartoon depicting exhausted infantrymen slogging through the rain, its caption mocking a typical late-war headline: "Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners". The first civilian compilation of his work, Up Front, a collection of his cartoons interwoven with his observations of war, topped the best-seller list in 1945. After war's end, the character of Willie was featured on the cover of Time Magazine for the June 18, 1945 issue. Mauldin made the cover of the July 21, 1961 issue.
  After the war, Mauldin turned to drawing political cartoons expressing a generally civil libertarian view associated with groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.  These were not well received by newspaper editors, who were hoping for apolitical cartoons. Mauldin's attempt to carry Willie and Joe into civilian life was also unsuccessful, as documented in his memoir Back Home in 1947. In 1951, he appeared with Audie Murphy in the John Huston film The Red Badge of Courage, and in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa.
  In 1956, he ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress as a Democrat in New York's 28th congressional district.  Mauldin said about his run for Congress:  
  I jumped in with both feet and campaigned for seven or eight months.  I found myself stumping around up in these rural districts and my own background did hurt there. A farmer knows a farmer when he sees one. So when I was talking about their problems I was a very sincere candidate, but when they would ask me questions that had to do with foreign policy or national policy, obviously I was pretty far to the left of the mainstream up there. Again, I'm an old Truman Democrat, I'm not that far left, but by their lives I was pretty far left.
  In 1959, Mauldin won a second Pulitzer Prize, while working at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for a cartoon depicting Soviet author Boris Pasternak in a Gulag, asking another prisoner, "I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?"  Pasternak had won the Nobel Prize for his novel Doctor Zhivago, but was not allowed to travel to Sweden to accept it. The following year Mauldin won the National Cartoonist Society Award for Editorial Cartooning.  In 1961, he received their Reuben Award as well.
  In addition to cartooning, Mauldin worked as a freelance writer. He also illustrated many articles for Life magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, and other publications. He brought back Joe as a war correspondent, writing letters to the stateside Willie.  He made cartoons of Willie and Joe together only in tributes to the "soldiers' generals": Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall, after their deaths; for a Life article on the "New Army"; and as a salute to the late cartoonist Milton Caniff.
  In 1962, Mauldin moved to the Chicago Sun-Times. One of his most famous post-war cartoons was published in 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It depicted the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, with his head in his hands.
  In 1969, Mauldin was commissioned by the National Safety Council to illustrate its annual booklet on traffic safety. These pamphlets were regularly issued without copyright, but for this issue the Council noted that Mauldin's cartoons were under copyright, although the rest of the pamphlet was not.
  In 1985, Mauldin won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. Mauldin remained with the Sun-Times until his retirement in 1991.
  He was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame on May 19, 1991. On September 19, 2001, Sergeant Major of the Army Jack L. Tilley presented Mauldin with a personal letter from Army Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shinseki, and a hardbound book with notes from other senior Army leaders and several celebrities, including TV broadcasters Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw, and actor Tom Hanks. Tilley also promoted Mauldin to the honorary rank of first sergeant.
  Mauldin drew 
caption: Mauldin's 1958 cartoon for which he received his second Pulitzer Prize
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