But Davis was just as capable at capturing just-plain-folk, and with a cartoonist's sensibilities and a fresh humor, he expanded into story art and ad work that called characters of every persuasion.

[4] His art career, interrupted by two and a half years of service in the U.S. Navy during World War I, was resumed when he returned to Chicago and joined the Grauman Brothers' organization as an advertising artist.

The following year, the couple moved to New York City where Floyd, dividing his time between advertising and magazine illustration, soon became the top man in both fields.

His pictures of southern rural and hill people for such authors as William Faulkner, Sigman Byrd, Glenn Allan, and MacKinlay Kantor became immensely popular.

He loved these assignments and filled the pictures not only with a fascinating cast of individuals, but added the special Davis touches: a cat crouched in the corner ready to leap out at a rival, a fly on an old mans heat, a small lizard hiding behind a tree.

[8] The family moved in a social milieu which included luminaries in all the arts such as Ernest Hemingway, Dr. Thomas Mann, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and the puppeteer Bil Baird.

When he arrived at the American Eighth Air Force Bomber Command Post he found the troops engaged in preparations for a raid on Hamburg.

His most famous painting of Bob Hope entertaining the troops came from that assignment and still hangs at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.[13] Floyd Davis and his wife, Gladys Rockmore Davis were commissioned by Life Magazine to paint liberated Paris in 1944 and 1945 where Gladys narrowly escaped death in a German strafing of Metz.

Floyd Davis concentrated on the wartime city with American soldiers, while she painted the familiar and nostalgic scenes.

His fellow correspondents included the following: Richard De'Rochemont, David Scherman, Will Lang, Charles Wertenbaker, Ralph Morse, Robert Capa, Janet Flanner, William Shirer, Noel Busch, H.V.

[15] He continued to do some work for major publications like Saturday Evening Post but gradually slipped into retirement and illustrating or painting only for pleasure.

In 1961, he was elected as the 5th inductee into The Illustrators Hall of Fame (external link) Archived March 30, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.