Milt Gross

[4] Originally titled Banana Oil until 1925, the comic strip was retitled Gross Exaggerations until becoming The Feitelbaum Family on June 1, 1926, and finally Looy Dot Dope on January 7, 1927.

[2][3] Also in 1926, he published Hiawatta witt No Odder Poems, a 40-page parody of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, each of its pages, in the words of Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., "with a barely decipherable stanza and a drawing which only sometimes helped".

[5] Minus words, this "novel" is composed entirely of pen-and-ink cartoons, nearly 300 pages long, and is comparable to such silent films serials as The Perils of Pauline.

[2][3] Starting in 1931, Gross worked for the Hearst chain, doing various syndicated comic strips and Sunday topper strips, including Dave's Delicatessen, Banana Oil, Pete the Pooch, Count Screwloose from Tooloose, Babbling Brooks, Otto and Blotto, The Meanest Man, Draw Your Own Conclusion, I Did It and I'm Glad!

His last book was I Shouda Ate the Eclair (published 1946), in which one Mr. Figgits nearly starts World War III because he refuses to eat a chocolate éclair.

In 1939, he returned to animation with two MGM cartoons, Jitterbug Follies and Wanted: No Master, featuring Count Screwloose (voiced by Mel Blanc) and J.R.

[7] Gross would also co-write the 1943 Screen Gems cartoon He Can't Make It Stick (directed by John Hubley and Paul Sommer), after he pitched the story to then-producer Dave Fleischer and writer Stephen Longstreet.

[8] On November 29, 1953, Gross died of a heart attack aboard the Pacific Ocean liner SS Monterey, while returning from a Hawaiian vacation with his wife.

At the time of his death, he was developing a children's TV show starring his character Pete the Pooch, which combined animation with live-action footage of Gross as host.