Born Fitzroy, Victoria 1923
Died Heathmont, Victoria 2008
By Lindsay Foyle
On January 14, 2005, Bill Green confronted a burglar running through his back yard. Unable to detain him, Green reported the incitant to the police. They soon arrived and asked for a description of the intruder. Green thought he would have trouble describing the man, but offered to draw the man. The police held back their giggles at the thought of an 82-year-old man scribbling a description that would be of any use. Green quickly put pen to paper and produce a caricature of the burglar. To their surprize, the police instantly recognised him. The offender was soon apprehended at a local shop.
Green cartooned for The Herald for 40 years using the name WEG (for Willian Ellis Green). He also had cartoons published in many other publications including Man, Nation Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, The New York Times and The Bulletin.
He was also known for his football premiership posters which depicted the winning Grand Final team in Melbourne. Starting in 1954 and originally selling for two shillings, they raised more than $2 million for the Royal Children's Hospital.
Green was born in Fitzroy but grew up in Essendon, Melbourne. One of his earliest memories was sitting in a high chair drawing. In fact, he could not remember a time when he was not drawing. With his bedroom walls decorated with cartoons from The Bulletin and Smith's Weekly he attended Essendon High School. After graduating he spent two years studding of architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
At the end of 1941 at the age of 18, he joined the army and served in New Guinea. He was discharged in June 1946 and soon after retuned to RMIT to continue his architecture degree. He was not there for long as he abandoned it for a rehabilitation course in painting and drawing at the National Art Gallery in Melbourne. That did not last long either as he was told he needed to go away and learn how to draw.
Not long after Carl Shreve the art director at The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, offered him a job. Shreve was American and some how assumed WEG was also American. When the misunderstanding was pointed out, Shreve withdrew the job offer. WEG returned to Melbourne and ended up getting a job drawing cartoons for The Herald when Sam Wells was on six weeks holidays.
When Wells returned WEG was asked to stay and draw pocket cartoons for the paper. Wells had been associated with The Herald as a cartoonist since the end of the First World War. It came as a bit of a shock to WEG when Wells offered him his office. Wells moved into a small room down near the men’s toilet. When Keith Murdoch saw Wells in the little room he asked him why he was there. Wells told him he was only in the office for an hour or two each day to draw his cartoons. Wells pointed out Green was in most of the day and would enjoy the bigger office more.
WEG was considered by many to have been one of the best pocket cartoonists to work in Australia. Late in his career he was asked to take on drawing bigger cartoons, which were run on page two. After some experimentation with size and position he returned to drawing pocket cartoons. However, he had lost the support of Neil Mitchell, the paper's editor, and those putting the paper together were out of the habit of placing his small cartoons. There were days when his cartoons were left out of the paper. Something that would have been inconceivable a few years earlier.
On April 1, 1986 The Age announced William Ellis Green had been sacked.
WEG keep on working freelance and continued with his Grand Final football posters.
In 2008 his health declined and he was hospitalized. The doctors told him he would not last more than a day if he left the hospital. He needed time to recover. But, it was getting close to the end of the football season and WEG discharged himself two weeks before the Grand Final so he could draw his football poster.
He got his wish and drew the poster. He passed away in December at home with his wife of 63 years, Joan, beside him.