Jules Feiffer, a provocative satirist, cartoonist, playwright and 1960s counterculturalist, wrote the screenplay for Mike Nichols' classic carnal knowledge and Robert Altman's Popeyealready dead. He is 95 years old.

Feaver, a Pulitzer Prize winner, died of congestive heart failure on January 17 at his home in upstate New York, his wife, JZ Holden, told him. this Washington Post.

The Bronx native contributed material to Broadway's 1969 raunchy musical alongside such luminaries as Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, John Lennon and Robert Benton oh! Calcutta!and received a Tony nomination for Best Play in 1976. knock, knock. Starring Judd Hirsch, it's "a riot of crazy jokes, missteps, wordplay, crumbling scenes, falling bodies and hilarious sight gags." new york times.

In 1967, his original comedy little murder The play opened on Broadway with a cast that included Barbara Cook, Elliott Gould and David Steinberg, and Feiffer adapted it for the 1971 wrote the screenplay for the film, which starred Gould and was directed by Alan Arkin.

While serving in the U.S. Army, Feaver wondered what would happen if a 4-year-old child was drafted. He wrote the story and included it in his 1959 book, Passionflower and other storieswhich was then adapted into a screenplay (and voiced by Sgt.) in this nine-minute short Munro (1961), nominated for an Oscar.

“Passionella” – Recap cinderella Set in Hollywood — which later became the basis for the third act of the 1966 Broadway musical apple treeDirected by Nichols and starring Tony Award winner Barbara Harris and Alan Alda.

Feifer offers a stark exploration of men's sexual attitudes and how they affect relationships with women carnal knowledge (1971) was also conceived as a theatrical performance. But when the screenwriter sent it to Nichols, the filmmakers immediately saw the potential for it to be made into a movie.

The critically acclaimed film, starring Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret and Candace Bergen, became a touchstone for the sexual revolution and earned Feiffer a WGA Award Nominated.

carnal knowledge "He's trying to tell us something about these characters and their sexual suffering, and it succeeds," Roger Ebert wrote in his review. "It doesn't lend itself to cheap or easy laughs, Or inappropriate symbolism, or a false contemporary feel.”

In 1956, Feiffer, who had studied under avant-garde cartoonist Will Eisner, joined this village voice — just one year old at the time — his edgy comic strips would grace the magazine as a contributor for more than four decades.

His cartoons also appeared in newspapers across the country, and as the events of the 1960s unfolded, Feifer's trenchant criticism of the establishment and his desire to change the status quo made him required reading for younger generations.

"At the height of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, almost no one made comments like this. On civil rights issues, the only white cartoonist I know of who made strong comments was Bill Mauldin ), he was losing a lot of newspapers. So it was very exciting to be there," Feiffer said in a 2010 interview with Sage Stossel. atlantic.

"Martin Luther King was considered an extremist by the very respectable mainstream white media at the time. So I was targeting well-intentioned white liberals who said completely wrong things about the civil rights movement.

"I find it exciting to go against established liberal views. I did the same thing in Vietnam, which was a liberal war after all. We as war protesters were always told that our protests were ignorant , and insiders — the Pentagon and the State Department — had access to information that we couldn’t, but it turned out that the experts were wrong and the protesters were right.”

Jules Ralph Feiffer was born on January 26, 1929. His father, David, was a salesman and, like many, had difficulty finding work during the Great Depression. His mother, Rhonda, was a fashion designer who sold watercolors of her designs to clothing manufacturers throughout Manhattan. Feiffer credits her with his interest in art, and when he was a teenager she helped him get into the Art Students League of New York.

In 1946, Feaver convinced Eisner to hire him to create "Soul," a hugely popular comic insert that appeared in newspapers across the country. Eisner had a low opinion of Feifer's artistic ability but admired the teenager's enthusiasm and gave him jobs that no one else wanted to do - coloring, cleaning, etc. - for next to nothing.

Feaver eventually took on more storytelling and painting responsibilities, but his career was interrupted in 1951 when he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. Two years of service fueled his disdain for authority and bureaucracy and sparked a lifelong call for dissent.

After his release, Feaver began creating original works of his own. but in a gentle atmosphere peanut A popular cartoon at the time, his radical cartoons that satirized social neurosis and hypocrisy were not accepted by anyone - until voice Launched.

His first newspaper strip was "Sick, Sick, Sick" (later titled "Fever's Fables" and then simply "Fever"). In 1958, a collection of his works became a bestseller, and he soon became a observer in london and playboy.

Hall Syndicate signed him to a deal, his comics began appearing across the United States, and Feifer became an important voice in the day's events.

His painting style is straightforward and always features empty backgrounds. The power of the message lies in the way the message and characters deliver it, with their facial expressions changing emotionally as they convey the point the creator wants to make.

The president was a popular target: Lyndon Johnson lamented the struggle to realize his Great Society. When protests against Vietnam broke out at halftime of an NFL game, Richard Nixon called for a ban on football. When Ronald Reagan claimed to turn America into Disneyland, he became Mickey Mouse.

Feiffer's comics also appear in Esquire and new yorkerand in 1986, he voice Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Ten years later, he became the first person to appear in new york times' Column page.

In 1961, Feaver created illustrations for the Norton Just children's classic phantom toll plaza. More than thirty years later, he has written and illustrated a series of children's books, adding a new chapter to his eclectic career, starting with people in the ceiling including 1995 bucket of laughter, valley of tears; 1998 I lost my bear; 1999 bark, george; 2001 I'm not Bobby; and 2014 Rupert can dance.

“Writing for young readers allowed me to connect professionally with a part of myself that I didn’t know how to unleash until I was 60,” Feaver wrote in a biography for publisher HarperCollins. "That child lived a life of innocence, a mixture of confusion and consternation, disappointment and silly humor. He drew comic strips, needed friends, and found them in comics and children's books that taught him about the things in his life that the adults were missing What. This is the benefit that reading brought me when I was a child. Now, I want to work hard to repay everyone’s kindness.”

Feiffer also helped illustrate several children's books written by her daughter Kate, including the 2007 Henry the tailless dog2009 Which puppy? and 2012 Don't go to sleep!

He also wrote Feiffer's people (1969), murder in the white house (1970) and grown ups (1981) Broadway.

In addition to his contributions to Ultraman’s wacky live-action version of Popeye (1980), Feiffer created the comedy I want to go home (1989), an independent film about a cartoonist for director Alain Resnais Bernard and Huey (2017).

In 2010, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the WGA.

Feifer married and divorced Judy Sheftel, a book editor who worked at dear mother and Maya Angelou's I know why the caged bird singsand author and stand-up comedian Jenny Allen before her September 2016 wedding to author JZ Holden.

Survivors also include daughter Halley Feiffer, a screenwriter and actress (So boring, what is your emergency, squid and whale).