Classic Archie Comic
Bob
Montana (October 23, 1920 - January 4, 1975) was an American
cartoonist who fashioned the characters that launched
Archie Comics. Born in Stockton, California, Montana was
the son of ex-Ziegfeld girl Roberta Pandolfini Montana
and Ray Montana, a top banjo player on the Keith vaudeville
circuit. Traveling all 48 states before the age of nine,
Montana received his childhood schooling backstage in
theater dressing rooms. During his early teen years, he
lived in Boston's theater district. With his father's
death and his mother's remarriage, he moved to Haverhill,
Massachusetts; his stepfather managed a theatrical costume
shop in Bradford.
From 1936 to 1939, Montana
attended Haverhill High School, where the students and
faculty inspired the leading characters in the Archie
cast. In his senior year, Montana moved to Manchester,
New Hampshire, where he graduated from Central High in
1940. The following year he drew Archie for MLJ's Pep
Comics (December, 1941), and the immediate success of
the character led MLJ to assign Montana to do the first
issue of Archie (November, 1942). During World War II,
Montana spent four years in the Army Signal Corps, working
on training films with William Saroyan and cartoonists
Sam Cobean and Charles Addams. Returning in 1946, he drew
the daily and Sunday Archie comic strips which ran in
700 newspapers.
Montana died of a heart attack
in Meredith, New Hampshire in January 1975, while cross-country
skiing. His daughter, Lynn Montana, of Meredith, along
with her sister, Paige Kuether, once managed a web site,
Archie Prints, to market their father's artwork. The site
featured a diary-sketchbook kept by Montana about life
in Haverhill High during the late 1930s.
