For many of us cartoon fans, the late Jud Hurd was a revered elder statesman — the editor and publisher of the wonderful magazine Cartoonist PROfiles. As a young man, though, he was a Charles Mintz Studio artist, working for $16 a week — not a bad salary for an inexperienced artist during the Great Depression.
But he only did it for six months. Then he decided to leave, and secured this letter of recommendation.
That’s the only piece of Mintz letterhead I’ve seen. (I do, however, have a form letter written on Columbia’s Scrappy Franchise Department stationery.)
Hurd’s book Cartoon Success Stories is available for reading over at Google Books; it includes the tale of his Mintz tenure, a photo of him outside the studio, and all sorts of other entertaining anecdotes. Revisiting it makes me wish that Jud, and Cartoonist PROfiles, were still with us.