Charles Spurgeon Paris Jr. was born on September 25, 1911 in Greensboro, North Carolina according to the North Carolina Birth Index (at Ancestry.com) and his World War II draft card.
The 1920 United States Census counted Paris, his parents, Charles and Ida, and brothers, Henry and James, in Greensboro at 103 South Cedar Street. Paris’s self-employed father was a paper hanger.
The Greensboro Daily Record, July 26, 1921, reported Paris’s fall from a tree. The injury required removal of his right kidney.
Paris’s poster for “H. M. S. Pinafore” was reproduced in the Greensboro Daily Record, May 14, 1929.
The Greensboro Daily Record, January 25, 1930, listed the mid-term high school graduates. Paris was one of 49 students. The 1930 census said the Paris family was at the same address. Paris’s occupation was listed as “commercial advertiser” in the theater industry.
The 2007 book, Batman: The Sunday Classics 1943–1946, said “Paris also worked for a theater chain for eight years, designing poster displays.” In Alter Ego #19, November 2002, Ike Wilson interviewed Paris who said
My first job was in a movie house here on South Elm Street called The Alamo. It’s long, long gone but it was a part of a chain that Paramount bought out. There were the Alamo, the Imperial, the National, and the Carolina Theatres, all of which were included in the same company and were of importance in that order. I worked for them for about seven or eight years and worked my way up to where I was working at the Carolina.
The 1933 Greensboro city directory listed Paris as a commercial artist. The Greensboro Daily News, July 8, 1945, said Paris moved to New York City in 1934.
Paris and Phoebe Tuulikki Ketonen obtained marriage license number 15696, in Manhattan, on July 10, 1937. They married on September 25, 1937 in Brooklyn. Their marriage reported in the Greensboro News and Record, October 3, 1937.
Charles Paris, and Miss Ketonen Wed in New York
The marriage of Miss Phoebe Ketonen, of Brooklyn, N. Y. and Charles S. Paris, of New York city, formerly of Greensboro, was solemnized Saturday afternoon, September 25, in a 3 o’clock ceremony at 44th Street Lutheran church in Brooklyn. Just the immediate family attended. Rev. Mr. Joka officiated.After the service there was an informal reception at the home of the bride’s mother, Mrs. H. M. Illka, in Brooklyn. The young couple are now at home in New York city at 29 East 11th street.
The bridegroom is eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Paris, of 103 South Cedar street, Greensboro. After graduation from Greensboro high school he studied art in Washington and New York city and is now house artist for Wannamaker’s in New York. The bride’s parents were natives of Finland, her father, the late Rev, H. Jalmar Ketonen, having been sent from Finland as a missionary to the United States by the Finnish Methodist church. She is a graduate of Bayridge School for Girls and is a talented musician.
Batman: The Sunday Classics said Paris graduated from Pratt Institute’s School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1938. Paris was not in the 1938 Prattonia yearbook. He probably completed the courses in the evening school. The Greensboro Daily News, July 24, 1938, said
Now Charles Paris is studying at the Art Students league in New York, still at night, and working for Wannamaker’s [sic] in the day time. And he is not satisfied yet.
The 1940 census said Paris and his wife were Manhattan residents at 29 East 11th Street. He was an artist at a department store and she a clerk at an aviation company. Six months later Paris signed his draft card on October 16. His employer was the John Wanamaker Company. Paris was described as five feet, 125 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.
According to Batman: The Sunday Classics, Paris studied at Harvey Dunn’s Grand Central School of Art where he met DC artists Stan Kaye, Cliff Young and Gene McDonald. In Alter Ego #19, Paris explained how he got into comics.
I was going to the Grand Central School of Art, studying under Harvey Dunn, who was a very famous illustrator. Some of the fellows in that class were working for DC at that time, so I knew them there. Every year in the spring, after school was out, Dunn would have a cookout for the students and past students. It was at one of those that [comic artist] Jack Lehti asked me if I’d like to be his inker. I had to ask him what an inker was, because I was in the department store display at that time. He told me and advised me to keep my job while he taught me how to ink. I inked for him for about two or three months, when he told me I could quit my job. From then on, I was into comics; I just fell in the back door.
Lehti helped Paris get hired in DC’s bullpen. The Grand Comics Database said Paris inked and lettered Lehti’s Crimson Avenger. A complete Crimson Avenger story from Detective Comics #59, January 1942, is here.
Comics: Between the Panels (1998) had this Paris anecdote about Lehti.
“Jack Lehti was a dogface,” Paris said. “He told me one time that he jumped into a foxhole in France and there was a copy of Detective Comics, with the Crimson Avenger. It gave him a funny damn feeling. Here he is lying out in the middle of nowhere, he might as well be on another planet with shells falling around and dead people and mud and dirt . . . and there’s a copy of a DC comic book. A whole other life flashed through his head.”
In 1943 Paris was called to serve and classified 4F, not acceptable for service.
American Newspaper Comics (2012) said Paris was the inker on the Batman and Robin comic strip. He did the daily strip from October 25, 1943 to February 9, 1946, and March 25 to November 2, 1946; the Sunday strip from November 7, 1943 to April 21, 1946, and August 25 to October 27, 1946. In Alter Ego, Paris said
[Editor] Whit [Ellsworth] then offered me the dailies and Sundays to ink. The dailies were drawn by Kane and the Sundays by Jack Burnley. And if memory serves me correctly, I went to Jerry Robinson and asked him if it’d be all right with him if I took the job. He said, “Yes,” and I jumped at it because it immediately doubled my salary and got me out of the bullpen. I could work at home and work all night and sleep all day if I wanted to, as long as I made the deadlines. And that was one of the great advantages in freelancing for the comic books. … So I took this job and worked probably for three years or so before it was dropped. …
Other Batman and Robin pencilers were Dick Sprang, Stan Kaye and Winslow Mortimer.
Freelance artist Paris and Phoebe were at the same address in the 1950 census. At some point they divorced. The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, Arizona), November 30, 1956, said Paris and Isabel McQueen Morris were issued a marriage license. Batman: The Sunday Classics said Paris moved to Tucson in 1958. Paris and Isabel’s divorce notice appeared in the Tucson Daily Citizen, October 31, 1959. Paris’s third divorce, from Anne Gerry Paris, appeared in the Tucson Daily Citizen, September 9, 1967.
Paris, as Chuck Paris, copyrighted his song “Blue Norther” in March 1961. DC Comics mailed pages to Paris who continued inking to 1968. Besides Batman, he inked the Atom, Flash, Green Lantern, Metal Men, Metamorpho and Teen Titans.
On August 1, 1973, Paris filed a claim for Social Security benefits.
On February 17, 1989, a fire destroyed Paris’s home. A July 1989 photograph of Paris appeared in Entertaining Tucson Across the Decades, Volume 2: 1986–1989.
In November 1989 Paris was one of the featured guests at Acmecon in Greensboro. Advertisement appeared in the Greensboro News & Record, November 3, 1989.
Paris passed away on March 19, 1994 in Tucson.
