British Cartoon Archive

About

David Philip Millar was born on 28 August 1909, and started his professional cartooning career in the 1930s as an illustrator for men's magazines. He married Maude Withers in London in 1936. Millar's work appeared in Razzle and Blighty, and in the Daily Mirror, but in the late 1940s he also began drawing seaside postcards.

Millar used a number of pseudonyms based on his name, including "Davo", "Pip", and "Milla", but he also had several others. His postcard work was published by E. Marks (1948-49 as "Pip"), Joseph Easton and Co. (1948-1951 as "Milla"), Easton Millar (1951 onwards as "Davo"), and D. Constance (1964 onwards as "Pedro", Carlos", "Bob", and "Flip"). At D. Constance Millar replaced Donald McGill, after the latter's death in 1962, and in several instances redrew and updated his designs.

"As well as their reliance on double entendres", Russell Ash wrote, "[Millar's] cards are characterized by the presence of sexy girls with impossibly humungous breasts and erect nipples and minimal or absent underwear, voracious newlyweds, wives, secretaries, randy neighbours, milkmen, dentists, campers, hikers, workmen, nudists, golfers, cricketers, holidaymakers - pretty much Carry On on a card."

Millar died in Norfolk in 1988.

 

  • Article on David Philip Millar by Peter Tucker in Picture Postcard Monthly, No.342 (Oct 2007)
  • Russell Ash It Just Slipped Out...A Bulging Compendium of Double Entendres (Headline, London, 2010), pp.168-9.
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