Garretson Beekman Trudeau (born July 21, 1948) is an American cartoonist best known for creating the Doonesbury political satirical comic strip.
Trudeau won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1975, making him the first comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer. He is one of only two comic strip artists to win the award, the other being Berkeley Breathed, whose work was influenced by Trudeau. Trudeau was also the creator and executive producer of the Amazon Studios political comedy series Alpha House.
Trudeau was born in New York City, the son of Jean Douglas (née Moore, daughter of New York Assembly member Thomas Channing Moore) and Francis Berger Trudeau Jr. He is the great-grandson of Edward Livingston Trudeau, who created Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, New York. Edward was succeeded by his son Francis and grandson Francis Jr. The latter founded the Trudeau Institute at Saranac Lake, with which Garry Trudeau retains a connection.
Raised in Saranac Lake, Trudeau attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He enrolled in Yale University in 1966. As an art major, Trudeau initially focused on painting, but soon discovered a greater interest in the graphic arts. He spent much of his time cartooning and writing for Yale's humor magazine The Yale Record, eventually serving as the magazine's editor-in-chief. At the same time, Trudeau began contributing to the Yale Daily News, which eventually led to the creation of Bull Tales, a comic strip parodying the exploits of Yale quarterback Brian Dowling. This strip was the progenitor of Doonesbury.
While still an undergraduate at Yale, Trudeau published two collections of Bull Tales: Bull Tales (1969, published by the Yale Daily News) and Michael J. (1970, published by The Yale Record).
As a senior, Trudeau became a member of Scroll and Key. He did postgraduate work at the Yale School of Art, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in graphic design in 1973. It was there that Trudeau first met photographer David Levinthal, with whom he collaborated on Hitler Moves East, an influential "graphic chronicle" of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Soon after Bull Tales began running in the Yale student newspaper, the strip caught the attention of the newly formed Universal Press Syndicate. The syndicate's editor, James F. Andrews, recruited Trudeau, changed the strip's name to Doonesbury, and began distributing it following the cartoonist's graduation in 1970. Today Doonesbury is syndicated to 1,000 daily and Sunday newspapers worldwide and is accessible online in association with The Washington Post.
In 1975, Trudeau became the first comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer, traditionally awarded to editorial-page cartoonists. He was also a Pulitzer finalist in 1990, 2004, and 2005. Other awards during this time include the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award in 1994, the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonist Society in 1995, the George Orwell Award in 1994, and the Forte dei Marmi Prize for Satire 1990 in Italy,
Awards received in the 21st century include: The Max & Moritz Award for Best Comic Strip (2006, Germany) the Harvey Award, Best Syndicated Strip (2011),
the George Polk Award, Lifetime Achievement (2015), and the National Cartoonist Society's Gold T-Square (2021).
Trudeau's work has been recognized by fellowships and halls of fame. In 1993, Trudeau was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2021, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2023.
Wiley Miller, fellow comic-strip artist responsible for Non Sequitur, called him "far and away the most influential editorial cartoonist in the last 25 years". A regular graduation speaker, Trudeau has received 37 honorary degrees.
In addition to his creating his strip, Trudeau has worked in both theater and television. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1977 in the category of Animated Short Film for A Doonesbury Special, created for NBC in collaboration with John and Faith Hubley. The film won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize in 1978. In 1984, with composer Elizabeth Swados, he wrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical Doonesbury, for which he was nominated for two Drama Desk Awards. A cast album of the show, recorded for MCA, received a Grammy nomination. Trudeau again collaborated with Swados in 1984, this time on Rap Master Ronnie, a satirical revue about the Reagan Administration that opened off-Broadway at the Village Gate. A filmed version, featuring Jon Cryer, the Smothers Brothers, and Carol Kane, was broadcast on Cinemax in 1988.
Also in 1988, Trudeau wrote and co-produced with director Robert Altman HBO's critically acclaimed Tanner '88, a satiric look at that year's presidential election campaign. The show won the gold medal for Best Television Series at the Cannes Television Festival, the British Academy Television Award for Best Foreign Program, and Best Imported Program from the British Broadcasting Press Guild. It earned an Emmy Award, as well as four ACE Award nominations. In 2004, Trudeau reunited with Altman to write and co-produce a sequel mini-series, Tanner on Tanner, for the Sundance Channel.
In February 2000, Trudeau, working with Dotcomix, launched Duke2000, a web-based presidential campaign featuring a real-time, 3-D, streaming-animation version of Duke. Nearly 30 campaign videos were created for the site, and Ambassador Duke was interviewed live by satellite on the Today Show, Larry King Live, The Charlie Rose Show, and dozens of local TV and radio news shows.
In 2013, Trudeau created, wrote and co-produced Alpha House, a political sitcom starring John Goodman that revolves around four Republican U.S. Senators who live together in a townhouse on Capitol Hill. Trudeau was inspired to write the show's pilot after reading a 2007 New York Times article about a real D.C. townhouse shared by New York Senator Chuck Schumer, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, and California Representative George Miller, all Democrats. The pilot for Alpha House was produced by Amazon Studios and aired in early 2013. Due to positive response, Amazon picked up the show to develop into a full series, streaming eleven episodes for its first season. On March 31, 2014, Amazon announced that Alpha House had been renewed. Production began in July 2014, and the entire second season became available for streaming on October 24, 2014.
While writing Alpha House, Trudeau put the daily Doonesbury into rerun mode. On March 3, 2014, the "Classic Doonesbury" series began, featuring approximately four weeks of daily strips from each year of the strip's run. He continues to produce new strips for Sundays. Although Alpha House has not been in production since the end of 2014, Trudeau has not returned to creating daily Doonesbury strips; new material remains a Sunday-only event.