Seymour Reit is one of the creators of 'Casper the Friendly Ghost'. He invented the character with animator and illustrator Joe Oriolo around 1940, but sold the rights to Famous Studios, who turned it into a successful cartoon series. Born and raised in New York, Reit drew his first cartoons for humorous college magazines while attending New York University. After graduation, he was hired by Fleischer Studios to work as an inbetweener and gag-writer. In the early 1940s, Reit also produced comic strips for the Iger Shop. His work appeared in a number of Fiction House titles, where he illustrated features like 'Auro', 'Cosmo Corrigan' and 'Super American'.
During World War II, he served alongside Hollywood scenic painters and window dressers in a unit employed to camouflage the west coast of America against the threat of a Japanese invasion. After the War, throughout the 1950s, Reit returned to comics, scripting for 'Archie', 'Little Lulu', MAD magazine, as well as writing gags for 'Casper' shorts and for television shows such as 'Captain Kangaroo'. He was involved in several educational projects, working with the Bank Street college of education in New York. Reit also wrote more than 80 books on historical subjects.
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