a domestic humour strip. Cross continued to draw the weekly strip for nineteen years until he left Smith's in late December 1939. The strip was taken over by Jim Russell in 1940 and renamed to Mr & Mrs Potts. On 17 November 1924, Cross married a 25-year-old clerk Jessie May Hamilton (d. 1972) at the Waverley Methodist Church in Bondi Junction. In 1928, Cross began another strip in Smith's Weekly, Smith's Vaudevillans, introducing the mis-matched characters of "Rhubarb", an alcoholic sailor, and "Norman", a fop who played the straight man to his drunken partner. Another Stan Cross success was the first "Dad and Dave" cartoons, also for Smith's Weekly. The strip was a straight adaptation of the radio serial, which commenced in 1936, and ran for 2,276 episodes before finishing in 1951. During his time at Smith's Weekly, Cross established a reputation as a skilled draftsman, particularly in the area of single-panel cartoons. In the 29 July 1933 issue of Smith's Weekly, a Cross cartoon featured two men who had been working on top of a building construction. There has been a mishap, and now one is hanging by his fingers from a girder at a frightening height over a street. His mate, to save himself, has grabbed the trousers of the other, yanking them down over his ankles and, looking directly upwards, is convulsed with laughter, while the other implores: "For gorsake, stop laughing: this is serious!". Editor Frank Marien immediately dubbed it "The Funniest Drawing in the World". Such was the popularity of the cartoon that it was reprinted on a quality paper and distributed throughout Australia, with many also being sent overseas. All through the Depression years, and after, the prints, costing two shillings and sixpence, were framed and hung on walls in work-places, hotel bars, barbers' shops, and even in some shop windows. Cross became Smith's Weekly'''s highest-paid artist and second art editor. Short-run series he devised included: Things That Make Stan Cross (political and economic criticism), Places We Have Never Visited (law courts, Parliament, the players' room at a test cricket match, etc.), Museum of the Future and Firsts in Australian History (the first barmaid, the first strike, the first football match). Towards the end of 1939, Smith's Weekly was in financial trouble and Cross was induced by Keith Murdoch to join the Melbourne Herald. Capitalising on his reputation as a comic strip artist, Cross