Walt Lardner sold his first cartoon in 1954 while a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. For the next decade, his free-lance cartoons appeared in national magazines such as Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post. In 1967, Lardner moved to South Carolina, where he began a long association with South Carolina Educational Television, eventually becoming the network's chief animator. During this period, he was also a regular, free-lance contributor to The State.