“Gasoline Alley,” “Little Orphan Annie,” “Dick Tracy,” “Moon Mullins,” and “Terry and the Pirates” were among the comic strips Mollie Slott supervised during her fifty-six-year tenure with the Chicago Tribune–New York Daily News Syndicate. There she guided the daily operation of a nationwide news distribution service that, in addition to the comics, included columns of advice, sports, politics, and serialized fiction.

Born in Chicago, on April 19, 1893, to Lee Slott and Sarah (Herlinger) Slott, she spent two years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago. Then, concealing her true age, at seventeen she went to work for the Chicago Tribune. Her marriage to Charles Levinson on May 29, 1917, produced two sons, William A. and Lee Slott.

In 1921, Slott helped the syndicate achieve a coup when Tribune photographers, carrying photos of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight, were blocked from a plane by rivals’ chicanery. Resourceful as always, she sent the pictures—the first photos so transmitted—by wire.

In 1946, she became the first female manager in syndicate history. She was later promoted to vice president (1955) and then to director (1961). A member of the National Women’s Press Club, the New York Newspaper Women’s Club, and the Overseas Press Club, Mollie Slott died on January 24, 1967, in New York City.