path2hope: November 2010

SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 10

Above: a SATURDAY EVENING POST classic multi-panel wordless gag cartoon by Syverson.

Here is a look back at some 1950s SATURDAY EVENING POST gag cartoons. Today: dogs and other animals.

It's the big eyes on the onlookers that sell this wordless Jerry Marcus cartoon.

Looks like cartoonist Roy Fox is channeling Marge's LITTLE LULU.

I love this Bill Yates cartoon for the dog's expression.

Ditto Vahan Shirvanian's expression on that bear's puss.

There are a good number of Mickey Mouse gags in general. The MICKEY MOUSE CLUB must have been making an impact.

Jack Chisum's expression on the outraged cat holding the thermometer makes this a bullseye.

My thanks to Kristin Cawood for giving me this large scrapbook of 1950s gag cartoons to share! Thanks, Kristin!

The SATURDAY EVENING POST 1950s gag cartoons blog entries:

SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 1
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 2
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 3
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 4
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 5
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 6
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 7
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 8
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 9
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 10
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 11
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 12
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 13
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 14
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 15
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 16
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 17
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 18
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 19
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 20
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 21
SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 22

Mike Lynch Cartoon in November 30, 2010 WALL STREET JOURNAL

I have a cartoon about Twitter in today's Wall Street Journal. Above is the version that I mailed in.

Upon getting the OK, I received notes to make the fellow ("Jon Dailey") look more pleasant and make the "Never Tweeted and Proud of It" more bold. Above is a blow up of his face, and you can see the look of grim determination that Mr. Dailey has about never ever ever no way in God's green Earth is he EVER using Twitter on his puss. I was sorry to lose that look.

Here are the stats. It was a long journey to print, over a year, from conception to sale to print:

Rejected by Harvard Business Review, Reader's Digest, The New Yorker. It was held by the Wall Street Journal on December 30, 2009. They bought it February 10, 2010. It ran in the paper today, November 30, 2010.

And above is the redrawn published version. His face is more pleasant. I took out trees in the background in favor of making the monument (and lettering) larger. "Jon Dailey" was a name I plucked out of thin air. I don't know anyone by that name. I wanted it specific (no "John Smith") and not funny on its own (no "Og Ogleby"). Now, I bet I get contacted by a couple of Jon Daileys!

TWILIGHT ZONE/CALVIN & HOBBES Mash-Up

"The Watterson Zone," written by Mark Pellegrini with art by Timothy Lim, adapts the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode where anything a little boy wants, happens.

It's a spoof of a classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode. The original program title was "It's a Good Life" and starred Billy Mumy. It was later remade as a segment of the TWILIGHT ZONE MOVIE.

Below is the program that originally aired on November 3, 1961, cut into its requisite YouTube 10-minute chunks:

When Martin Landau Was a Cartoonist

Maybe you know this and maybe it's news to you, but actor Martin Landau was a staff cartoonist at the New York Daily News in the 1940s. He was just a kid, assisting other cartoonists (the Daily News' theatrical caricaturist Horace Knight and, later on, THE GUMPS cartoonist Gus Edson) and thinking that he would maybe be a pro one day. Actually, he was; he assisted Edson for several years in the late 1940s, graduating from drawing backgrounds and lettering to drawing THE GUMPS Sunday pages.

Above: a Horace knight caricature of Edward R. Murrow from the Tufts Digital Library.

Bhob Stewart recounts the cartoonist years of Martin Landau, complete with some screen captures of Mr. Landau drawing for the 2008 film LOVELY, STILL, and some GUMPS scans. Above: a close up of Mr. Landau drawing from the beginning of the movie.

On September 2, 2010, Mr. Landau gave an interview to Neal Conan on NPR's Talk of the Nation program (full audio here). While promoting LOVELY, STILL, he recounted his cartooning days at The Daily News:

CONAN: There is a part in the film you play, a character who is involved. We see him sketching at first, later painting. And that's you. You did that, right?

Mr. LANDAU: Well, I did that professionally, actually. I mean, I started on The New York Daily News as a kid when I was 17 years old, as a cartoonist and illustrator, and I was being groomed to be the theatrical caricaturist. And I know if I got that job, I'd never quit. So I quit.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: So you were getting offered a - you believed you were about to be offered a nice, cushy job in newspapers, and then...

Mr. LANDAU: It was a great job, actually. I'd go to opening nights, and the PR people would give me 8x10s of the dress rehearsal. And I would go home, actually - I didn't have to go to the news building - and do a drawing of the cast, which would appear in a Sunday paper. If there were two openings that week, two drawings. The old fellow, Horace Knight(ph), was an old English fellow who had that job was retiring. And I was - I had the ability to do that. So I - but I knew I wanted to go into the theater. I mean, I wanted to act. And I knew if I got that job - which was, again, a cushy job and very well-paying job, and the only - you know, I mean, my style was sort of a nouveau - art nouveau style, an art deco style, as opposed Hirschfeld's, who had a very flowing line.

CONAN: Yeah.

Mr. LANDAU: And it was a different look, but it had a look. And - but I quit. And my - you know, my family - I had to put up with a lot of - you did what?

A big hat tip to Bhob Stewart. Landau joins the ranks of other actor/cartoonists, like Caruso, Jackie Gleason, Orson Bean, Robert Lansing, Rita Moreno, Ginger Rogers, Al Roker, Denis Leary and Morley Safer.

Above: Albert Dorne, Carol Burnett and Bill Holman from the cover THE PRO CARTOONIST AND GAG WRITER. It's 1962 and she's receiving an NCS ACE (Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinary) award. Complete link to the entire PRO CARTOONIST issue here.

Martin Rowson: "Cartoonists Live In the Twilight Zone"

"Sensible editors will allow their cartoonists as free a rein as reasonable, within the bounds of decency." Above cartoon by Martin Rowson

Writing for The Guardian, Martin Rowson describes the function of a full-time newspaper editorial cartoonist.

"Cartoons as a medium, particularly political ones, occupy a curious, not quite respectable twilight place in the realm of journalism, often integral to the topography of a newspaper but also more than slightly semi-detached."

Link here. This is a shorter version of an article Mr. Rowson wrote for the British Journalism Review.

SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 9

Some car and driver cartoons from some 1950s SATURDAY EVENING POST magazines in honor of today, one of the biggest holiday travel days of the year.