Showing posts with label Marilyn Monroe. Show all posts

Saturday, February 5, 2022

Peter Arno for Penn Maryland Whiskey

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a popular 1925 novel by Anita Loos that inspired a 1928 silent film of the same name (and a Technicolor musical in 1953 starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe). Aware of this cultural touchstone, the Penn-Maryland Corporation registered the trademark "Gentlemen Prefer Blends" in 1935 for use in its blended whiskey advertising. Cartoonist Peter Arno contributed a humorous drawing to the campaign, which appeared in The New Yorker, in The New York Times, and on a promotional matchbook cover. The matchbook bears the additional slogan, "Mellow as a Cello."

Penn Maryland Whiskey
Peter Arno
The New Yorker, February 9, 1935, page 59

The New York Times, February 20, 1935, page 13

https://www.nytimes.com/1935/02/20/archives/exconvict-is-parted-from-pet-squirrels-arrest-on-new-narcotic.html

Peter Arno
Penn Maryland Blended Whiskey
eBay listing accessed February 4, 2022

https://www.ebay.com/itm/294168855969

Peter Arno
Penn Maryland Blended Whiskey
eBay item description

Spot drawing by unidentified artist and advertisement by Peter Arno

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1935-01-19/flipbook/058/

April 17, 2022 Update: That phrase "Mellow as a cello" did not only appear on this matchbook. A 1935 ad for Penn Maryland Whiskey without any Arno content features the words front and center in its copy:

Penn Maryland Whiskey ad
The Daily News, February 8, 1935

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/417526290/

While the phrase may have been in general circulation, it was not common enough to appear on the Google Books Ngram Viewer. Did a competitor steal it? A later 1944 ad for Old Melody liqueurs by M. S. Walker, Inc., of Boston, makes use of the same musical rhyme:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133154079932?nma=true...

Note: I can't make out the signature on the New Yorker spot drawing, but I would appreciate hearing from anyone who perhaps can.

03867

Monday, June 10, 2019

Furnishing The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #666

The New Yorker's issue of June 10 & 17, 2019 is a double issue; there is apparently no longer enough news to require news weeklies to go to press every single week. As an added bonus, I have an additional week to procrastinate on the writing of my caption for The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #666. The drawing is by Carolita Johnson and it pays homage to an Italian furniture classic, the 1972 'Bocca Lip' Sofa designed by Studio 65 and inspired by the lips of Marilyn Monroe.

Carolita Johnson
The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #666

Here's an example of the sofa from 1stdibs:

Studio 65
Marilyn Bocca Lip Sofa, 1972
Sold for $4950 on 1stdibs

https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/seating/sofas/studio-65-marilyn-bocca-lip-sofa/id-f_7456933/

Note: 1stdibs currently offers a 'Marilyn Bocca Lip' Sofa for $7,400 he r e. The sofa is still in production. Longtime readers may recall my 2012 post on this sofa here.

None of the information provided here is in the least helpful in writing a funny caption for the contest, but it might very well help with your home furnishing. Send me a picture when you redecorate.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Carolita Johnson

Couches

Marilyn Monroe

The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest

The Moment Magazine Cartoon Caption Contest

The Cartoon Collections Caption Contest

All the Above Cartoon Caption Contests and Then Some

Attempted Bloggery's Sedentary Index

02951

Friday, January 25, 2019

Strolling by the Farm: Barbara Shermund and Peter Arno

Cartoonists Peter Arno and Barbara Shermund occasionally found themselves covering more or less the same territory. After the Second World War women gradually started wearing bikinis to the beach and adopting more revealing two-piece summer outfits. It must have been second nature for cartoonists to wonder how such daringly sophisticated summer wear would be greeted down on the farm.

This time it is Shermund who got there first. Her cover for the April 1948 Esquire contrasts not only the rural shepherd with the fashionable woman, it also juxtaposes the older male and the younger female generation. The typical young male Esquire reader would have had no trouble imagining the old man's reaction to the attractive woman walking by even if it weren't so obviously delineated on his face.

Barbara Shermund
Esquire, April 1948

https://www.amazon.com/watching-illustration-Shermund-Magazine-art/dp/B072Q9NFMJ/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542148268&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=%22Barbara+Shermund%22+Esquire

Given the prominence of Esquire's monthly covers, it would be hard to argue that Arno hadn't seen Shermund's cover illustration. Arno's editors at the New Yorker likely must have seen it as well. Arno's New Yorker cover appeared a little more than four years after Shermund's. He doubles down on the passing women but he also backs off a bit, losing the one-on-one intimacy of Shermund's encounter. The three figures seen here are not so much individual personalities as conventionalized types. The farmer is younger than Shermund's, to be sure, but it is his unexpected behavior rather than his wide-eyed smile that makes this gag memorable.

Peter Arno
The New Yorker, August 2, 1952

Amanda Gormley, Barbara Shermund's niece, responds:

In Shermund’s piece the female, strikingly reminiscent to a later photo of Marilyn Monroe, walks independently alone past all manner of living things that stop to take her in. Even the squirrel has stopped chewing on his nut.

In Arno’s cover, the male is the more central figure, clueless to his wandering thresher and the accumulating steam cloud overhead.

Shermund’s female “owns it” while Arno’s male “is owned.”

Two very different voices.

Note: "Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund" is now on view at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. It will remain on exhibit through March 31, 2019.

Instagram posts hashtagged #peterarno may be seen here.

Posts on Instagram with the hashtag #barbarashermund may be reviewed here.

Back in 2011 my very first post on Peter Arno was about the sale of the original cover art seen here. I have since written more than one hundred posts about the artist.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Peter Arno

Barbara Shermund

Magazine Covers

Cartoon Similarities

Bikinis

The New Yorker

Esquire

Attempted Bloggery's Peripatetic Index

02814

Monday, October 15, 2012

Andy Warhol's Double Elvis

I got to see Andy Warhol's Double Elvis in the weeks before its auction at Sotheby's New York. The canvas is monumental, and I wasn't quite sure what to make of the large areas of flat color given the enormous scale. I found myself surprisingly grateful for the second fainter impression of Elvis over to the left, which I think helps the composition greatly.

Andy Warhol, Double Elvis [Ferus Type], 1963

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/contemporary-art-evening-n08853/lot.27.html

Fig. 1Bob Dylan holding the present work at the Factory, East 47th Street, New York, 1965
Photo: Nat Finkelstein
© 2012 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Fig. 2

Andy Warhol, Silver Liz (Ferus Type), 1963

Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Fig. 3

Double Marlon, 1966

Private Collection

Fig. 4

Silver Liz as Cleopatra, 1963

Art Gallery of Ontario, Gift of Mrs. Else Landauer, in memory of her husband, Walter Landauer, 1979

Fig. 5

Red Elvis, 1962

Private Collection

Fig. 6

Andy Warhol, Round Marilyn (Head of Marilyn Monroe), 1962

Private Collection

Fig. 8Exhibition poster (An Exhibition by Andy Warhol at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, September 30, 1963) Collection of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
© 2012 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Fig. 9

Andy Warhol working on an Elvis painting

Photo: Nat Finkelstein

Fig. 10

Installation view of the present work at the 1963 Ferus Gallery exhibition

Andy Warhol, Double Elvis [Ferus Type], 1963

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/contemporary-art-evening-n08853/lot.27.html

487

Friday, April 27, 2012

Some Like it Hot Film Poster

What's in a title? Writers Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond were not native speakers of English, yet they understood the nuances of the language so well that they could deftly produce brilliant screenplays. I doubt that either of them could have heard the nursery rhyme "Pease Porridge Hot" while growing up, yet the title of "Some Like it Hot," one of the funniest movies ever, is certainly derived from this. In the dialogue from the movie, though, the title phrase specifically refers to a musical preference for syncopated jazz. Or does it?

The vintage 1959 film poster from Billy Wilder's "Some Like it Hot" tells a different story about the title's meaning, one that has nothing to do with peas porridge or syncopated rhythms. Mother Goose would be proud.

Some Like It Hot

1959, United Artists, U.S. one-sheet -- 41 x 27 in. (104 x 69 cm.), linen-backed, (A-)

Price Realized May 2, 2012

£1,375

($2,229)
Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer’s premium and do not reflect costs, financing fees or application of buyer’s or seller’s credits.