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| "Magazines are about eighty-five percent luck." —Harold W. Ross |
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| Author photo |
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| Title page |
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| Acknowledgments |
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| Harold Ross, man of letters |
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| Hooray for Hollywood |
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| Thomas Kunkel eBay listing ended April 3, 2020 |
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| Thomas Kunkel eBay item description |
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Showing posts with label Thomas Kunkel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Kunkel. Show all posts
Thursday, March 25, 2021
Thomas Kunkel's Genius in Disguise, with a Signed Bookplate
Published in 1995, Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker is Thomas Kunkel's full-length biography of The New Yorker's founding editor. Signed copies of this book, his first, are not terribly common and many of them seem to carry the author's signature on bookplates. The dust jacket reveals that at the time of publication Kunkel lived in Indiana with his wife and four daughters. Going on a national book signing tour may not have been a high priority.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
A Portrait of Harold Ross
A portrait photograph of New Yorker founding editor Harold Ross from a 1927 sitting is offered on eBay for $122 or a best offer. It was taken less than two years after the the New Yorker was first published and shows Ross at about age 34. The photograph was published on the cover of Letters from the Editor, Thomas Kunkel's 2000 collection of Ross's correspondence. Just when this particular photograph may have been printed is anybody's guess.
A much later press photo released in 1951 at the time of Ross's death is also available on eBay, but it is readily acknowledged as a modern print. At most 24 years separate the two images of Ross.
Attempted Bloggery's quick links:
Ireland
Attempted Bloggery's sophisticated index
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| eBay Listing Copied September 5, 2016 |
A much later press photo released in 1951 at the time of Ross's death is also available on eBay, but it is readily acknowledged as a modern print. At most 24 years separate the two images of Ross.
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| Harold Ross 1951 Press Photo (Modern Reproduction) |
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| Harold Ross, 1927 |
Attempted Bloggery's quick links:
Ireland
Attempted Bloggery's sophisticated index
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Sunday, September 27, 2015
Rea Irvin and Al Hirschfeld: Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley
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| Rea Irvin The New Yorker, February 21, 1925 |
Harold Ross founded the magazine (with Jane Grant and Raoul Fleischmann) and served as its editor. It was probably only a matter of time before someone portrayed him as Eustace Tilley. A period photo of the young Ross shows his remarkable shock of hair brushed skyward.
Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley? The idea is straightforward enough. It isn't such a great stretch for an illustrator to depict the New Yorker's founding editor Harold Ross as the foppish Eustace Tilley. The first to do this was Irvin himself. The occasion was a parody issue of the magazine dated November 6, 1926, Ross's birthday. It was circulated in-house at the New Yorker as a gift for Ross.
Irvin, under the joking pseudonym Penaninksky, depicts Ross in profile, adopting Eustace Tilley's characteristic perceptive pose. Ross is shown in silhouette because this one-off had to be printed cheaply in black-and-white. The top hat may be Tilley's but the spiky hair clearly belongs to Ross only. Ross was a chain-smoker and thus a cigarette dangles from his lip. He still wears Tilley's nineteenth century waistcoat but his snazzy shirt and tie belong to the Jazz Age. The delicate butterfly of the classic magazine cover is replaced by the not-so-delicate form of Alexander Woollcott as a fedora-clad spider.
Margaret Case Harriman's The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table was published in 1951, a quarter-century later. When illustrator Al Hirschfeld chose to depict the Round Table's Harold Ross in the guise of Eustace Tilley, he was very likely unaware of Rea Irvin's earlier illustration, which had been circulated only within the New Yorker's offices. Ross of course was older now: his head was rounder, he wore glasses, and his once gravity-defying hair was slicked down.
Note: Artwork from The Vicious Circle is © The Al Hirschfeld Foundation. My thanks to Stephen Kroninger for permission to use his scans of the book. On Tuesday he will participate in a panel discussion entitled "The Hirschfeld Century Speaks" at the Art Students League in Manhattan. Joining him will be Ken Fallin, Drew Friedman, and Bill Jacklin, while David Leopold, the Creative Director of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, will be moderating. I'll be there in the audience if I can get out of work early enough, which is another way of saying I probably won't be there. Say hi to me anyway.
Have you seen "The Hirschfeld Century" at the New-York Historical Society? It's a stunning show, but it's only there through October 12. Don't miss it.
The scan of the New Yorker's rare parody issue is taken from Magazine History: A Collector's Blog by Steven Lomazow, M.D. He's that rarity: a doctor interested in scarce printed memorabilia! Who ever heard of such a thing?
Follow the links to more Attempted Bloggery posts about Harold Ross, Alexander Woollcott, Eustace Tilley, Rea Irvin, and Al Hirschfeld.
You might also care to look at Michael Maslin's Ink Spill post on Ross & Tilley.
See how Hirschfeld altered a photo of Harold Ross in Life magazine and got himself banned from the New Yorker for almost six decades. (Thanks again to Stephen Kroninger!)
Please contact me if you have other images of Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley. In particular, I believe there's a 1980's-era photographic illustration by Ellen Page Wilson along these lines.
I'd also love to hear from anyone with interior scans or photos of the New Yorker's rare self-parody issue.
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| Harold Ross, 1926 The photo is apparently reversed. |
Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley? The idea is straightforward enough. It isn't such a great stretch for an illustrator to depict the New Yorker's founding editor Harold Ross as the foppish Eustace Tilley. The first to do this was Irvin himself. The occasion was a parody issue of the magazine dated November 6, 1926, Ross's birthday. It was circulated in-house at the New Yorker as a gift for Ross.
Irvin, under the joking pseudonym Penaninksky, depicts Ross in profile, adopting Eustace Tilley's characteristic perceptive pose. Ross is shown in silhouette because this one-off had to be printed cheaply in black-and-white. The top hat may be Tilley's but the spiky hair clearly belongs to Ross only. Ross was a chain-smoker and thus a cigarette dangles from his lip. He still wears Tilley's nineteenth century waistcoat but his snazzy shirt and tie belong to the Jazz Age. The delicate butterfly of the classic magazine cover is replaced by the not-so-delicate form of Alexander Woollcott as a fedora-clad spider.
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| Rea Irvin The New Yorker in-house parody, November 6, 1926 |
A photograph shows the dapper Woollcott's fondness for hats. He doesn't look at all like a spider, does he?
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| Alexander Woollcott |
Margaret Case Harriman's The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table was published in 1951, a quarter-century later. When illustrator Al Hirschfeld chose to depict the Round Table's Harold Ross in the guise of Eustace Tilley, he was very likely unaware of Rea Irvin's earlier illustration, which had been circulated only within the New Yorker's offices. Ross of course was older now: his head was rounder, he wore glasses, and his once gravity-defying hair was slicked down.
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| Harold Ross |
Hirschfeld depicts Ross with a wheat straw in his mouth, something of an out-of-town rube in high society finery. He is not the first to note Ross's relatively unsophisticated manners which stand in marked contrast to his high social standing at the classy magazine.
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Al Hirschfeld "+ R. I." Harold Ross from The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table, 1951 |
The book's dustcover reproduces Hirschfeld's caricatures of (left to right, top to bottom) Heywood Broun, Robert Benchley, Harold Ross, Robert Sherwood, Irving Berlin, Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, and Alexander Woollcott.
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Al Hirschfeld The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table, 1951 by Margaret Case Harriman
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More recently, Thomas Kunkel's biography of Harold Ross uses Rea Irvin's caricature of Ross as Tilley on its cover.
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| Rea Irvin Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker, 1995, by Thomas Kunkel |
April 5, 2016 Update: A detail of Edward Sorel's mural at Monkey Bar in New York shows Ross in the guise of Eustace Tilley.
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| Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley Detail from Edward Sorel's Monkey Bar mural completed in 2009 |
September 5, 2016 Update: The original artwork by Al Hirschfeld was sold at Swann Galleries in 2008.
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Al Hirschfeld "+ R. I." Original art, Harold Ross from The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table, 1951 |
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| Swann Galleries, June 12, 2008, Hammer Price |
Have you seen "The Hirschfeld Century" at the New-York Historical Society? It's a stunning show, but it's only there through October 12. Don't miss it.
The scan of the New Yorker's rare parody issue is taken from Magazine History: A Collector's Blog by Steven Lomazow, M.D. He's that rarity: a doctor interested in scarce printed memorabilia! Who ever heard of such a thing?
Follow the links to more Attempted Bloggery posts about Harold Ross, Alexander Woollcott, Eustace Tilley, Rea Irvin, and Al Hirschfeld.
You might also care to look at Michael Maslin's Ink Spill post on Ross & Tilley.
See how Hirschfeld altered a photo of Harold Ross in Life magazine and got himself banned from the New Yorker for almost six decades. (Thanks again to Stephen Kroninger!)
Please contact me if you have other images of Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley. In particular, I believe there's a 1980's-era photographic illustration by Ellen Page Wilson along these lines.
I'd also love to hear from anyone with interior scans or photos of the New Yorker's rare self-parody issue.
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