After Peter Arno's advertisement for Penn Maryland Whiskey's "Gentlemen Prefer Blends" campaign, cartoonist Otto Soglow had his own variation on the theme. Soglow's six-panel cartoon appeared as a full page ad in The New Yorker issue of April 20, 1935. It also was published in the old Life magazine for June 1935.
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| Penn Maryland Blended Whiskey Otto Soglow The New Yorker, April 20, 1935, page 67 |
The cartoon is blatantly racist, and sexist to boot. Today we are sensitive to the offensiveness and downright wrongness of such racial caricatures, but clearly this wasn't always the case. The subservient black man depicted here, whether slave or servant, is an example of the the sort of overtly racist cartoon that can be found at least through the 1950s in mainstream American media. Demeaning racial imagery was published apparently without objection from advertisers, editorial staff, and the reading public, but that doesn't excuse it. Rather, it demonstrates just how widespread the acceptance of such images was at the time, at least among white Americans.
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| Humorous verse by Gustave Lobrano and an advertisement by Otto Soglow |
Note: Other than Peter Arno and Otto Soglow, I know of no other cartoonists contributing to the "Gentlemen Prefer Blends" ad campaign for Penn Maryland Whiskey, but I am eager to learn of any other artists I possibly may have missed. Also, if Soglow's ad was published anywhere in addition to The New Yorker and Life, I'd like to know about it.
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