Speaking of Pictures: Life Magazine on Peter Arno, 1941

In its October 13, 1941 issue, Life magazine gave its readers a generous sampling of ten Peter Arno cartoons from The New Yorker collected in his seventh book, Cartoon Revue. The looming wartime themes are evident, but there's also the 1939 World's Fair, a wedding night scenario, and a gag about aging—or is it about publicity?

Peter Arno
Life, October 13, 1941, pp. 8-9

I think Life made an obvious mistake here: placing the captions on the lower half of the page at the top of the cartoons could only have been dreamed up by an art director too concerned about "balance." The idea, I suppose, was to keep the captions from being trimmed off the lower edge of the page.

Peter Arno
eBay listing accessed April 27, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/135035220279?mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l1120&ch=osgood&euid=1dbda975180346dda416fb7e6a54111d&bu=43186000575&ut=RU&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20240427013620&segname=11021

Peter Arno
eBay item description

EBay paper sellers often don't disclose specific issue dates—I mean, why buy the two pages on offer when you could get a copy of the full magazine for probably not too much more?—but that withheld information is increasingly searchable. My own formidable Google skills gave me not only the issue date, but an additional page, numbered 11, with the final two Arno cartoons. Here, I'm pleased to report, both captions are placed underneath the drawing, where they belong.

https://books.google.com/books?id=uk4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Note:  I've been at this game long enough to have written a few comprehensive posts on some of these classic Peter Arno cartoons, including:

"You're making a grave mistake, Miss Loesch . . . "

"Well, what's the excuse this time?"

"Why, George Carter! . . . "

As for "Well, back to the old drawing board," Paul Karasik explains why this is his candidate for the perfect cartoon here.

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