"People who like the theatre can't help but like The New Yorker." So advertised the magazine in the April 1938 issue of Stage: The Magazine of After Dark. The ad featured a collage of nine theatre pages from The New Yorker, all illustrated by Alfred Frueh. Evidently the magazine was making a play for new readers who were fans of the theatre, rather than fans of flawless grammar. Frueh's drawings cover the Broadway plays "On Borrowed Time," "Our Town," Julius Caesar," "Of Mice and Men," and "A Doll's House," among others.
"People who like the theatre can't help but like The New Yorker." Alfred Frueh
The magazine cover features a photograph of actress Helen Hayes:
Helen Hayes touring as Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" Stage: The Magazine of After Dark, April 1938 Photo by Vandamm
The truth is, readers of Stage were already familiar with a number of contributors to the New Yorker, many of them artists. Illustrator Victor de Pauw contributed cartoons and spot drawings to The New Yorker. A full-width spot drawing for Stage on the contents page could easily be taken for a New Yorker spot.
Contents Spot drawing by Victor de Pauw
Ludwig Bemelmans illustrates a Frank Sullivan piece the year after the artist's work first appeared in The New Yorker and the year before his first Madeline book was published.
First putting suet on his Saratoga lawn for a tame flock of spring harbingers, Frank Sullivan takes a junket to Broadway, and casts a weather-eye on the current drama. Ludwig Bemelmans
Detail showing the remainder of the far right side of the Bemelmans drawing
Christina Malman caricatures actress Beatrice Lillie.
"Till the Weather Breaks" by Beatrice Lillie Caricature of Beatrice Lillie by Christina Malman
Why , I can remember when a dog could go to sleep all day in the middle of Main Street and nothing come along to disturb him.
—Thornton Wilder, "Our Town"
The streets of Grover's Corners still look pretty tranquil in Adolf Dehn's illustration of the Stage Manager's story, condensed. New Yorker readers occasionally got to see Dehn's work, but never in color.
"Our Town" Adolf Dehn
Meanwhile Abe Birnbaum illustrates the jazz scene.
The old Onyx Club
"Oh, Say Can You Swing" by Paul Douglas
Illustration by Abe Birnbaum
Ruth Woodbury Sedgwick's column is named for the privilege of sitting in the center seats of the seventh row. One hopes George Price's absurd cartoon takes place many rows back.
"He's a dramatic critic, and sees a point in keeping it a secret." George Price
Music writer Marcia Davenport, who also contributed to The New Yorker, offers the second part of a profile of conductor Leopold Stokowski.Otto Soglow's accompanying cartoon anticipates the iconic handshake between Stokowski and Mickey Mouse that was to occur two years later in Walt Disney's "Fantasia" (1940). The maestro is even shown in silhouette, as both he and Mickey are in the movie. Did Davenport have advance knowledge of the handshake?
"Hi-ya, Leo." Otto Soglow
from "Fantasia" (1940)
Note: This all started when master collagist Stephen Kroninger sent me a scan of the New Yorker theatre advertisement from his magazine collection. After that, one thing just led to another. My thanks to Stephen for all the work he put in. This is his forty-sixth contribution here. He should know better by now.
When single-speaker captions came into their own—as opposed to the older convention of having two speakers exchanging lines of dialogue—it became practical to populate a cartoon with even larger groupings of figures engaged in conversation. The cartoonist merely had to indicate which individual was doing the speaking and which others were waiting their turn and doing the listening. An original 1927 New Yorker cartoon by Barbara Shermund from Carlson & Stevenson Antiques of Manchester, Vermont, is a beautiful example of this. Three long-limbed young women lounge outdoors on an impossibly perfect summer's day but only one is doing the talking. The topic, as it happens, is a fourth young woman who is apparently quite sensible, for a reason one might not readily guess.
"Oh my, she's very leveled-headed—her father was a lawyer!"
Barbara Shermund
Original art
The New Yorker, July 30, 1927, page 18
Framed and matted, measuring 29.5 inches high by 34 inches wide
Some prefer their poets thin and starving. Claude Smith'sNew Yorker cartoon from the April 24, 1954 issue raises the question of just how we size up creative people.
Charles E. Martin The New Yorker, April 24, 1954
"I hardly think I'd care for a stout poet." Claude Smith Original art The New Yorker, April 24, 1954, page 39
Detail
Detail
Charles E. Martin The New Yorker, April 24, 1954
Verso detail
Detail
Detail
"I hardly think I'd care for a stout poet." Claude Smith The New Yorker, April 24, 1954, page 39
Verso detail
"I hardly think I'd care for a stout poet." Claude Smith The New Yorker, April 24, 1954, page 39
Ninety years ago the New Yorker celebrated the coming of its first summer with a beautiful, stylized cover by H. O. Hofman depicting an angular waterskier. Cartoonists such as W. Heath Robinson and Alfred Frueh appeared in the issue. Today, copies of the magazine from early in that first year typically sell for more than $500. On eBay this past March, a good if slightly faded copy of the June 20 issue sold for the noteworthy price of $1330. That's nearly nine-thousand times the newsstand price of 15 cents in 1925!
H. O. Hofman,The New Yorker, June 20, 1925
A cartoon by W. Heath Robinson, left, from the days when the New Yorker had difficulty selling advertising even on the inside front cover.
Alfred Frueh. News Reaches the Bar Association that the Stillmans, the Stokeses, and the Goulds Have Decided to Settle Their Differences Out of Court.
EBay Bid History It gets interesting in the final nine seconds.
Note:Here's a post of mine, also based on an eBay sale, about an unusual copy of the magazine's seventh issue from its first year. Or is it the fifth issue?
It wasn't that long ago that I took a good look at the New Yorker's first twelve issues. Then, for some unfathomable reason, I stopped. Perhaps I'll be able to get back to it one of these days. In the meantime, here's my look at the twelfth issue.
Rea Irvin's street sweeper is not pleased to find that a pair of white butterflies are drawn to him. Irvin's working class cartoon figure is in many ways the opposite of his upscale dandy who deigns to regard a single butterfly through his monocle on the cover of the first issue. The street sweepers were called the White Wings because of their regulation white uniforms, but Irvin suggests another, even better reason for the appellation.
Rea Irvin The New Yorker, May 9, 1925
With Ralph Barton off the list of advisory editors, the first in the alphabetical listing is playwright Marc Connelly of the Algonquin Round Table. He is the subject of this issue's first "Talk" piece. Editor Harold Ross's friends from the Algonquin get a lot of press in his magazine. Meanwhile Eldon Kelley illustrates the Roman myth of Proserpine being abducted to the underworld by Pluto, although some classical scholars may dispute the historical details shown here. For added fun, try reading that license plate upside down.
"The Talk of the Town" Eldon Kelley,Proserpine
Reginald Marsh returns to the "Talk" section with a new spread on the subject of golf, "the other great Scotch invention." In the New Yorker of the Prohibition era, it's pretty certain the writer isn't referring to bagpipes.
Reginald Marsh,Elegant America Does Its Duty By the Other Great Scotch Invention.
This "Talk" piece on illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson girl, gives some idea of the type of astronomical earnings top illustrators commanded back in the Golden Age.
Couple about town:
In Herb Roth's cartoon, the padlocking of the City's speakeasies has an all-too-familiar domestic analogy.
Herb Roth,An Early Padlocking--Showing That This Woe Has Long Been Known to Gas Consumers
Island girl:
Fiction, or a reasonable facsimile, by Tip Bliss...
"That's New York"
"Their most acute problem was Mayor Hylan. Hylan didn't want to be Mayor. He wanted to be Music Master. He was devoted to his art and gave concerts in his own parks all over the city." Herb Roth illustrates Mayor Hylan conducting. Note the radio microphone, the very latest communication technology embraced even by Silent Cal in the White House.
Herb Roth "Story of Manhattankind."
Alfred Frueh demonstrates an ingenious contraption for circumventing the padlocking of speakeasies. Who needs Heath Robinson?
Alfred Frueh,A Crafty and Timely Device--The Turn-Table Club
"The small figure in the centre of the page is Miss Hayes, showing that even in those days there were flappers." In place of Ralph Barton, W. E. Hill has been providing many of the weekly theatre page illustrations, this one featuring the talented Helen Hayes.
"Great Moments front the Drama" W. E. Hill, "Caesar and Cleopatra" at the New Home of the Theatre Guild
"The Theatre" reviewer who last week became carried away with the cumbersome phrase this department, formally announces the welcome return of the editorial we.
Gardner Rea's cartoon about a vacationing White Wing--a New York City street sweeper--appears in this issue perhaps as a companion piece to Rea Irvin's cover. Note that the White Wing dresses in black on his vacation and does his littering from a hired cab.
Gardner Rea,The White Wing's Vacation
Who Were the "White Wings?"
The New-York Historical Society
"We have known George Luks intimately and we have made the discovery that his most sincere attachment is to orange juice in the morning and raw oysters all the rest of the day." Artist George Luks illustrates his own "Profile"--a first--and signs it with the name of boxer Gene Tunney.
"Profiles: The Illustrious George" Illustration by George Luks
Robert L. Gambone elucidates:
From Life on the Press: The Popular Art and Illustrations of George Benjamin Luks by Robert L. Gambone, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2009.
"People heard of the Bronx River for the first time about ten years ago when somebody named a highway commission after it." This still rings true in 2015, with the Bronx River Parkway far better known than the Bronx River itself. E. B. White returns to the magazine, thank heaven, with "Defense of the Bronx River."
"Defense of the Bronx River"
An illustration on the "Music" page is one of the first to add elements of personality.
"Music"
Rockewell Kent on the "Arts" page:
Rockwell Kent
Mayor Hylan deals with a growing murder rate. Prohibitionists react with alarm to a news item about using champagne to christen an airplane. Will Rogers reports on Calvin Coolidge's sense of humor. Motorcycles are banned at Yale. Surgeons are urged to sign their patients. (In 2015, they finally do.) Howard Brubaker's "Of All Things" is truly all over the place, but the punch lines, well, they really aren't so very amusing.
"Of All Things" by Howard Brubaker
Straphangers by Eldon Kelley:
Eldon Kelley
"Broadway has had and still has its negro cabarets, patronized by white people, but the place to see the real colored shows unhampered by white management or tastes is in the center of the negro district of Harlem." Lest one mistake a minstrel show for the real deal...
"When Nights Are Bold" Illustrations at Smalls, left, and of dancer Bobbie, right, by Charles Baskerville
British cartoonist Lawson Wood stops by the New Yorker for his one and only appearance in the magazine.
Lawson Wood, "Look here, I'm going to give you a fiver, and you fellersh musht fight it out among yourselves."
A Parisian bouquiniste:
Eldon Kelley
The New Yorker engages in some lowbrow play on the word colored. One Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street would describe the neighborhood known as Harlem.
"The Optimist" shows up for its twelfth consecutive issue. Bring it on! Plus, some clear thinking from the military:
The New Yorker's subscription ads continue to provide some of the most humorous copy in the magazine.
Humorist Corey Ford writes about the art of the blotter:
"Blotters: An Absorbing Medium" by Corey Ford
Last week the magazine reviewed Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" and stated, "One--this department, to be exact--is conscious of being in the presence neither of a great play nor of a particularly high-grade production." This week, in the capsule review on the "Goings On" page, it is a "masterpiece." This shows a lack of editorial consistency; the New Yorker is speaking with too many voices. The review of "They Knew What They Wanted," on the other hand, delivers the kind of quick-witted punch that works so well on this page.
I think most Savoyards would state that it is "The Grand Duke" and not "Princess Ida" that is the most obscure of Gilbert and Sullivan's surviving works. Just last week, the New Yorker's capsule review of the "Ziegfeld Follies" called both W. C. Fields and Will Rogers "the funniest man in New York." This week Will Rogers plays second fiddle.
A familiar rite of spring, or so we've been told:
A new header for the "Sports" section featuring William Tell by Rea Irvin:
"Sports"
Some light verse to read on your next cab ride:
"Indifference" by Arthur Guiterman
"'..."Once a P. A. man, always a P. A. man."'" A humorous piece by Charles Street reimagines dime novel hero Frank Merriwell at the Police Academy. A misfire, to be sure.
"Frank Merriwell's Triumph"
Note: Did you happen to catch the May 2nd issue? If you missed it in 1925, you can still read my full report.
