Blog Post No. 2400: Sizzling Platter Chatter

It is now time for us to take up the sizzling platter situation. Just imagining what might very well be the specialty of the house can make one’s mouth water. Yet New Yorker cartoonists very deliberately have avoided drawing sizzling platters for... well, decades. Three cartoons in the magazine's storied history specifically mention sizzling platters, but do we ever actually get to visualize the real deal? In 1937, cartoonist Barbara Shermund comes awfully close to drawing one, but there is so much steam there’s just nothing left to see. In other words, it's all sizzle and no platter.

Barbara Shermund
The New Yorker, March 13, 1937

Likewise, very early in 1949 cartoonist Robert Day does not delineate for us a sizzling platter either, only a couple discussing the fancy menu item. This time it's all talk and no sizzle.

Robert Day, The New Yorker, January 29, 1949

Thankfully, the subject finds its way to Peter Arno later in 1949, via gag writer Richard McCallister. In Arno's hands, the sizzling platter is no longer really a menu item at all; instead it's an unseen but potently-suggestive double entendre. Note how the provocatively-posed line of showgirls allows the viewer to imagine the comically-horrific incident described. And what a wonderful look of abject concern on the diner’s face! Yet there is paradoxically a complete absence of food anywhere in the drawing; there's not even a dish in sight. Now it's all innuendo and no platter.

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, May 7, 1949

Arno’s midcentury masterpiece put an understandable end to the small run of New Yorker cartoons on the subject of sizzling platters; there is simply no way to top it. So, do we ever actually get to see our talked-about sizzling platter? We certainly do, but it isn't to be found in the pages of The New Yorker. Rather, the long-awaited sizzling platter is finally depicted on the front cover dust jacket illustration for the collection Peter Arno's Sizzling Platter (1949). (You know a cartoon is iconic when it lends a published collection its title!) Arno's self-restraint has finally exhausted itself and it is only now that we get to feast our eyes on a hot sizzling platter...and the food doesn’t look so bad either.

Peter Arno's Sizzling Platter (1949)

www.abebooks.co.uk/

Note:  I am grateful to New Yorker cartoonist and Peter Arno biographer Michael Maslin for identifying Richard McCallister as the gag writer of the Arno cartoon. Mr. Maslin's 2016 biography, Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of the New Yorker's Greatest Cartoonist, is available on Amazon and elsewhere at a mad, mad discount no Arno fan should pass up. Incidentally, if any reader can identify the gag writer for the two other sizzling platter cartoons by Shermund and Day, or whether they indeed used a gag writer at all, please come forward and tell the epicurean world what we need to know.

Surely Peter Arno produced far more than his share of unsurpassed work throughout his career and Attempted Bloggery humbly begs to bring you more of it. I seek scans or photographs of original cartoon art by Arno as well as examples of rare and obscure published work from outside of the well-thumbed pages of The New Yorker. Please send me something that sizzles.


December 31, 2017 Update:  Peter Arno's original book cover illustration is in Harry's Bar, London. It's in the center on the back wall.

Harry's Bar in London by Mark Birley

Image added May 7, 2020

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/294563631848250049/

The Attempted Bloggery Centennial Posts
Blog Post No. 100
Blog Post No. 200:  A Shaggy Dog Story

Blog Post No. 300:  From the Libraries of Searle, Koren, Booth, and Saxon

Blog Post No. 400: The Attempted Bloggery Quiz

Blog Post No. 500:  The Second Attempted Bloggery Quiz

Blog Post No. 600:  What I Do When I'm Not Blogging

Blog Post No. 700:  The Many Hazards of Blogging

Blog Post No. 800:  Think Locally, Blog Globally

Blog Post No. 900:  The Blog I Was Meant to Write

Blog Post No. 1000: Happy New Year, Lurkers and All!

Blog Post No. 1100:  The Power of Google

Blog Post No. 1200:  The Ukrainian Situation

Blog Post No. 1300:  Plus-Sizing the Readership

Blog Post No. 1400:  New Goals for an Old Blogger

Blog Post No. 1500:  The Wisdom of Warren Buffett 

Blog Post No. 1600:  "The Big Bang Theory's" Homage to Charles Addams

Blog Post No. 1700:  The New Yorker Apocrypha

Blog Post No. 1800:  The Wrong Bag

Blog Post No. 1900:  Think Good Thoughts About George Booth at 90

Blog Post No. 2000:  Charles Addams and the Birth of a Rare Book Collector
Blog Post No. 2100:  Eustace Tilley in Leotards
Blog Post No. 2200:  Peter Arno Drawings from the Estate of Frank Modell
Blog Post No. 2300:  Peter Arno—Not for Attribution 

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives

Peter Arno

Robert Day

Richard McCallister

Barbara Shermund

The New Yorker

Attempted Bloggery's Overheated Index

Attempted Bloggery supports net neutrality.

02400

Peter Arno: Getting the After-Theatre Crowd

In New York, everyone likes to play to a crowd! Peter Arno understands this—after all, he does a bit of it himself—and he uses it to good effect in the cartoon "We were lucky to get the after-theatre crowd, weren't we?" The drawing depicts firefighters and well-dressed bystanders at a raging blaze somewhere in the area of Times square. The gag was originally published as a full page cartoon in the New Yorker of January 24, 1942. It was subsequently included in the 1944 collection Peter Arno's Man in the Shower. The original New Yorker artwork was sold on eBay in December of 2010 after several unsuccessful tries. This eBay listing has not been seen on the internet in over five years.

"We were fortunate in getting the after-theatre crowd, weren't we?"
Peter Arno, Original artwork
The New Yorker, January 24, 1942, page 22
Man in the Shower, 1944

Detail

Detail

Peter Arno's signature

Detail

Caption

Detail

"We were fortunate in getting the after-theatre crowd, weren't we?"
Peter Arno, Original artwork
The New Yorker, January 24, 1942, page 22
Man in the Shower, 1944

Two Arno originals!

"We were fortunate in getting the after-theatre crowd, weren't we?"
Peter Arno, The New Yorker, January 24, 1942, page 22

eBay Q & A

[End of eBay Listing]

"We were fortunate in getting the after-theatre crowd, weren't we?"
Peter Arno, The New Yorker, January 24, 1942, page 22

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1942-01-24#folio=022

From Peter Arno's Man in the Shower, 1944

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Peter-Arnos-Man-in-the-Shower-1st-1st-Hardcover-w-Jacket-Humor-Cartoons-1944-/141953303404?hash=item210d13836c:g:dtgAAOxyoA1RQOcQ

Note:  Do you know what this blog post needs? If you read the Q & A you do. It needs a photograph showing this original art when it was hanging in the 21 Club. This is a tall order, I know, but if you've got the goods, please don't be shy about it. Usually I ask for much easier stuff and almost no one responds anyway.

For example, something I'd consider far easier would be for you to send me an example or two of original New Yorker cartoon art. This blog has a nice virtual collection of it and I'm always looking for more. Collectors take note: you can remain anonymous if you wish. Politicians take note: sure you can have some free publicity.

Would you like to know a little more about Peter Arno? Well, this is your lucky day. Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker's Greatest Cartoonist by Michael Maslin was just published last week. If you're reading this blog, my guess is you should be reading this book.

While you're waiting for the book to arrive from Amazon, why not check out these helpful Arno links?

Peter Arno posts on Ink Spill. It's as if Arno's biographer had written them.

Peter Arno in Chris Wheeler's Cartoon(ist) Gallery. It's as if a great cartoon book collector were showing off his holdings.

Peter Arno in April's Vanity Fair. It's as if a leading national magazine that doesn't publish cartoons really cared about this cartoonist.

Peter Arno in the March 29 Wall Street Journal article. It's as if the financial district were a temple of high culture.

Peter Arno posts here on Attempted Bloggery. It's as if I had nothing better to do.

01844

New Year's Eve with Peter Arno

Over the years, cartoonist Peter Arno had quite a run with his New Yorker magazine covers welcoming in the New Year with humor. The 1940 cover was published in January and is probably not, strictly speaking, a New Year's cover, although I like to think it is.

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, December 28, 1929

Image added January 1, 2014

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, January 6, 1940

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, January 1, 1944

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, December 29, 1951

January 1, 2014 Update:  The original artwork for the 1951 monk cover is in the collection of Harry's Bar, located in the Mayfair district of London. It can be seen at the lower left of the photograph.

http://elegantvocals.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/a-mayfair-marriage/

Note:  My previous seasonal post on Peter Arno can be found here.

0191

My All-Time Favorite New Yorker Cover (If I Had to Pick Only One)

I'm someone who looks at a lot of New Yorker magazine covers, so many that it's nearly impossible to pick a favorite. Yet I actually do, I believe, have a steady favorite, and it just turned sixty years old! The cover has absolutely no relevance to anything I've seen or done in my own life and it's a gag so straightforward and simple that I can't believe it's kept its hold on me for decades. I'm not going to try to explain it, out of fear of ruining the effect. The artist, of course, is Peter Arno:

Peter Arno, The New Yorker, November 17, 1951

I believe the original artwork is in the collection of Harry's Bar, London.

Note: This may be my all-time favorite New Yorker cover, but my favorite magazine cover of all time is actually Graphis No. 185, which is illustrated not with a drawing but with a photograph by Phil Marco. You can see it here.

My most recent post on Peter Arno, entitled Pilgrim's Progress, can be found right here.

157