Attempted Bloggery: yearbook

Showing posts with label yearbook. Show all posts

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Charles Addams's First Published Cartoon?

An eBay listing offers a rare 1927 Westfield High School yearbook, the Weather Vane. The eBay seller contends that it holds Charles Addams's first published cartoon, a plausible enough statement. This would have been Addams's sophomore year and the fifteen-year-old is credited as one of three art editors on the yearbook staff. The Addams cartoon in question, dated 1927, appears on page 94 in a section dedicated to the foreign languages—and it's in Latin!

Logic

Terentia: "When the man began to speak, he did not stop to think."

Cicero: "But when the woman began to speak, he did not think to interrupt."

It's actually funnier in Latin where the parallel wordplay is more explicit. I don't believe for a minute that this Latin exercise was Addams's idea; he merely illustrated it. He said/she said cartoons were still common back then, but they were soon to be replaced in The New Yorker and later everywhere else, by single-speaker cartoons. The characters, Terentia and her husband Cicero the orator, are vaguely drawn in the style of 1920s newspaper comics. She is drawn as a beautiful flapper and he is drawn as a caricature a little reminiscent of Jiggs from George McManus's comic strip Bringing Up Father. Addams attempts to invoke Ancient Rome with the sandals and those ponderous Roman column table legs. It's rare to see him have any trouble with perspective, but the stool and table leg sit lower on Cicero's side while Terentia's stool is floating just above the tile line. Addams will outgrow all this soon.

Addams may be seen in the yearbook staff photo, I believe, standing to the right of center in the sweater vest.

"IS IT POSSIBLE THAT: . . .
Charles Addams has learned to play Bethune Jones' Piccolo?"

The yearbook's previous owner observes of Addams, "The neat thing is you can already see his unique, macabre style." And where might that be?

Say it isn't so!

Charles Addams
eBay listing accessed June 10, 2023

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175763869365?hash=item28ec57ceb5:g:-eAAAOSwiipkWV-S

Charles Addams
eBay item description

The Westfield Memorial Library has digitized a copy of the 1927 Westfield High School yearbook here. It reveals that Charles Addams had a second published drawing just four pages after the first, an illustration for the Sports section dated 1926. As with the Latin cartoon, he's already signing his name Chas.

I confess I'm not entirely sold on this Addams kid yet. Let's come back in a few years and see what he comes up with.

Image added June 28, 2023

Note: Is the Latin drawing truly Charles Addams's first published cartoon? Very likely, unless he was previously published in some school or local newspaper. I'd like to hear from anyone who can confirm or refute this. Submissions of other Addams juvenilia, Latin or otherwise, would be welcome too.

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Saturday, November 19, 2016

Peter Arno: Once a Year~The Mid

The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,
And deep his midnight lair had made
In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade;
But, when the sun his beacon red
Had kindled on Benvoirlich’s head,
The deep-mouthed bloodhound’s heavy bay
Resounded up the rocky way,
And faint, from farther distance borne,
Were heard the clanging hoof and horn.

—Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake, Canto 1

These lines by Sir Walter Scott were at one time part and parcel of a good education. Peter Arno, back when he was still known as Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr., was familiar with them when he attended the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. At age 17 in 1921, he created a full page, six-panel illustration for a school publication, possibly The Mischianza, the school's yearbook. Entitled Once a Year~The Mid (short for the midterm dance), Arno shows off his budding command of illustration and his—shall we call it sophomoric?—sense of humor. Thus the panel titled "The stag at eve had drunk his fill, etc." is set at the punch bowl table. "The last belle for breakfast" is a verbal and visual pun on the school breakfast bell. "Divine Services," has the two sexes distractedly eying each other in chapel, a focus that would serve Arno well for his entire cartooning career.

It's a nice energetic piece reminiscent of the mainstream illustration of the time. It's still a work of juvenilia though and probably shouldn't be offered at a price commensurate with that of the artist's later classic New Yorker work.

Peter Arno, Once a Year~The Mid, 1921

AbeBooks Listing as of November 19, 2016

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=574388564&searchurl=bx%3Don%26tn%3D%2522original%2Bart%2522%2Bor%2B%2522original%2Bpainting%2522%2Bor%2B%2522original%2Bwatercolor%2522%2Bor%2B%2522original%2Bwatercolour%2522%2Bor%2B%2522original%2Bsketch%2522%26sortby%3D1%26n%3D201000221

Item Description

Peter Arno, Once a Year~The Mid, 1921

Note: This artwork is reproduced in Michael Maslin's biography Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker's Greatest Cartoonist, New York: Regan Arts, 2016, p. 13.

Speaking of Michael Maslin, he was kind enough to mention my post "Peter Arno: Wedding Belle" on the Ink Spill blog.

Attempted Bloggery's quick links:

Peter Arno

Yearbooks

A Drawing by the 10-Year-Old Charles Addams

Attempted Bloggery's Truly Sophomoric Index

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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Bob Staake's High School Yearbook

It is not unusual for the artwork of budding illustrators to appear in their high school yearbooks. Bob Staake, to give an example, illustrated the cover of his class yearbook. It is, on the other hand, probably very unusual to find an illustrator voted by his class most likely to succeed, as Mr. Staake was. That he was in the Cartoonists Club is not a surprise; that he was in the Apathy Club—well, that must have been a joke.

A copy of his high school yearbook has been listed on eBay for the past two years. The volume is marketed to take advantage of Mr. Staake's fame as a New Yorker cover illustrator. The title of the listing specifically mentions his "Obama cover." This was the cover published on November 17, 2008 when Barack Obama had won the Presidential election, making history as the first black man to be elected to America's highest office. Mr. Staake chose to illuminate the Lincoln Memorial and, significantly, the O from the magazine's logo.

Bob Staake, "Reflection"
The New Yorker, November 17, 2008

Most likely to succeed indeed! Here's the eBay listing:

EBay Listing ended June 26, 2013

EBay Item Description

[End of eBay Listing]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BOB-STAAKE-HIGH-SCHOOL-YEARBOOK-NEW-YORKER-MAGAZINE-OBAMA-COVER-ARTIST-AUTHOR-/400497963358?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d3f89f15e

A YouTube video demonstrates Bob Staake illustrating in PhotoShop:

Bob Staake Illustrates in PhotoShop

Note: You're in luck! This hard-to-find yearbook is still available on eBay.

I have more blog posts about Bob Staake here, and they are not so hard-to-find.

Paul Giambarba's blog has an excellent post about Bob Staake's New Yorker covers, among other things. Check it out.

Meanwhile Mike Lynch shows us Bob Staake's TV commercial for Intel.

Whatever else you need to know about Bob Staake should be available at bobstaake.com,

Cue up the Elgar, don your cap and gown, and check out my other yearbook posts.

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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Signed with a Drawing of Pogo by Walt Kelly

A prized copy of the first Pogo collection was signed and inscribed by Walt Kelly with an original drawing of Pogo Possum. The eBay seller is correct to point out that this is not a first edition, but it is a highly-collectable copy just the same.

Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1948

Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1948, inscribed "Best wishes / to Mrs. Kirk Hoerman / Walt Kelly / + / [drawing of Pogo]"
Note that in the book, Simon & Schuster's logo "The Sower" has been redrawn by Kelly in the character of Pogo.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Walt-Kelly-Cartoonist-Signed-Copy-of-His-First-Book-Pogo-Original-Sketch-/400349195910?pt=Art_Drawings&hash=item5d36abee86&nma=true&si=UB68sj2DvLx%252F9kdb54zXrlCgzYs%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

This printing of the book is dated 1951 and the recipient is a Mrs. Kirk Hoerman. From that, I pieced together some biographical information, mostly about her husband. One Kirk Hoerman is mentioned in the University of Missouri at Kansas City Kangaroo Yearbook for the Class of 1947. Acknowledgment is given on the School and Faculty page for the Bushwhacker section, the yearbook of the School of Dentistry, page 199, "to Kirk Hoerman for drawing the splendid cartoons...." In 1960, he coauthored a paper on nutrition in Ethiopia which indicated he was then a Commander in the Dental Corps of the U.S. Navy and the chief of the biochemistry laboratory of Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 in Cairo, Egypt. He would be about 88 today. A Kirk Conklin Hoerman was married to Donna Wilson, according to Ancestry.com, but the year isn't stated. Today he is retired in Arizona and I believe he remarried.

I'm going to speculate--it keeps me busy, after all--that in 1951 or perhaps later, Kirk Hoerman, a dentist with a talent for cartooning, must have admired Walt Kelly's Pogo, and may have obtained this book for his wife at a signing or by some other means. Of course, they could have gone together--there were, it seems, no children yet--or she could have obtained it herself, but I wanted to try to tie the story in with his cartooning. It seems to me that many amateur cartoonists, myself included, have a real appreciation for the works of the great cartoonists.