Up until the 1960s men were men, women were women and children’s books steadfastly reinforced that boys are boys, and girls are girls. Not just anatomically, but in professions, expectations and capabilities.
“Because he was naughty, dear.”
Whitney Darrow Jr. (August 22, 1909 – August 10, 1999) was Continue reading
Ralph Barton & his 4th wife Germaine Talleferre photo: Daily News
“New York has ceased to be a city in which people live. It is necessary if one has to have quiet and peace to work to live in the suburbs. Steamships have made Europe a suburb of New York. I like to eat well, drink well and read grown up books, and these are not to be had in America.”
“New York is a crazy city and America is a madhouse. That is why I came back. I feel I belong here. Americans are crazy and I find I am crazy too. Americans are too rich. We have too much money. I have too much money. That is why I’m crazy. An artist ought to be prohibited from earning as much money as I do. Yet if someone suggested cutting my earnings, I’d scream so that you could hear me for three blocks.” – Ralph Barton upon returning to New York in 1929 after being in Paris for two years.
Barton committed suicide, Continue reading
Days after Peter Arno’s death on February 22, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson wrote to The New Yorker editor William Shawn about Arno:
We all have our favorite memories of his comic genius. They seem so fresh in mind and heart that I believe he has a firm hold on posterity.
The nation can be glad of that, and grateful to The New Yorker for serving as Mr. Arno’s stage for so many happy years.
A private life is the most difficult to capture in a biography. For someone so famous during his heyday of fame, Peter Arno led a very private life. In his public life Arno hobnobbed with the famous, was once named the best dressed man in America and was the very definition of man about town. Yet Peter Arno never divulged his inner-self and is somewhat forgotten today.
Michael Maslin’s Peter Arno The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker’s Greatest Cartoonist (Regan Arts) April 2016, takes up the challenge of unveiling Peter Arno’s life . Continue reading
The more things change the more they remain the same.
This great political cartoon ran in 1905 on the cover of the satirical Puck Magazine. The cartoon showing The National Bird of Prey “Corporate Vulture” feeding her young “dough” is as appropriate in 2016 as it was in 1905 . The hatchlings being fed in a nest lined with money are labeled “Our” Senators; “Our” Legislatures and “Our” Judges. Is the “Our” in quotes referring to the citizens who have been robbed of representative power or a sarcastic wink to the fact that “Our” government belongs to the corporations? With either interpretation it is a potent statement that still rings true today.
The only thing missing is Continue reading
My Dear, You Smell of B.O.
Lifebuoy Soap Ad – Schenectady Gazette March 13, 1933 (click to enlarge)
“What a kill-joy B.O. is!” says this 1933 Lifebuoy comic strip ad.
“Perhaps its your fault,” says Auntie to Mrs. B.O.
Nothing like being direct.
The Lifebuoy ad warns that B.O. make life miserable for its victims. I like that it is whispered in parenthesis in case you don’t know that B.O. stands for body odor.
And to add a dramatic flair, B.O. “threatens their jobs, social positions – even their homes!”
Fortunately of course there is a Continue reading
On May Day (also called International Workers’ Day) which is now morphing into a day of general protest, not just workers rights, I found this nugget of wisdom from an 1864 magazine article. It makes you realize how far we have gone off track as a country when it comes to partisan politics and what is best for the country.
“Patriotism means love of the institutions and customs and peoples of one’s country in general. Loyalty is allegiance, not, as elsewhere or in former times, to kings and nobles, but to the Constitution and laws of our country in both its State and Federal forms. Loyalty to an administration or party may be disloyalty in the true sense of the word, and must be so, if the administration or party be itself unfaithful to the Constitution and laws. Our oath and duty of allegiance are to the Constitution, and not to any administration. The President is not the government, but an administrator of it, according to the laws of the Constitution, and he, as every other officer is sworn to administer it according to that standard and in allegiance to it. They owe the same allegiance we do.”
You’ll Never See This Cartoon On Saturday Morning
Decades before South Park, Warner Bros. put this cartoon out in theaters. Bosko’s Picture Show, from 1933 features this incredible scene.
Language warning here – play in front of children at your discretion:
How this cartoon was ever shown is inexplicable, unless I misheard what is being said.
This was the last Bosko cartoon that Warner Bros. / Looney Tunes ever did. Produced by the same man who would put out some of the great Warner Bros. cartoons, Leon Schlesinger and drawn by legendary animator Friz Freleng, this is a far cry from Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig. Here is the full cartoon for your viewing pleasure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXGI0XLUdqs
UPDATE 2014: Warner Bros. which still owns the copyright has pulled the full cartoon from youtube.