Steve Stoliar, author of Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House has brought to the Spill‘s attention an article illustrated by James Thurber* way way back in March of 1937 for Stage magazine. I will let Mr. Stoliar do the talking from this point on :
They [Thurber’s Marx Brothers drawings] were done to illustrate an article by Teet Carle about when the Marx Brothers were trying out scenes on the road in advance of filming them for “A Day at the Races.”
Groucho had the original drawings framed in green wood on his hallway wall. The pink highlights in Stage were done by the magazine; the originals were black ink. The horse was drawn (horse-drawn?) on the back of the sheet of paper with Groucho’s picture and Groucho framed it with the horse-side showing and only faint bleeding thru of his own caricature on the verso.
Richard Anobile, in his controversial Marx Brothers Scrapbook showed the drawing of the horse and said that Groucho had “tried to erase” the drawing of him because it was on a horse’s ass, but that was entirely incorrect. The bleed-thru was inadvertent; not Groucho trying to eradicate a Thurber caricature of himself! (I included a closeup up the horse’s rump from Groucho’s wall to show you how the original looked. Stage reversed the horse.)
Below: Groucho’s framed horse, courtesy of Mr. Stoliar
When I first got The Marx Brothers Scrapbook, I couldn’t believe that Groucho would’ve tried to erase a Thurber drawing of himself because it was on a horse’s ass – but there was the photo in the Scrapbook, so I figured Anobile must be correct with his information. Then, when I got the job and spent every day inside Groucho’s house, I was able to closely examine the drawing (still in the frame, of course) and realized there was a drawing of Groucho’s head on the reverse of the paper – in India ink. There ain’t no erasing that. So instead of it being Groucho’s ego that motivated him to try to remove his face from a horse’s ass, it was Groucho’s preference to look at Thurber’s wonderful horse, rather than his own image, that led him to frame it with the horse showing.
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The Spill thanks Mr. Stoliar for all the above!
Below is the cover of that issue of Stage. The cover artist is William Henry Cotton, someone whose beautiful work appeared on the cover of The New Yorker 56 times. His first cover appeared on the issue of November 5, 1932; his last, on the issue of December 22, 1951.
*James Thurber’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. A short bio appears on the Thurber House website.
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Today’s Daily Cartoonist & Cartoon
Liza Donnelly (with Carl Kissin) on a very snowy day.
Ms. Donnelly’s first New Yorker cartoon appeared in 1982. Visit her website here.
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Yesterday’s Daily Shouts Cartoonist
“Some 2020 ‘Feel Good’ Movies” from Zoe Si, who began contributing to The New Yorker in February of this year. Visit her website here.