Finding Freddie Packard
The “spot” drawings you see above were drawn by Freddie Packard, who began working at The New Yorker in 1929 — he passed away in November of 1974, at age 71 (one of his “spot” drawings appeared in the issue of November 4, 1974).
The “spots” were just one of the feathers in Mr. Packard’s New Yorker cap. He also contributed fiction, and written pieces to The Talk Of The Town. For many of those years at the magazine he served as head of the fact-checking department. According to his obit in The New York Times (Nov. 13, 1974), “Under Mr. Packard’s over-all supervision, checking at The New Yorker by its special staff of seven has been developed into a fine art.”
The Spill recently acquired a collection of 23 of his drawings, half-a-dozen are shown at the top of this post. All of them arrived in a tattered New Yorker envelope.
One drawing — one of the larger ones, was on the back of New Yorker stationery (that’s what you see up above used as a backdrop for the small drawings).
Here’s the drawing on the other side of that New Yorker stationery:
My knowledge of New Yorker “spot” artists is almost nil. The ones I can name were also cartoonists for the magazine, moonlighting as “spot” artists (Henry Martin was, I believe, the most prolific moonlighter). Susanne Suba, is the exception: she was primarily a “spot” artist, with one cartoon published, and five covers. And there’s a book, published in 1944 by E.P. Dutton: Spots By Suba: From The New Yorker.
But back to Freddie Packard…
— From Thomas Vinciguerra’s Cast Of Characters, this photo of Freddie Packard
While my knowledge of “spot” artists is narrow, my knowledge of Freddie Packard, until finding this envelope full of art, was, I’m sorry to say, nil. I must have run into his name while reading various New Yorker-centric books. He’s mentioned in, among others, Brendan Gill’s Here At The New Yorker, Thomas Kunkel’s bio of Harold Ross, Genius In Disguise, and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life And Times. For whatever reason — possibly because of his non-cartoonist status — I never registered his name.
Something to know about Freddie Packard: he was the husband of The New Yorker‘s legendary editor, Eleanor Gould Packard. The couple’s combined years at the magazine: 99.
Here are a few passages from Brendan Gill’s New Yorker obit for Mr. Packard (in the issue of November 25, 1974):
…”He was a stocky man, with straight, dark hair and a close-cropped mustache, and nobody called him anything but Freddie. He began writing for us in 1929, having just been hired as a “checker.” He wrote funny, cranky pieces that befell him as he trudged about the city, or that, more likely, befell him in his imagination.” …
…”He was a gentleman-scholar who, instead of of poring at leisure over folios in some dim, ancient library, worked hard in an ordinary office building in midtown Manhattan, under the pressure of constant deadlines. …
…”He had a gift for making small sketches in pen-and-ink and in watercolor, and dozens of these sketches were published as “spots” in this magazine…”
Finally, from Gill’s Here At The New Yorker, this small glimpse of life outside The New Yorker‘s offices, involving The New Yorker‘s then Art Editor, James Geraghty, and a mention of John McCarten, whose name (crossed-out) is on the New Yorker envelope shown above, just below Freddie Packard’s name.
“In the late afternoons, Geraghty could be found at the Cortile [a restaurant close-by the New Yorker’s 25 West 43rd Street address] entertaining a cluster of artists. Among other regulars were John McCarten, for a time our movie critic and then for a time our Broadway theatre critic; Freddie Packard, head of the checking department...”