A Miscellany
Looking over items on my desktop this morning (not my “real” desktop — the one on my computer) I came across various items I’ve been saving for future Spill posts. I thought, hey wait a sec! Posting these as group is a Spill post. So here, in no particular order, and with little to connect them other than they’re all New Yorker cartoon/cartoonist related are the odds & ends.
First up: The New Yorker‘s obit for Ralph Barton: I came across it while looking through the issue of May 30, 1931. It surprised me that the obit was so small.
The New York Times Barton obit headline:
And here’s a trio of 1940s Helen Hokinson ads for various products (all of these are/were on Ebay):
Saved this fabulous Barbara Shermund drawing in the June 20, 1931 New Yorker. “Oh yes, we’re all a little bit insane.”
And from the same issue as Ms. Shermund’s drawing, this terrif Garrett Price drawing I thought about using to illustrate the way cartoons once played on the pages of The New Yorker.
This screen shot of Musical Cartoon Album, published in 1962, has been on my desktop for quite a long time. Have never seen the real thing. The cover drawing is by the late great Anatol Kovarsky. Anyone have a copy?
A-Zs for the above mentioned cartoonists:
Ralph Barton Born August 14, 1891, Kansas City, Mo. Committed suicide on May 2oth, 1931 in NYC. New Yorker work: 3rd issue of The New Yorker, March 7th 1925 — May 23, 1931. Key book: Ralph Barton: The Last Dandy (University of Missouri Press, 1991) by
Bruce Kellner.
Helen Hokinson Born, Illinois,1893; died, Washington, D.C., 1949. New Yorker work: 1925 -1949, with some work published posthumously. All of Hokinson’s collections are wonderful, but here are two favorites. Her first collection: So You’re Going To Buy A Book! (Minton, Balch & Co, 1931) and what was billed as “the final Hokinson collection”: The Hokinson Festival (Dutton & Co., 1956). According to a New Yorker document produced during Harold Ross’s editorship (1925-1951) rating their artists, Ms. Hokinson and Peter Arno occupied a special category unto themselves above all others.
Barbara Shermund (self portrait shown) Born, San Francisco. 1899. Studied at The California School of Fine Arts. Died, 1978, New Jersey. New Yorker work: June 13, 1925 thru September 16, 1944. 8 covers and 599 cartoons. Shermund’s post-New Yorker work was featured in Esquire. (See Liza Donnelly’s book, Funny Ladies — a history of The New Yorker’s women cartoonists — for more on Shermund’s life and work)
Garrett Price ( Photo source: Esquire Cartoon Album, 1957) Born, 1897, Bucyrus, Kansas. Died, April, 1979, Norwalk, Conn. Collection: Drawing Room Only / A Book of Cartoons (Coward -McCann, 1946). New Yorker work: 1925 -1974.
Anatol Kovarsky (photo above, NYC, 2013. By Liza Donnelly) Born, Moscow. Died, June 1, 2016, NYC. Collection: Kovarsky’s World (Knopf, 1956) NYer work: 1947 -1969. Link to Ink Spill’s 2013 piece, “Anatol Kovarsky at 94: Still Drawing After All These Years”