A Mid-1940s New Yorker Clipped Cartoons & Covers Collection
A relative in England recently brought over a package of New Yorker cartoons clipped by their father in the mid 1940s. The Spill has a few other New Yorker cartoon collections in its archives (one is in a scrapbook, another contains just New Yorker covers held in a 3 ring binder, and another, similar to this latest addition, is a pile of favorites. I like to think of these collections as diaries; we’re seeing one person’s particular tastes in humor.
I sat down today with this wartime collection, easing it out of its envelope and onto a table top. It didn’t take long to discover that the collection, subject-wise, is themeless. There is no one cartoonist collected more than others, no run of cartoons about soldiers, or desert islands. It was not lost on me, as I looked through, that a fellow living through wartime (and post-war) England, found these cartoons appealing and meaningful enough to cut out and save.
Within the envelope I found two complete issues of The New Yorker, dated December 30, 1944 and August 31, 1946. The earlier issue was likely saved because of the H.L. Mencken piece inside (“Stare Decisis”). How could I possibly know? Because “H.L.Mencken” is written in pen on the subway car window on the cover of the magazine. The later issue is one of the most famous New Yorker issues of all-time. It contains John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.” It was a keeper then, it remains a keeper now.
The clipped Mary Petty cover you see in the collection, (shown again below) I believe to be the best cover she ever did, and one of the best New Yorker covers of all-time; a perfect example of a fleeting moment that stays with the reader.
When I was writing Peter Arno’s biography I went through every issue of The New Yorker, from its debut all the way through to the issue containing Arno’s obit (March 9, 1968). Although I looked at every cartoon in every issue, I confess not every single cartoon remained stored in my brain. Going through the stack of clipped cartoons today, a number were new to me. “New” even though I’d seen them before. There are some wartime cartoons in the collection, but just a few. Work by many of the magazine’s “stars” are represented: Thurber, Hokinson, Steinberg, Charles Addams, Otto Soglow, the aforementioned Arno. A few “spot” drawings are included, as is an Al Frueh theater caricature. There’s also one of Frueh’s cartoons (shown below) — it appeared in the issue of June 29, 1946. The drawing, and especially the little dog, carefully scissored out of an issue now seventy-six years old, made me laugh out loud.
— A very special thanks to Barbara Crowther for so generously giving her father’s New Yorker clippings collection to our archive.