W. Bradley, Published in The New Yorker, 1933, Added To The A-Z
The other evening, while revisiting New Yorker issues from the early 1930s, I opened the September 16, 1933 issue and began looking through page-by-page (it’s not just the cartoons that interest me in the magazine– I like examining the whole enchilada). On the bottom of page thirty-six I saw the above drawing and immediately recognized that I did not know the signature, “WBradley.” I checked my memory by going to the Spill‘s A-Z listing of all known New Yorker cartoonists: no W. Bradley there. The next step was the Complete New Yorker database, searching first for the name. No dice. No W. Bradley. I looked up the September 16th issue’s contents on that same database and found that there was no cartoon listed for page thirty-six.
And now, things get really confusing: that same database does list W. Bradley’s drawing, but lists it as appearing on page fifty-four, and credits it to the cartoonist, Stephen Ronay.
Back when I first assembled the A-Z, relying heavily on the database, I assigned Mr. Ronay this turtle drawing belonging to W. Bradley (I did not look up every single drawing by every single contributor while assembling the A-Z, but instead relied on the database). That’s been corrected.
Mr. Ronay, who had been credited with two New Yorker drawings, now has one less to his name, meaning he becomes the latest member of the Spill‘s “One Club” (One Club members are contributors who were published just once in The New Yorker. There are approximately eighty of them in the magazine’s history). ps: I checked Mr. Ronay’s remaining drawing, in the April 8, 1939 issue, to make sure it was by him. It was.
Left: Stephen Ronay’s one and only New Yorker drawing.
W. Bradley has now been added to the A-Z, but without any information other than this one appearance in The New Yorker (anyone with information, please let me know). I found an illustrator, William Henry Bradley, from the time period, but the style (and signature) don’t jell.