We’re in an anniversary week. The very first issue of The New Yorker, with its now iconic cover by Rea Irvin, was dated February 21, 1925. Some years back (2008 to be precise) I took the Spill’s anniversary cover issue collection, and put it on the floor, fan-like. Then I stood on a chair and took the above photo with my trusty Canon “Cyber-shot” — I think it turned out all right. The photo accompanied a piece I wrote for newyorker.com, “Tilley Over Time” ; I ended the piece with this:
“One thing about Tilley: when he leaves, he never goes far, and he always comes back.”
I do hope he returns sooner than later. The last time we saw the classic cover was a decade ago, for the anniversary issue of February 14 & 21, 2011, shown left.
The off-shoots we’ve seen for some time now are sometimes amusing, but like Ashford & Simpson put it so well: Ain’t nothing like the real thing.
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As it’s the second half of a double issue week, The Monday Tilley Watch, normally seen at this time, will return next Monday.
A New (Old) Addition To The Spill’s A-Z
Yesterday, while having a blast looking through ancient issues of The New Yorker to talk about today, I ran across a rarity: a cartoonist I didn’t recall. Most times, when this happens, I go to the A-Z and find that I did, in fact, already include the artist some time back, but had forgotten. Yesterday, it was a different story. I found no Alan Foster on the A-Z list. Going to The New Yorker‘s database next, I found 14 Alan Foster cartoons. Fourteen! No One Clubber,* this Foster! His first drawing appeared March 1, 1930, his last February 27, 1932. Here’s the first Foster cartoon I came across while browsing, from the issue of December 20, 1930. It’s captioned, “This isn’t as bad as at Macy’s, is it, Mama?”
I stopped to look at it because it’s such an interesting drawing. Squint your eyes and it almost looks like an abstract painting.
Not recognizing the signature, I began my search. In most cases a cartoonist who slipped between the cracks during my full speed ahead research days a decade ago, slipped because they were published just once or twice. Usually, once I eventually did find them, I found nothing about them, other than that they had a drawing or two published in The New Yorker a long long time ago. The A-Z is littered with such sad findings. Alan Foster is not one of those cartoonists. As I said earlier, he’d been published 14 times. A Google search immediately turned up this bio from The Saturday Evening Post:
Luckily, The New York Times published an obit for Foster, July 27, 1969.
The obit gives us just a little more about Foster’s “brief acting career” mentioned in The Saturday Evening Post write-up, informing us that Foster “acted for two years with the ‘Better Way’ company of Klaw & Erlanger.” There’s a slight discrepancy between the number of Saturday Evening Post covers the SEP says Foster did (30) and the number The New York Times reported (40).
The Times obit also included this:
A lot to chew on there. Although his developing “a caricature technique in clay” seems appealing for further looking into, I went with his series for Collier’s both The Times and The SEP mentioned: “Mr. Fala Of The White House”…here are some examples (more can be found through the FDR Library site here:
And now, to close on Mr. Foster (until I find a photograph and more about his acting career) here are a couple more examples of his New Yorker work:
His last New Yorker appearance, February 27, 1932:
and this beauty from the December 13, 1930 issue:
And so there we have it: a previously un-Spilled New Yorker artist now Spilled. I’m heading over right now to put Mr. Foster on the A-Z. Sorry it took so long, Foster!
*The One Club is a Spill concoction indicating an artist who contributed just one cartoon to The New Yorker during their lifetime (or New Yorker career). One Clubber’s are given the below icon next to their entry on the A-Z:
