Reading the Holly Golightly piece (“Forever a Gamine at Tiffany’s”) in today’s New York Times revived a thought I had lodged in my mental “to do” file a few weeks ago when I had the pleasure of meeting Thurber biographer, Burton Bernstein. Listening to Mr. Bernstein expanding upon a passage from his biography concerning (the nearly blind) Thurber
Read moreTag: Rea Irvin
Happy Birthday, Eustace!
In honor of the very first issue of The New Yorker, dated February 21, 1925, I’m re-posting a photo I took for “Tilley Over Time“ a piece I contributed to newyorker.com back in February 21, 2008. The cartoonists appearing in that first issue were Alfred Frueh, Gardner Rea, Oscar Howard, Wallace Morgan, Ethel Plummer and, on page 14, an
Read moreIn Good Company: a look at the cartoons in Al Ross’s New Yorker debut issue
The news that Al Ross passed away last week got me to thinking about his start at The New Yorker, way way back in the issue of November 27, 1937, when he was twenty-five years old. This morning I went to our cabinet full of bound New Yorkers, brought out the volume from late 1937 and began paging through
Read moreTilley loading
Above: a glimpse of the first New Yorker cover. Ever since Tina Brown broke the sixty-nine year string of unbroken appearances by Rea Irvin’s Eustace Tilley on the anniversary issue in 1994 by running R. Crumb’s Eustace Elvis, there’s always been, for me, some nail biting in early February about whether the real Eustace will show up on
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