A favorite pastime here at the Spill is looking up classic New Yorker drawings (cartoons) to see them as they originally appeared in magazine. This being Thurber Thursday (and even if it wasn’t) I had a hankerin’ to see one of my favorite Thurber drawings in its natural habitat. My first stop was Bowden’s JamesThurber: A Bibliography to find the drawing’s New Yorker debut. Luckily I have the issue of May 6, 1933 in a bound volume (if i didn’t there’s always the online archive available to subscribers).
A gloomy rainy golf course cover by Richard Decker, and after a ton of great ads, this surprise: a full page ad opposite the Talk Of The Town for French Line — it’s beautifully illustrated by Thurber.
After a lead-off drawing by Mr. Decker (wow: a cover and the first drawing), and opposite it a drawing by Robert Day, we turn the page to find the Thurber:
I’ve written about my favorite Thurber drawing a number of times, but past that one particular drawing there is no further order — no list — of personal favorites. It would be pointless placing one great drawing ahead of, or behind another. But if forced to list a Thurber’s Greatest Hits, his “Well, it makes a difference to me!” would definitely be among them. It has everything going for it; there’s even a Thurber dog in the little framed piece on the left (and, in the other framed piece there’s the sailboat that shows up so often in Thurber wall hangings). Besides the perfectly coupled caption and drawing (and honestly, what more can one ask for in a cartoon), there’s the style itself: the impressive perspective (the bed is perfect); the body language of the couple. The drawing itself contains no more detail than it needs, and no less. I shouldn’t have to (but I will) bother mentioning that the drawing is — to me, and for me — hilarious.
Placement on the page-wise, I believe the drawing was run as it should’ve been run. It occupies enough space for us to enjoy it without squinting. Had it been larger, I’m not sure we could’ve enjoyed it quite the same. The lay-out person knew what the heck they were doing.
I first saw the “…makes a difference…” drawing in The Thurber Carnival the very same day, and likely just minutes after I saw my first Thurber drawing (the aforementioned favorite Thurber) — “What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?”
A footnote, sort of…
As with all of these early issues of the magazine, graphic wonders never cease. Just two pages after the Thurber is the above spectacular full page Reginald Marsh drawing (I’m sorry I didn’t capture the caption. It reads: “Let’s give Jimmie Adams a ring. Maybe he can think of something to do.” ).
Opposite it is a spot drawing by another New Yorker giant, George Price. I don’t recall seeing that many spots by him.
Just to give credit where it’s due, here are the other artists in the issue (including some spot artists: Gardner Rea, Kemp Starrett, Gluyas Williams (with one of those oddly placed full page drawings on the vertical — you need to rotate the magazine counter-clockwise to appreciate it), Garrett Price, a Profiles illustration by the great Abe Birnbaum, Al Frueh (a four parter), Alan Dunn, Helen Hokinson, Howard Baer, Al Frueh again (with one of his Theatre caricatures), an ad for The Stage magazine by, I think, Ms. Hokinson), Izzy Klein, another Gardner Rea, a shoe ad illustrated by Otto Soglow, and finally a spot by Barbara Shermund (as with George Price, another major contributor who, I believe, rarely did spot drawings).
— To find out a little more by any of the artists mentioned above please take a look through the Spill’s New Yorker Cartoonists A-Z.