The After-Shave Club
Who knew! Once upon a time, long ago, there was an after-shave club (at least in the minds of ad folks). Here’s an ad showing a drawing by New Yorker artist and club member, Alajalov. As you see in the copy, James Thurber lent his name to Aqua Velva’s campaign. One didn’t need to do anything but buy a bottle of Aqua Velva to be in the club.
Curiously, I could only find one specifically-related after-shave cartoon in The New Yorker‘s database (shown below). Another included after-shave as one element in a full page drawing . The magazine has published plenty of shaving-related cartoons (just under a hundred), especially cartoons about electric shavers (in the era when such things were new), and young men learning to shave.
Here’s Sam Cobean’s two-part after-shave drawing from the November 18, 1950 New Yorker:
and Frank Modell’s full page, published in The New Yorker, July 5, 1982:
Update: It’s come to my attention that Attempted Bloggery covered the Aqua Velva campaign nearly a decade ago: “Constantin Alajalov For Aqua Velva”… Read it here
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Constantin Alajalov Born Constantin Aladjalov, 1900, Rostov-on-the-Don, Russia. Died Oct., 1987, Amenia, New York. New Yorker work: !926 -1960. Perhaps best known for his New Yorker covers ( he also supplied cover art to other publications). Key collection: Conversation Pieces (The Studio Publications Inc., 1942) w/ commentary by Janet Flanner. More reading here on The Saturday Evening Post website.
Sam Cobean (pictured above. Source: Sam Cobean’s World). Born, December 28, 1913, Gettysburgh, Penn. Died, July 2, 1951, Watkins Glen, New York. NYer work: 1944 -1951. Collections: Cobean’s Naked Eye (Harper Bros.,1950), the Cartoons of Cobean (Harper & Bros.,1952).
Frank Modell (photograph taken early 1990s) Born, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 6, 1917. Died, May 27, 2016, Guilford, Connecticut. NYer work: 1946 – 1997. Mr. Modell began his New Yorker career as assistant to the Art Editor, James Geraghty. He soon began contributing his cartoons (and cartoon ideas for others), with his first drawing appearing July 20, 1946. Besides his work for The New Yorker, he was a children’s book author and an actor (he appeared, most notably, in Woody Allen’s 1980 film, Stardust Memories). Key collection: Stop Trying To Cheer Me Up! (Dodd, Mead, 1978).
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website