Last week I showed three James Thurber spot drawings that appeared in several early 1950s New Yorkers I came across in bound volumes. You might wonder why I’m talking about Thurber spot drawings when his spots appeared many many times in previous decades. The reason is that by the 1950s Thurber was no longer drawing work for publication.
His TIME magazine cover of July 9, 1951 (left) has long been considered his last published drawing. The spot drawings shown last week, and now today are obviously from an earlier time, pre- 1951. It was a real joy running into them when I least expected it.
The New Yorker has a history of re-using spot drawings. My guess is that these spots have appeared before. The first one shown — the harpist — was lifted out of a Thurber cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker, April 4, 1936, captioned, “Come on, get hot!” *
The first appears in the issue of August 7, 1954, page 18.
The below is in the October 2, 1954 New Yorker, page. 31 [update: this Spot apparently originally appeared in The New Yorker issue of July 15, 1939. I found the pub date in the 1994 collection (edited by Michael Rosen) People Have More Fun Than Anybody:
*Here’s what the harpist looks like in the original drawing. Note two changes from cartoon to spot: the small winged person was removed as well as Thurber’s signature below the chair.
