90 Years Ago This Week In The New Yorker
Every so often I like to check in with The New Yorker‘s past (for those who want to make it a regular thing, I highly suggest the terrif website, A New Yorker State of Mind). I rolled the dice today and thought: “Hmmm, 90 years ago is probably interesting.” So back I went — no joke –to the April 1st, 1933 issue. Paging through I found that the issue — as most were in that time period — chock full of great art and artists. A for instance: the cover artist, Julian de Miskey [Born 1898, died 1976. New Yorker work: 1925 – 1962. The New Yorker’s database indicates he contributed 82 cartoons and 62 covers]. By the way, you can own this original April 1, 1933 cover for a lot of pretty pennies.
photo of Mr. de Miskey, below right, by the great photographer, Andre Kertesz.
Most of the cartoonists in the issue were part of that era’s vast cream of the crop: William Steig, James Thurber (twice), Mary Petty, Peter Arno (full page), Helen Hokinson, Gilbert Bundy, Alan Dunn (twice), Otto Soglow (full page), Richard Decker, Perry Barlow, Douglas Ryan, Robert Day (twice).
The one name I had to reacquaint myself with was Douglas Ryan. This was his third and last drawing to appear in the magazine [the previous two: June 25, 1932 and January 14, 1933]:
The first Thurber drawing in the magazine is especially interesting (you can see it here).
This Perry Barlow two-pager is unusual in the way it was drawn (the split-in-half oblong), as well as its placement across the magazine’s gutter…
The magazine is only 56 pages, yet the readers are given two full page cartoons, a half page Steig, the above two-parter from Mr. Barlow, the two Thurbers and two Dunns, as well as work by the other artists mentioned. Truly a show of comic force. It’s a wonderful thing to see the magazine’s text seem to accommodate the art (you see that clearly in the second Thurber of the issue, shown below). But that was then.
The Thurber is timely today.