Jason Chatfield’s Substack
Jason Chatfield (the Spill‘s Sports correspondent) has a new Substack, “New York Cartoons.”
It leads off with “Coming To America” — fun (free!) interesting writing (and more) from Mr. Chatfield who began contributing to The New Yorker in 2017.
___________________________________________________________________
68 Years Ago In The New Yorker
I keep a list of all the bound and single copy issues of The New Yorker in the Spill library. This morning, while looking over the list, I noticed that of all the more “recent” years, 1954 is one of the leanest: just a dozen issues on hand (the Spill library is missing most of the magazine’s first decade). While I’ve looked through all the issues from ’54 using the discs available with The Complete New Yorker, I’m always up for a refresher course. And so I took a look at the issue from ’54 dated closest to the issue on the newsstands this week in 2022. The charming cover is by one of the magazine’s Cartoon Gods, the great Mary Petty.
Here’s her Spill A-Z entry:
Mary Petty Born, Hampton, New Jersey, April 29, 1899. Died, Paramus, New Jersey, March, 1976. New Yorker work: October 22,1927 – March 19,1966. Collection: This Petty Place ( Knopf, 1945) with a Preface by James Thurber.
You never know what you’ll find breezing through back issues of the magazine. This particular issue contained many surprises. You’ll see I’m using the word “classic” here a good bit — hey, if the adjective fits! For instance, a Charles Addams classic appears in this issue — Addams must’ve thought highly of it — it was included in a number of his anthologies (someone please correct me if i’m wrong on that!). There’s also a classic Steinberg drawing that at first glance seemed to be a “Spot” drawing (because it was printed smallish on the page), but upon checking The New Yorker database I found it was identified as a cartoon.
The drawing was/is spectacular enough to have caught the eye of someone at the publisher, Harry Abrams back in 2005, when Joel Smith’s wonderful Steinberg At The New Yorker was put together. It appears on the cover.
A nice surprise: this unsigned Thurber dog used as a “Spot” drawing. This appeared during the time The New Yorker was engaged in publishing composites of his work, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this terrif dog was lifted out of an older Thurber drawing.
Here’s a drawing I don’t remember ever seeing before (or at least, never pausing to consider before). It’s by Robert Day (who signed his work “Robt Day”). I had to zoom in on this one to understand what was flying out of the television set. Television tubes!
And here’s a wonderful drawing by a Spill favorite artist, Anatol Kovarsky, playing with one of his favorite themes.
Other cartoonists in the issue: George Price with a great New York City subway drawing of a fellow waiting for a train. The man has has removed his pants because it’s so blazing hot down in the station; a really nice Syd Hoff beach drawing, and, finally, this Whitney Darrow, Jr. full page. I think of this as a time capsule drawing — an excellent example of what we might think of as one of the common cartoon themes from the 1950s: the secretary dealing with the lecherous boss.
_______________________________________________________________