Partying 95 Years Ago
As much as I look forward this time of year, I also look back, most especially when talking about The New Yorker. With a very big anniversary now just half a dozen issues away, my inclination is to think even more about the magazine in its earliest years. Sometimes, all I’ll need to do is see a cover to start my day.
One example: the cover of the issue of December 28, 1929, published in the magazine’s fourth year. Peter Arno, The New Yorker‘s master of design and insightful delight, captures a moment of hilarity: a deadpan couple who, because of too much drink (their “x” eyes are the giveaway) are not into gaiety, surrounded by party-goers having-the-time-of-their-lives. The idea would work today, with just a few changes allowing for the passage of time; people still party in their own way. The New Yorker thought so highly of this cover it was used as the cover for their third Album of drawings.
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Peter Arno Born Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr., January 8, 1904, New York City. Died February 22, 1968, Port Chester, NY. New Yorker work: 1925 -1968. Key collection: Ladies & Gentlemen (Simon & Schuster, 1951) The Foreword is by Arno. For far more on Arno please check out my biography of him, Peter Arno: The Mad Mad World of The New Yorker’s Greatest Cartoonist (Regan Arts, 2016).