PRESIDENTS vs POLITICAL CARTOONISTS

 

I:Political Cartoonists Have Reflected (and Moved) Events, Decisions, and... History

by Rick Marschall

Politics and cartoons have not always been ingredients in an adversarial recipe. This drawing from PUCK is about a politician (publisher William Randolph Hearst) and his own cartoon characters, stars in his chain of newspapers. In 1904 he sought the Democrat Party nomination for President; he would have run against the incumbent Theodore Roosevelt. Around him are the creations of F Opper, Rudolph Dirks, James Swinnerton, and Carl Schultze.  

I recently returned from Washington DC, the Inauguration and related events, and while this will be old news to any who read this after it is archived, it will not be a news report. I was inspired, if that is the right word, to share a little history of presidents and cartoons. Campaigns and commentary by comic artists. It will run over several postings.  

Editorial cartooning, specifically politically cartooning, thrives at times of urgent public debates and vivid personalities.

This statement sounds trite or self-evident, barely a thesis except that – in a corollary of the “Great Man” theory of studying history – urgent public debates and vivid personalities sometimes are shaped and propelled by speeches, tracts… and cartoons.

The timing and the passions of the Revolutionary War, the French Revolution, the Spanish-American War, the New Deal, and various anti-war movements all mightily were influenced by cartoons and cartoonists.

Cartoons not only reflected events but have influenced history. Napoleon said that history was written by the victors – and it is just as true that our views of history often have been shaped by artists, including cartoonists.

                 

The legendary Thomas Nast, a self-caricature, sharpening his most lethal weapon, a pencil. His support of the North in the Civil War, and of President Abraham Lincoln, earned the latter's honorific, "The North's Greatest Recruiting Sergeant." On the other hand, his vicious cartoons against Democrat presidential candidate Horace Greeley helped defeat U S Grant's opponent in 1872. Greeley died only days after the election.

Much of what we think – and know; or think we know – of kings, presidents, generals, candidates, and leaders of movements, has been codified by cartoonists. Oftentimes, major figures in history have been portrayed to their detriment. Sometimes unfairly, sometimes falsely, often spot-on. No matter: our general opinions of: say, Andrew Jackson or Williams Jennings Bryan frequently are what the cartoonists said through their art.

Consider Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. Do we “know” them through their portraits? Speeches? Caricatures? Truth? Generalizations? Slander? Gossip? Facts? Cartoonists work on the blank slates of daily journalism in ink, but might as well carve in stone.

King Tut: What do we know of how he lived and loved? But his image endures. We have thousands of hours of Nixon on film, yet we remember him mostly through the cartoons of Herblock.

… Anyway, it was once so. Henry Major, a caricaturist of an earlier generation, noted that cartoonists more than occasionally were thrown in jail for what they drew. He said that later cartoonists should be arrested for what they don’t draw. If we return to our thesis – that political cartooning thrives during times of urgent debates and vivid personalities, and vice-versa – then we might well be entering a new Golden Age of political cartooning.

Time will tell, but signs are at hand. The Trump presidency, indeed the Trump phenomenon, provides an unprecedented opportunity for political cartoonists to spread their ink-stained wings as seldom before. Stand-up comedians and cable-news wiseguys have stolen a lot of cartoonists' thunder... but, really, only to the extent that artists and newspapers have weakened their platforms and surrendered their turf.

To appreciate the art form of the political cartoon, as much as to contextualize the opportunity presented by Trump, it is instructive to survey the history of political cartooning in America. We will see that the most powerful and memorable – and prescient – work has been at times when vivid personalities have predominated. Whether cartoonists have accurately or satirically recorded, or helped create, their victims, is an open question. That questions is as intractable as the chicken-or-egg conundrum.

Our job – as citizens, commentators, voters – is to appreciate and learn from this amazing art form of graphic humor, variously called “Wordless Journalism,” the “Ungentlemanly Art”: the political cartoon.

At a conference held by the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists in the mid-1970s, Meg Greenfield of the Washington Post addressed the assembled cartoonists and thanked them for providing “laughs” and “morning chuckles.” The assembled cartoonists mostly were outraged. After investing in careers as pictorial commentators they were being dismissed as court jesters. False News. By the Washington Post of all institutions (surprise, surprise in view of recent events? See the recent travails of cartoonist Ann Telnaes, chronicled in these columns) .

             

Several times in American history, there were calls to restrict and even censor, political cartoons. Sometimes these calls, by politicians of course, became legislative proposals. These bills never became laws. Spangler, Montgomery Advertiser, in the 1910s. The most serious of these efforts occured in Pennsylvania about the same time, by an aggrieved Senator Pennypacker.

It was outrageous that someone from the staff of the newspaper home of Herblock could so totally misunderstand the unique gift – yes, art form – of the political cartoon. Maybe cartoonists make their points through laughs. But that one creative tool among many others, is not the only special attribute of cartoons – there is the ideal of truth itself.

Next: The birth of American political cartoons, and the early American cartoonists Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere. 

A Crowded Life in Comics –

A Major About-Face.

Rick Marschall

Marlene Dietrich

The great caricaturist Henry Major, who was born in Hungary in 1889, but most active in the United States by way of Vienna and London, once said about political cartooning:

At one time, cartoonists were put in jail for what they drew. Today, political cartoonists should be arrested for what they DON’T draw.

It is great as an aphorism, one I often recalled when I was a working political cartoonist. The problem with Major – and he had few problems! – was that he primarily was not a political cartoonist, but a caricaturist.

… and one of the best. In a sense, all caricaturists are political cartoonists, or satirists. Caricature, as a branch of the arts, is cartooning’s closest affinity to Expressionism in “fine” art. The caricature is a statement, an observation – meant not to evoke a response, nor to entertain. Observers, even the “victims,” must meet it more than halfway; whereas traditional strips and humorous cartoons reach out to readers.

I will write more about the art of caricature in the relaunch of NEMO Magazine, if you can stand it, and with a focus each issue on a master of the form.

Bing Crosby

“Are cartoonists commentators?” I once asked Al Capp, sensing the answer but seeking something quotable, which I got. “It’s inevitable,” he said. “When you draw a cat, you are commenting on cats.”

To my way of “thinking,” there are at least two schools of caricature, and a middle-ground melding that saves innumerable sub-categories. And there is no “correct” approach: they are merely different.

There are those artists who exaggerate. Big noses grow bigger; hydrocephalus infects every sitter; warts and freckles explode; large heads on little bodies populate their world.

Charles Laughton

The other school, stylistically, usually is less mannered. Sketchier. Faces, usually; not full figures. This type of drawing is called caricature by default. The mission is to capture a personality, not a likeness… but, done well, succeeds at both. In a real sense, though there be subtexts of humor or sarcasm, these caricatures are more like quick portraits. The informality, sense of irony, unconventional attitudes of the subjects all combine to make “caricature” an appropriate appelation.

David Levine is an avatar of the first school; Honore Daumier exemplified the second; Al Hirschfeld’s work clearly fell in the middle. All of them great caricaturists, surely.

Back to Henry Major. I have always loved his work, but did not know him. He became famous, especially as a roving assignment artist for Hearst enterprises, for lightning-quick sketches, celebrity caricatures, and personality drawings. He invariably drew with grease crayon, and people I have meet who knew him said that he drew, indeed, lightning-fast.

Fred Astaire 

When I earned my living (some might say under false pretenses) as a political cartoonist and caricaturist, my favored tool was the same lithograph crayon. I tend to like an artist’s studies and sketches more than finished canvases; and as an artist I have often been happy with preliminary sketches and disliked my “finishes,” because I tend to tighten up and lose the spontaneity I seek.

The grease crayon allows an artist to look informal even when exactitude is needed. The heavy or light lines, and shading, can cover a multitude of “sins,” and pleasingly. With pens, artists like Heinrich Kley and John Groth achieved the same magic; but they were magicians. The crayon allows the artist to create depth by suggesting shadows; can (yes) cover the mistakes of the quick-sketch with manic shading – see Fred Astaire’s hat here.

And there is a “permanence” to penlines that, despite exaggerations, suggest that some caricatures aspire to be a distorted but formal portrait. The crayon-sketch, on the other hand, is like a snapshot, free of pretense and self-consciousness.

I promised you to get back to Henry Major. I never met him, but I have collected his work, and knew people who knew him. I recall in this “Crowded Life” essay Mary Joe Connolly, of whom I shall write more some week. Mary Joe, the daughter of Joe Connolly, knew every star of King Features Syndicate and the Hearst empire, because her father was president of King Features, International News Service, Good Housekeeping, American Weekly, Pictorial Review, and the many other domains of that empire. After Arthur Brisbane – and maybe including him – Connolly was the best right-hand man Hearst ever had… by Hearst’s many testimonials.

Lewis Milestone

Mary Joe worked at King, too, after her father’s early death in 1945. She was an award-winning photographer, and her editorial work included ghosting the Hints from Heloise column; a Jill of all trades.

Many celebrities came and went from the Connolly home in Westchester County (and I am thinking of another remarkable friend who had a remarkable father – Russelle Patterson, daughter of the great illustrator Russell Patterson – about whom I shall write here too) and Henry Major was a frequent guest. An amiable friend, he was also available to sketch the “cabbages and kings,” anyone you could name from the 1920s to the 1940s.

I acquired some of Mary Joe’s collection, including personal and corporate archives of her father. Historical treasures galore, including many back-stories and “inside baseball” details of the time, including promotional material, contracts, and such.

But. The Major point this week is Henry, the caricaturist. The Connolly family scrapbook is filled with sketches he did of Joe and Marguerite, Mary Joe and Buddy. Many, through the years. Hearst cartoonists; celebrities in the news (like Lindbergh and Floyd Gibbons); sports stars like Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey; movie stars like… well, of course, Marion Davies.

Many homes of the time, especially “power” couples, had guestbooks. The Connollys had a running register of Henry Major’s caricatures.

I share some of his work here. One afternoon the cartoonists George McManus and Jimmy Murphy visited the Connollys; Henry sketched them all, including himself. The other celebrity drawings will illustrate my point about the forgiving nature of the grease crayon – its creative malleability. And its almost magical properties. A mistaken stroke “works out,” creating a shadow or upturned eyebrow or hinted smile.

Henry Major (right) with George McManus (Bringing Up Father; left), Jimmy Murphy (Toots and Casper), and King Features President Joseph V Connolly, standing.

A little bump in the paper made a white spot in Charles Laughton’s right eye and lent reality. The crayon, applied with otherwise illogical heaviness, allowed Major to accentuate the contours of Dietrich’s cheekbone and jawline, ultimately as distinctive as her famous eyes.

Close up of Major’s caricature of the four friends

I have always maintained that the best caricature is that, when you might not know the subject (from the past, or a stranger)… you look at it, and you do know the subject! Of the group of sketches I share here, the film director Lewis Milestone might be the least familiar today. And his profile the most “cartooney,” in that first category of “exaggeration.”

But is it? You have the feeling it is closest to reality, an unusual face perhaps, but captured faithfully. It’s almost like we know him.

And that was a common, but Major, accomplishment.

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