Telling Tales

Saturday Leftover Day. 

Anyone who knows my blog, know I have a special interest in the comic section ads that were produced by the Johnstone and Cushing talent agency. There are no more people left who can talk about the daily working of this company in the forties and early fifties, but those are the yeras that interest me the most. With a roster of talent containing Dik Browne, Gill Fox, Bill Williams, Jack Betts, Craig Flessel, Elmer Wexler, Stan Drake and many others, they oproduced some of the best newspaper comic art in the newspapers. And not only the Sundays. In 1952, not long before he was appraoched to do the family strip Hi and Lois with Mort Walker, Dik Browne did a series of one panel ads for Camels, using the slogan: But Only Time Will Tell... not a very good slogan, because time did tell on the cigarette companies, but if they knew how unhealthy their product was, they certainly didn't tell anyone. 

I have show some of these Dik Browne panels before, some in colour even. But I recently found out that they were used in daily papers as well, which helped me find almost all of them. Running from June 1952 to April 1953 at a rate of two per month, I managed to find almost all of them, even if they are in microfiche format. I have written an article about these and other series done by Dik Browne and Gill Fox in the Harry Haenigson style, which will be published this year in the next issue of Hogan's Alley. On the next few saterdays, I will share more of the material, not all of which could be added to the printed piece.

A Gaggle of Brown Foxes

My friend Michael Vassallo has a Facebook page devoted to his hobby of scanning in any comic page or illustration from any of the New York Sunday News sections he has (plus some of the dailies as well). He shares a part of those scans with the group. Among the scans there are the many comci strip ads that were don ein the thirties, forties and fifties. And so he has quite a collection of the Lipton Tea ads Dik Browne did, probably with Gill Fox, in a Harry Haenigson style. Some people believe Haenigson himselve was involved - as he used to work for the Johnstone and Cushing agancy. But as he had one daily and and two Sunday comic strips running at the same time, I do not think so. All this is the subject of an article I wrote for the comci strip magazine Hogan's Alley, although I still have to get confirmation on which (yearly) issue it will be used.

Like Michael, I collected these ads for years. Here, for the first time, I have collected all of the scans I did myself and combined them with all of Michael's and a seperate set of black and white ones I found on microfiche online. Quite a collection, but even if this was a monthly series (while most of these were two weekly, as seems the case here), we are only scratching the surface. I hope to use this post as the beasis of an eventual complete collection.

As you can see all of Michael's scans are from a special tabloid half page version that has more art. Where I had his version, I used it instead of my own. Mine were all from larger newspaper in a two tier format with something else added underneath. Those additions were never by Browne or Fox.

Final mystery is when these ads started and ended. The first one here is from December 1948. It is slightly different in lay-out and may be the first. It is signed by Dik Browne, which may indicate he did this one solo. I believe that when the square jowed men start appearing (giving it more of a modern Haenigsen look) Gill Fox became involved.

Dec 8 1948:

Jan 23 1949:

Feb 20 1949:

March 20 1949:

April 24 1949:

May 5 1949:

September 11 1949:

September 25 1949:

October 23 1949:

November 20 1949:

April 23 1950:

Mat 21 1950:

August 20 1950:

Feb 4 1951:

Feb 18 1951:

March 10 1951:

March 18 1951:

Juky 15 1951:

September 9 1951:

October 7 1951:

November 5 1951:

Jan 20-1952:

Feb 3 1952:

Feb 17 1952:

March 16 1952:

May 25 1952:

September 28 1952:

October 26 1952: