The New Yorker Cartoons
In 1946, as in the present, the cartoons were the most popular feature of The New Yorker. In the April 20 issue:
Peter Arno showed a headwaiter summoning a well-dressed couple, who had fallen asleep at the bar, to their table.
A circus animal act is disrupted by a man with an urgent message, “Petrillo says no!” in a Whitney Darrow Jr. cartoon; James Petrillo was the unpopular head of the American Federation of Musicians, whose hardball tactics on behalf of the union membership temporarily crippled the recording industry and briefly stopped the performance of live music on the radio during the 1940s.
Alain depicted a housewife dusting the furniture with her husband’s Army jacket.
Helen E. Hokinson , who specialized in befuddled matrons,was responsible for the housewife bragging about the compliment paid by the saleswoman at Bonwits and the woman asking the salesclerk about whether the upper floor in the birdhouse would be too hot in the summer, both mentioned on a preceding page.
Another scatterbrain woman appeared in a Perry Barlow cartoon telling the well dressed clerk at a liquor store that resembles a men’s club with dark wood paneling, “I don’t remember the name, but it has the picture of a kindly old gentleman on the label.”
A woman obviously in for the night lied her way out of a last minute dinner invitation as her husband relaxes by the fire in an Alan Dunn cartoon.
Garrett Price had native oarsmen in a canoe being urged on by a coxswain with a megaphone, an Ivy League sort of joke.
“What the hell is McKeaver doing in Alcatraz?” wondered a bald-headed businessman to his equally bald colleague as they examined the pushpins on a sales map in Chon Day cartoon.
A cab driver with a new cab ordered a businessman to “Wipe his feet” in a Richard Decker cartoon.
A sign in Otto Soglow’s barber shop bore a disclaimer that the opinions expressed by the employees are not necessarily those of the management.
A Mexican couple examined a crude hut with a hammock, a straw mat and stone mortar; Alain had the husband tell the wife “He says if we take the place we will have to buy the furniture.”
M.K. Barlow showed a burglar jumping with his loot from a window in a burning apartment building to a safety net below as firemen battled the blaze.
A startled salmon was joined by a canned salmon as it swam upstream in a Gardner Rea contribution.
Richard Decker drew a stout New York policeman on night patrol playing hopscotch on a city street.
Back then The New Yorker filled space with brief news item that had mangled language to humorous effect. I miss that stuff, even though I was once myself the victim thanks to an idiotic announcement that my employer at the time ordered me to put out.