Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Anyone For War?

Wednesday Advertising Day.

In keeping with this weeks silent theme, here is a series of war bonds ads by Otto Soglow from 1952. Soglow is one of those cartoonists I come across so many times in my collections that I have even begun to scan his work, as I wouldn't know where to start. His work on The Little King is quite well know, even if it is not collected a lot, but I also have single cartoons, cartoons for ads. But I think I will start with the series of illustrations he did for the King Features Sunday Magazine section he did for many years from the forties onward. These war bonds ads (to fund the war against communim, I guess) have no date on them, as they were distributed to newspapers for free and subsequently appear on many different dates. But they were all from the later part of the year.















3 comments:

Unknown said...

Really superb stuff. I'm going through a 1963 horse racing anthology, and am researching the cartoonists whose work is in it. Always great to see Soglow, although when I see his work, it's a sharp reminder of how pathetic the New Yorker magazine cartoons have been since about 2000. Thanks!

Unknown said...

Good morning. Yes, it is always great to see "Soglow's" work, but what I meant to say/type was "Salo." As in Salo Roth. Opps! Also interesting to find out that Salo was a trotter handicapper, which makes his cartoon in "The Fireside Book of Horse Racing" especially appropriate.

My name, I should add, is Don Reed. War Emblem is the thoroughbred who won the Kentucky Derby for me (and at 20-1, not too many other bettors) in 2002.

Unknown said...

And now, to either clarify matters or to make them even more (harmlessly) incomprehensible, let me start from the beginning by adding this.

Square One: I was searching for information about an artist named "Salo."

I made it to a blog run by someone who had taken an interest in the Roth brothers, one of whom was Salo Roth.

(The others were "Al Ross" - Arlen Roth; "Roir" was Irving Ross; and Ben Roth had no pen name. "Salo" might be an abbreviation of "Salomon." All four brothers made a living as cartoonists / commercial illustrators; Al Ross hit the big time with The New Yorker magazine. All four are deceased; Al lived to be 100 years old, passing away in 2012.)

I hope this will explain the previous murky messages.

The main point: My admiration for...

Kid nonchalantly saunters into his home, with his mother holding open the door for him as the sheepish husband behind his son avoids her scornful glance:

"Daddy took me to the zoo. One of the animals came in & paid $33.80 across the board."

(Cartoon by "Salo," Salo Roth, Fireside Book of Horse Racing, 1963, p. 257)