Paintin' The Town

Monday New Stuff Day.

Mark Hellinger was a theatre critic, broadway gossip, short story writer and finally Hollywood producer, who had various columns in the twenties, thirties and forties. He took over the About Town column in 1925. Instead of just filling it with gossip about the broadway stars, he turned it into a whole page of gags, gossip and short stories. In guess somewhere in the thirties the name was changed to Goin' Tp Town, because that s how I came across it. What interested me the most, was the page wide spread he included in every page with gossip and caricatures by Sam Berman. Berman was the biggest caricaturist in the US before Hirshfeldt came along. I have seem some of his full color work in magazines in the forties, but he was on his way out then. He also did caricatures in 3d - using some sort of colored clay. His work is very expressive and although many of the celebrities pictured here may have been long forgotten, his faces are a lot of fun to look at. Less Hirshfeldt, more Mort Drucker.

I am opening with a color drawing by Berman from a magazine that was named after the year it was published: '47.