Greasy Twins

Saturday Smooth Scalp Day. 

In the short history if newspaper comic strip ads (say, between 1935 and 1960) there were some companies that spent more money in this field then others. Big players were the cigarette companies, which used comics to advertise their various brands. The soap manufacterors were also very active, as were the producers of oilbased products. One of them was Vasiline, which came from Unilever. They made an oil based jelly that used to be best know for it's use as a hair gel. these days it is more often used as an neutral skin mostener and eh... other stuff. In the sampling I am sharing here, we see it used for hair gel in a 1944 ad drawn by Johnstone and Cushing regular Sargent. After the war, two new series were started by two of the Johnstone and Cushing mainstays. Rusty and Dusty was a long running adventure series drawn by Elmer Wexler. My samples run from the late fifties to at least 1956. In a mid fifties Johnstone and Cushing booklet he was specifically named as the artist behind this bi-weekly series. Soon after it became a hit, it was joined by another Vaseline ad, this time more funny, starrtinh to twin brats. This one tier addition looks like it was drawn or at least developed by Dik Browne and it is often mentioned as the strip that got him hired to do Hi & Lois. Still, pretty soon it seems to have been taken over by Bill Williams, in a similar but slightly different syle.  

 

It Pays To Advertise

Wednesday Adverising Day.

I haven't shared a lot of advertising strips from the fifties lately, mainly because I have shown so many already. Another thing that is hlding me back, is my inabillity to determine the artist on most of them. Here are a couple with some comments, just to show how my thing goes.

The main provider for Sunday Newspaper advertising strips was the Johnstone and Advertising agency. Some artists worked or were approched on their own, but most of the work came through J&C in some way. Not very much is know about the workings of this outfit, except that some of the rugulars working at the office in the forties and fifties were Dik Browne, Gill Fox, Bill Williams, Jack Betts, Elmer Wexler, Craig Flessel and Stan Drake. Stan Drake was the only one not signing his work - and the only one to clain afterwards that he was one of the first to be allowed to sign.

Stan Drake's work is often recognizable, although he did admit in several interviews that he had to learn how to draw realistically, so maybe the earlier pieces are harder to spot. Dik Browne worked at the office and told many storie about how the guys used to play practicle jokes on each other. For a long time I thought that meant everyone working for J&C worked at the office. But these days I am not so sure any more. Longer running accounts were often handled by a regular artist, so they may have been doing that out of their own home. Others may have walked in and grabbed assignments. It is remarkable for a company so commercial, that most of the artwork seems to have been done by one artist, though sometimes with different inkers.

Elmer Exler was one of the mainstays as far as realistic art is concerned. Neal Adams told me that in the later days Wexler acted as a mentor to him and showed him te ropes. From some of the catalogues we know that one of Wexler's regular accounts was Rusty and Dusty. That gives us a nice basis for his style in the fifties. You can see some of those here: https://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search?q=gillette. And here is one with two new Rusty and Dustys after it:

Another series I suspected Wexler to have had a hand in, is the long running Sal Hepatica series, some of which can be found here: https://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2012/10/good-hair-day-wednesday-advertising-day.html. And although there are similarities, now that I have a couple in color, they do remind me of another artist, whom I did not know worked at Johnstone and Cushing (but may have). Al Avison was a journeyman artist, who worked a lot with Joe Simon at Harvey. He did a lot of covers for the Harvey horror titles, more than he did stories. His swirling style can be seen in these samples.

Here are two of his Harvey covers.

Another artist working for Johnstone and Cushing in the early fifties was Ken Bald. Blad had started out as a romance artist at Timely-Atlas and would go on to do newspaper strips Dr. Kildare and Dark Shadows. His style in the fifties was a lot more slick than it would later become and he is a hard artist to spot. He also drew a lot of romance comics covers for the American Comcis Group, which gives me a basis.

But did he do the Folgers series? He might have, but I don't really think so.

I think the Gem ad is by Bald.

And I have another one, I forgot to clean up. Generic or Bald?

The Mentholeum ad might be by Bald. Though the extra ad on the bottom certainly isn't.

This Halo ad with Ralph Flanagan (the composer of The Typewriter Song) is probably by one of those full color illustrators, trying to work in a clear line style, like Gunnar Peterson.

And since we started with Drake, let's finish with him. I have shown several of these daily ad strips earlier, taken from an online source. But this set are my own scans, from a small collection I aquired. Stan Drake was rumored to have done the Sal Hepatica Sundays. Did he do these as well?

One of the biggest quetions remains: who did the long running Camels celebrity series? There is a similarity in the style if you look through all fifteen years of them. But sometimes one jumps out as being just a bit different.

Four Days Till Christmas

Wednesday Advertising Day.

On two seperate Facebook groups we talked about comic strip ads by Bill Williams and Tom Scheuer (who changed his name to Dawyer when he became a television writer). In my files I had a small series of ads for the Boy Scout organisation in 1964 b both gentlemen. It looks like something Johnstone and Cushing would produce, but if I am right they were disbandoned by then. It may be a reworking of some pieces Johnstone and Cushing did produce for the comic section of the scouting magazine Boy's Life (although I do not recall seeing those in my collection or the online archives of that publication. Both attributions are my guess, but the seem obvious to me. Even the untypical realistic piece by Williams.

The special Christmas Gift this time is an ad by Jack Davis I had never sene before.

Everywhere You Look

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Some newspaper ads, most probably from the famous Johnstone and Cushing agency.

I normally don't scan stuff that is cut, but I think these late fifties Camels ads by Dik Browne are so nice and so rare, that I am sharing this one from the bak of another strip anyway. Note that it is from 1959, so well into Browne's run of Hi and Lois (daily and Sunday, while he was also doing a weekly strip for the Boy's Life comic section). Most have been a very well paying assignment.

Between 1940 and 1945 Camels were doing their famous celebrity assignment strips. After that, they diversivied. First they had Bob Buggs Sgt. Bilko ads and later the square ones by Dik Brown. But they didn't own the celebrity endorsement idea. They were all over popular culture, including newspaper comic strip ads. So these ones are for all the Peggy Lee and Fontaine sisters fans out there.

Just a seperate and rather bland one, which sems to me to be by Elmer Wexler.

And aother bland one, which is by an unexpected visitor at Johnstone and Cushing, signing NC. Comic book (and Batman) fans know this is Nick Cardy, who did a lot of work on J&C's comic book section in Boy's Life and later joined his fellow J&C regular Neal Adams at DC doing Batman and horror covers.

And finally a sample of what I call the Rosetta stone series of ads for the Smith Brothers black coughdrops. It showcases the same style as the Lipton Tea ads, which always seeed to me to be by Dik Browne and Gill Fox imitating the Harry Haenigson style. In the Smith Brotehrs ads you can see three styles, the first unsigned - which seems like the Lipton Tea ads, the second signed by Gill Fox - which is like the Lipton Tea style but slightly different and the third signed by Bill Williams - who took over a couple of Dik Browne's accounts when he left for Hi and Lois.