Tell Them The Sunday Paper Sent You

Monday Advertising Day. 

Some years ago I clipped a whol lot of Sunday newspaper ads from the Francisco Chronicle, a paper that does not appear on every micro-fiche paper site. Some of these I have shared before, others are new. Most need a bit of explanation. 

This ad for Baker's Cacoa Mix is the work of the Johnstone and Cushing company. Some Baker's ads were done by Dik Brown. This one seems more like a mix of Creig Flessel and Jack Betts' talents.

Weston's Honey Graham Crackers is harder to pinpoint. The way the kid sits in the last image is reminiscant of Dik Brown, who would have had to change his style consiberable to do this.

I have shared several ads for Jergens lotion in the past and have always felt they could be the work of Ken Bald.

If Willy the Penguin wasn't conceived to sell kids on cigarettes, at least they were done to normalize them for when they grew up. The comic book version was done by Chad Grothkopf, although I am not sure if he did the (many) newspaper ads.

Stan Randell imitation All Around Home for Nescafé.

Pacquins ads were around for a long time and although I think it had different inkers at different times the main aetist underneath all of them is Gunnar Peterson, the guy who created and solidified the photorealistic style of American newspaper advertising comics, using a variety of influences.

One of the influences on Peterson was Lou Fine, who was famous for his long run on the Philip Morris cigarettes ads. I have colected most of them in one big earlier post, many of which with my own scans in color.

These Purex ads were signed by Pineo. I may have shown them before on a seperate post on his work.

RoyalDesserts was done by a very competent artist, although I can't see which one.  

From an ad by Johnstone & Cushing about their company we know Wexler had the Sal Hepatica account.

Swan Soap seems to have been done by Gill Fox in the same style he used for his comic strip Jeanie.

Tootsie was created by C. C. Beck. He often drew them with Pete Costanza, who got to sign them. This one seems to be by Bill Schreiber, who took over from them in 1950.

The Triton ads were one of a few series that were don in a Ripley Believe It Or Not Style. I have shared some before, but there seem to have been more. Some of these look as if they were done by later The Heart of Juliet Jones artist Stan Drake.

 

A Bright New Day

Saturday Leftover Day. 

I recently scanned and cleaned a couple more newspaper comic strips ads. The first four are by Gunnar Peterson, who also did the Colgate ads. The last two are by Lou Fine, one of which I have already shown in my larger Sam Spade post years ago and anopther which I will add there.

Did You Know?

Tuesday What The Heck Day. 

Finally some time to do another post and share some weird material. I have been collection ads that use the Ripley's Format of facts and information. Apart from Ripley's, there were quite a few in the newspapers, Elsie Hix's Stranger Than It Seems as one of the most familiar. But tehre were a lot of local versions and it was used as a staple format for oil industries and other big firms such as General Electric. I recently went through a bunch of Junior Scholastic magazines of the late fifties and came across a couple that seemed familiar even apart from the format. Let me show them first and talk about them after.

So the last of these seems to be clearly by Leonard Starr. I don't know if it is a solo job he did or via Johnstone and Cushing, I will have to check. But if there are more out there, I would love to see them. The second one is signed with an inwards curled IN, which was the signature of Irving Novick. Who was working for the Johnstone and Cushing produced Boy's Life section (and doing illustrations inside that magazine as well). The first one is unknown, but the Nick connection makes me wonder if he did this too. But he didn't sign it and he was never known for doing that type of charcoal pencil ggreys. It's not Starr either, but other artists from that pool include Lou Fine and Alex Kotzky. Either of which could do figures like the guy in the third panel. As long as I am showing stuff from Junior Scholastic magazine, here are three illustrations by Al Wenzel, who at that time was also doing pencil assistance on Steve Roper. I have three sets of seven or eight magazines from 1957 and 1958, all for sale cheaply on Ebay.

Hey, JC!

 Saturday Advertising Day.

Ever since I started this blog about 15 years ago, I have included comic style advertisements as they were found in the Sunday comic sections. Along the way, I found that the Johstone and Cushong agancy was one of the largest producers of these ads, employing all sorts of talent. Some one off, some regulars. Tom Heintjes' article in Hogan's Alley (available online) was one of the major steps in finding out more about this legendary agency. Dave O'Dell did some important reserach, as well.

I tried to find out more, but unfortunately all of the artists of the Golden Age of Johstone and Cushing have pasted on. I was able to talk to two of the later talents (Neal Adams and Tom Scheuer/Sawyer) but they both only worked there from the late fifties and had very little to say about their predecessors. 

Lately I have been gathering 'evidence' to do a series of articles (or possibly a book) about the most important of the Johnstone and Cushing regulars. I learned from Doc Vassallo that the best way to learn to identify styles is to look at as much material as possible, preferable chronologically. This is what that looks like. These ads are from a paper that I never had acces to before. There are still some holes, I have to go back and fill.

Pacquins ads are a long runing series, many of which I have shown before (even in color). The flowery style has made me wonder who was the artist on them, sometimes even wondering if Dr. Kildare artist Ken Bald was involved. He had an equally fluid and often very thin line in his drawing and he excelled at pretty women. But looking at the whole lot from the start, it is clear to me that Swedish born artist Gunnar Peterson may have been responsible, certainly at the start. I earlier did a seperate post on these, which has more samples (probably a lot of the same, but from different sources). His trademark style elements are the larger opening panel (which on some ads he painted rather than drew) and the bland Lou Fine-like smile on his women characters.

In the comments, Allan Holtz (he of the unmissable American Newspaper Comics) asked me what I look at to indentify certain artists that have not digned. In many cases, it is a combination of factors, having to do with the faces, the poses, the line quality and the history of a company in combination with other works that are signed. With Gunnar Peterson, I was not even sure where I first found his name, but looking back at previous posts I found that one my my regular visitors called Fortunato had alerted me to him. This led me to a website about American Illustrators, where I immediately recognized his painted style. Also, some of his ads for Colgate were shown as samples of his advertising work. The Colgate ads became the basis to compare his other work to. They used a painted and larger first panel in combination with two tiers of smaller inked panels. This same format was used for some of the Pacquins ads, with a regulary inked panel as the first one. The Colgate ads also show how Peterson used bland smiling faces with perfect teeth for the women, which are completely the same as the smiling faces Lou Fine used in all of his work. But Peterson's men are less slick and manly than Fine's, so that's something to distinguish between them. Also Peterson staging is much more stiff and posed compared to Fine's masterful comic book staging. Once you get a feel for Peterson's staging, it is easy to recognize his work. 

Of course, one of the factors at Johstone and Cushing that makes all of this harder, is the fact that often for various customers, different twams were formed of some of the 'main suspects'. I will say something more about the individual styles of Creig Flessel and Craig Pineo, but Flessel particulary seems to have done more collaborations. These Peterson samples seem to have various inkers and I would not be surprised if Ken Bald did some of the more thinlined ones.

Another regular series was that for Sal Hepatica laxative. It can also be seen on the Johnstone and Cuching publicity ad above. I have always been. I have always been convinced that it was done by Johnstone and Cushing regular Elmer Wexler (who later tought both Neal Adams and Tom Scheuer/Sawyer), based on the similarity to his confirmed series for Gillette razor blades. But going through my files, I found some color ones that look more like Al Avison was invovled (a prolific artist who mainly worked for Harvey Comics) and I even had one that was signed by Johstone and Cushing other regular Creig Flessel (CJ in the last panel). Now I am not sure anymore. They are not by Stan Drake, who did the daily version.

The Purex ads are signed by Pineo, a realistic artist from the early fifties. I did a seperate post on him as well, where I added these two as well. He was one of a few artists to regulary sign his work and I hope to find more of it.

I was alerted to the Kool ads featuring Willie the Penguin by my friend Ken Quattro (The Comics Detective) when he did a post somewhere about the comic book version of this seemingly innocent children's character. The comic books were drawn by Chad Grothkopf, but I don't think the ad were. So the artist remains unknown, although the insidious intention of the cigarette company who prodcued them isn't. You gotta get them hooked young.

The Tiron ads are one of the many series that took a Ripley Believe it or not/Seein' Stars type of format and used it for advertising. I am not sure about the artist. The loose style points to Avison, but I would have to see more to be sure.

The rest is a mix of unknown and known ads.  The Jergens Lotion ad has the diary set-up that Gill Fox used in his Jeanie Sundays around the same time (with the same lettering), but the art does not seem to be his.

The Nescafe ad seems to have been drawn by Stan Randall, who not much later actually took over the Right Around Home newspaper feature which inspired this ad.

The Philip Morris ad is #92 in the long running Lou Fine series.

The artist of this Royal Dessert ad is unknown to me, but I like thse ads that used movies and movie actors as their entry point.

The faces here are clearly by Gill Fox, although the inking style suggest another artist worked on it as well.

Someone should do a complete collections of all Sunday, Daily and comic book Captain Tootsie ads, which was started by C.C. Beck, contunued (probably with him) by Pete Costanza and later made more realistic by Bill Schreiber.

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