From the Dick Buchanan Files: More Color Gag Cartoons 1951 - 1957

Dick Buchanan has pulled out some rare color single panel cartoons from his Cartoon Clip File, located somewhere in Greenwich Village. These are rare since color printing was not the norm in the 1950s, being more expensive and time consuming to produce than black and white. Thanks and take it away, Dick.

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MORE COLOR GAG CARTOONS
(1951 – 1957)

Here is a selection of vintage gag cartoons in color.

Most of these were published in the pages of Collier’s and American Magazine. Famed cartoon editor Gurney Williams was cartoon editor of both magazines. Young and upcoming cartoonists often appeared first in American Magazine before they made Collier’s roster.
 

Take a look . . .

1. GEORGE W. BOOTH. American Magazine June, 1955.

2. CORKA (Jon Cronin) Collier’s April 22, 1950.

3. JOHN GALLAGHER. Collier’s June 14, 1952.

4. DAVID HUFFINE. Collier’s April 26, 1952.

5. KATE OSANN. Collier’s February 5, 1954.

6. GREGORY d’ALESSIO. February 23, 1952.

7. TED KEY. Collier’s February 5, 1954.

8. WILLIAM von RIEGEN. Collier’s June 25, 1954.

9. BILL RUBLE. Collier’s February 6, 1954.

10. LOUIS PRISCILLA. Collier’s April 26, 1952.

11. ROLAND COE. Colliers May 26, 1951.

12. JEFF KEATE. American Magazine February, 1955.

13. WILLIAM SCULLY. Punch Summer Number May 26, 1952.

"Somehow it's just as I imagined it."

 

14. BILL WENZEL. True Magazine January, 1957.

"So long, girls. I'll be in touch!"

 

 

15. JOSEPH KIERNAN. American Magazine July, 1955.

More:

From the Dick Buchanan Files: Color Gag Cartoons 1947 - 1957

 
From the Dick Buchanan Files: Color Gag Cartoons 1942 - 1954

 
From the Dick Buchanan Files: 1950s Color Magazine Gag Cartoons

 
From the Dick Buchanan Files: Gag Cartoons in Color 1943 - 1957


From the Dick Buchanan Files: Color Gag Cartoons 1945 - 1957

From the Dick Buchanan Files: Color Gag Cartoons 1951 - 1955

Gardner Rea's Sideshow

 

 A scan of a Gardner Rea original from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. 

Born in Ironton, Ohio (one of the legion of cartoonists originally born in Ohio), he sold his first cartoon at the age of 15 to the old LIFE Magazine. He moved to NYC after serving in the chemical warfare unit in WW1.

In 1920 he married Pratt graduate Dorothy Julia Calkins. They shortly moved to Brookhaven, where he designed and built a house.

Brookhaven would be where they would bring up two daughters and spend the rest of their lives.

Gardner Rea was one of the original New Yorker contributors. He drew his own cartoons and supplied gags to Charles Addams and Helen Hokinson. He was an aloof fellow, who, according to Ogden Nash, went into the city "only once a year" to see editors. He was still drawing until the end. 

From the New York Times:

"That somewhat serpentine line of his drawings, without detail, became his trademark, along with a trick of having in each picture a small shape, such as a necktie, inked in solid black. He explained the 'wiggle' of his line with another gag—'Nobody will catch on when I get senile.'

"But Mr. Rea distinguished between verbal humor and the art of drawing. He told an interviewer in 1946 that in common with most critics, he considered "that line is the highest, most difficult form of art, and so long long as the fundamental design is there, I can't see that it makes the slightest difference, technically speaking, if the subject matter is humorous."

Here are some cartoons from the book Gardner Rea's Sideshow. These scans are from the great Hairy Green Eyeball 2 blog. 

 

Related: 

From the Dick Buchanan Files: Gardner Rea Gag Cartoons 1938 - 1963

Ger Apeldoorn's The Fabulous Fifties

Found In the Collection: Gardner Rea (1894 - 1966)

Ron Goulart 1933 - 2022

 Frank Bolle, Orlando Busino, Ron Goulart from a 2006 lunch in Westport.

 Award winning writer and popular culture historian Ron Goulart has passed away, a day after his 89th birthday. 

"Besides writing extensively about pulp fiction, including the seminal Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972), Goulart had written for the pulps since 1952, when The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published his first story, a sci-fi parody of letters to the editor. He went on to write dozens of novels and countless short stories, spanning genres and using a variety of pennames, including Kenneth Robeson, Joseph Silva, and Con Steffanson.

"In the 1970’s, Goulart wrote novels starring series characters like Flash Gordon and the Phantom, and in 1978 released Calling Dr. Patchwork (1978), a comic sci-fi novel that began the Odd Jobs, Inc. series; and created the brilliant newspaper strip, Star Hawks, with Gil Kane, most recently republished by IDW."

-- DownTheTubes

 

He was the ghost writer for William Shatner's Tekwar series of books. He also wrote a comic/mystery series of mystery books featuring Groucho Marx.

Mark Evanier:

“… He was a great lover of comic books and a fine historian of the form. He dabbled now and then in writing for comics and at one point, collaborated with artist Gil Kane on an ahead-of-its-time newspaper strip called Star Hawks.

“The last time Ron and I were together – which I now sadly realize was too long ago – we had a long talk about how he wished he fit in better with the comic book field but kept finding more comfort in prose writing.

“He was awfully good at it. He was awfully good at everything he did.”

 

Ron was an early historian of pulp magazines and comic strips and comic books. His books Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazines (1972) and The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips In the Thirties (1975) are seminal histories of these popular forms. 

Orlando Busino 1926 - 2022

 

 

 

Cartoonist Orlando Busino passed away quietly on January 11th. He was 95, and had just recently celebrated his 70th wedding anniversary with Ann (Darlington) Busino. 

Known for his gag cartoon work for so many publications (including Boys' Life, 1000 Jokes, Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, and many, many others), he created comic books with George Gladir at Archie, as well as comic strips, assisting with Moose Miller and Gil Thorp. 

He was as prolific as he was kind. I was fortunate to have lunch with him on a number of occasions at a restaurant in Westport. Or "Westpork," as his friend and neighbor Bob Weber would say. Bob would be at lunch as well as a few more like Ron Goulart and Frank McLaughlin and Frank Bolle. All of them, legends.

Frank McLaughlin, Orlando Busino, and Frank Bolle.

 

 

 

Orlando grew up in "cow country," in Binghamton, New York. He developed an interest in cartooning at the age of nine, and he sold his first cartoon to the New York Mirror at the age of 14. "Bulldog, with Central, the Wonder Dog" was the name of the comic strip he created for his high school paper. Look at an old copy of the magazine Open Road for Boys, and you will see Orlando's cartoons winning many of their cartoon contests. Orlando was drafted into the army and served in Panama from 1945 to 1947. He drew cartoons for the army unit newspaper there. Returning home, he attended Binghamton State, and then the University of Iowa, drawing cartoons for their school papers.  

Dick Buchanan picks up the story:

"After graduating in 1952, he moved to New York City. He worked in the ad department of the Macmillan Publishing Company. At night he attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School. A year later he sold his first cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post, launching his career as a freelance cartoonist.

"Busino also worked for Archie Comics in the 1960s, doing covers, illustrations, and stories for "Tales Calculated To Drive You Bats." This work was later reprinted in Archie's Madhouse.

"Orlando Busino’s created 'Gus,' a feature about the antics of a large white dog, which first appeared in Boys' Life in January 1970. It took over the honor spot on the 'Think & Grin' page (the spot headed for nearly 20 years by Clyde Lamb 'Millicent' and briefly by John Gallagher’s 'Cartoon Bug'). Gus appeared on the cover of Boys' Life in December 1981.

"Orlando Busino received the National Cartoonist Society Gag Cartoon Award for 1965, 1967, and 1968."

I've been a fan of Orlando's since my Dad got me a subscription to Boys' Life (1970 or so), where, for 30 years, he'd drawn a cartoon about a big dog titled "Gus."

"I don't know how that translates into dog years, but it's been a long time," Mr. Busino said in Who's Who in Ridgefield, CT. (Link down as of today. Hmm.)

More from Who's Who:

"Aside from his wry sense of humor and his drawing ability, Mr. Busino is well known in the field for his skill at lettering. In recent years, he has done all the lettering on one of the world's most popular serial strips, Gil Thorp.

"'I've never had a real job,' he once joked with an interviewer. 'Once in a while I daydream I might want to direct a movie. But that only lasts for a minute.'

"However, in another, more serious interview, he said: 'I've enjoyed it all the way. Cartooning is not something you go into unless you enjoy it.'"

Related:

The Daily Cartoonist has a great round up of links

Ger Apeldoorn showcases cartoons from Boys' Life and the syndicated Laff-A-Day panel by Orlando (as well as ones by Don Orehek, Bill Yates, Jack Markow, Reamer Keller and others) at his blog.

 

His Lambiek bio

Video: TCM Classic Film Festival: Peter Bogdanovich on His Career, Orson Welles, Cary Grant and Hollywood

Here's Peter Bogdanovich talking about his career, Orson Welles, Cary Grant and Hollywood. This is from the 2017 Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival. Ben Mankiewicz hosts. At least watch for the Hitchcock elevator story, which comes first. This video is closed captioned.

Video: Political Cartoonist Chan Lowe

"Without the idea behind the cartoon - without the message - there really is no point in drawing the cartoon."

Political cartoonist Chan Lowe talks about the nature of political cartoons and we see some of his process -- which combines old school paper and digital. 

 

This video is from 2018, just a year before Mr. Lowe retired.

 

Tony Tallarico 1933 - 2022

 

Comic book artist Tony Tallarico passed away on January 6th. He was 88. Tony was a friend and a member of our Long Island Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, the Berndt Toast Gang. In addition to being a longtime comic book artist, he was a children's book illustrator and author. For Dell Comics, he drew the comic book Lobo (1965), the first to star an African-American hero. 

 Via Paul Gravett:

"Among Tallarico's diverse credits (see a few examples below - he also produced over 1,000 children's books), his political satire comic 'The Great Society' from 1966 stands out, mashing up topical political caricature with Sixties superheroes. Naturally, I included it here in my 'Incredibly Strange Comics' survey, writing: 'Here's an entire pun-filled satirical comic about costumed versions of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, alias SuperLBJ, and his cabinet, who team up as G.R.E.A.T ("Group Resigned to End All Threats") against an array of supervillains, from France's Gaullefinger (DeGaulle) to Russia's Dr. Nyet (Khruschchev). leaping into action because "SuperLBJ is Missing!", the team including LBJ's wife, "Lady Bird" Johnson as Wonderbird, Barry Goldwater as Colonel America and Hubert Humphrey as Captain Marvelous fail to find him. So it's up to SuperLBJ to save himself and then the entire world. Plotting behind the scenes are Bobman and Teddy, or Robert and Ted Kennedy, who starred in a sequel of their own. Written by D.J. Arneson and published by Parallax Comic Books Inc, New York.'"

 

One of the projects that Tony did was a comic book adaptation of the film version of the 1776 musical. Here are some originals of his from the collection of Michael J. Vassallo:

Here is GRIN, a 3-issue MAD-type magazine from 1972-3, with Tallarico art for the cover for number three:

From 1971, a Christian comic for Logos International:

 

Tony was always working. I see his books -- his kids books, his how to draw books, etc. -- all the time. 

Here's Adrian Sinnott, the chair of the Berndt Toast Gang:

"The wonderful Tony Tallarico passed away late last night. Tony had a long and prolific career working in comics and children’s books.

"A consummate professional, Tony was always in demand and worked up until recently. He was very proud to have illustrated the first comic book with an African-American hero 'Lobo.'"

"Such a kind and generous soul, the Berndt Toast Gang is privileged to have had Tony as an esteemed member."

 Related:

 

The Daily Cartoonist

 

Lambiek