Marriage Cartoons from YOU'VE GOT ME -- AND HOW! Edited by Lawrence Lariar Part Three

 Above: a 1955 cartoon by Jeff Keate; relevant then, relevant now.

Part three of a selection of gag cartoons from the book titled YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW! , edited by Lawrence Lariar and published by Dodd, Mead and Company. It's copyright 1955 by Mr. Lariar.


Salo was one of the four Roth brothers who drew gag cartoons.


Argumentative spouses became Bob Barnes' bread and butter. A year after this book was published, he began his run 16 year run on the syndicated newspaper panel THE BETTER HALF. In 1958, he received an NCS Division Award for the feature.


Norman Hoifjeld gives me a laugh due to the goofy smiles the husband and wife exhibit. Scan biographical information about Mr. Hoifjeld exists. I know he did magazine gag cartoons in the 50s and 60s, with his work appearing in Baseball Digest and some of the Charlton magazines.

Did Goldstein knowingly or unwittingly draw the wife to look like she's wearing one of those striped shirts like a football referee?



It's the composition -- the fact that are eyes are drawn to the little wiggle lines by the exposed toes -- that Bill Harrison's cartoon works.


Here is Al Ross, another one of those four Roth brothers. He changed his last name from Roth to Ross. Al would develop an even sketchier style as the decades progressed. Oh, and here's a link to Arlen Roth's blog, with a photo of Al from December 2009. Arlen is Al's son.



I like how better dressed everyone was back then. Jim Whiting even makes sure there's a sharp crease in the male guest's slacks.



John Norment (1911-88) was a very busy fellow: a correspondent and photographer during the war, he would later, working for the Sundbloom Studio in Chicago, photograph all of the Coca Cola Santa Clauses. In addition to massive freelance work, John was an editor for Dell Publications. He won the National Cartoonists Society's Silver T-Square for editing The Cartoonist NCS journal. And there's a lot more I'm leaving out. He has a very good Web site devoted to his paintings, as well as an extensive bio. There is even a Zazzle store, managed by his niece, where you can buy one of his designs on a mouse pad.

More Barnes, more marital dischord for laffs.




Jack Markow had such a vervy line style.


Wilkinson reminds us of a time when a monkey named J. Fred Muggs was cohosting The Today Show.


George Wolfe shows the woman behind the man, egging him on, out of the house and upwards and onward.




Reamer Keller is one of my favorite cartoonists. Even for this simple layout, he gives us a bird's eye point of view, which gives a fresh dynamic to the composition.

I liked this cartoon by Mr. Boime, whose work I had not seen before. So far as I can make out, this may be Albert Boime (1933-2008), who dabbled in cartooning when he was in the army, and went on to get get his Master's from Columbia. He became a prominent art historian, leaving, so far as I can tell, the cartooning world behind. All this is according to the Dictionary of Art Historians.