From the Dick Buchanan Files: Eldon Dedini Cartoons 1946 - 1964

With his lush, deep colors and wicked sense of humor, Eldon Dedini (1921 - 2006) has a well-deserved legion of fans. He sold his first gag cartoon while still in community college, and worked for Disney soon after graduation. But it wouldn't last long! Why? Well, read below. 

Here's a great assortment of 25 Dedini cartoons spanning the first 18 years of his professional cartooning career culled from the collection of gag cartoon curator Dick Buchanan. Dick has also written a brief look at his amazing life.

Thanks and take it away, Dick!

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ELDON DEDINI
1946 to 1964

Eldon Dedini began drawing at age 5 by copying newspaper comic strips his mother pasted into homemade comic books. His favorites were Popeye, Jiggs, and the Katzenjammer Kids.
He studied art at what is now Hartnell College, while drawing cartoons (without pay) for the Salinas Morning Post and the Salinas Index Journal to gain experience. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute, working as a janitor to pay his tuition.
Dedini began his career in Hollywood studios, working briefly at Universal and then, from 1944 to 1946, in the storyboard department at Disney. All the while he kept freelancing his gag cartoons, and Esquire soon hired him to work in its Chicago office by doubling what Disney paid him. He was Esquire’s staff cartoonist from 1946 to 1950, the same year he sold his first cartoon to The New Yorker.
Dedini was most proud of his gag writing, which he considered to be the whole secret of cartooning. He once said “style alone will never sell a bum joke. A million people can draw. The question is are you funny?”

Dedini drew 50 roughs every three weeks, resulting in 630 drawings for The New Yorker and 1,200 for Playboy. His work also appeared in many other national magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Sports Illustrated and True Magazine, among others. He illustrated several books, including Rally Round the Flag, Boys! I Was a Teen-Age Dwarf and Anyone Got a Match? A collection of his work, The Dedini Gallery, was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York in 1961. In 2006 Fantagraphics published a retrospective called “An Orgy of Playboy’s Eldon Dedini”
Eldon Dedini was named best magazine cartoonist by the National Cartoonists Society in 1958, 1961, 1964, and 1989.

Here is a small collection of his great cartoons, gleamed from the voluminous Cartoon Clip File . . .


1. ELDON DEDINI. Judge January, 1946.

 

 

2. ELDON DEDINI. Judge March, 1946.

 

3. ELDON DEDINI. Judge April, 1946.

 

4. ELDON DEDINI. True Magazine November, 1948.

 

 

5. ELDON DEDINI. The Saturday Evening Post January 8, 1949.

 

6. ELDON DEDINI. True Magazine March, 1949.

 

7. ELDON DEDINI. The Saturday Evening Post April 23, 1949.

 

8. ELDON DEDINI. The Saturday Evening Post September 10, 1949.

 

9. ELDON DEDINI. True Magazine July, 1950.

10. ELDON DEDINI. Esquire August, 1950.

 

11. ELDON DEDINI. Esquire August, 1950.

 

12. ELDON DEDINI. Esquire November, 1950.

 

13. ELDON DEDINI. True Magazine March, 1952.

 

14. ELDON DEDINI. Esquire March, 1955.

 

15. ELDON DEDINI.Collier's March 16, 1956.

16. ELDON DEDINI. Esquire, April 1956.

 

17. ELDON DEDINI. True, November 1966.

 

18. ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine February 18, 1958.

 

19. ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine May 12, 1959.

 

20. ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine May 10, 1950.

 

21. ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine November 7, 1960.

 

22. ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine May 7, 1961.

 

23. ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine April 7, 1963.

 

24. ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine June 16, 1964.

 

25.ELDON DEDINI. Look Magazine August 11, 1964

 

Edited from an original blog entry of March 15, 2021.

How View-Master Created 3D Worlds Before Computers

When I was a kid, these View-Master toys were something that most kids had. With color photos on a disc, you could see a 3D view of travel destinations or a story from a story book or a licensed TV or movie property. There were a series of View-Master scenes that were sculpted out of plasticene and then specially photographed to create a 3D effect. While there's little known about the process, View Master Travels and Peter Dibble have a short presentation on these and invite people to add what they know. 

 

"In this video, I explore the surprisingly complex world of View-Master’s 'creative' reels, including fairy tales, television shows, movies, and cartoons. While most people think of View-Master as a simple toy, I discovered that producing these reels required an extraordinary combination of sculpture, photography, illustration, special effects, and technical craftsmanship. Because almost no documentation of the original production methods appears to survive, much of this video is an investigation into how these forgotten techniques may have worked. 

"I begin by examining the fairy tale reels that transformed miniature hand-built dioramas into immersive 3D worlds. Along the way, I highlight the work of talented artists such as Florence Thomas, whose sculpting skills helped define some of View-Master’s most memorable releases. These reels reveal a level of artistry and attention to detail that rivaled miniature effects work in Hollywood, yet most of the original models were eventually discarded, leaving the reels themselves as the primary record of the craft. 

"Next, I look at television and movie tie-in reels and investigate how View-Master adapted popular entertainment into stereoscopic images. By comparing reel images to actual television episodes and examining promotional materials from films such as The Black Hole, I reconstruct how photographers, artists, and designers may have used on-set photography, masking techniques, high-contrast film, and image compositing to create convincing 3D scenes from flat source material. 

"Finally, I explore the challenge of creating cartoon reels, where artists had to draw separate left- and right-eye views by hand to produce the illusion of depth. From the sculptors and photographers of the fairy tale era to the illustrators and stereo artists who followed, I uncover a collection of highly specialized skills that have largely disappeared. Whether my reconstruction is completely accurate or not, the story reveals just how much creativity, craftsmanship, and ingenuity went into the View-Master reels many of us remember from childhood."

 

Vintage Science Fiction Comic Art

Here are a few old comic book scans from the Bob's Comics at the Crossroads Birth of the Silver Age Facebook group. Most of them are scans of vintage DC Comics' science fiction books like Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures. There's a cover scans and then a scan of the first page of each story in that book. Lots of fun, and due to big heat wave, "The Day the World Melted" has a certain relevance. And Bob has the credits down for you, which is great.

For instance, here's:

DC’s Mystery in Space 6 Feb-Mar 1952

Cover: Carmine Infantino / Joe Giella
Knights of the Galaxy: The Day the World Melted… Robert Kanigher / Carmine Infantino / Joe Giella
Story: The Boy Who Saved the Earth… John Broome / Bob Oksner / Bernard Sachs

Story: The Man Who Hated Science… Jack Miller / John Giunta / John Giunta
Story: Cowboy on Mars… Manny Ruben / Jim Mooney / Jim Mooney

DC’s Strange Adventures 157
Sept 1963

Cover: Murphy Anderson / Murphy Anderson
Story: Plight of the Human Cocoons… Gardner Fox / Gil Kane / Joe Giella Frank Giacoia
Story: The Immortality Seekers… Ed Herron / Sid Greene / Sid Greene
Space Museum: Rescue By Moonlight… Gardner Fox / Carmine Infantino / John Giunta

 

 

What If STAR WARS Was Made Out of Cardboard?

Wonder no more. The Secondhand Movie Co. has created some STAR WARS scenes out of cheap cardboard. Cheeky and fun. More about them here.

E. Simms Campbell: A Nightclub Map of Harlem (1932)

 
E. Simms Campbell (1906-1971), an African American cartoonist, drew the above map of the places to go in Harlem circa 1932. Mike Thibault originally posted this, after a great deal of searching

"I was at my friend Jojo’s house about a year and a half ago, watching some old VHS tapes of dance stuff she had. Among the home movies she had was a taped documentary featuring Cab Calloway. He was checking out this amazing cartoon map of Harlem from back in the 30’s and remembering all the places. Since then I’ve been trying to find a readable copy of it. A while ago I found that the title is “A Nightclub Map of Harlem” and it was drawn in 1932 by E. Simms Campbell, a cartoonist who went on to great success with his drawings in Ebony Magazine.

"... Cab Calloway made a joking comment about what a deal those marijuana cigarettes seemed at the time of filming, '2 for $.25.'"

Campbell had a long list of major league clients for his gag cartoons (Esquire, The New Yorker) and this is a major find by Mike. Click to supersize.

Hat tip to Frank Jacobs at Big Think, who provides more historical background, including the fact that A Nightclub Map of Harlem was used as endpapers for Cab Calloway's 1976 autobiography.

The Garden As of Mid-June

 

Here’s the garden as of mid-June. Everything is coming up fast: cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, runner beans. I’m mowing the lawn ever 5-7 days. The birds are eating a lot. 

Tank the cat "working."

 

All of the Cartoons From January 1963 McCALL'S

Above: my fellow Berndt Toast colleague David Gantz illustrates "Four Successful Methods of Getting Your Husband Up in the Morning."


It's been a good couple of weeks! We have seen a great selection of cartoons from some 50+ year old magazines that Tom Sager has been kind enough to scan in before tossing. Here's the latest: all of the cartoons from the January 1963 issue of McCALL'S Magazine.

Stan and Jan Berenstain:

Bo Brown:

Donald Reilly:

 Reamer Keller:

- Edited from a blog entry that originally ran on August 8, 2012.