Mike Lynch Cartoons: "Yankee Yiddish" Cocktail Napkin Cartoons by Lawrence Lariar

If you know your gag cartoons, then you know who Lawrence Lariar (1908-1981) is. He's the guy who put together the BEST CARTOONS OF THE YEAR books from 1942 to 1971. He was also a writer of mystery novels (under the pen names Michael Stark, Adam Knight and Marston la France), as well as the title "famous cartoonist" of Bill Griffiths' graphic memoir INVISIBLE INK: MY MOTHER'S SECRET LOVE AFFAIR WITH A FAMOUS CARTOONIST.

Here are a bunch of his cocktail napkins. The full box, in fact. These are copyright 1955 by Mr. Lariar. I know this because each individual napkin has that printed on its backside. It was produced by Monogram, 2500 18th Street, San Francisco 10, Calif.

These are all just oddball, dusty ethnic punning kinda jokes. But I guess in 1955 it was good stuff. And you certainly have to know some Yiddish expressions to "get" the humor.

The ironic thing is that even though Lariar edited so many top-selling gag cartoon anthology books, one rarely sees his cartoons. I mean, if you have the covers to some of his BEST CARTOONS books, then you can see some his art there, and sometimes it's in his intros to the books. But he does not put many drawings of his own into the cartoon books he edits. This is the first time I have seen so many in one place.

There are 35 designs here. One of them is a repeat and I left it off. Even in 1955, you couldn't trust advertising!