The Netflix Of It's Time

 Saturday Leftover Day.

The Pictorial Review was a syndicated magazine for papers that subscribed to King Features syndication package. During WWII it carved out a nice place for itself by featuring covers and heavily illustrated articles by some of the illustrators the Hearst owned syndicate had sent to the various war fronts. For most of the war these magazines featured on large color illustration on the front and at least two pages more of similar il;ustrations in black and white inside. Sometimes one tabloid page each, sometimes two to a page, but always impressive. Illustrated maps of war movements were common as well (as they were in most papers). 

In August 1944 the syndicate added something else to the packages. They asked some of their best read columnist to create a seperate new column for Sundays, which were illustrators by the best cartoonists they could lay their hands on. In the tradition of Netflix, heart only bought the best and let them do what they were good at. This resukted in a particulary interesting magazine, with the war art on the front and the often very funny columns inside, each with three or four illustrations by people such as Colin Allen, Abner Bean and Carl Rose. With that, they also had various cartoon pages, usually with page filling cartoons or at the most four to a page. Cartoonists used for that were Barbara Shermund, E. Simms Campbell (one of the black artists covered in Ken Quattro's unmissable Invisible Men), Irving Roir, Henry Boltinoff, George Wolfe and British artist David Fennick. But the best was yet to come.

Within a couple of weeks three new cartoonists were added, two illustration new columns and one writing and drawing his own. Otto Soglow was added as the cartoonist of Geroge Dixon's Well, That's Washington! He reamained on that serie until well into the fifties and did some of his best non sequential artwork for it. Virgil Partch was assigned the column by Arthur "Bugs" Baer. WSorking in a lush brush style, he may have delivered some of the best art he ever created -  without the gags, but maybe because of that with some of the best grtesk images I have ever seen him do. He worked on the column only for a year before he was replaced by Ralph Stein. The third important addition was the pre-publication of Milt Gross' last great comedy book, Dear Dollink. Written in Gross' trademark mock YIddish (which he had used for Nize Baby years before that), it was a series of letters written by a Jewish mother (Momma) to her son (Frankie) at the front, telling him all about what was going on at home. It is almost unreadable, but often very funny. And when in January 1945 the book came out, it was an immediate hit. 

Now, most Gross bio's mentioned that this was his last book, because he had to slow down after a heart attack later that year. But what they don;t mention is that he returned to Pictorial Review for a second series of Dear Dollink, after a short hiates. When he started again, I don't know precisely because my private collection of these rare and exoensive magazines skips from January to May. That's why I was very excited to find a digital source for al of these magazine, which I have slowly started to download.

I am not done by a long shot, but I have gotten far enoiugh to present them to you one per week, with an extra large strat just to get you hooked. I am showing all of the illustrated columns, along with the Louella Parsons gossip page, just because I know some people will like them. Their digital size allows them to be enlarged enough to be read. There are some, I would love to get completely and do a reprint book of. One of the problems is that due to the large tabloid size, soemthing will have to be done to include all text in a readable way. Not every column is as funny (Athur Baer's pages are unbearable, if you forgive me the pun), but all are essential to understand the illustrations. At least, here you can read them for yourself (even if you may have to download them and enlarge them on your own computer).

I am also selling my own collection of Pictorial Reviews from this period. They are up on Ebay now for very low starting prices. It's one of those things that rarely gets offered and when it does, they are up for months or years for very inflated prices. I have been looking at the same eight issues at $35-$45 for over a year now. Mine start at $8 to $12, depending on content, size and condition. Get them while you can, you will be helping my efforts to find more.

Dear Bloggins

Saturday Leftover Day.

I have shown some of these columns before and I have to admit they are something of a Holy Grail for me. In 1944 Milt Gross started doing a series of (mostly) weekly illustrated columns for the KIng Features Sunday section The Pictorial Review. It was not the only such regular series, others were done by George Dixon (with illustrations by Otto Soglow) and Bugs Bear (with illustrations by Virgil Partch). others included writing by Damon Runyan and illustrations by Ralph Stein. Dear Dollink was a continuation of Gross' 1926 book Nize Baby, in which a Jiddish momma talks to her newborn child in a heavy JIddish/American accent. Actually, Gross developed his own writing style for that and resused it for Dollink where a Jiddish momma wrties to her son in the army. In 1945 there was a book with the same name, but I never was able to figure out if these were the same stories and illustrations he used for Pictorial Review. If he did, there were many more than would have fit into that book. But since the war was over, I guess one book was enough.

I have always wanted to try and get all of these pages and see if they could be truned into a complete collection. That would be hard to do, because of the huge amount of text (and how hard it is to read). The book woud either have to be as big as the Review (to ensure the letters are visible) or the whole thing would have to be recut in some way. The illustrations are as good as you can expect from Gross at that point in his career. The text is funny, but it can be a bit much to take.

I am curious what you all think...

Grossest With The Mostest.

Wednesday Illustration Day.

Somewhere between 1944 and 1946, cartoon favorite Milt Gross wrote and drew a weekly page for the King features Sunday Supplement Pictorial review. This entertainment was a selection of illustrated columns and features, including the Hedda Hopper gossip page, as well as columns illustrated by Virgil Partch, Colin Allen, Bob Bugg, Otto Soglow, Colin Allen and other great names of the period. Gross provided a series of letters from a Jewish mother to her soldier son. The text was in the faux yiddish that Gross developed himself for Nize baby, full of funny and made-up words and almost impossible to read. Even out loud it was often not clearer (though it sounds great). There was a book by the same name published in 19445, but I am not sure if that contained material from the column o if the column in fact was a continuation of the book. Anyway, the colum ran for long beyond the book and seems to have had three times as many illustrations. I have been quite careful in showing these scans, because over the years I have been trying to get all of them so that I could one day try and do a (digital) collection of them. Only problem is that I have been going for a couple of years and I have been going nowhere. These sections are either very rare or they never come up for sale. Another problem would be the right format yo reproduce them in. I have made quite big scans that you should be able to enlarge and read (if you can manage the faux Yiddish), But to make it work in book form you would either have to produce a large book (which is more suited to those early Sunday pages than this) or reformat them, which would involve a lot of very difficult retyping. And of course, then there is the problem that most of it is actually unreadable. Good as it is, these pages are tiring. I don;t know if a complete collection would actually attract anyone.

If there is anyone out there who, like my, would like to see more or even cab provide further scans, I would love to hear from you. These are my pages from 1944.

Gross Neglicense

Monday Cartoon Day.

I started my association with Craig Yoe by giving him scans from Milt Gross' silent review series for the weekly news magazine Ken from the thirties. He used some of them for his first Gross book, which you can see and buy to the right of this text. He recently published a second Gross book, with his 'second' graphic novel (after He Done Her Wrong), which was widely regarded as one of the best books of this year. Of course, Gross was a prolific artist from whose work any number of collections could be made. I have clipped some of his daily strips from the twenties and thirties, which I will show tomorrow - and from what I have seen his 1940's series That's My Pop was very easy to like as well.

One of Gross' more obscure efforts was his 1944/45 version of Nize Baby. Nize Baby had been the title of a series of illustrated stories he did in the twenties. When they were collected, they were the basis for his fame and success. Written in his own very funny and almost illegible version of Yiddish, it was a celebration of Jewish pre-war stereotypical humor. Towards the end of the war he returned to the format with a series of letters by a Jewish mother to her son in the army, now calling it Dear Dollink. These page long piece (often with two or three illustrations) were a part of the King Features supplied Pictorial Review magazine, which had illustrated columns and short stories from all sorts of contributors - from Virgil Partch to Damon Runyon. In total there may have been as many as 100 episodes, none of which were ever collected as far as I know. They would be very suited for a collection, if not for two things: first of all, since they were first published in a large tabloid format of Pictorial Review, they would either have to be reprinted at that same pricey and unappetizing size. And secondly, the Gross' mock Jewish is so hard to get through, especially for those of us who have no reference for it, that no number of funny drawings would make up for the unreadability of it.

Still, I am trying to collect all of them and intend to self publish a digital version of a reprint book (which you can blow up to any size on your computer or tablet), possibly with notes. Unfortunately, these magazines are hard to come by and since every city was allowed to make their own line-up from the King Features offerings that some of the ones I got turned out to have no Gross.

Which is a long winded way of introducing you to two of the sampled and ask you what you think of it. Forgotten masterpiece or justly buried in the past?

Here are some of the earlier version of Nize Baby. As you can see, Gross was pretty much allowed to do anything he liked in the twenties.

The Milt iIs On

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Milt Gross made newspaper strips from the nineteen twenties to the nineteen forties. There is so much material out there and his pages fetch such high prices on ebay, thatit is a miracle that so little of it is actually collected in books. I would ill for a book on Dave's Delicatessen, preferable with blow by blow commentary from Paul Tumey (wo does that sort of thing on his Screwball Comics page (see the link to the right). A selection.