100 Years of 100 Things: New Yorker Cartoons

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things, and just as WNYC is celebrating its 100th birthday, so is The New Yorker celebrating its. One of those ways is with some events and exhibits featuring 100 years of New Yorker cartoons. Did you know The New Yorker started out as a humor magazine? Did you know the line "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog," or "How about never. Is never good for you" came from New Yorker cartoons? That's where we go today for 100 Years of 100 Things thing number 79, 100 years of New Yorker cartoons. I'm delighted to have as our guest Liza Donnelly, New Yorker cartoonist and writer of over 46 years and author of the book Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Women Cartoonists. She is also producing and directing a forthcoming documentary about New Yorker cartoonists called Women Laughing, and she writes a newsletter of politics and humor called Seeing Things.

There's also a New Yorker cartoon exhibit that she's involved with called Drawn from The New Yorker: A Centennial Celebration that's up through May 3rd at the Society of Illustrator space at 128 East 63rd street in Manhattan. We'll tell you more about that exhibit. Liza, great to have you with us for this. Congratulations on 100 years of The New Yorker and welcome back to WNYC.

Liza Donnelly: Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me back, and happy birthday to WNYC.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you on behalf of everybody here. Listeners, you know we invite your oral histories in our 100-year segments. In this case, it's do you have an all-time favorite New Yorker cartoon? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, what is The New Yorker cartoon GOAT, greatest of all time, from any era of the magazine or just the one that made you laugh out loud while you were reading it on the subway and people thought you were weird, or the one that shed some light on something about modern life or even something about yourself that gave you a chuckle but also taught you something, or maybe you've even entered or even won a New Yorker Cartoon caption contest?

212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, it's your favorite New Yorker cartoon from any era or just the one that comes right to mind that stuck with you enough that when I say a 100 years of New Yorker cartoons, that's the one that popped right into your head or your own caption contest entries. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, give us a call or send us a text. Liza, in conjunction with the exhibit, I read the language that's posted with that, and I'm not sure if you wrote it, but it begins with the idea that The New Yorker was founded in 1925 as a humor magazine. Now we think of it as being so much more serious than that today, though of course it includes humor. What was the original idea?

Liza Donnelly: Yes, I did write that, Brian. The original idea, Harold Ross and Jane Grant came up with this idea, they were married journalists, and wanted to do a humor magazine for New York City for the urban elite. Harold Ross had worked at Judge, which is another humor magazine, and didn't like that kind of down-home humor. He wanted something more sophisticated. They saw a need. The magazine didn't really do well for the first three or four months, but as we know now, it took off like a rocket ship. Actually, art was there in the beginning. Cartoons were there in the beginning, and those were really successful from the get go because there were so many artists and cartoonists living in New York and working on newspapers and magazines.

Brian Lehrer: That article you wrote says "Single-panel cartoons had previously been illustrated jokes: a line of dialogue and a drawing," so what was different about the early New Yorker cartoons?

Liza Donnelly: They started, I don't know who really wanted this to happen, but Ross, maybe the art director, he hired Rea Irvin, who's responsible for the font we all know and love, they wanted something more modern and more quick to get, so they brought in these artists, they were all freelance, to do drawings, and many of these artists were classically trained cartoonists. They studied art in art school, but they were funny people, and they worked with the editors in many cases to make this piece of art that was a combination of word and image. That's what we know now as a New Yorker cartoon. It's a thing that works together. The art needs the words, and the words need the art. It's not just like here's a funny joke and this is the illustration that tells you what it's about.

Brian Lehrer: Right. It elevated the visual.

Liza Donnelly: Yes, elevated the visual, and they work together to make the cartoon captions shorter, quicker, more gettable, the context is [unintelligible 00:05:36].

Brian Lehrer: Do the cartoonists always do both the visual and the line? It's not necessarily the same talent?

Liza Donnelly: No. We're a weird breed, Brian. I think many of us do do both. I actually don't know now if it's most, but I think most of us do do both. It's like a worldview coming from one person that's looking at the world and finding something funny in it or something meaningful in it and sharing it with readers. Sometimes people use caption writers, they're called gag writers, and they did that a lot of that in the '30s and '40s, and then in my generation, when I started the late '70s, it became sort of a point of pride that you didn't use a gag writer. Like Roz Chast of course doesn't use a gag writer. Jack Ziegler didn't. I never did. Michael Maslin didn't. We were all doing it both.

Brian Lehrer: There's an early cartoon, very first issue, I think, that you drew to our attention yesterday, and I looked at it yesterday, I'd never seen it before, about keeping the subway clean. It's just a sweet-looking guy, a strap hanger, literally holding the strap while he's wiping off a window from inside the subway car. Did I describe that right, or what was the context for that?

Liza Donnelly: Yes, that's a good description, but the thing that makes it work even better is there's a sign inside of the subway car that says, "Help keep our subway clean." This man is taking that sign to heart and he's wiping the windows to clean the subway. It's the first cartoon in the first issue. It's by Al Frueh, and I just love it because it's like it tells you about New York a little bit and it tells you about somebody's generosity, and it's also captionless. I love captionless cartoons. It's my favorite form.

Brian Lehrer: You've singled out some others for us I guess from the exhibit that I'll read the captions for in a minute, and you can describe the visual-

Liza Donnelly: I'll try.

Brian Lehrer: -if you're willing to play that way-

Liza Donnelly: I'll try.

Brian Lehrer: -but just tell us one other narrative thing first. Is there a chronological 100 years story to tell? Did New Yorker cartoons from different decades or eras tend to contain certain kinds of humor or certain kinds of commentary or certain kinds of art? You mentioned that one thing, which was that in the '30s and '40s, they did hire joke writers to go with the art, and by the '70s it became a point of pride not to do that. Anything else that you would consider sort of chronological tent poles?

Liza Donnelly: That's a great question. The drawing styles have shifted over the years. I don't know if I can pinpoint different time periods for that, but if you look at the early cartoons, like I said, there are many well-drawn, for want of a better word, cartoons. Helen Hokinson, one of the early women cartoonists, she she studied art in Chicago, and so you can see she knows how to render a person perfectly, but she has humor in her line, even though it's perfectly rendered, woman standing there waving at a ocean liner, but it's funny because of the way she drew it. Those, in the early days, there was more of that. Now it's more single-line drawings that are less rendered like that. Not saying that they're badly drawn. Like James Thurber didn't know how to draw a stitch, but his stuff is wonderful.

Brian Lehrer: All right, I'll read the caption, you describe the art or the meaning or the year if you know it, and credit the cartoonist if you know it, and then listeners, be patient, we'll get to yours after a few of these with Liza Donnelly from The New Yorker. The one I mentioned in the intro, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog," which you say is the most reprinted cartoon.

Liza Donnelly: Yes. That's by Peter Steiner, and I don't have the year in my brain, but it's probably the '90s, right when the internet start out. Right?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Liza Donnelly: That, you can imagine why that was so reprinted, it spoke to everybody who were trying to navigate the internet. That's what cartoons do. They tell us about ourselves and we can relate to what the artist is showing us.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and I'll bet even back in the '90s, that provoked a variety of feelings, one, maybe liberation, because people who might be discriminated against or for whatever reason felt liberated by not having to be themselves per se on the internet-

Liza Donnelly: Oh, yes.

Brian Lehrer: -but, of course, there's the downside that we're living with to this day, trolling.

Liza Donnelly: Untruths on the internet, it's our biggest problem right now.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. All right, another one, "Back to the old drawing board."

Liza Donnelly: That is by Peter Arno, very well-known cartoonists from the early years, and the date on that again is probably late '30s, and that, I thought that was interesting because it also is one of those cartoons that-- that's where that phrase came from, "Back to the old drawing board." The image looks like he's a airplane designer walking towards the viewer in the cartoon, and there's other official-looking military people. In the background, you see this army plane has crashed into the ground and up in flames, and so he's just smiling and saying, "Back to the old drawing board."

Brian Lehrer: I was shocked to see that they made a joke out of a plane crash.

Liza Donnelly: [laughs] I know. Again, you'll find a lot of shocking cartoons if you look at the history of some of the cartoons, they're racist and sexist.

Brian Lehrer: I guess the word old got dropped in the common usage, but I never knew until I was reading in for this segment yesterday that that-

Liza Donnelly: Oh, great.

Brian Lehrer: -very common expression, "Back to the drawing board," came from a New Yorker cartoon. All right, another one. "All right, have it your way. You heard a seal bark."

Liza Donnelly: This is James Thurber, my favorite cartoonist in the past, actually one of two favorites, and he had a quick story for that. He was started as a writer, maybe some of your listeners don't know, he wrote the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He was a humor writer, and E.B. White was his friend and office mate, and E.B. encouraged him to submit and he didn't because Thurber was sketching all the time on his desk. E.B. White went around his back and submitted a version of this to Harold Ross, and eventually they bought it.

Harold Ross was not happy with Thurber's drawings. He didn't understand them, and he said, "What are these things?" At first they didn't buy it and Thurber and White went off and did a book together called Is Sex Necessary? which was a bestseller in 1929, and that infuriated Ross, so he came back and wanted to buy this cartoon. The funny thing I'm going to tell you is that when Thurber submitted the finished drawing for this cartoon, the art director, Rea Irvin, said, "Whiskers on seals don't go that way," and E.B. White said to him, "Well, Thurber's seal whiskers go that way." That's the thing about cartoons is you can make stuff up within reason and if it works, it works.

Brian Lehrer: Ah, so that's James Thurber, and "All right, have it your way. You heard a seal bark," it's kind of a middle-aged or older couple in bed, right?

Liza Donnelly: Right. Oh, yes, and there's a seal on the headboard, so it's a story about a marriage, I think.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see. One more for now. We'll take some from our listeners. Maybe we'll come back and do a few more with you too. "See you in two weddings, three unconfirmed plans."

Liza Donnelly: Oh, it goes on. There's more to that caption, but that's basically it. It's two Black women talking to each other, and it's again, a slice of life about relationships and friendships, but it's just two women talking to each other. I wanted to show that to you because it's Sarah Akinterinwa, and she's British and she's Black, and The New Yorker has made a concerted effort to increase diversity among their cartoon communities in terms of race and gender, and they've done it. Well, actually, racial diversity has a ways to go, but gender diversity is pretty equal now, but it's great to hear from everybody, Brian, because you have to hear from everybody, right?

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely. I know one of your interests has long been the women cartoonists of The New Yorker, and you're working on the new thing with respect to that as well, but was there a first? Were there no women cartoonists at the beginning and then there was a first?

Liza Donnelly: No, there was a woman in the first issue of the first magazine, and her name was Ethel Plummer. She was the only woman in the issue. That was 1925, and in the '20s, there were a handful of women drawing cartoons. There was a bit more freedom for women in the '20s in New York City and a certain demographic. The New Yorker never said no women. It was founded by Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant, who was a activist feminist, so they were open to women, so there may be 8, I would say 8 women out of 40 men. That's not a great ratio, but at least they were there.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, we're in our 100 Years of a 100 Things series. Today, it's 100 years of cartoons in The New Yorker because it's their 100th anniversary, too, and they're celebrating in various ways, including an exhibit called Drawn from The New Yorker: A Centennial Celebration up through May 3rd at the Society of Illustrators. There's space at 128 East 63rd Street.

Our guest is Liza Donnelly, New Yorker cartoonist and writer of 46 years and author of the book Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Women Cartoonists. She's also producing and directing a forthcoming documentary about New Yorker cartoonists called Women Laughing, and she writes a newsletter of politics and humor called Seeing Things. All right, let's hear what some people are going to shout out as their most memorable New Yorker cartoon. Holly in Stamford, you're on WNYC. Hi, Holly.

Holly: Hey, thanks for taking my call. I immediately called because I have a killer favorite cartoon. I'm a psychiatrist. There's a two-panel cartoon by Danny Shanahan. The first panel says, "Lassie, get help. Timmy's drowning." The second panel is Lassie lying on the psychiatrist couch getting therapy, and I have this framed in my psychiatry office and I've been looking at it for years. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

Liza Donnelly: That's great. Yes. As soon as you start talking, I think I knew which one you were going to mention because everybody loves that one. It's great.

Brian Lehrer: She talks about having it framed in her office. Do you know I have one-

Liza Donnelly: Oh, really?

Brian Lehrer: -framed, someone gave me a gift because of what I do for a living. The caption is "Why kids don't host talk shows," and it's a kid in the host chair saying to his guest, another kid he knows, "Don't you hate Eric?" I don't even know who the artist is. Do you happen to know?

Liza Donnelly: No, I don't. Doesn't ring a bell.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah-- Oh, go ahead. What were you going to say?

Liza Donnelly: No, just that this is why we love cartoons, New Yorker cartoons is because they tell us about ourselves, right?

Brian Lehrer: Indeed. Deborah in Branchville, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Deborah.

Deborah: Hi. My very favorite New Yorker cartoon, and this is going back quite a while, was the caption is taken from famous song and it pictures a frog and a toad and a tadpole sitting at an outdoor bar, and I would suggest, like a country setting, and the caption is, "Give me one for my baby and one more for the toad."

Brian: Oh.

Deborah: I love that, and I have to say this, my good friend, the late Isaac Asimov, who loved The New Yorker, 36 years ago on Thanksgiving called me and he said, "I've written over 500 books. You write one measly little children's book and it gets recommended by The New Yorker," and this was on Thanksgiving morning and I went crazy trying to-- and where was I going to get a copy of The New Yorker?

Up in the wilds of rural New Jersey, and Isaac was, "Don't worry, I've got it. I've got it for you," and it was me recommending my book Is Your Mama a Llama on the New York Christmas list 36 years ago in 1989. I'm glad to say it's still in print, and I remain forever a wonderful fan. Also, I want to shout out Bob Eckstein, who I think your guest will know, who's a wonderful New Yorker-- he was writing cartoons for The New Yorker for quite a while, and he's the author of several books, and I think one of his favorites was, you know the classic scene of somebody going up a hill to consult a guru, but on the top of this hill is a Rubik's Cube?

Liza Donnelly: Oh, right. That was very gentle.

Deborah: You remember that one?

Liza Donnelly: Yes.

Deborah: I thank you for doing this segment. It's terrific.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah, thank you.

Liza Donnelly: We need it.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Brad in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Brad. What's your cartoon?

Brad: I've got two cartoons. I want to thank you. It's a great segment and something we really need at this time. The one that I think is the truest is the guy standing behind the desk and saying, "No, Thursday is no good for me. How about never. Is never good for you?" The one that I always laugh at is the one set in the Old West with the snails, where one snail is about an inch away in a black hat and somebody's talking to the sheriff in a white hat and saying, "You'll never catch him. He's long gone. I just love both of those cartoons."

Brian Lehrer: Brad, thank you very much. Sig in Manha--

Liza Donnelly: The first-

Brian Lehrer: Oh, go ahead.

Liza Donnelly: Sorry. The first one was by Bob Mankoff, who was our cartoon editor for many years.

Brian Lehrer: He had an anthology of New Yorker cartoons book that carried that as the title. Right? Wasn't it How about Never? Something like that?

Liza Donnelly: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: Is Never Good for You. Sig in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sig.

Sig: Hi. I'm afraid it's not even funny, but I constantly am reminded of a simple cartoon, two people, doesn't matter what sex they are, one's telling the other, "My desire to stay well informed is at odds with my need to remain sane."

Brian Lehrer: Ooh, that could have been published yesterday.

Liza Donnelly: Yes, that is fairly recent, I think, but I can't remember who did that, I think Al Frueh.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another kind of issue, related one, I think from Alyssa in Fairfield County. Alyssa, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Alyssa: Hi. Thanks for having me. The one that I remember the most came out after 9/11, and it's two guys sitting at a bar and having drinks and one of them says to the other, "Well, if we don't have this drink, then the terrorists win," or something along those lines. It wasn't so much as like haha funny, but it opened a door to a conversation with my mom, who is this ex-hippie, very liberal, and talking about what-- we had conversations about what does it mean to be a citizen in the new normal? What does the war on terrorism mean to each of us as individuals? Was it okay to suspend certain liberties, and so on. I think for me, that cartoon was the first time that I saw something kind of in a different light. It's not just haha funny, it can be, but it's real journalism, and it was cool. I still remember it to this day.

Liza Donnelly: Yes. Actually, a comment on that. Just that's why I got into New Yorker cartooning because I loved that they weren't all just laugh out loud, they were comments on what was going on, I do a lot of those kind of drawings, but it is, it makes you think, right?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, if we don't have the strength, the terrorists win, but there don't tend to be sort of head on political cartoons in The New Yorker, right?

Liza Donnelly: No, I did one in 1984, my first political cartoon for them, and it was a man in a Chinese restaurant and he's opening his fortune from his fortune cookie and the fortune says, "You will find love and happiness and vote for Fritz Mondale." Most people won't remember who that was, but it was commenting on the politics at the time.

Brian Lehrer: He lost to Reagan by about 1,000 points.

Liza Donnelly: [laughs] Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Last question before I let you plug the event a little bit. Is there sort of a Trump era ethos for New Yorker cartoons, either Trump won or now?

Liza Donnelly: Is there a Trump ethos?

Brian Lehrer: Like cartoons that are more likely to be seen in The New Yorker are some takes on these times that New Yorker cartoonists are publishing, because a lot of our listeners think we live in uniquely extreme times after all.

Liza Donnelly: Right. It's a hard one to answer, Brian. I think they do put more politically leaning and anti-Trump cartoons when they have them on their daily cartoon. They now have this daily online cartoon, and the political cartoons are fewer to my eyes in the print magazine. Those have to be more evergreen in a way. Even though the Mondale one I described you was in print, of course, but I think they do less. When Trump was first elected, I know that David Remnick, the senior editor, published a lot of anti-Trump cartoons online. It's not quite like that now, but perhaps it should be.

Brian Lehrer: You want to end with a plug this exhibit of New Yorker cartoons at the Society of Illustrators?

Liza Donnelly: Yes, thank you. Society of Illustrators is a wonderful place. If you haven't been, it's on the upper east side, 63rd and Lexington Avenue. I curated two floors of New Yorker cartoons from 1925 to the present day, and it was such a joy to do. The Society of Illustrators is a wonderful place to see other types of art, illustration and cartoons. The second floor, which is where the exhibit starts, will be open till May 2nd, I think. Unfortunately, the third floor, where all the older cartoons were hung, had to close because there was another exhibit coming in, but you can go see a lot of great contemporary cartoons. George Booth, a lot of George Booth. There's a William Hamilton there, Roz Chast, so it's a lot of fun. I recommend it. It's great.

Brian Lehrer: That's great, and up through May 3rd. When can we look forward to your forthcoming documentary that I see you're doing about New Yorker cartoonists to be called Women Laughing?

Liza Donnelly: Yes, we don't have a release date yet, but it'll be this spring or summer, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Well, come back when it comes. Okay?

Liza Donnelly: If people want to keep up with it, it's womenlaughingfilm.com. There'll be news there or on my website or my Substack.

Brian Lehrer: Liza Donnelly from The New Yorker, thanks for celebrating 100 years of New Yorker cartoons in our 100 Years of 100 Things series.

Liza Donnelly: Thank you, Brian.

 

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