“We All Have To Start Somewhere” Department. Case in Point No.5
Case in point No. 5 in this ongoing feature is award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Charles Saxon. Mr. Saxon died in 1988 at the age of 68. More than 700 of his sophisticated, highly-stylized cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, starting in 1956, and he also created 92 New Yorker covers. His pre-New Yorker cartoons, five of which I’m posting here, show an interesting progession in drawing style (and sense of humor).
Yes, “we all have to start somewhere”.
The first 2 cartoons are from an anthology I’ve mentioned before, “The Good Humor Book”, published in 1944. The next two are from the Saturday Evening Post, late 1940’s or early 1950’s (I’m not sure of the exact dates). The last cartoon was printed in True magazine. I found it in a paperback anthology of True cartoons, “Cartoon Laffs”, which was published in 1952.
The photo I’m including is from the back cover flyleaf of one of Charles Saxon’s own anthologies, “One Man’s Fancy”, published in 1977. Two other collections of his cartoons were published, “Oh, Happy, Happy, Happy!” (1960) and “Honesty Is One Of The Better Policies” (1984).
To see Charles Saxon’s cartoons in The New Yorker, just look at the years 1956 to 1988, or of course you can check him out in The Cartoon Bank.
Charles Saxon