Saturday 17 December 2011

More Caricatures Than There Are in Heaven

All-star pictures fell on North American movie theatres in World War Two as often as bombs on Berlin. And not all of the pictures bombed.

Here’s a great ad from Boxoffice magazine for the 1943 MGM extravaganza “Thousands Cheer.”



The thing that struck me instantly was that I had seen the caricature of Lucille Ball before. And so has anyone else who watched “The Lucy Show” in the 1960s.




It’s a shame the ad is unsigned. If anyone knows who drew these great caricatures, please leave a comment.
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6 comments:

  1. Ted17 December 2011 at 13:44

    There's 26 caricatures in the September 18th BoxOffice, and 25 in this one; I think 26 is Benny Carter. There could be substitutions as well, but it was hard enough for me to find one difference without printing and drawing lines...
    http://cartoonsof1943.blogspot.com/2011/09/boxoffice-september-18-1943.html

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  2. J Lee17 December 2011 at 15:00

    Yowp -- the Lucy sketch was done by long, long, longtime New York Times artist Al Hirschfeld, who began his work for the paper in the mid 1920s and continued until his death in 2003. Here's a Lucy fan page with the drawing -- the site also notes he was under contract do do artwork for various studios, including MGM (and Paramount's 1954 cartoon "Popeye's 20th Anniversary" borrowed heavily from the Hirschfeld style for their celebrity charactures).

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  3. Yowp17 December 2011 at 16:50

    Thanks, JL. I've seen a different Hirscheld drawing of her. I wasn't sure if he did this one because it was a lot less exaggerated.

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  4. J Lee17 December 2011 at 17:23

    Hirschfeld's style in the 1920s-1940s was more restrained, which kind of befitted the general buttoned-down style of the New York Times of the era (though it he had stuck a couple of 'Ninas' in the Lucy drawing it would have been easy to tell it was Al's even without the signature).

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  5. cartoonjoe20 December 2011 at 00:06

    Dang, that Lucy drawing is kinda spooky-lookin'...

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  6. Anonymous24 May 2013 at 12:09

    The caricature of Lucy scared the delights out of me when I was a kid!

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