By: Fred Bailey

Fred Bailey — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:28:17 +0000

I remeber The Saturday Evening Post had a contest for an artist to “replace” (?) Norman rockwell, probably in the 50′s or 60′s. I remember this one young artist was so good. Any information ?

By: Dick Bloom, PA

Dick Bloom, PA — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:15:12 +0000

There must be a few hundred men in their fifties who look at the little boy in the closet in George Hughes’s “Christmas in Hiding” and see themselves, but at 6 I looked so much like Hughes’s model that the artist might have been painting my portrait. I’ve been comforted by that thought since I first became aware of this cover, for the Christmas of 1960 was the most memorable of my childhood and one during whose shopping season I was NOT aware of the identity of my gift. When I awoke on a cold and sunny Christmas morning, Santa had not only filled the stockings my little brother and I had hung over the fireplace but had left a brand-new football uniform in red and white with the giant number “33″ on the jersey as well. With our hometown Philadelphia Eagles on their way to the NFL championship that year and footballer JFK recently elected president, I was thrilled to have a uniform that said I played football, too. The cosmic happiness a six year old child knows at Christmas defies adequate description and justifies everything that’s ever been done to perpetuate the holiday. That child’s perfect contentment is the seed of all succeeding happinesses, without which he would be unable to recognize love or find satisfaction at work. So let us again give thanks this year to the pagans, the Germans, and the Madison Avenue advertisers who collectively have given us this ancient celebration of Christ and the solstice, if only in the name of the six year old in all of us.

Comments on: Classic Covers: For Your Eyes Only

By: Fred Bailey

By: Dick Bloom, PA