With Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the well-loved novel in the spotlight, we’ve been admiring vintage 1920s illustrations and advertisements from the pages of The Saturday Evening Post.

Here’s a look at some of the Post‘s Gatsby-era artwork. For more original illustrations and beautiful cover images, check out Gatsby Girls, available for purchase in print and digital editions.

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Vintage Gatsby-Era Art The Saturday Evening Post

Flapper and Roadster
Coles Phillips
September 23, 1922

Coles Phillips (1880-1927) was almost reckless. As a young salesman, he once got caught drawing a caricature of an important client (by the client). Another time he rented a studio with no way to pay for it. But what he lacked in prudence, Phillips made up for with confidence.

He left college in 1904 in his junior year with no plan, and, at that point, no inkling that his future would involve art. He had drawn and sketched since he was a boy but had not considered it a serious endeavor. Instead he began his career as a clerk for a company that sold radiators. That job ended shortly after a major client, who kept Phillips waiting, came up behind Phillips just in time to see the young clerk sketching a caricature of the businessman himself on an old envelope.

No, Phillips didn’t get fired. According to the 1928 Post article, “The Making of an Illustrator,” written by his widow, Teresa Hyde Phillips, the businessman loved the drawing. “He laughed a good deal and wanted to know why a chap with talent like that was holding down a job with a radiator concern.” Before long Phillips was in art school, albeit briefly. He took night classes for about three months. But it was enough time for him to know he wanted to draw. He just needed to figure out how to make it pay.

Vitralite Enamel advertisement
Coles Phillips
May 3, 1924

So the young artist visited a small ad agency with some sketches under his arm. “My name is Coles Phillips,” he said, “and I’ve dropped in with a rather important bit of news. I’m going to work for you.” Although this announcement resulted in “no marked enthusiasm on the part of his host,” his wife wrote, the sketches did impress the agency. This and the artist’s ebullient personality (and the fact “that he had a remarkable ability to sell anything, including his own ideas and work”) led to his securing a position. He was only with the ad agency a short period of time before he decided to open an agency of his own.

But Phillips grew tired of the business end of running an agency and wanted more time to draw. Studying periodicals of the period, he decided he was going to work for Life magazine. Apparently, it never occurred to him that his work could be declined. He rented a studio telling the landlord he had some important orders that would bring in plenty of money to pay him before the month was up.

He then hired a model and worked for weeks on a drawing, while the increasingly nervous landlord made frequent visits. When the drawing was finally ready, he carried it over to the Life building, asking to see the editor.

Phillips at work in his New Rochelle studio in 1921.
“The Making of an Illustrator,” The Saturday Evening Post; April 7, 1928.

A secretary informed him that Editor John Ames Mitchell was not available and that he only saw artists on Wednesdays. As luck would have it, the business manager, on his way to lunch, stopped and looked at the drawing. “I think Mr. Mitchell would like to see this,” he said.

Soon a secretary appeared with those magic words: “Mr. Mitchell would like to see Mr. Phillips.” There is an old saying that God watches over drunks and fools. Perhaps it should include brash young men. Phillips left with a check for $150.00. (Today the equivalent of that 1907 windfall would be more than $3,600.) He celebrated at a local hangout with his friends, as his wife recalled in the 1928 Post memoir, adding, “I don’t know where the landlord celebrated.”

Community Silver advertisement
Coles Phillips
December 2, 1911

Around 1908, Mitchell went to Phillips and asked if he could come up with a different kind of image. Phillips had already been working on a technique for an advertising client, and it not only worked for Life, it became the artist’s signature work.“It was what became afterward his well-known fade-away type of drawing, where the figure fades into the background and is caught here and there by some accessory or highlight,” wrote Mrs. Phillips.

The “fade-away” effect was used in this 1911 ad for Community Silver, left, and takes on an art deco vibe in the 1923 Post cover, Broken Pearls, shown below, center. This distinctive technique is shown with dazzling effect in a video put together by KistoDreams.

The likely inspiration for the 1920 cover—below, right—was the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” which had run in the Post earlier that year. The days of the beautiful but proper Gibson Girl with her lush tresses and cool demeanor was in the past, and the Roaring ’20s were here.

In the ’20s, Phillips was making an excellent living working for advertisers and a number of periodicals, including Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and, like fellow New Rochelle resident Norman Rockwell, The Saturday Evening Post.

Portrait of Coles Phillips
Norman Rockwell
April 7, 1928

“He used to get marvelous prices for his work as much as, if not more than, any illustrator,” wrote Norman Rockwell speaking of Phillips in My Life as an Illustrator. “First, he’d think of the best price he could hope for; then he’d think of his four children and add four hundred dollars. In the twenties, he received two thousand dollars a picture, which was fabulous.”

Phillips was just as forthright about expressing his opinion of the popular artist’s work, which wasn’t always kind. According to Rockwell, Phillips would criticize his work as too commercial, too bland, saying, “Old men and boys! Haven’t you got any guts? You’re young. Haven’t you got any sex? Old men and boys. For Lord’s sake!”

Although Rockwell thought of Phillips as “a smart fellow” who probably would have succeeded at whatever field he might have chosen, he wrote, “I didn’t lose any sleep over his criticisms. He didn’t like Howard Pyle. Or Rembrandt. Or Degas. Or Leonardo da Vinci. … In fact, he didn’t like anybody and couldn’t understand why an artist would want to paint anything but pretty girls.”

Click here to view the fade-away girl, along with other Coles Phillips art, in this beautiful video by KistoDreams.

Flat Tire
Coles Phillips
July 15, 1922 flat tire

Broken Pearls
Coles Phillips
November 17, 1923

Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Coles Phillips
November 6, 1920

Classic Post Artist: Coles Phillips Exemplified Roaring ’20s Style The Saturday Evening Post

Kemal Pasha
October 20, 1923
by Isaac F. Marcosson

Kemal Pasha as Field Marshal of the Turkish Army

THERE was a time when Angora was famous solely for cats and goats. Today the shambling, time-worn town far up in the Anatolian hills has another, and world-wide significance. It is not only the capital of the reconstructed Turkish Government and the seat therefore of the most picturesque of all contemporary experiments in democracy, but is likewise the home of Ghazi Mustapha Kemal Pasha—to give him his full title—who is distinct among the few vital personalities revealed by the bitter backwash of the World War.

Only Lenin and Mussolini vie with him for the center of that narrowing stage of compelling leadership. Each of these three remarkable men has achieved a definite result in a manner all his own. Lenin imposed an autocracy through force and blood. Mussolini created a personal and political dictatorship in which he dramatized himself. Kemal not only led a beaten nation to victory and dictated terms to the one-time conqueror, but set up a new and unique system of administration.

Lenin and Mussolini have almost been done to death by human or, in the case of the soviet overlord, inhuman interest historians.  Kemal Pasha is still invested with an element of mystery and aloofness largely begot of the physical inaccessibility of his position.  To the average American, he is merely a Turkish name vaguely associated with some kind of military achievement. The British Dardanelles Expedition know it much better, for he frustrated the fruits of that immense heroism written in blood and agony on the shores of Gallipoli. The Greeks have an even costlier knowledge, because he was the organizer of the victory that literally drove them into the sea in one of the most complete debacles of modern times.

At Angora I talked with this man in a critical hour of the war-born Turkish Government.  The Lausanne Conference was at the breaking point. War or peace still hung in the balance. Only the day before, Rauf Bey, the Prime Minister, had said to me: “If they [the Allies] want war they can have it.” The air was charged with tension and uncertainty. Over the troubled scene brooded the unrelenting presence of the chieftain I had traveled so far to see. Events, like the government itself, revolved about him.

In difficulty of approach and in the grim and dramatic quality of the setting, Anatolia was strongly reminiscent of my journey a year ago to the Southern Chinese front to see Sun Yat-sen. Between him and Kemal exists a certain similarity. Each is a sort of inspired leader. Each has his kindling ideal of a self-determination that is the by-product of fallen empire. Here the parallel ends. Kemal is the man of blood and iron—an orientalized Bismarck, as it were—dogged, ruthless, invincible; while Sun Yat-sen is the dreamer and visionary, eternal pawn of chance, and with as many political existences—and I might add, governments—as the proverbial cat has lives.

Turkey for the Turks
As with men, so with the peoples behind them.  You have another striking contrast. While China flounders in well-nigh incredible political chaos, due to incessant conflict of selfish purpose and lack of leadership, Turkey has emerged as a homogeneous nation for the first time in its long and bloody history, with defined frontiers, a real homeland, and a nationalistic aim that may shape the destiny of the Mohammedan world, and incidentally affect American commercial aspirations in the Near East.  ”Turkey for the Turks” is the new slogan. The instrument and inspiration of the whole astonishing evolution—it is little less than a miracle when you realize that in 1919 Turkey was as prostrate as defeat and bankruptcy could bring her—has been Kemal Pasha.

He was the real objective of my trip to Turkey.  Constantinople with its gleaming mosques and minarets, and still a queen among cities despite its dingy magnificence, had its lure, but from the hour of my arrival on the shores of the Golden Horn my interest was centered on Angora.

I had chosen a difficult time for the realization of this ambition. The Lausanne Conference was apparently mired, and the long-awaited peace seemed more distant than ever. A state of war still existed. The army of occupation gave the streets martial tone and color, while a vast Allied fleet rode at anchor in the Bosporus or boomed at target practice in the Sea of Marmora. The capital in the Anatolian hills had become even more inaccessible.

Every barrier based on suspicion, aloofness and general resentment of the foreigner—the usual Turkish trilogy— all tied up with endless red tape, worked overtime. It was a combination disastrous to swift American action. My subsequent experiences emphasized the truth of the well-known Kipling story which dealt with the fate of an energetic Yankee in the Orient whose epitaph read: “Here lies a fool who tried to hustle the East.”

To add to all this handicap begot of temperament and otherwise, the Turks had begun to realize, not without irritation, that the consummation of the Chester Concession was not so easy as it looked on paper. The last civilian who successfully applied for permission to go to Angora had been compelled to linger at Constantinople seven weeks before he got his vessica—as a visa is called in Turkish.  Two or three others had departed for home in disgust after four weeks of watchful and fruitless waiting. The prospect was not promising.

When I paid my respects to Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, the American High Commissioner, on my first day in Constantinople, I invoked his aid in getting to Angora. He promptly gave me a letter of introduction to Dr. Adnan Bey, then the principal representative of Angora in Constantinople, through whom all permits had to pass.

I went to see him at the famous Sublime Porte, the Foreign Office and the scene of so much sinister Turkish history. Here the sordid tools of Abdul-Hamid, the Red Sultan, and others no less unscrupulous, lived their day. I expected to find the structure almost as imposing as its richer mate in history, the Mosque of St. Sophia. It proved to be a dirty, rambling, yellow building without the slightest semblance of architectural beauty, and strongly in need of disinfecting.

In Adnan Bey I found my first Turkish ally. Moreover, I discovered him to be a man of the world with a broad and generous outlook. An early aid of Kemal in the precarious days of the nationalist movement, he became the first vice president of the Angora Government.  Moreover, he had another claim to fame, for he is the husband of the renowned Halide Hanum, the foremost woman reformer of Turkey, whom I was later to meet in interesting circumstances at Munich, and whose story will be disclosed in a subsequent article. Adnan Bey, however, is not what we would call a professional husband in America. Long before he rallied to the Kemalist cause he was widely known as one of the ablest physicians in Turkey.

He at once sent a telegram to Angora asking for my permission to go. This permission is concretely embodied in a pass—the aforesaid vessica—which is issued by the Constantinople prefect of police. Back in the days of the Great War it was a difficult procedure to get the so-called white pass which enabled the holder to go to the front. Compared with the coveted permission to visit Angora, that pass was about as inaccessible as a public handbill, as I was now to discover.

Adnan Bey told me that he would have an answer from Angora in about three days. I found that three days was like the Russian word seichas which technically means “immediately” but when employed in action or rather lack of action on its own ground, usually spells “next month.”

Red-Tape Entanglements
After a week passed, the American Embassy inquired of the Sublime Porte if they had heard about my application, but no word had come. A few days later Turkish officialdom went mad. An order was promulgated that no alien except of British, French or Italian nationality could enter or leave Constantinople without the consent of Angora. People who had left Paris or London, and they included various Americans, with existing credentials, were held up at the Turkish frontier, despite the fact that the order had been issued after they had started. Thanks to Admiral Bristol’s prompt and persistent endeavors, the frontier ban was lifted from Americans. Angora became swamped overnight with telegraphic protests and requests, and I felt that mine was completely lost in the new and growing shuffle.

Meanwhile I had acquired a fine upstanding young Turk, Reschad Bey by name, who spoke English, French and German fluently, as dragoman, which means courier and interpreter. No alien can go to Angora without such an aid, because, save in a few isolated spots, the only language spoken in Anatolia is Turkish. Reschad Bey was really an inheritance from Robert Imbrie, who had just retired after a year as American consul at Angora. Reschad Bey had been his interpreter. Much contact with Imbrie had acquainted him with American ways and he thoroughly sympathized with my impatience over the delay. He had a strong pull at Angora himself and sent some telegrams to friends in my behalf.

At the expiration of the second week Admiral Bristol made a personal appeal to Adnan Bey to expedite my permission, and a second strong telegram went from the Sublime Porte to Angora. Other Turkish and American individuals whom I had met added their requests by wire. Of course I was occupied with other work, but I had only a limited amount of time at my disposal and when all was said and done, Kemal was the principal prize of the trip and I was determined to land him. Early in July therefore I sent Reschad Bey to Angora to find out just what the situation was. He departed on the morning of the Fourth. When I returned to my hotel from attending the Independence Day celebration at the embassy I found a telegram from Angora addressed to Reschad Bey in my care from one of his friends in the government, saying that my permission to go to Angora had been wired nine days before! Yet on the previous morning the Sublime Porte had declared that Angora was still silent on my request.

Kemal Pasha: Conflict in Turkey The Saturday Evening Post

Back when it was crowded with booksellers, Book Row would have attracted anyone who loved reading. But it was irresistible to bibliophiles and bibliomanics. A bibliophile is anyone who loves the look, feel, and scent of books as much as their contents. Bibliomanics, however, are obsessed by books. They are fanatic hunters and compulsive buyers, usually purchasing more books than they can read in their lifetime.

In his 1944 article, “Book Row,” Don Samson gives a brief history of a bibliomaniac who haunted the area.

A shoe clerk from Brooklyn wandered into one of the secondhand bookshops on Book Row. He had never bought a book in his life, but picking up a musty volume, he liked the feel of it and bought it. The more he handled it, the more he liked it. He began buying books, and after a year his modest apartment was filled with them. Finally, his wife couldn’t take a bath because the tub was full of books. “You love your books more than you do me,” she wept, and threatened to go home to mother unless he got rid of them. He did. But within two weeks he was buying books again. His wife? She went home to mother.

There is something about books that provokes fascination and the odd compulsions that Samson saw in Book Row’s regulars:

A regular cash customer is the lady of the evening who collects the works of Marcel Proust. There is the Bowery bum who panhandles to buy books containing the word” hell,” books which he burns” to destroy the devil.” And there is the lawyer, internationally known, who collects books with uncut pages. “Virgin books,” he calls them.

Some people buy anything. Others, like the editor who has seventy-five copies of South Wind, will buy only copies of a single title. A collector who has all the dealers mystified is a banker who buys books in one series, Burt’s Home Library of popular classics. He tears the covers off and has the books and the covers restitched, switching titles and covers so that no book has the right title. Thus Alice in Wonderland becomes Black Beauty; The Divine Comedy, The Last Days of Pompeii, and so on. He boasts to the dealers, “You should see my library. It’s wonderful!”

The hangout for lovers of the unusual is a shop that specializes in strange books. Many are first attracted to the shop by the huge, black, plaster-of-Paris cat that crouches menacingly in the window; others are led here by their “vibrations.” An old German woman used to come regularly to buy books on the occult. One day she bought a book entitled “How to Make Yourself Invisible.”

“And she never came back,” says the dealer. “At least, we never saw her again.”

Book smellers are common. But they are hard to detect because, while running the nose along the bindings, they appear to be short-sightedly browsing. One smeller, a college professor, collects old, odoriferous volumes and wears the badge of his fraternity—a redrubbed nose. A well-known actress, a confessed smeller who never buys a book, is allowed the run of the shops because of the trade she attracts.

There are also book dusters. A good one can dust as many as fifty books in a single visit. He picks up a book, looks at the price marked in it, snaps it shut and, with a mighty huff and puff, blows the dust off before easing it back into place. Ironically, more men than women are dusters.

Odd behavior, I’ll grant you. An electronic book would never excite such mania, or even a semblance of this fascination. E-books will never hold the sensual appeal of what, for many Americans, is the “real thing”: a clean, hard-bound, octavo with clear, dark type on bright, clean pages. And books have several practical benefits. In a recent New York Times article, Sam Grobart wrote about the technical gadgets we won’t need in the future: desktop computers, digital cameras, and iPods. But he advised readers to keep their books. Compared to e-books, the real thing has “a terrific, high-resolution display,” durability, greater water-resistance, and “tremendous battery life.”

The Bibliomaniacs of Book Row The Saturday Evening Post

Vaudeville was at the height of its popularity, and three performances a day, with four on Saturday and five on Sunday, was considered a vacation. A week which only called for one split engagement was a rest cure.

The standard vaudeville wage was forty dollars for a single and sixty dollars for a double; quartets were paid $150 and headliners $200.

Theater curtains were rolled on a log, and to be hit by one was sure death. Stage hands changed the sets in full lights and their shirt sleeves, and the proprietor’s daughter always played the piano. That’s how he came to be the proprietor.

The Three Nightingales became the Four Marx Brothers when Brother Arthur joined the act. When he spoke his first lines we realized he was born to be a pantomimist. We laughed indulgently when he said he’d like to take lessons on a harp and our act was called “Fun In Hi Skool.” This spelling was considered to be very comical in those days and, in fact, was the biggest laugh in the act. As I recall it now, it was the only laugh

Art Fischer,a monologist, disturbed our poker game in Champaign, Illinois, by calling Arthur “Harpo”; Leo “Chico”; Herbert “Zeppo”; and me “Groucho.” He was the only kibitzer on record who ever said anything of value.

Our booking agent was one Minnie Palmer and so was our mother.

Railroad fare was two cents a mile, and hotels had a standard rate of six dollars a week, including a midnight supper after the show.

The musical saw had not made its appearance on the vaudeville stage, and every burlesque show had an Irish and a Jew comedian, as well as a rich widow. It was considered quite the thing to have the saxophone player stretch out across the piano, and the violinist was a bust unless he could fiddle behind his back. All good drummers threw their sticks in the air, and the member of the orchestra who played the loudest was made the leader.

Harvard still won football championships… and men who played golf were considered effeminate.  Every well-dressed man wore an elk’s tooth for a watch charm, and a fellow who could blow smoke rings was a social success.

It was a swell house that had more than one bathroom There were very few two-car families, but there was always meat on the table. No hot dog was complete without sauerkraut. Liver was given away with each purchase of meat

Chorus girls were picked for weight, not speed, and shop girls work silk stockings only on Sunday.

“Skidoo” was considered a pretty smart crack. Girls blushed when a wise-cracker would say, “Oh, you chicken!”… and only in a terrific windstorm were a girl’s knees visible.

What the country needed was a good three-cent cigar Beer was a nickel a glass… and dinners with candles were unknown except in homes of plumbers.

Half the population had stiff necks from looking at Halley’s Comet, and you could park as long as you liked in Times Square.

Actors spent their spare time in pool rooms, and if anybody had told me that a magazine would pay me to write articles I would have sneered derisively — If I had known what that meant.

When I Was Young And Charming The Saturday Evening Post

Swimming Hole by Norman Rockwell

Swimming Hole
Norman Rockwell
August 11, 1945
© SEPS 1945

This is a charming story-in-a-picture of a salesman making a long drive on a hot August day. No air conditioning in the car, of course. He spots a swimming hole, pulls over and goes for it. He carefully lays his glasses on a newspaper and his lit cigar on his shoe, to be picked up when he emerges (Rockwell was all about details). And then shows us a face of pure bliss. “George Zimmer, my model,” reported Norman Rockwell, “was an awful good sport. He stripped and I poured several buckets of water over his head to get the effect.” And you thought modeling was easy!

Drink of Water by Frank X. Leyendecker

Drink of Water
Frank X. Leyendecker
August 22, 1914
© SEPS 1914

We love this cover from August of 1914 by artist Frank X. Leyendecker (brother of Post cover artist J.C.). Frank did sixteen Post covers, and this one is delightful. Delivering papers in August is hot, tiring work, and the kid deserves a cool drink. The fact that his drinking buddy happens to be a horse doesn’t concern him.

Watering Father by Richard Sargent

Watering Father
Richard Sargent
June 4, 1955
© SEPS 1955

We’d all like to see this scene three seconds later, but this is what we have to work with. While Mom is busy planting and watering flowers, Junior is thinking Dad’s pasty white skin needs a cool-down. Whether Dad agreed it was a good idea is a mystery left up to the viewer. Sargent was great with humorous scenes and a master at the pregnant pause, the “what-happens-next” moment.

Wet Swim Suit by Clarence F. Underwood

Wet Swim Suit
Clarence F. Underwood
August 24, 1912
© SEPS 1912

We know, you’re shocked. A pretty young lady in a swimsuit on the cover of the staid and venerable Saturday Evening Post. And in 1912 yet! Well, even young ladies in 1912 deserved a cool-down. At least we don’t have to wring out the heavy skirts of our swimsuits these days. Artist Clarence F. Underwood did over forty Post covers. Even though most of them were in the 19-teens, many showed active women: fishing, playing tennis, canoeing, even plowing a field. Of course, they looked surprisingly pretty doing all this.

Sitting on the Diving Board by Penrhyn Stanlaws

Sitting On the Diving Board
Penrhyn Stanlaws
August 19, 1933
© 1933 SEPS.

My, how bathing suits changed in a mere twenty-one years! In a swimsuit more suited for immersion, the pretty lady from 1933 is just dipping her toes in the water. Go figure. Curtis Publishing (curtispublishing.com) shows many gorgeous Stanlaws covers, usually of lovely young ladies holding a teacup or bouquet. He did a total of thirty-seven Post covers between 1913 and 1938. (Warning: if you look up his covers on the Curtis website, you’ll want to buy prints of them all.)

Cool Bear by Charles Livingston Bull

Cool Bear
Charles Livingston Bull
August 19, 1922
© SEPS 1922

Then there’s the total immersion therapy. This is from Country Gentleman magazine (a sister publication) in 1922 by great wildlife artist, Charles Livingston Bull. If that water looks good to you, a word of advice: Find another place to cool down.

Classic Covers: August Cool-Down The Saturday Evening Post

A large part of his success came from his willingness to reinvent his game and himself. For instance, he overcame country-club prejudice against immigrants by redesigning his name, changing it to the less-Italian-sounding Gene Sarazen. (For a while, he even tried passing himself off as a Scottish MacSarazen.)

Another innovation came in the late ’20s, with his invention of the sand wedge—a club found in any respectable golf bag today.

For years I had been afflicted with that dread malady of the links which, for lack of a better term, I call “trap phobia.” It’s a virulent plague that strikes at the hearts of men and turns them to stone… Nearly every championship is decided in and out of traps, with the result that you either master your niblick before a title event or you might as well start back home and save the caddie fees.

A “niblick,” for the great majority of us who don’t know, was a club with a slightly angled face resembling a modern nine iron.

Personally, I wasn’t able to save anything—neither fees nor strokes nor reputation. I lived through some pretty desperate years that way, and then, suddenly, the answer came at a time and place when I wasn’t thinking about golf at all.

The scene is Roosevelt Field, Long Island, the year 1928; I was idly watching the planes land and take off, without the faintest thought of golf… I had noticed that as the pilot started to take off he lowered the rudder to get the plane in flying position. And within a few moments I was murmuring absently to myself: “How about a rudder on the back of my niblick?”

The result was a special niblick with the rear edge one-quarter of an inch lower than the front edge of the blade… it is designed with a rudder like an airplane, and its effect was amazing. I don’t fear the traps now.

Sarazen also designed a four wood that enabled him to make one of the most famous shots in golf history. It was during the 1935 Masters tournament, and he was approaching the fifteenth hole three strokes behind the leader, Craig Wood, who had completed play. Sarazen still thought he had a chance to catch up over the next three holes. In fact, he completely passed Wood with his next shot.

I found myself with a downhill lie, one of the toughest of fairway shots, but I still had a hunch up my sleeve or, rather, in the bag, to cover the situation. That was my club especially designed to offset the effects of this awkward shot. Selecting this club, I stood slightly ahead of the ball and toed the club head in at address. Then, as I came down into the shot, I drew the face of the club slightly across the ball in order to get it high enough to carry the water.

The ball sailed over 230 yards, clearing the water hazard, onto the green, and into the cup.

It was called the greatest shot ever made in a pinch; also some other things not quite so complimentary, there doubtless being an element of luck in holing a 230-yard shot from the fairway… What was I thinking of? Somebody asked me that after the round, and the answer was simple enough. “I was thinking of getting 230 yards,” said I grimly. “And I got it exactly to the last inch. Lucky? Oh, yes; quite lucky. But it was a good shot, hit exactly the way I wanted to hit it.”

More impressive than his mastering of the game, though, was Sarazen’s mastering of himself.

Straight as an arrow. Watching the ball fly down the fairway for a birdie.

At that time my temper was inflammable and quite beyond control. A bad shot was something to drive me into a tantrum, with the result that my reputation for club-throwing somewhat exceeded my prestige as a golfer. I recall, for instance, that I used a member’s putter during one round of the course in which I missed all putts from three to thirty feet.

The first thing I did was to head for the pro’s shop. The next was to put the putter in a vise and saw it into sections. This sounds crazy as I tell it now, but it actually happened. The third thing was to leave the sawed-off sections in the member’s locker. I later paid him for the club, but I hardly think he appreciated the spirit of the thing. It didn’t seem to occur to me at the time that he might have cherished the club.

Anyhow, I was so boisterous around a golf course that everybody got a laugh when I was paired with Bobby Jones for the first two rounds of the national open championship at the Columbia Country Club, Washington, D. C., in 1921. They thought we would wind up in each other’s beards, Bobby being quite a man for temperamental outbursts in those days. The result was that we made a private bet, whereby each was to forfeit five dollars to the other every time he threw a club, and the funny thing was that not a dollar changed hands for the two days. I don’t know what this did for Jones, but it convinced me of one thing: If it was going to cost me money, I wasn’t the man to lose my temper.

That was the beginning. The finish of Sarazen-the-fanatic came through my wife, Mary, and Walter Hagen, an arch-opponent. My wife shamed me into a degree of decent behavior on a golf course by telling me how the gallery murmured inaudibly and then walked away in tacit disapproval after one of my periodic outbursts. “Every time you get riled and show it,” she said quietly, “you lose some friends. I know you’re only mad at yourself. They don’t. They think you’re a bad sport.”

I’m not insensible to the importance of the men and women who pay for the show and thus make my living possible. It occurred to me, in fact, that I had as much privilege to step out of my part and rant at destiny as would an actor onstage in suddenly abandoning his character and haranguing the audience.

Hagen did the rest—by precept. I have played many a round with him and don’t mind conceding several points, including the fact that there is no great devotion between us. But in one respect I have to move well back and let him stand alone. As a golfer who can take the good with the bad, he’s a positive standout. I’ve seen him get the worst breaks a man ever had and never for a moment betray the fact that he had noticed anything out of the ordinary. To one of Hagen’s sublime self-faith, the alibi is simply not to be thought of.

This may be regarded as a surprising tribute, coming as it does from a man who openly stated before the 1933 championship at Chicago that Hagen belonged in an armchair and who, in turn, had to accept the ignominy of a rather grim jest by Hagen before the end of the tournament.

He waited, in fact, for the final round and the certainty that I was to get nowhere on those abominations known as the creeping-bent greens. Then he called a clubhouse attendant, gave him five dollars and an armchair and told him to take the latter out to me on the fifteenth tee.

Read “I Play Hunches,” by Gene Sarazen, August 31, 1935 [PDF].

The Old Masters: Gene Sarazen Reinvents His Clubs and Self The Saturday Evening Post

Toddler Watering Geraniums by K.R. Wireman, June 28, 1924 (The Country Gentleman)

Toddler Watering Geraniums
K. R. Wireman
The Country Gentleman
June 28, 1924

The Country Gentleman magazine (from the same publisher as the Post) showed us that gardeners come in all shapes and sizes. Cutie Patootie here wants to help with watering the flowers. This is from 1924. Artist K.R. Wireman is little known today but did about two dozen covers for The Country Gentleman magazine and about a half dozen for the Post.

Hardware Store at Springtime by Stevan Dohanos, March 16, 1946

Hardware Store at Springtime
Stevan Dohanos
March 16, 1946

This is the part I love best! Shopping for flowers at the local stores. This hardware store in 1946 is tempting your wallet with shiny equipment, seeds, and cool stuff for your patio. “There is nothing like the feel of a good rake or hoe in your hand,” the editors noted, “in the hardware store.”

Ready to Garden by J.C. Leyendecker, May 6, 1916

Ready to Garden
J. C. Leyendecker
May 6, 1916

All ready with his brand-spanking-new equipment and the latest seed catalog is this endearing fellow by artist J.C. Leyendecker. Oh, to have a shiny new push mower like this one from 1916! Oh wait, we can still get one. It’s just that it will be $100-$200 these days.

Geranium Gardener by W.D. Stevens, May 1, 1937

Geranium Gardener
W. D. Stevens
May 1, 1937

I wish artist W.D. Stevens had done more than one cover for the Post, because this is a charmer. Dig the high-tech wheelbarrow. That, a couple of rakes, a shovel, a hoe, and a watering can for one itty-bitty geranium. And darned if she doesn’t look good doing it!

Little Girl Gardener by K.R. Wireman, March 15, 1919 (The Country Gentleman)

Little Girl Gardener
K. R. Wireman
The Country Gentleman Magazine
March 15, 1919

Now THIS is a gardener! If you can grow cabbages half your size and body weight, you have accomplished something indeed. This is another adorable cover from artist K.R. Wireman and is from 1919.

Victory Garden by Howard Scott, August 7, 1943

Victory Garden
Howard Scott
August 7, 1943

Now for the part about gardening we all like least. Toiling in his victory garden in 1943, the man’s face and posture says it all. Maybe a wifely backrub and some fresh-cooked veggies will make it all worthwhile.

Classic Covers: Calling All Gardeners The Saturday Evening Post

According to a recently written history, the theft was no slight bit of corruption. In fact, the orchestrators of the theft secured the nomination for President Harding knowing he would give a free hand to his supporter, New Mexico senator Albert B. Fall, who worked diligently to sell as many natural resources as he could grab.

“It was this policy of conservation which Albert B. Fall undertook to overthrow, and he wasted no time about it. Fall took office as Secretary of the Interior in March, 1921. By April first he had already launched the idea of transferring to his department the forests of Alaska, then under the wise and efficient care of the forest service in the Department of Agriculture. Along with this came the rumor of a transfer of naval oil reserves from the Navy Department to the Department of the Interior. The next month—May, 1921—that transfer was actually made.

“Soon afterward, Fall extended his scheme of transferring the Alaskan forests to his department to take in all the national forests, and was evidently making ready to include in his attack every natural resources that was under the control of his department already, or that could be brought under it.

“Mr. Fall was confident and ambitious, but he made one mistake. He took in too much territory. Moreover, he imagined that as a public official he still could live on the Three Rivers plane, and that the methods of the old frontier would go in Washington. He was seriously mistaken.”

Fall made private deals with Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil Company and Edward Doheny of the Pan American Petroleum Company. In return for gifts of cash and no-interest, don’t-hurry-to-pay-it-back loans, Fall allowed Mammoth and Pan American to take the oil from the reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, which were intended to fuel the U.S. Navy in wartime.

President Warren G. Harding

The deal came to light. The public was outraged. Washington investigated. President Harding died before the inquiry reached him. No one was imprisoned for the crime except the fall guy; Albert B. Fall served one year in prison.

To the American public, the conclusion was as unsatisfying as that of the Enron scandal of 2001. Enron had grown from a pipeline company to a massive energy trader, but suddenly collapsed in a cloud of fraud, scandal, and suspicions of collusion with Washington insiders. Enron’s president, Ken Lay, died shortly before he was to be sentenced for his role in the collapse, which destroyed the jobs and pensions of 4000 workers.

Gifford Pinchot, in his 1924 Post article, was rightly scornful of corrupt business practices, but he unleashed his full wrath on Washington legislators who cooperated with such practices. His words, written 86 years ago, seem to capture a spirit very much alive today.

“Washington has been adrift. Some of the leaders of the people have gone astray. They thought the Ten Commandments had lost their force. It would be safe to wager that some of them think otherwise today, and safer still to believe that the American people see, as they seldom have seen before, the need for honesty in government; and are determined, as they seldom have been before, that honesty in government heneceforth shall prevail.

“It would be foolish to believe that the various investigating committees have found or will ever find all the dishonesty and betrayal that have been going on in Washington.

“What the country needs is a revival of faith in its Government. But there can be no such revival until the Government is worth believing in. There is no way the Government can be restored to public confidence unless the men who defiled it are thoroughly cleaned out.

“The breakdown of government machinery always stirs up the remedy brokers, whose confidence in any good-for-what-ails-you cure-all is the greater the less it has ever been tried. But the remedy does no lie in communism or Bolshevism or any other ism of the kind. It lies in a return to the simple, old-time, dependable virtues of personal and official honesty, fidelity and loyalty to the United States.

“Many years ago I was riding with a lumberman through the timbered mountains of Western North Caroline. He was no great talker, and neither of us had spoken for a long time, when suddenly he burst out: “Say, there’s a lot of good readin’ in the Bible, ain’t there?”

Yes; and a lot of it applies to the situation at Washington today. The trouble is perfectly diagnosed and the remedy accurately prescribed: “Thou shalt not steal.”

Scandal and Frustration: Teapot Dome and the Call to Reform The Saturday Evening Post

In boom times like these, oil companies had little time, and scant interest, in planning. As a Post writer observed in 1929,

“Authorities all agree that the United States has developed and produced its oil too rapidly… For ten years now, despite the increasing multiplicity of its uses, oil has been found faster than it could be consumed. All the time there has been more of it above ground than the market demanded. ["Taming Wild Oil Wells," Oct 19, 1929]

“The presence of too much of any commodity leads inevitably to its waste… The record of all time for the waste of a national resource has been broken in the past decade in the oil fields of the United States.

“In the state of California, for example, it is estimated that the loss of natural gas alone has been sufficient to have paid off the national debt.

“Of the oil that is in [the typical oil pool], it is believed that not more than 20 per cent is usually recovered before the flow ceases.

“In the interest of prolonging the life of the field, no gas should be allowed to blow off at random or before its full quota of work has been performed. Gas which cannot otherwise be used obviously should be pumped back into the ground so that the life of the field may be prolonged.

“Finding that they owned land over an oil dome, its possessors…  should have agreed to develop the field as a unit and split the returns in proportion to their holdings.”

They “should have” agreed, but they didn’t. Instead, the industry kept drilling for quick oil, taking the crude that natural gas pushed to the surface, left the more difficult oil, and natural gas, behind.

Oil companies showed no signs of moderating themselves, and critics were beginning to wonder how it would all end.

“In view of the now familiar oil over-production, with its unnecessary drain on the natural reserve, the question of future supply become increasingly acute. People are beginning to wonder if the carriage manufacturer is coming back to his former prestige, and whether the faded letters “L-i-v-e-r-y  S-t-a-b-l-e,” now supplanted by the more aesthetic “G-a-r-a-g-e,” on endless buildings, will have to be restored. Is a nation on wheels, as it were, going back to the hoof so far as daily transport is concerned?” ["After Petroleum — What?" Isaac F. Marcosson, March 3, 1928 (PDF)]

“There is more truth than idle speculation in this surmise. Although it may be postponed longer than we think, the time is inevitable when we shall be obliged to depend for motor fuel on imported crude or a synthetic liquid distilled from coal, lignite or shale.

“How much oil is left in the ground for our future needs? Like every other features of the business, this is uncertain. All predictions so far have been in error.

“As recently as 1921, statisticians maintained that our domestic output would be at its peak when 500,00,000 barrels were obtained. Yet last year… we produced 900,00,000 barrels. Despite the pessimism, the supply of oil proved greater than anyone could have predicted.

“The wells drilled during the last three years have already yielded considerably more than 1,000,000,000 barrels of oil and their productive life is still largely in the future. This makes the total reserve from all proved sources nearly 80,000,000,000 barrels. At the 1927 rate of production, this would last thirty-three years.”

They were off by a decade; as you can see from the graph below, domestic production began falling in 1970, while imported oil rose sharply to cover the difference.

Not knowing when the easy oil would give out, critics repeatedly called for conserving oil — long before there were any environmental considerations.

One of the strongest proponents for conservation was former governor and Director of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot. He fiercely opposed the unrestrained drilling for oil on federal lands. Conservation, he argued, was essential to the public interest. The restraint of one generation would be the inheritance of the next.

“The conservation policy grew out of the idea that public resources held in the public hands should not be wasted, but be made to serve the public to the utmost, both in the present and in the future. ["Ships, Oil and the Ten Commandments," May 17, 1924]

This chart shows how sharply oil imports rose as domestic production fell. (Wikipedia Commons)

“It was introduced to the people of the United States through the meeting of governors in the White House in 1908 — the first meeting of its kind in American history, and by far the greatest — and met with instant general approbation.

“This was the more remarkable because it was then commonly believed and openly asserted that, since posterity had done nothing for us, we had no reason to do aught for posterity. Let posterity paddle its own canoe. This theory conveniently forgot that our ancestors gave us the only canoe we have to paddle; that they discovered and conquered for us our continent; that they founded and preserved for us our nation; that we, who are their posterity, are living our safe and reasonably comfortable lives because of what they did for us who came after them; and that the only way we can pay our debt to them is to play fair in our turn with those who will come after us.

“From the beginning, conservation has meant wise use in the public interest, and it means wise use today. This generation has a right to all it needs, but no right whatever to waste what it does not need. Our children have their rights as well as we. If there was ever a policy since this world began that was simple, sound and filled with common sense, it is the policy of conservation.”

Read “After Petroleum — What?” Isaac F. Marcosson, March 3, 1928 [PDF]
Next: Teapot Dome

The Common Wealth of Oil The Saturday Evening Post

Naturally the event prompted me to look through the archives for past reports about the oil industry. I found scores of stories on the subject spanning the past century. Taken altogether, these articles present a story of America’s troubled relationship with oil and its producers.

As early as 1908, for example, the Post was criticizing Standard Oil, particularly its Vice President John D. Archbold who announced his company would be more vocal in defending its reputation.

“It was entirely unnecessary for Mr. Archbold to urge upon his readers that the Standard Oil trust is a powerful and successful commercial organization, or that it has adopted many useful and important economies in the conduct of its extensive and diversified business.

“But his denial of the often repeated charge that the business success of the Standard Oil Trust has been largely contributed to by unlawful special favors from railroad companies can hardly be accepted as conclusive, contradicted as it is by testimony in numerous cases and investigations. And when the amount and frequency of these special privileges, which have been conclusively proven to exist, are considered, the statement is clearly justified that the ability of the Standard Oil trust to defeat competition and achieve its remarkable success has been due to illegal privileges from railroad companies more than to any other one cause.

“It has been proven that during the early period of its existence it had contracts with railroad companies by which it secured a rebate of from 10% to 68% on the published tariffs of the roads on all oil that it shipped. This would have been an advantage over competitors that would have satisfied the avarice of most people. But not the geniuses of the Standard Oil Trust. They demanded and received the same amount as a rebate upon the shipments of their competitors, who were compelled to pay the full tariff rate by the railroads.”

Historically, the Post was a tireless cheerleader for development and business success. Throughout the 1920s, it  heaped praise on every prospering American industry. But it never lost an ambivalence toward the oil industry.

For example, Post writer Samuel G. Blythe rhapsodized over the oil industry’s accomplishments in 1930. He proudly announced America’s oil production:

“The daily average oil output in the United States in 1929 was 3,196,000 barrels. Multiply that by 36, for oil wells, when they work, work every day. Thus we find that our total oil output in 1929 was 1,166,540,000 barrels. Almost one and one-sixth billions.”

“Oil is the giant of our national products… Oil is indispensible to our progress and prosperity. The use of it ramifies in nearly every commercial, manufacturing, distributing, motor, lubricative, heating and transport direction. It warms us and lights us. It runs our tractors and trucks and automobiles, pulls our passenger and freight trains on great railroad systems, propels our ships, whirls countless factory wheels, generates much of our power, fights our wars and flies our airplanes. The by-products of it are used in hundreds of utilitarian ways.”

Yet, at article’s end, Blythe drops his worshipful tone for one of stern warning against “the business idiocy of producing more than can be sold.” He encourages major oil-producing states to voluntarily curtail “wasteful and unneeded oil production.”

“the benefits have been clearly demonstrated. Oil can be conserved. Oil should be conserved, not because there isn’t plenty of oil but because it is sheer business lunacy not to recognize the imperative economic law of supply and demand.

“There is hope. Conservation will continue unless the oil producers are the biggest and greediest business jackasses the world has ever known.”

In a 1933 article, Harold Ickes, FDR’s new Secretary of the Interior, provided details about the wastefulness of oil exploration.

“One billion dollars is not an insignificant fortune even for the country that holds within its treasury most of the gold of the world. Yet the same people who would avidly scan tales of such a theft have permitted, practically unheeded, a loss in their oil resources amounting to much more than one billion dollars.

“We have suffered and are continuing to suffer stupendous losses in the exploitation of our oil resources. We are just as indifferent about oil as our forefather were about our forests, our plains and our streams. What if oil is being wasted? There will always be more oil; and even if it should, in time, give out, there will be plenty for our own needs in our own day. ‘May the devil take the hindmost’ is still sound American doctrine.

“I challenge any other present-day industry in the United States to show greater waste, inefficiency and mismanagement than seem to be inherent in the oil industry, whether of its own making or because of inadequate laws. These are grave charges, but they are less grave than the situation to which they relate.

The oil-drilling practices of the time, Ickes relates, encouraged drillers to grab up the easy oil, close to the surface, and leave behind the most costly oil.

“A quantity of oil on top can readily be skimmed off, and below, there is more oil clinging to rocklike sand, while still farther down in the lank there are coal and shale from which oil might be manufactured.

“If we drive a hole… a certain amount of the very cheapest oil will flow out naturally from the top. When the natural flow has ceased, it becomes necessary to install pumps in order to draw out the oil that remains stubbornly sticking to the rocklike sand. This makes the crude oil cost more. When this is gone it is now customary to abandon an oil field.

“But it may become necessary, expensive though the process will be, to go down and dig out the oil-saturated rock to wring from it oil which no pumps will bring up. It may even become necessary, at a still greater cost, to go to the bottom of our tank and dig out our coal and shale, from which, if the consumer will pay enough, it is possible to process motor fuels. “Already in many areas in the United States the cream from the top of the tank has been skimmed. The former great flush oil fields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, New York and Indiana are gone.

“Millions upon millions of barrels of oil have been allowed to become bogged in the earth’s reaches, beyond cheap recovery, because of the loss of the driving pressure of the gas.

Natural gas, rich in caloric energy, was the force that pushed oil to the earth’s surface. But the oil companies were little interested in natural gas at first. Once they realized it could be just as valuable as oil, they made efforts to capture it at the well head, instead of letting it escape into the atmosphere. However many get-rich-quick operations didn’t spare the time and money to capture this gas, but just grabbed the easy oil. The energy-rich gas was simply discarded.

“In the Panhandle of Texas, 1,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day go utterly to waste. Expert engineers estimate that the loss of this gas means that from 400,000,000 to 500,000,000 barrels of easily recoverable crude oil will stick in the sands. This is a direct loss of crude oil sufficient to supply the entire nation for approximately six months.

“From 200,000,000 to 250,000,000 barrels of gasoline could have been made from that crude oil. Enough is being lost in that one field to fill up every car in the country more than forty times.

“A year’s output of that wasted gas — 365,000,000,000 cubic feet — represents as much heat energy as 62,634,000 barrels of fuel oil—enough to heat the average home 1,252,680 years, or, to turn it around, to heat 1,252,680 homes a year. The staggering total of 62,634,000 barrels of fuel oil is difficult for most of us to grasp. But it would heat every home in Cleveland for three years. Dallas, Texas has 83,000 homes, every one of which could be heated for 132 months. Likewise every home in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon, Providence, Erie, Lansing, Topeka and Racine could be kept warm for a whole twelve months’ year, not just the winter season.

“Some of the early wells in Michigan were allowed to spew 18,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day, each, into the air. Visualize the worth of that gas if piped into Detroit or Lansing to make automobiles, or into Chicago for use as fuel. Just as a measuring rod, consider that our capital city of Washington consumes for domestic and industrial purposes approximately 7,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas a year.

“My own opinion is that if the oil industry cannot control its affairs in the public interest, then the Federal Government, of necessity and to protect all the people, must take a hand. This business of oil is so important to all of us that private control must promptly and drastically mend its ways. We must, as a people, have oil, and plenty of it, at reasonable prices from our own wells. We cannot continue recklessly to pour this precious resource over the whole world. One can almost hear the sardonic laughter of nations, jealous of our prestige and covetous of our wealth, as they watch our headlong course toward national bankruptcy in oil while they count every drop of their own hoarded stores of this precious mineral.”

Over the next forty years, critics kept up their demands that oil companies use less wasteful methods. The companies had little interest in the arguments until the 1970s. To be fair, the oil companies would have had little incentive to reduce waste in the early 20th Century. As far as they could see, there was a nearly unlimited wealth of inexpensive oil in the 1930s — far more than would ever be needed by America’s 26 Million cars and trucks. (The number of vehicles has grown 1,000% since then.)

In 1970, though, America’s supply of cheap oil began to disappear, and we became more reliant on foreign oil. Suddenly the industry was working hard to extract every bit of oil and gas at every well head. And, as the oil executives, critics, and politicians had expected, energy prices rose.

I’ll close the first part of this Retrospective with a nostalgic glimpse at historic gasoline prices.

Oh, those happy days.

Read “This Billion Barrel Oil Country” by Samuel G. Blythe [PDF].

Read “After the Oil Deluge, What Price Gasoline?” by Harold Ickes [PDF].

Next:

America’s Common Wealth of Energy: The Long Battle for Oil Conservation

America’s Century of Oil Problems The Saturday Evening Post

“George Blount put a Saturday Evening Post advertisement on the biggest elephant in a circus parade,” boasted the editors in the 1909 newsletter. We’re not sure how George accomplished this task, but he apparently came away unscathed. But Kenneth Casselman of British Columbia did George one better when he “created a big sensation at a local roller-skating carnival by wearing a Saturday Evening Post suit. The trousers were made of oilcloth Post signs and the coat and cap were covered with front covers of recent issues of the Post.” Score one for creativity.

Devoted Post Boy Kenneth Casselman designed a suit made out of clipped Saturday Evening Post ads and covers.

In the 1930s, “I had a route and delivered the Post at 5 cents a piece to five to 25 customers,” Robert Bonney of Peoria, Illinois wrote us in January of this year. “I got to keep 1.5 cents a copy,” which he put in his bank account. In 1936 “I entered the University of Maine and used my bank account to help pay my way.”

We’ve been privileged to hear from many of the former Post boys over the years and have often run photos of them in the magazine’s Letters to the Editor. We’ve also discovered that regular Saturday Evening Post contributor Charles Osgood was once a Post newsboy. And guess what else we’ve found out? Not all Post newsboys were boys.

Mary Simmons of Portland Oregpn, age 10, on her sales rounds in 1927. Photo courtesy of David Powers.

Take the case of 10-year-old entrepreneur, Mary Simmons, of Portland, Oregon. We’re fortunate to have a great photo of Mary on her rounds from 1927 because, according to her son, David, she made a sale to a professional photographer, and “he asked her if she would step outside and pose for this picture.”

Like other “newsboys,” Mary gained some business savvy from her route. Her father died six years later, and the children had to run his carbon paper business. “My mother at age 16 drove a Model T all over eastern Oregon selling carbon paper, camping with a tent to save money,” David Powers e-mailed us.

Like other young sellers, Mary had to work hard to earn her $10 a week toward college. But there were perks, too. Van Duyn candies later became famous, but Mary recalled seeing Mr. Van Duyn making candy himself. “I could barely see over the big copper kettle,” she later told her son. “I could see him dump the butter in and smell the candy. Best of all was that the candy that was not perfect, I got to eat.”

Post Boys could send in for one of the items in the Our Boys prize catalog.

OK, free candy was important. Even more exciting was the cool stuff you could earn with your sales vouchers. This ad from 1924 shows a Ma Jong set (with cardboard tiles), a great Boy Scout knife and, if you had as many as 95 “brown vouchers,” you could get this loud speaker. “Let the whole family and the ‘gang’ enjoy your radio concerts.” A dude (or dudette) couldn’t be more happening than that.

Remember Post Boys and Post Girls? The Saturday Evening Post

N. C. Wyeth

Cowboy in Setting Sun
November 30, 1997
N. C. Wyeth

The father of painter Andrew Wyeth and grandfather of present-day artist Jamie Wyeth, Newell Convers Wyeth was a student of Howard Pyle and the Brandywine School of art. Wyeth’s first professional work was a commissioned illustration for the Post. His sense of color and mood was particularly suited to Western subjects, which also appealed to Lorimer. So the Post sent Wyeth to gain firsthand knowledge of his subject. On trips to the western United States, he worked as a ranch hand in Colorado and rode mail routes in New Mexico and Arizona.

Charles Livingston Bull

Fox and Goose
Charles Livingston Bull
September 9, 1905

Known chiefly as an animal illustrator, Bull literally drew from his experience as a taxidermist at the National Museum in Washington, D.C. Bull’s images, whether an eagle soaring in flight or a fox on the prowl, gave a majestic, even startling, life and grace to his wild subjects.

Angus MacDonall

St. Bernard for SaleAngus MacDonall
October 8, 1921

MacDonall, who came from the Midwest but eventually migrated east to become part of the Westport, Connecticut art colony, did only a few covers for the Post, but they were memorable, especially his poignant depictions of children. The forlorn boy and his dog were real, seen by a reader in Oregon, who described the scene vividly in a letter to the editor.

Ellen Pyle

Ice Cream Cone
Ellen Pyle
August 12, 1922

Like N.C. Wyeth, Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle was a student of Howard Pyle’s Brandywine School, later marrying Howard’s brother Walter. When they started a family, Pyle set painting aside, but after Walter’s death in 1919, as a widow with four children, Pyle resumed her career to make ends meet. She struggled at first, but then her sister-in-law took three of Pyle’s paintings to the Post—and Lorimer promptly bought two of them, in addition to the girl with the ice cream cone, which became a cover in 1922 (after Lorimer insisted that the dog, originally shown drooling, be retouched). Pyle painted 40 Post covers in all, often using her children as models. The girls sipping sodas here are Pyle’s daughters.

J. C. Leyendecker

Carnival
J. C. Leyendecker
February 25, 1933

Joseph Christian Leyendecker received his first commission to paint a Post cover the same year George Horace Lorimer began running them, in 1899. Before Norman Rockwell arrived, no other artist had been so closely identified with the Post. Leyendecker famously created the iconic New Year’s Baby and the pudgy red-garbed rendition of Santa Claus, among other enduring images. Rockwell himself idolized the artist, calling him “a superb draftsman and a fine colorist,” as evidenced here. Leyendecker had an eye for the humor in everyday life, too (as in the case of the ample bathing beauty and her water wings, witnessed by a Post editor, who later described her to Leyendecker), which always delighted readers.

For more cover art, visit saturdayeveningpostcovers.com.

The Art of the Post The Saturday Evening Post

Dorothy Parker? She of the caustic wit, the rapier tongue, the put-down from-which-there-is-no-comeback? Indeed, reader, it was she. Her poetry appeared in our magazine long before she had established herself as one of the country’s sharpest and funniest critics.

To say that she was a woman ahead of her time is an understatement.  Half-Scottish and half-Jewish, Ms. Parker was born in 1893 into a tumultuous childhood. Her mother died while Dorothy was still young, and she came to despise her father and step-mother.

She left for New York where she began a promising career at Vanity Fair. She also co-founded the inner circle of America’s literary talent: the Round Table at New York’s Algonquin hotel. There she gained immense respect from the leading writers of the day, and could summon maximum laughter with minimal words, though everyone was wary of her cyical wit. Another member of the Round Table described her as “a blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth.”

Her critical reviews for Vanity Fair were as funny as they were devastating. Writing of actress Marion Davies, Dorothy said she had “only two expressions, joy and indigestion.” She said of Katherine Hepburn that her performance ran the gamut of emotions “from A to B.” In one book review, she wrote, “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

She became friends with other Vanity Fair writers: Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood. These three, according to a 1939 Post article, “brought to Vanity Fair a new wit and alertness, but Condé Nast, its publisher, found himself wondering if, perhaps, these qualities were not being achieved at the sacrifice of others more valuable — office discipline, for instance.

There was the time Nast posted a notice forbidding employees to speculate about one another’s salaries. Immediately, Benchley, Parker & Sherwood splashed “$27.50 per” on huge placards and wore them about their necks.”

When Parker proved too critical in their review, Vanity Fair fired her. She and Benchley rented an office from where they could launch their free-lance writing careers.

“They took an office in the Metropolitan Opera House — a triangular room with space enough for a table, two chairs and two typewriters. The only other furniture was a gigantic mirror.

Since the room seemed to lack the personal touch, they soaped on the mirror, “Today’s Special; Yankee Pot Roast, 45¢,” hung up a pennant with the word “Spain,” and had a sign painter letter their door:

UTICA DROP FORGE & TOOL CO.

ROBERT BENCHLEY, PRESIDENT

DOROTHY PARKER, PRESIDENT

Their last preparation was to obtain a cable address: “Park-bench.” The firm of Benchley & Parker was ready for business.”

Dorothy’s personal life was a roller-coaster.  She was married three times, twice to the same man.  (“I require three things of a man,” she said. “He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”)

She moved to Hollywood with her second (and third) husband Alan Campbell in 1933 and worked in the movie industry.  She was nominated for an Academy Award for her work with “A Star Is Born.”

Politically, her views made her a target of the government during the Cold War era.  She was active in left-wing politics and was red-listed by the studios she had worked for in the anti-communism sentiment that seized Hollywood after World War II.

The poems below are among the scores that were published by the Post.

To A Lady (10/14/22)

Lady, pretty lady, delicate and sweet,
Timorous as April, frolicsome as May,

Many are the hearts that lie beneath your feet
As they go a-dancing down the sunlit way.

Lady, pretty lady, blithe as trilling birds,
Shy as early sunbeams play your sudden smile.

How you quaintly prattle lilting baby words,
Fluttering your helpless little hands the while!

Lady, pretty lady, bright your eyes and blue,
Who could be a-counting all the hearts they broke?

Not a man you meet that doesn’t fall for you;
Lady, pretty lady, how I hope you choke!

Song of the Conventions (2/24/23)

We’d dance, with grapes in our wind-tossed hair,
And garments of swirling smoke;

We’d fling wild song to the amorous air,
Till the long-dead gods awoke.

Our quivering bodies, young and white,
Poised light by the brooklet’s brink,

We’d whirl and leap through the moon-mad night-
But what would the neighbors think?

We’d bid the workaday world go hang,
And idle the seasons through;

We’d pay no tribute of thought or pang
To the world that we once knew.

With hearts in ecstasy intertwined,
In languorous, sweet content,

We’d leave all worry and care behind-
But how would we pay the rent?

We’d roam the universe, hand in hand,
Through tropical climes, or cold,

And find each spot was a wonderland,
A country of pearl and gold.

Our hearts as light as the sunlit foam,
We’d voyage the oceans o’er,

With never a thought for those at home-
But wouldn’t our folks be sore?

A Triolet

You’ll be returning one day.
(such premonitions are true ones.)
Treading the dew-spangled way,
You’ll be returning one day.
I’ll have a few things to say—
I’ve learned a whole lot of new ones.
You’ll be returning, one day.
(Such premonitions are true ones.)

Song (3)

When summer used to linger,
Before the daisies died,
You’d but to bend your finger
And I was by your side.
And, oh, my heart was breaking,
And, oh, my life was through;
You had me for the taking;
“Now run along,” said you.

But now the summer’s over,
The birds have flown away,
And all the amorous clover
Has turned to sober hay.
And you’re the one to tarry,
And you’re the one to sigh,
And beg me, will I marry.
“The deuce I will,” say I.

Grandfather Said It

When I was but a little thing of two, or maybe three,
My granddad—on my mother’s side—would lift me on his knee;
He’d take my thumb from out my mouth and say to me: “My dear,
Remember what I tell you when you’re choosing a career:

“Take in laundry work; cart off dust;
Drive a moving van if you must;
Shovel off the pavement when the snow lies white;
But think of your family, and please don’t write.”

When I was two I cannot say his counsel knocked me cold.
But now it all returns—for, darling, I am growing old,
And when I read the writing of the authors of today
I echo all those golden words that grandpa used to say:

“Clean out ferrboats; peddle fish;
Go be chorus men if you wish;
Rob your neighbors’ houses in the dark midnight;
But think of your families, and please don’t write.”

Update: Added correct picture. Thanks to Kevin for pointing out the error.

Poetry by Dorothy Parker The Saturday Evening Post