Cover Gallery: Rainy Days

The weather may be dreary, but these rainy day covers will make you feel cheery!

Gallery
Rainy day at a church

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The weather may be dreary, but these rainy day covers will make you feel cheery!

 

Baby underneath an umbrella during some rain
Raining on Baby New Year
December 31, 1927
J. C. Leyendecker

 

Artist J. C. Leyendecker was well known for his Baby New Year illustrations that graced many Post covers from the 1910s through the 1940s. Our 1928 baby awaits the possible repeal of Prohibition, symbolized by “wet” weather.

 

Two girls underneath an umbrella at a table with flowers in a rain storm
Flower Children
Ellen Pyle
May 4, 1934

 

 

The subjects in this illustration were likely artist Ellen Pyle’s own children; they served as the models in more than 20 of her Post covers.

 

Rain coats and hats on a coat rack
Loaded Coat Rack
John Atherton
April 14th, 1945

 

[From the editors of the April 14, 1945 issue] Norman Rockwell suggested the idea to Atherton. The hatrack is in the hall of the Community House at Arlington, Vermont. Neighbors contributed the hats, coats and galoshes seen in the painting.

 

Movie being shown to G.I.s during a rain storm
Army Entertainment
Stevan Dohanos
July 17, 1945

 

[From the editors of the July 17, 1945 issue] We imagine it is hard for anyone who has never sat on a Pacific spit kit of an island for months on end, contemplating the shapely curves of a can of tinned-pork products for emotional release, to understand Stevan Dohanos’ cover. After such soul-gnawing, a flickering, one-dimensional pin-up girl enlarged many times on an improvised screen must have the pulling power a naked electric-light bulb has for a moth. Most South Pacific movies are now first-run, sometimes world premieres; but when “Wilson” was shown on Okinawa before an audience just back from the front lines, there were eight air-raid interruptions, and the show assumed a three-and-a-half-hour Gone With the Wind proportion. Perhaps the reason why Dohanos’ G.I.’s are willing to sit in the rain is that their bucket seats are really magic carpets taking them home to Main Street for an hour or two.

 

Man fishing during rain at sea
Deep Sea Fishing in Rain
Constantin Alajalov
August 31, 1946

 

[From the editors of the August 31, 1946 issue] The man who has determined to go fishing, Constantin Alajalov observed when he was in Florida, will go fishing until he catches a fish, in spite of bad weather. Alajalov determined to paint this truth. There were a few things on which he needed to refresh his recollection, but to do this, he needed only to go out in a boat on a similar day. We don’t know how long the average determined fisherman has to wait for a sunny day. We do know how long Alajalov had to wait to catch a rainy one. One fair day followed another. He waited three weeks.

 

Three umpires notice rain starting to fall during a baseball game
“Bottom of the Sixth” (Three Umpires)
Norman Rockwell
April 23, 1949

 

[From the editors of the April 23, 1949 issue] This week’s Norman Rockwell cover depicts Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here, the Dodgers are trailing the Pittsburgh Pirates 1-0 in the sixth inning. If the arbiters—left to right, Harry Goetz, Beans Reardon and Lou Jorda—call the game because of rain, the score will stand as is, and Pittsburgh will win. This irks the Brooklynites, who dislike having other teams win. In the picture, Clyde Sukeforth, a Brooklyn coach, could well be saying, “You may be all wet, but it ain’t raining a drop!” The huddled

Pittsburgher—Bill Meyer, Pirate manager—is doubtless retorting, “For the love of Abner Doubleday, how can we play ball in this cloudburst?”

 

Kids at a birthday party crowd in a garage due to rain
Rain-out Birthday Party
Stevan Dohanos
May 22, 1954

 

[From the editors of the May 22, 1954 issue] Rather than be depressed by Mr. Dohanos’ soggy scene, note how the deluge has improved the situation. Any birthday party is fun, even if nothing more happens than the duly expected games, grub and slight fights between incompatible little boys. But to arrange for the routine confusion to be stepped up into the joyous chaos of a garden party dispersed by a cloudburst, that’s a charming innovation indeed. And how delightful it is to throw a party in or into a garage, where tools and other weapons are available for favors as well as paper hats, where joy can he so much more unconfined than in an ordinary living-room hullabaloo. Even that pony thinks, Bless the rain—no more work. Fortunately, there isn’t space here for what mother thinks.

 

Mother watching her son put on cleats before football practice. It is raining.
Oh Mother!
Richard Sargent
October 5, 1957

 

[From the editors of the October 5, 1957 issue] Women can be such a handicap sometimes—“Aw, ma, halfbacks don’t wear rubbers. Next thing, you’ll want me to make touchdowns with my poncho on. Next thing, you’ll want me to run the end with an umbrella.” To which mother replies, “James, football men obey the quarterback’s signals or get benched. The bench is home. Now then, four, eleven, forty-four, hip—on rubbers!” Well, the maxim says that mothers know best, and if James catches cold by getting wet everywhere except his feet, let’s switch to the maxim that only Monday-morning quarterbacks think of everything. This might have been some action picture if Dick Sargent hadn’t rung in mother; yet let’s settle for the maxim that when it comes to painting, painters know best.

 

Scared children run to mom in bed during a thunderstorm.
Lightning Storm
Coby Whitmore
March 22, 1958

 

[From the editors of the March 22, 1958 issue] Of course, the children haven’t been frightened by Papa’s snoring, but by the awful sounds of Nature on an electrical rampage. So mother will gather them in her arms and love away their fear—mustn’t it be wonderful to be a mother? If that lightning is bedeviling a far-north state, it should signify the breaking up of a winter which certainly needed breaking up; and yet not long ago some northern areas had thunderstorms followed by the blankety-blankest descent of snow for thirty-something years. Let’s leave forecasting to the weatherman, who is welcome to it. Coby Whitmore’s man of the house, buried there in the bed, must be the deepest sleeper this side of the proverbial log. How does mother get him up mornings—rap on his head with the book?

 

Church goers file out of church during a rain storm
Sunday Rain
Melbourne E. Brindle
May 24, 1958

 

[From the editors of the May 25, 1958 issue] This wet cover had its origin in a drought. When crops withered in the Eastern states last summer, the Rev. Benjamin Axleroad, seen there at the door of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Bridgewater, Conn., included in his prayers a plea for precipitation. And one Sunday, just as his service ended, down came the rain, exit drought. Weeks later artist Melbourne Brindle, a St. Mark’s vestryman, puzzled some of the congregation by posing them at the church and refusing to tell them what it was all about—surprise, folks, you’re in the Post! Comments on the cover scene: (l) artistic license helped keep that grass green during the drought; (2) if any of the parishioners were out on a golf course during the deluge, how remorseful they must have been that they weren’t in church.

 

Man having fun with eachother in a rainy clubhouse
Clubhouse on a Rainy Day
Ben Kimberly Prins
July 8, 1961

 

[From the editors of the July 8, 1961 issue] How do you like that? On Saturday afternoon—prime time at any golf club—comes the deluge. Well, that’s par for the course, we suppose, and the course in this Ben Prins cover belongs to The Dunes Club of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That wave in the background is a fringe of the Atlantic Ocean, not the crest of an oncoming flood. The three-wheeled vehicle under the umbrella is what is known as a caddy car, and its occupants are either fair-weather athletes scurrying toward the indoor recreation of the nineteenth hole, or spirited souls bent on challenging their fellow duffers to a game of motorized water polo. At any rate they’re not slowing down at the putting green. The weather being what it is, they’re probably less concerned about sinking putts than about sinking, period.

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Comments

  1. All great selections dealing with the rain. The Leyendecker Baby on top looks worried, has a hole in his umbrella, and is sitting on top of Noah’s Ark with 2 of the animals (what else?) the symbolic elephant and donkey.

    I should have commented on ‘Rainy Wait for a Cab’ by John Falter featured in the current ‘News’ feature, so I will here. This ’47 cover features rain at its heaviest like I’ve never seen before; especially the drops hitting the cement. Amazing cover.

    The 1954 Rain-Out Birthday Party cover is another nightmare; horrible. The editors at the time seem to have gotten a sadistic laugh at the expense and predicament this poor, well intended Mom found herself in. A party in the garage with power tools and other weapons in addition to party hats? It’s SUCH a terrible situation that it’s beautifully wonderful, on my 2nd reading of it.

    I love Coby Whitmore and this sentimentally sweet cover. His choice and use of colors here are outstanding. That aside, these little girls were lucky to have an understanding mother. She could have pulled out a copy of the ’54 birthday party cover POST and told them “a little thunder and lightning OUTSIDE is far better than THIS, young ladies; now back to your own room!”

    ‘Sunday Rain’ is great too. Aside from the editors comments I see three cars from the Big Three from the 3 different sections of the ’50s. The yellow convertible looks like a ’57 Oldsmobile that needed the top up upon parking.

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