Liza Donnelly - Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorkers Women Cartoonists

I dreamed recently that a woman cartoonist from the 1930s wrote me about her time at The New Yorker. I panickedhow had I missed her? In the dream, she had a name that did not indicate her sex, so I felt vindicated and made plans to put her in my book. In reality, I tried hard to find every woman whose cartoons appeared in the magazine. In The New Yorkers early years, many artists used initials for their first names, and thus it would have been next to impossible to find out whether they were men or women. I sincerely apologize if I failed to include someone in this book who should have been included. Sadly, I could not uncover much information about Mary Gibson or Dorothy McKay.

A word concerning my criteria for cartoons. If the artist was a single-panel cartoonist of the traditional captioned variety, or if her work appeared with regularity, I included her in this book. During the 1980s, what was considered a cartoon became broader (no pun intended) and very different from what was thought of as a New Yorker cartoon. Cartoon editor Lee Lorenz had the vision to widen his definition of humor, and I believe this was significant in bringing more women into cartooning.

I wish I had begun this book years ago. So many of the cartoonists and editors of an earlier generation who knew the artists from the twenties and thirties have only recently passed away: William Shawn, Philip Hamburger, William Maxwell, Brendan Gill, Mischa Richter, Syd Hoff, William Steig, Andy Logan, and James Geraghty.

I interviewed many people, and I wish to thank them for their time and thoughts. Roger Angell graciously talked with me about his mother, Katharine White, and about Helen Hokinson and Mary Petty; Page Simon, Roberta MacDonalds daughter; Alice Harveys daughter, Janet Aley; Katharine Whites daughter-in-law, Allene White; James Geraghtys daughter, Sarah Herndon; Nancy Fays son, Stephen Fay, and her niece Nancy Harris; Rea Irvins granddaughter, Molly Rea; and Alan Dunn and Mary Pettys niece, Pamela Dunn Ellis. Thank you to Page Simon for her stories about her mother, Roberta McDonald, and to Carl Gauerke for telling me about his mother, Mary Gauerke. Thank you to Frank Modell, who shared many of his reminiscences of the art department when he was assistant to editor James Geraghty. Harriet Waldon, secretary to Harold Ross, was very helpful in her letters. I am very grateful to Eldon Dedini, who wrote me his fond memories of Barbara Shermund. Eldon also spent countless hours photocopying letters for me that he and Barbara exchanged over the years.

Many thanks to Shirley Pierson at the Mendota Museum and Historical Society for endlessly answering my questions and sending me valuable information about Helen Hokinson. Swann Foundations Martha Kennedy; the friends of Nora Benjamin; Rose OConnor; John Michaud, Laurel Maury, and Erin Overby at the New Yorker library; Wayne Furman and the folks at the New York Public Library Special Collections; and Andy Pillsbury, Sumner Jaretzki, and Cory Whittier at the Cartoon Bank were all very helpful. Marshall Hopkins and Colin Stokes were very helpful as liaisons with many of the cartoonists. Anne Newburg for her writers eye. Harry Bliss for his preliminary research on Mary Petty. And Nicolette A. Schneider of Syracuse University. Without Anne Hall, I would not have many of the beautiful photographs in this book, and I thank her for allowing me to use them.

I sincerely thank David Remnick, Bob Mankoff, and Emma Allen for assisting me over the course of this project.

I want to thank all the women cartoonists whom I interviewed and who donated their drawings for use in this book. When the first edition of this book was about to be published in 2005, David (only a few years into his editorship of The New Yorker) invited me to write about the women cartoonists for the magazine. I was deeply honored. I value his continued support of this obsession of mine. This has been one of the great pleasures of this projectgetting to know them and their work. It has cemented some good friendships and hopefully started some new ones. Most of all, I thank them for their insights for this book.

Many thanks to Lee Lorenz and William Shawn for encouraging me and my cartoons. I greatly appreciate Lees skill and creative insight as cartoon editor of The New Yorker for over twenty years. Lee brought many of the women I profile in this book into the magazine. I extend extra warm thanks to Lee for writing the preface to this book.

Many sincere thanks to my editors, Jonathan Kurtz and Linda Regan, for their tremendous help and support. I am very grateful to book designer Bruce Carle and art director Jacqueline Cooke for their artistic eyes and sensitivity to my vision. Thanks to the amazing Chris Kramer, production manager, for her attention to detail. The entire Prometheus staff was a pleasure to work with. And I extend warm thanks to my agent, Denise Marcil.

I would like to thank the women writers before me who explored the issue of humor and gender. Notably, Nancy Walker, Zita Dresner, Regina Barecca, Judith Yaross Lee, and Trina Robbins.

My daughters, Ella and Gretchen, are amazing wordsmiths, and I thank them enormously for their editing help. In many ways, I did this book for them. And I thank my father, Orville Donnelly. Together with my mother, Elizabeth, they made me feel I could do anything.

And most of all, I thank my husband. Michael is my rock, my editor, my confidant, my wife, my sounding board, my research assistant. He cheers me on, prods me, questions my theories, applauds my efforts. We met more than thirty years ago because of The New Yorker. The love we share for our art form and for The New Yorker is almost magical.

T he early women cartoonists of The New Yorker were among the female humorists who emerged in the twenties, almost in response to the question Do women have a sense of humor? The female humorists may have broken new ground, but they did not gain acceptance easily. At The New Yorker, however, they did.

Helen Hokinson, Alice Harvey, and Barbara Shermund were innovators in the field of cartooning. But they were also innovators in the field of humor, and they worked in an environmentThe New Yorkerthat gave them the room to express themselves. Still, it was a difficult road, and at times, they perpetuated the stereotype of women. But their early work shows a desire to depict women in their new roles in societyas working and independent.

The careers of Hokinson and Shermund, in particular, illustrate how the innovations of these women became constricted by society. The early cartoons of Hokinson, while she used New Yorker writers, came from within her, based on her view of the world that she observed around her. The attention that Hokinson received for the matrons she and James Reid Parker created, I believe, led the editors to ask for more of the same. Hokinsons matrons were easy for the public to adore because they fit a stereotype that it was comfortable with. This became almost all she drew at the end of her life, though she sought to erase what she felt was a misconception of her characters. Barbara Shermund was a free spirit whose energy perhaps was difficult for her to maintain. She succumbed to the easier road of using a gag writer. Thus her work changed from the breezy feminist attitude evident in her captions to stereotypes that fit prevailing trends. It would have been interesting to see if Hokinson could have changed the publics perception of her ladies, as she had hoped; but that was not to be. And Barbara Shermund never returned to her original voice.