Friday Spill: First & Last…Henry Anton Steig

First & Last: Henry Anton Steig

It’s probably no secret that Henry Anton Steig, who signed his drawings “Henry Anton,” was William Steig’s brother. Henry’s cartoon contributions to The New Yorker were, in number, the polar opposite of William’s: 19, compared to William’s nearly 2000.

William Steig said this about his brother (the following from Lee Lorenz’s terrif The World Of William Steig (Artisan, 1998):

“My mom started painting late in life, but she had a real flair. My brother Henry also painted, and he could do everything. He played the saxophone in jazz bands when he was just a teenager. He traveled with a vaudeville act…Henry wrote stories about his experiences and sold them to The New Yorker and other magazines…He was a good cartoonist, and since our stuff was running in the same magazine, he used the name Henry Anton. In 1941 he published a jazz novel called Send Me Down and did a brief stint in Hollywood, which he hated. He painted, sculpted, did photography, and in the late forties got into designing jewelry. He had a store on Lexington Avenue. That famous shot of Marilyn Monroe holding her skirt down over a subway gate shows Henry’s store in the background.”

Here’s Henry Anton’s very first New Yorker drawing, published in the issue of October 22, 1932:

And here’s his last, from the issue of May 2 1936: