Wednesday Spill: Belated Birthday Note…Helen Hokinson

Belated Birthday Note…Helen Hokinson

–photo: Helen Hokinson’s scrapbooks in the New Yorker library. Photo by Liza Donnelly

Noticed late yesterday that I’d missed the anniversary of Helen Hokinson’s birthday (June 29, 1893). I really need to set up some sort of birthday log to keep track.

When Ms. Hokinson came to the magazine in its earliest months, her art was immediately embraced by the art department’s supervisor, Rea Irvin, and the magazine’s editor, Harold Ross. They saw in her work a natural sense of humor (see the woman waving adieu to the ship below) that fit perfectly with Ross’s idea (with Irvin’s input I’d imagine) that New Yorker art should reflect the real world as opposed to the stilted world of humor that was popular in the established humor magazines of the day.

After a short stint of suppling spot drawings, Hokinson joined forces with James Reid Parker, a New Yorker writer, and her cartoons began to appear regularly in the magazine (Mr. Parker supplied the captions for the majority of Ms. Hokinson’s work). Ms. Hokinson, along with Gluyas Williams, and Peter Arno, were considered by Ross to be the magazine’s top artists. Their names were literally placed above all other New Yorker artists on an inter-office memo.

Below: her first appearance in the magazine, July 4, 1925. (Her first cartoon appeared in the issue of August 1, 1925 — a two page spread)

Ms. Hokinson went on to contribute an astounding 1,796 cartoons to the magazine as well as 68 covers. No doubt those numbers would’ve continued far higher if she hadn’t perished in a plane crash over the Potomac River in the Fall of 1949. From The New Yorker issue of November 12, 1949, here’s Wolcott Gibbs‘ (unsigned) obituary for Ms. Hokinson:

And from that same issue, Ms. Hokinson’s cover:

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Helen Hokinson’s A-Z Entry

Helen Hokinson (above) Born, Illinois,1893; died, Washington, D.C., 1949. New Yorker work: 1925 -1949, with some work published posthumously. All of Hokinson’s collections are wonderful, but here are two favorites. Her first collection: So You’re Going To Buy A Book! (Minton, Balch & Co, 1931) and what was billed as “the final Hokinson collection”: The Hokinson Festival (Dutton & Co., 1956). According to a New Yorker document produced during Harold Ross’s editorship (1925-1951) rating their artists, Ms. Hokinson, Gluyas Williams, and Peter Arno occupied a special category unto themselves above all others.

Further Reading: Liza Donnelly’s Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists