It was a Saturday, obviously.
A couple of comments. The Saturday Evening Post featured a cover by J. C. Leyendecker. This cover was cross posted over at Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub and immediately drew a comment about how Rockwell did the covers for the magazine.
That's a really common perception, but it's highly inaccurate. A short search, whose accuracy I can't verify, indicates that Rockwell did 323 covers for the Saturday Evening Post during his career but Leyendecker did over 300. Joseph Kernan and Ruth Eastman did quite a few, but there were other illustrators as well. Both Rockwell and Leyendecker did them for Country Gentleman as well.
Rockwell's style is very close to Leyendecker's, and Rockwell openly credited Leyendecker with being his mentor. Indeed, his style is so close that if these were illustrated today Rockwell would draw criticism for it.
Leyendecker is not nearly as well recalled by the general public as Rockwell but he has an enormous number of fans to this day. We've commented on his somewhat tragic life story several times.
The Parasite is a written work by Tarkington that must have been reprised in he magazine i this issue. Tarkington also wrote The Magnificent Ambersons. The story is unrelated to the illustration, but it's startling in this context. The portrayal of what we'd regard as the homeless in this fashion was really common, and continued up until at least the early 60s. Indeed, Buddy Ebsen portrayed essentially this sort of character, in an unsympathetic portrayal, in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show.
The New Yorker had a typical one of its illustrations.
Some people really love these, I'd note, but I don't.
Last edition:
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