Thank you for including her! My mother, who was born in 1914, and was a New Yorker subscriber throughout my childhood, loved Helen Hokinson. I have very happy memories of looking at those cartoons with her.
My favourite cartoon of hers is the matronly lady reading her grocery list on the phone, saying "...and a box of the matches you can strike on the seat of your pants".
we all wear a lot of hats! so enjoyable to see these cartoons from a woman who had a great sense of humor and an excellent vision of the world around her. the one of the woman and her dog at the bar made me laugh out loud!
I love Hokinson and her bosomy ladies, sometimes with little dogs. A favorite WW2 cartoon shows a woman offering her Scottie to an Army recruiter. “I thought he’d be good for crawling under things,” she tells him.
I love her work that you have reproduced in the post. I particularly like those in the museum, at the "soda fountain", on the sidewalk (with the wonderful dappled shade), and of the car.
My goodness, such a precious column today. (I guess that’s an antiquated term… Retro - it’s your SUBSTACK “post.” :-) )
Oh my, another reader said her mother was born in 1914. Mine, 1915. Her mother had been a milliner, my mother told me, but in truth, I never saw her wear a hat. We visited her once a week in Hermosa Beach, Mom driving our glorious’41 Packard sedan from our home near LAX, and she’d had some health problems in life and so seemed a bit sedentary at that point. She did live to be 94. Inspiring! I adored her. She fell in love in San Diego when invited to tour a Navy ship, and her date was ill, sent another guy… He became my grandfather, but he passed when I was age 1, so I never knew him. He was an inventor, active in Los Angeles once he left the Navy, with generators, neon lights, and early traffic signals. He had a partner who wrongfully sold some patents when he was out of town And it’s possible his state of distress caused the heart attack that took his life. Anyway… Our grandson whom we raised is 19, and always at doctors’ offices reached for the New Yorker because he loved the cartoons and I’d alerted him to that feature early on.
Everything you include here is so delightful. Like a movie with a surprise ending, learning as you close that she passed in a plane crash was jarring. Oh my.
Her adventure, heading to New York to try her luck, reminds me of my grandmother whom I was told left Los Angeles and went to San Diego on her own. While the history we are taught in school carries so much male dominance, there are countless narratives of brave women heading out on adventurous pursuits… Were there some looking glass through which we could view all that really played out… I’m sure we would be surprised, at times horrified, but also delightfully gratified.
Onward! Good that your Kickstarter is advancing! Gratitude as always.
I join the chorus of praise---these drawings are wonderful. "I shall now quote the passage I consider obscene" is priceless. She has such a terrific sense of style (and of humor). I think you can tell she was classically trained but we are so lucky that she chose cartooning. Brave, bold, brash---we like that in our cartoonists, especially the women. Hallelujah! (that's me joining the chorus)
These are all so great. I’m intrigued by the one that was split in two across the center spread. Also the captionless Brancusi is genius.
Thank you for including her! My mother, who was born in 1914, and was a New Yorker subscriber throughout my childhood, loved Helen Hokinson. I have very happy memories of looking at those cartoons with her.
My favourite cartoon of hers is the matronly lady reading her grocery list on the phone, saying "...and a box of the matches you can strike on the seat of your pants".
What a delight to revisit the wonderful Helen Hokinson. I remember her work among that passed around at my grandparents' Sunday dinner.
we all wear a lot of hats! so enjoyable to see these cartoons from a woman who had a great sense of humor and an excellent vision of the world around her. the one of the woman and her dog at the bar made me laugh out loud!
I love Hokinson and her bosomy ladies, sometimes with little dogs. A favorite WW2 cartoon shows a woman offering her Scottie to an Army recruiter. “I thought he’d be good for crawling under things,” she tells him.
Thank you for taking us down memory lane when we can all smile at an era whose cartoonists like Helen H could smile at the foibles of human nature.
I love her work that you have reproduced in the post. I particularly like those in the museum, at the "soda fountain", on the sidewalk (with the wonderful dappled shade), and of the car.
My goodness, such a precious column today. (I guess that’s an antiquated term… Retro - it’s your SUBSTACK “post.” :-) )
Oh my, another reader said her mother was born in 1914. Mine, 1915. Her mother had been a milliner, my mother told me, but in truth, I never saw her wear a hat. We visited her once a week in Hermosa Beach, Mom driving our glorious’41 Packard sedan from our home near LAX, and she’d had some health problems in life and so seemed a bit sedentary at that point. She did live to be 94. Inspiring! I adored her. She fell in love in San Diego when invited to tour a Navy ship, and her date was ill, sent another guy… He became my grandfather, but he passed when I was age 1, so I never knew him. He was an inventor, active in Los Angeles once he left the Navy, with generators, neon lights, and early traffic signals. He had a partner who wrongfully sold some patents when he was out of town And it’s possible his state of distress caused the heart attack that took his life. Anyway… Our grandson whom we raised is 19, and always at doctors’ offices reached for the New Yorker because he loved the cartoons and I’d alerted him to that feature early on.
Everything you include here is so delightful. Like a movie with a surprise ending, learning as you close that she passed in a plane crash was jarring. Oh my.
Her adventure, heading to New York to try her luck, reminds me of my grandmother whom I was told left Los Angeles and went to San Diego on her own. While the history we are taught in school carries so much male dominance, there are countless narratives of brave women heading out on adventurous pursuits… Were there some looking glass through which we could view all that really played out… I’m sure we would be surprised, at times horrified, but also delightfully gratified.
Onward! Good that your Kickstarter is advancing! Gratitude as always.
Thanks for the intro.
I join the chorus of praise---these drawings are wonderful. "I shall now quote the passage I consider obscene" is priceless. She has such a terrific sense of style (and of humor). I think you can tell she was classically trained but we are so lucky that she chose cartooning. Brave, bold, brash---we like that in our cartoonists, especially the women. Hallelujah! (that's me joining the chorus)
what wonderful work, I think I was born to late and missed so much of this