Tag Archives: Also Cartoonists?

Car-TOON cha cha cha

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This is part of a series on people who, renowned for other accomplishments, have also been cartoonists– some professional, some amateur

xaviercugat

Francisco de Asis Javier Cugat Mingall de Brue y Deulofeo (1900–1990), better known by his stage name Xavier Cugat, was the prime big-band maestro of Latin American music: rumba, mambo, cha-cha.

He was also a professional cartoonist and illustrator all his life.

Cugat and his band at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel. One of his trademarks was conducting while holding a Chihuahua dog.

Born in Catalonia, Spain, Cugat moved with his family to Havana, Cuba, when he was three. A trained violinist and arranger, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times newspaper during the day and played in  a band at night.

This is a neat reversal of the usual situation of an artist working a day job and cartooning in his free time.

Greta Garbo

After a few years of playing smaller clubs in the Los Angeles area, Cugat  got his big break when he and his band played the prestigious Coconut Grove nightclub in 1928. His style of music caught on; in the ’30s and ’40s he was nicknamed “The Rumba King” because of his popularization of that dance.

But despite all his success in concerts, records, radio, movies and (later) television, Cugat never quit drawing, providing humorous covers for several of his own record albums, publishing collections of his star caricatures and even producing an illustrated curtain for Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

His caricatures are spare and assured, reminiscent of those of Al Hirschfeld. Below are some radio comedians:

An album cover:

A painting done for his personal pleasure:

Finally, a self-portrait:

In previous installments of this series on part-time cartoonists (with more to follow), we saw a talented amateur in Enrico Caruso, and a skilled dilettante in G.K.Chesterton.

Cugat stands out because he remained a professional cartoonist all his life, taking his graphic work as seriously as his music.

For which I tip my hat…and dance a few steps…cha-cha-cha !

“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong…”

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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of those prodigious artistic polymaths the last two centuries brought forth. He was the author of 80 books, 200 short stories, over 4000 essays, and several plays; today he is chiefly remembered for his ‘Father Brown’ stories, still widely considered to be some of the greatest detective tales of all time, and his Christian apologetics; his novel The man who was Thursday is a masterpiece of fantasy, hailed by writers ranging from Jorge Luis Borges to Neil Gaiman.

G.K.Chesterton

However, his original training was as an artist, at London’s prestigious Slade school; and though he shifted his ambition to writing, Chesterton continued to produce drawings for the rest of his life.

Chesterton was a large, imposing figure in his great overcoat and  floppy hat, a favorite target of caricaturists — the latter  including himself, as the next four drawings show:

His sense of humor often tended to the macabre:

Others also felt his satirical lash, for instance his ideological foe and personal friend George Bernard Shaw:

Where Chesterton was famously portly, Shaw was all but skeletal; which explains this exchange between these two sharp wits:

Chesterton: “To see you, one would think there were a famine in the land.”

Shaw: “And to see you, one would know who caused it.”

His personal drawings show a like playfulness:

“Catching a Train”

“Enraged Gentleman and His Victim”

Chesterton also illustrated the work of others. Below are three illustrations forBiography for Beginners, the 1905 collection of biographical quatrains — or clerihews — by Edmund Clerihew Bently.

The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about Maps,
But Biography is about Chaps

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium

What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.

The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes;
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy

Chesterton extensively illustrated- in color- a collection of whimsical fables and tales, The Colored Lands.

The wit and whimsy of Chesterton’s writing — as evinced by this article’s title, taken from the opening line of The Napoleon of Notting Hill– is neatly echoed in these entertaining illustrations: he thus earns the title of cartoonist!

 

Sing Me a Cartoon

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Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) was one of the most celebrated opera tenors in history. He was also a deft and witty caricaturist — not least of himself, as shown below:

Caruso was prolific and generous with his cartoons, often including them in letters to his fans. They show a wide variety of line styles, from delicate to bold.

 

Many of them depict him in costume for one of his roles. Below, Caruso as Lieutenant Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, which he sang in 1906:

As Federico Loewe in Franchetti‘s Germania:

As Don José in Bizet‘s Carmen:

 

He also caricatured other luminaries of the music world. Giuseppe Verdi:

The Mexican tenor José Mojica:

The conductor Arturo Toscanini, an important figure in Caruso’s life; it was in his 1900 production of Puccini’s La Boheme at the Scala in Milan that Caruso achieved stardom:

The soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, who co-starred with Caruso in Rigoletto:


The composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, who was the director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House when Caruso was engaged there; this portrait was drawn for The Musical Courier magazine.

The composer Leoncavallo, author of I Pagliacci:

Caruso in the role of the clown Canio in I Pagliacci; Caruso’s recording of the opera’s song Vesti la Giubba (“On with the Motley”) was the first record to sell over a million copies:

A recording of Vesti la giubba may be found here.

Below is a rare group drawing, depicting the rehearsal for Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (“The Girl of the Golden West”), for which Caruso created the role of Dick Johnson in 1910:

Click on image to enlarge

Caruso didn’t confine himself to music-realated subjects; here is his rendering of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he was acquainted:

Roosevelt served the superstitious Caruso as a good-luck charm on a day of disaster.

In 1906, Caruso was performing Carmen in San Francisco when the great earthquake and fire destroyed the city. Caruso was found walking the streets, disoriented and weeping, clutching a signed photograph of the President to his chest. He ran into the actor John Barrymore, fresh from a brothel, who persuaded the tenor to sing to calm the panicked crowds.

Caruso’s talent for caricature extended to sculpture, as seen in this bust of himself as a ‘laughing Buddha’, which he presented to Toscanini:

He was not above using his fame to swing lucrative endorsement deals, as we can see from the following advertisement for Pianola– illustrated by the singer:

But he also donated his talents for good causes: below, Caruso mans a quick-sketch booth for charity, drawing Mrs Albert Gallatin.

He published several books of his caricatures and cartoons; this one dates from 1914. I like the cover drawing below best of all his self-portraits:

These ‘transformation’ drawings show a delightful playfulness:

Enrico Caruso’s cartoons all evince a spirit of light mockery without a hint of meanness; seeing them, I can believe that the great tenor would have made excellent company!