Music: 1933 Doin' the Uptown Lowdown | Isham Jones Orchestra | Joe Martin vocal
Video: 1932 Nightclub Map of Harlem by E. Simms Campbell
1930s playlist: t.ly/TxIW
"Elmer Simms Campbell . . . was born in St. Louis in 1906, but his father died when Campbell was four and the family moved to Chicago. There, Campbell went to work as a messenger boy and later found work as a waiter on train dining cars, but his dream was always to become an artist. He took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and won a few school prizes for his drawing. He even sold an early cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post, but could not find lasting work. . . .
In 1929 Campbell got off the train in New York and moved in with his aunt. He tried to find work as an artist but recalled, 'I didn’t catch on right away, by any means. I wore out a lot of shoe leather before I found a job. Even then it was nothing to get excited about.' Though he couldn’t find work, he continued to invent his own imaginative projects.
For example, in 1932 he drew a large cartoon called 'A Night-Club Map of 1930s Harlem,' with his observations of the various clubs and night life in Harlem during the now famous Harlem Renaissance. He drew Cab Calloway singing at the Cotton Club, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson dancing at the Lafayette Theater, and other landmarks and celebrities of African American culture.
In 1933, Campbell and his aunt were scraping by when a man climbed the rickety steps up to Campbell’s flat and knocked on the door. The man, Arnold Gingrich, announced that he was starting a brand new magazine and was looking for a cartoonist.
Gingrich was the co-founder of Esquire magazine, a lavish, large format, premium magazine for men, unlike any previous magazine. It would be full color and printed on quality paper stock. It would sell for 50 cents per copy at a time when The Saturday Evening Post was selling for a mere 5 cents. It would contain full page color cartoons as well as stories by the top writers of the day, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Mann and John Dos Passos.
Gingrich had already . . . approached a well-known cartoonist named Russell Patterson, but Patterson laughed at the figure of $100 a feature, which Gingrich mentioned as what Esquire was able to pay. . . . As Gingrich left, Patterson volunteered that he did know of a talented 'colored kid' who couldn’t get a job because he hadn’t been able to get past the receptionists to show his work. Patterson said that if Esquire 'was not afraid to cross the color line' to hire an African-American artist, he might fit the bill. The 'colored kid' was Campbell. . . .
As soon as Gingrich saw Campbell’s sample drawings, he knew they were the answer to his prayers. . . . Soon Campbell was named the art editor for Esquire. His work appeared in every single issue of Esquire from 1933 until 1958. . . More than that, his role with Esquire exposed him to a huge audience and gave him instant legitimacy with other publications. His art reappeared in the [Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker and Life magazine]. He started a nationally syndicated comic strip called Cuties and also did advertising art. Campbell became so busy that he had to turn away work. . . .
Campbell got married and moved to a very nice home in White Plains, New York where he and his wife Constance raised a family together. Constance helped out by modeling for his illustrations.
One advantage of being an illustrator in the early days of the 20th century was that the reading public had no way of knowing whether a picture was made by a male or female artist, or a white or an Asian or an African-American artist. If an artist mailed artwork to a magazine and the magazine accepted it, an artist might escape some of the prejudices that afflicted other jobs.
With his fame and fortune now secure, Campbell was able to use his art to openly celebrate his African-American identity. His 'Night-Club Map of 1930s Harlem' became a culturally important document, reproduced in several books, from Ken Burns‘s documentary Jazz to the autobiography of Cab Calloway . . . . It was displayed by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and National Geographic magazine, and is now in the permanent collection of the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
In 1942, his hometown paper, The St. Louis Star-Times, ran a major article about Campbell’s return to give a speech, saying 'The St. Louis Negro community this week will celebrate the return of one of its favorite sons: E. Simms Campbell.' Campbell was using his fame and prestige to raise funds for a Negro People’s Art Center, where 'young Negroes will have an opportunity to receive… the kind of formal art instruction that was denied Negro boys and girls of Campbell’s generation.'”
(www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2...)
8 мар 2023
