May the Fourth Be With You! 2019

We're in the last year of Star Wars movies but on this Star Wars day--May the Fourth--I'd like to look back and remember two who have left us.

Peter Mayhew died last week, on April 30, 2019. Star Wars fans know him as Chewbacca, Han Solo's sidekick and co-pilot. Born on May 19, 1944, he was not an actor at all until George Lucas cast him as Chewbacca in 1976. The three main actors get lots of credit for the success of Star Wars, but can you imagine the original or its two sequels without Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca? It's a sad thing to contemplate.

Strangely, Chewbacca began life as a pointy-eared alien. Only later was he softened into a furry and lovable creature. The artist who first depicted him was a Hoosier, Ralph McQuarrie, who was born on June 13, 1929, in Gary, Indiana. McQuarrie wasn't in the movie business, either, until shortly before George Lucas hired him to create pre-production artwork for Star Wars. He went on to work on many more movies. A great deal of the look and mood of the Star Wars universe is based on his work. Ralph McQuarrie died on March 3, 2012.

As it turns out, Chewbacca's final appearance was inspired by the works of another artist and another writer. The writer was someone you might have heard of, George R.R. Martin, who wrote a story called "And Seven Times Never Kill Man," which was published in Analog in July 1975. The artist was John Schoenherr (1935-2010), who illustrated Mr. Martin's story and provided a painting for the cover of Analog that Star Wars fans will, I think, find very familiar. (In addition to Chewbacca, think Ewoks.) Michael Heilemann tells the full story on his very fine blog Kitbashed: The Origin of Star Wars, here.

Early promotional poster artwork by Ralph McQuarrie, dated April 1, 1975. The tall, pointy-eared alien is an early version of Chewbacca. Note the resemblance of the Luke Skywalker-like character to George Lucas and the golden robot to the figure in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. You can see why McQuarrie's pre-production paintings of Star Wars helped to sell Twentieth Century Fox on the project. It must have been this version of Chewbacca to whom Carrie Fisher referred in her audition for Star Wars.

Here's a sketch of the new, furry Chewbacca. The body and the getup are mostly the same. It's the head and arms that have changed, based on inspiration by science fiction artist John Schoenherr from 1975.

Here is Chewbacca with the other principals on Tatooine. Painting by Ralph McQuarrie.

And here he is again on the Death Star in another of McQuarrie's famed panoramic paintings.

Original text copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley, with acknowledgments to Michael Heilemann for his research on the origins of Chewbacca. 

Buffleheads by Mac Heaton (1925-2002)

February is the month in which migratory ducks return to the Midwest--if they weren't already here in January--and one of the cutest and most fun to watch is the little bufflehead. Buffleheads are diving ducks, and where they dive is in our big rivers and lakes. First you'll see the bright white head of the male. Then you'll see him plunge, only to come up again somewhere close by. In its issue of January 1964, Outdoor Indiana had buffleheads on its cover in a portrait by Mac Heaton (1925-2002). If you're lucky and you look hard enough this late winter, maybe you'll see the real thing.

Text copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Abe Lincoln and Garo Antreasian

Today, February 12, 2019, is the 110th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky, but in the late fall of 1816, just a few weeks before Indiana became a state, he came with his family to the future land of Hoosiers. Abe spent fourteen years in Indiana before moving on to Illinois. That state may rightly claim the title of "the Land of Lincoln," but it was in Indiana that he grew up.

Outdoor Indiana, the magazine of the Indiana Department of Conservation, now the Department of Natural Resources, featured Abraham Lincoln in its issue of June 1963, one hundred years minus a month after the twin Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. The art on the front and back covers is from a design by Garo Z. Antreasian of Indianapolis. As you can see, the cover design is actually a photograph of a mosaic mural made from over 300,000 pieces of imported Murano glass, set by Ralph Peck and Mrs. Charles Pitts. It is located in the Indiana Government Center North, then called the Indiana State Office Building.

Garo Antreasian was born on February 16, 1922, in Indianapolis to parents who survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915. He attended Arsenal Technical High School, which was known for its programs in arts and graphics, and the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. (1) During World War II, he served as a combat artist with the U.S. Coast Guard. Afterwards he taught at Herron before moving on the teaching jobs in Los Angeles and New Mexico. Mr. Antreasian retired in 1986 and died only recently, on November 3, 2018, eight days before Veterans Day. He was ninety-six years old. So today, in the month of their birthdays, we honor Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, but we may also honor another man of greatness who honored him.

Note
(1) Arsenal Technical High School, usually just shortened to "Tech," got its name from its use as an Civil War-era arsenal. The arsenal was closed in 1903. The school was opened in 1912.

Text copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2019

Today is what I call the International Day of the Cartoonist. It was on this day in 2015 that five cartoonists working for the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were murdered for their art. They called themselves Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb--respectively, George David Wolinski (1934-2015), Jean Cabut (1938-2015), Philippe Honoré (1941-2015), Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015), and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015). Their murderers were adherents to a totalitarian ideology, one of many that I suspect will forever be a plague on humanity.

There is an organization devoted to defending cartoonists from those who would wish to silence them. It's called Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI), and every year since 1999 it has given out its Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning. The most recent winner is Pedro X. Molina of Nicaragua, who has drawn cartoons in opposition to President Daniel Ortega and his regime. Mr. Molina received his award in 2018.

You can read more about Pedro X. Molina and CRNI at its website:

https://cartoonistsrights.org/

By the way, Hoosier cartoonist Joel Pett serves as president of CRNI.

Copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The Great War

The Great War, what we now call World War I or the First World War, ended one hundred years ago, on November 11, 1918. Millions of Americans answered their country's call, including artists who created posters, illustrations, cards, bookplates, and other works on behalf of the war effort. Some worked mostly or exclusively on the home front, in the safety of their studios. There were also official artists, what were later called combat artists, that is, men in uniform who went to where the action was and brought back pictures of what they had seen there. For almost a generation after the war--until war came again to Europe--illustrators, cartoonists, and other artists in America depicted the Great War for a popular readership and viewership. The art and artists represented below only scratch the surface of war-related works created by men and women from the Hoosier State. I hope they are enough for now as the year ends and we look forward to 2019. Happy New Year!

Charles Buckles Falls (1874-1960) of Fort Wayne worked with the Division of Pictorial Publicity, an organization of artists who created art for the U.S. government for the war effort. Falls may in fact have become the most famous among them for his posters, which were seen by countless millions nationwide. His most familiar involved books and reading, including this one, "The Camp Library Is Yours."

"Books Wanted," another poster by C.B. Falls.

The same design was used as a bookplate for the War Service Library.

Above and below: Posters by Falls promoting service in the U.S. Marines. 

With this poster Falls did the same with records as what he had done with books by asking people to donate their "slacker" records for the sake of troops stationed overseas. 

Joseph Clemens Gretter (1904-1988), who signed his name "Gretta," was born in Benton County, Indiana, and studied art in Iowa and Chicago. A cartoonist and illustrator (he later worked on Ripley's Believe It or Not!), Gretta drew the pictures for Glimpses of American History by Leah Berger (1933), from which this stark, intense, and frightening image is taken.

Gretta also illustrated a number of books for boys, including Wing for Wing by Thomas Burtis (1932). This is the frontispiece for the book. It shows an aerial attack on a German balloon, not as easy a thing as we might think.

Walter Jack Duncan (1881-1941) of Indianapolis was in a completely different category as an illustrator of war scenes, for he served in uniform as one of the official artists attached to the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). Duncan spent a little over a year in Europe, mostly in the rear, where he depicted scenes like this one, the disembarkation of American troops at the French port of Brest. This image gives us an idea of the scale of things, not just in a time of war but in the great pageant of history.

Here is another scene by Duncan of the port at Brest. Note the masts of the sailing ships in the background.

Finally, an interior scene by Duncan showing an American officers' mess in a cellar, probably in France. For more images by Walter Jack Duncan, see the website of the National Museum of American History, here.

Text and captions copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for Christmas

The year is almost over, but before it ends, I want to offer a few pictures for the season and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

First, a charming illustration by John Dukes McKee (1899-1956) of Kokomo, from My American Heritage, collected by Ralph Henry and Lucile Pannell (1959).

Next, the cover design for More About the Live Dolls by Josephine Scribner Gates (1906), an drawing created by Virginia Keep (1878-1962) of Indianapolis.

Not everyone who puts on a Santa suit is nice. Sometimes they can be naughty, as in this illustration by John A. Coughlin (1885-1943), a Chicagoan who studied at the University of Notre Dame. (For that I think we can call him a Hoosier.) The illustration is from Detective Story Weekly, December 19, 1925.

Finally, what the season is really about, an image of the birth of Jesus Christ by Sister Esther Newport (1901-1986) of Clinton, Indiana, from the book A Bible History: With a History of the Church by Rev. Stephen J. McDonald and Elizabeth Jackson (1932, 1940).

Text and captions copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Leo Ross Porter (1889-1918)

I wrote some time ago that I knew of only one Hoosier cartoonist who died while on active duty in the U.S. military. He was Asa Henderson King (1880-1919) of Boone and Clinton counties, who died at Camp Galliard in the Panama Canal Zone on June 6, 1919. This summer, though, I discovered another, one who not only died while on active duty but was actually killed in action, one hundred years ago as the Great War was in its final months. On this anniversary of the ending of that war, the war that was to have ended all wars, I would like to remember and honor him as we remember all who fought and died, in the mud and trenches, among the shell craters, on the wire, in the bombed-out cities, above the battlefields, and in the maritime approaches to a continent at war.

Leo Ross Porter was born on February 26, 1889, in Metz, a small town in Steuben County, Indiana, not far from the Ohio state line. When he was five years old, his parents, John Wesley Porter (1855-1933) and Josephine Porter (1856-1933), moved their family to Pleasant Lake, a town a little south of Angola, Indiana. "Leo was always a lover of art and nature," wrote the Steuben Republican. "He always liked birds and animals and they seemed to know him as a friend. He made a special study of birds, and when a boy, used to watch them by the hour, studying their habits, and he could answer almost any question concerning them." (1)

When he was about twenty, Porter went west, working and traveling for about a year and a half. He also studied art for a short time in Kansas City. Upon his return to the Midwest, Porter worked at a wholesale firm in Detroit before leaving to take up his art studies again. He attended the Lockwood Art Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and graduated in 1914. From 1914 to April 1917, he worked as a designer and cartoonist for the Lansing State Journal. Then war came.

Porter enlisted in the U.S. Army at Lansing in April 1917. He trained with his unit, the 119th Field Artillery, at Camp Grayling, Michigan, then, beginning in July 1917, at Camp McArthur, Texas. At Camp McArthur, he was assigned to the reconnaissance section of his headquarters unit as a drawer of maps and sketches. The 119th shipped out for France on February 26, 1918, and went right into the firing line and what for Porter would be five months of continuous action. He was at the Second Battle of the Marne, his unit helping to capture the city of Fismes. On August 12, Porter was wounded at Château-Thierry. While he was being carried away by his comrades, a shell burst nearly tore off his left leg. Despite the grievous wounds he had received, Porter joked, "Well, I guess I'll have to get a peg leg." (2) Instead he died two days later, on August 14, 1918. Leo Ross Porter was the first Steuben County resident to die in action.

Three years passed before his body was returned stateside for burial. His father received the body in Indiana in July 1921. On July 31, 1921, a funeral for Leo Ross Porter took place at the Methodist Church in Angola. He was buried at Circle Hill Cemetery in that city. Porter was survived by his parents; three brothers, Jay, Otis, who served with the 338th Infantry in France, and Lester; and a sister, Audrey. The local newspaper, the Steuben Republican, remembered the fallen soldier as "of a quiet disposition, never talking much, and his remarks were always to the point." (3)

In the year following Porter's funeral and interment, local veterans formed the Ross Porter Chapter of Disabled Veterans of the World War. On May 31, 1922, the men marched in the Decoration Day parade in Angola. Afterwards they went to Porter's grave for a memorial service. You can still visit his grave today. His headstone is engraved: "Leo R. Porter/Killed in France/1889-1918."

Notes

(1) "Leo Ross Porter." Obituary. Steuben Republican, October 2, 1918, page 1.

(2) "Steuben County Hero Will Be Buried Today." Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, July 31, 1921, page 27.

(3) "Leo Ross Porter." Obituary. Steuben Republican, October 2, 1918, page 1.

For years journalist Earle R. Pitt amused readers of the Lansing State Journal with his humorous columns published under the heading "The City Hall Grouch." For part of that time, Pitt's columns were illustrated by a young Hoosier cartoonist, Leo Ross Porter. Here's an example from April 5, 1916, exactly a year and a day before Congress declared war on Germany. 

And here is the cartoonist, Leo Ross Porter, who was killed in the war.

Original text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley