Word: geisel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Geisel had been back in New York for only a year before he got a job with Judge, the top humor magazine of a decade rich in them. S.J. Perelman, a month and a day older, was there at the same time, and the two men have similar profiles. Both were Ivy Leaguers who had edited their college humor publications (Perelman's, at Brown, was the Brown Jug); both made their names first as cartoonists at Judge and another popular gag mag, Life (pre-Luce); both branched out to movie work and books. One difference: Perelman went to live...
...Judge cartoon led to a livelihood. In it, a dragon crawls ferociously into the bed of a "mediaeval tenant" who complains, "And just after I'd sprayed the whole castle with Flit!" Flit was a bug spray, and its manufacturer, Standard Oil of New Jersey, soon hired Geisel to create an ad campaign. "Quick Henry the Flit!" became one of the best-known catch phrases from between the wars. (It lingered decades later in a cartoon, appearing in one of Harvey Kurtzman's magazines - Trump or, more likely, Help! As I recall it, a man summons his butler with...
...female mosquito stand before a minister mosquito, with a scowling fourth figure holding the spray at the groom: "The Flit Gun Wedding." A bug stands in front of the business end of the spray gun, a rope attached to the pump: "The suicide." In a tribute to his ancestors, Geisel did one ad in semi-German: "Quick Heinrich, Das Flit" (Should it be "Raus"?) The campaign expanded to book form, with a collection of the published ads, and a promotional movie, produced by Warner Bros. It showed a whale being menacing by a mosquito; Orca snarls, "Quick Jonah! The Flit...
...cartoons or his children's books, Geisel had the great salesman's gift for distilling an idea, making it glamorous and amusing - selling without shouting. Recognizing this, Standard Oil put him on other products, such as the auto additive Esso-lube. A Seussian creature would lurk on a car hood: Beware the "Moto-raspus"! Battle the "Karbo-nockus"! (Standard's oil to the rescue.) In a nod to dad, he also worked for Schaefer Beer; one cartoon had a stuffed moose head that comes to enthusiastic life when a waiter walks by with a bottle of Schaefer Bock Beer...
...verdant and productive dreamlife: "I found that I could no longer keep my mind on drawing pictures of Horton the Elephant. I found myself drawing pictures of Lindbergh the Ostrich." Annoyed by the controversial air hero Charles Lindbergh and the blinkered isolationism he was seductively selling to America, Geisel became the editorial cartoonist for PM, the left-wing New York City newspaper. "The New Yorker dismissed us as 'a bunch of young fogies,' " Ted later wrote. "I think we were a bunch of honest but slightly cockeyed crusaders, and I still have prideful memories of working alongside ... dozens of other...