Word: humorizing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Seuss books when I was a lad; my literary companions Babar, Bugs Bunny and the Little Prince (and a lot of junk that I have elevated to the pop-cultural Pantheon in this column). I'm glad that Cohen has honored Geisel as a full-service wit: the humor-magazine work, the political cartoons, his cunning ad campaigns and Ted's creation of one of the most enduring, least endearing antiheroes in Hollywood cartoon history. What follows comes from studying the Cohen book, rerunning my favorites from Geisel's mid-period film work, and watching Peter Jones' excellent two-hour...
...Whatever the genes that produced him, Ted radiated a comic precocity. For the high school newspaper he wrote parodies of poems and contributed humorous drawings. At Dartmouth he stretched the limits of homework, writing a "book report" of the Boston & Maine Railroad timetable as if it were a modern novel: "Chapter 18 is word for word exactly the same as Chapter 17, only it is run backwards." Ted joined the campus humor magazine, Jack-O-Lantern, where he became editor-in-chief, until removed as punishment for the drinking incident. (Prohibition was in force, not only making Ted's spree...
...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...
...Capra to amass a film unit, mainly for documentaries that would instruct soldiers and citizens on the government's enemies, aims and ideals. (From this unit came the "Why We Fight" series and many other powerful non-fiction films.) Geisel, who had sold bug spray and motor oil through humor, and honed his satirical skills on the isolationists for PM, was the prefect recruit for this task. At the end of the war this son of German-Americans wrote a training film called "Your Job in Germany," which said that the German people would have to prove they were...
...grown-up children's book called "The Seven Lady Godivas" in 1940. Much later, he created, for his own pleasure, Beardsley-like art of a slightly bawdy nature (a woman with a long-necked cat at her pubis - a pussy). SNAFU gave him the chance to write adult humor for adults, or for boys who were being trained to die as men. The series tried to ensure that more of those boys would come home alive...