Robert Benchley by Nathaniel Benchley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Son Nathaniel’s book of his father is a well written account of his father’s life. As he mentions at the start, this is more anecdotal than a chronological history. As can be the case in a situation like this, it does seems Nathaniel was weaving around spot’s in Robert’s life he’d rather not have published. One moment the book is tripping along the chronological trail. Suddenly there are leaps here and there in time. then back to chronological order.

If I had not other wise known and read so much of Benchley over the past 40 plus years, I wouldn’t have thought much of it. In this case, Nathaniel’s skipping is at spots where Robert’s life took some turns that would be tagged uncomfortable. Certainly understandable for a son to do. The last people you ask to learn about a person is the family.

I was hoping for more first hand knowledge of the goings on in Robert’s life. Unfortunately, it seems so much I’ve learned of Robert being away from his family is reflected in the lack of personal stories in the book.

This has me pulling ‘Laughter’s Gentle Soul’ by Billy Altman off the shelf for another viewpoint. Seems Altman had no contact with the Benchley family in assembling his book. Wonder what I will find there?

Despite all this I do feel Nathaniel’s book is an otherwise very good overview of Robert’s life. There are a ton of promised anecdotes. That’s what the book is basically based upon. Lots and lots of hilarious stories that are pure Benchley. Thus this book is not to be missed by fans of the era and the humor.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 7 of 10

View all my reviews

The Best American Wit and Humor by J.B. Mussey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a nearly perfect set of laugh out loud (or however the kiddies say it today) stories, columns and cartoons. Outstanding entries of Alec Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, F.P.A. … well, the bulk of the Round Table. The stand out of the lot is Corey Ford’s reflection of his John Riddell Murder Case novel.

Also included, and has the largest contribution,are columns of Will Rogers. He was at his peak when this was published and certainly a draw for sales. The lot are also the weakest of the collection and why I drop a point from the star ccategory.

Unfortunately, most in this book could not be published today in the U.S. due to narrowing senses of humor and minds. The Politically Correct Police, who claim to hate all censorship except all they want to censor, would shackle a volume of this and sure to burn in much fanfare.

Bottom line: I highly recommend this book. 9 of 10 points.

View all my reviews

This has been a busy week of caricature events! this one in Altamonte Springs, Florida. A medical office brought me in for an open house. The event went very well. I was concerned because i haven’t been sleeping much in the past few weeks and especially the past week. My likenesses could have been better, but the engagement with the crowd was the best at this event than others in the past few weeks. What really assisted that was the lack of blaring music/soccer games and other noise. It gave me a chance to interact with the crowd and working at getting the crowd to interact with themselves.

Also dropped off an illustration that got got bogged down in massive miscommunication and ended up getting kicked back to me. Haven’t had that happen in – well, I don’t know when. Quite jarring and surprising. Part of the problem, as I saw it, is that I thought the conversation between me and the client were also part of the instructions to get the artwork done.

Apparently, we should have gotten more familiar with each other. It also would have helped if I hadn’t been on the road so much and finding myself in various parts of the state with car problems so that I could have communicated with the client better and not worked on the art work off and on. I also struggled with the project as the request was to create the illustration with pencil. i thought that would be a breeze and approached it as I approach all my illustrations. However, this had a lot of mechanical parts in a rather boring setting and that i tried to enliven it a bit, which I work at in all my work. The client, it seems was looking for a very technical look which is positively not something I do.

Bottom line is that client wasn’t familiar with my work as I thought and if I had developed a contract between us, we might have better nailed down what was expected. In that I was doing the project for a relative of a friend of mine, a contract didn’t seem necessary. I do my best to avoid these traps. Though they come up at times, I have always done my best to salvage the project and can’t think of a time that a project crashed and burned. The client does want to regroup and reapproach the project, but I think we are too far apart in what I do and what they want, so I’m stepping away so that they can find an illustrator who can accomplish far better what they want. Lots of time and materials poured into the project. My loss, just at a time when i can’t afford to let that happen.

Possibly more caricatures Saturday. But that’s likely the last for a week or so. I have plenty else to do and will be featuring here in the coming week.

Sketch Dailies had H.R. Giger as their subject of the day in honor of his death the day before. Giger was an artist known for his very sexually themed artwork. This included his designs of the alien in the film ‘Alien’. In fact, his sexual designs were meshed throughout the set of the alien’s lair in the original film. As the sequels were tacked on, the alien settings were toned down as was the alien and family members.

Back when the film came out it became a favorite topic amongst my friends Ken Cullota and Steve Gallancy and others. This was back in high school. It was at that time I attempted to work through Junior Achievement to create a humor magazine, much like Mad. Ken Culotta came up with a take off of the film renamed Alias. It was hilarious. Unfortunately, the funding part became pretty unreachable as I’m as incompetent in fiances then as I am now. We had an adviser that was also a publisher, but that didn’t help. It was just too much to pull off. I still have Ken’s script.

I picked up all I could of the film from movie books to Walt Simonson’s incredible graphic novel of the film. Thee best illustrated adaption of any film ever done, in my opinion. I’ve still got most all of it. The one thing I never got was a large Alien “action figure” around at the time.

Back then there was a comic book convention in Orlando that was run by, my friend, Jim Ivey. One of the guest artists was a local fellow, Ken Mitchroney. Mitchroney had a set of copies of his version of Alien that just blew me away! I’ll try to track them down and post them here. Mitchroney is still cartooning, but in California now. He just announced today his arrival at Warner Brothers Studio to work on a film. He’s a great cartoonist who should be better known.

Anyway, the Alien film obviously was a big part of my life after it came out for over a year and I got real good at drawing the critter. It’s been a rare time that I will draw the Alien character these days. When Sketch Dailies posted the opportunity, i grabbed it and tailored a bit of humor to go with it.

Drew a whole bunch of caricatures yesterday in Okeechobee, Florida. Here are a few!

Charlie by Ben Hecht

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is outstanding in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. I want to be sure to point out something that might be missed and that is that author Hecht has this biography of his pal Charlie MacArthur with excellent quotes. Much to be quoted is just descriptions made by Hecht. I have my volume full of sticky notes where I found wonderful quotes.

Hecht’s writing is typical Hecht and his love of his friend shines through often in the text. I’m glad he wrote many of the chapters more as if approaching a column than a linear biography. It gives the opportunity to read a part and walk away and savor the writing abilities of Hecht.

Certainly the biggest drawback to the book is that there’s a good deal not told about MacArthur. Especially missing is information in his youngest years. However, the entire book is a joy to read and I highly recommend it.

View all my reviews