A Dream Come True?
At Disney, Sam worked on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the worlds'
first feature length, animated cartoon. His job was that of a
lowly "in-betweener", those who draw hundreds of very precise frames,
based on an original set of master drawings, in order to give the
illusion of movement. For example: to animate the movement of a
character's arm above his head might require drawing the same character
in eighteen different poses. Sam hated that kind of drudgery! It
required little skill and no creativity from the animator. It was
little more than craft work, but that was his primary function at
Disney. For Sam, the entire process was like working on a
treadmill. Disney regularly hired eager young talent to work for minimum pay. While they did receive valuable experience, after two or three years, most realized that they would enjoy neither fame nor fortune working for Disney. Turnover was high. Sam believed that Disney was callously exploiting the dreams of creative young talent. When the young artists finally realized they were being used and decided to leave, Disney would simply recruit a whole new crop of eager young talent willing to turn out huge amounts of work for very little pay.
In 1941 the American Federation of Labor began the organization of the Screen Cartoonists Guild. Disney became the focus of a major labor dispute. Sam soon found himself carrying a picket sign in front of Disney Studios, along with a large number of other animation artists. Cobean believed he was helping to prevent the exploitation of future young artists. He and friend Reg Massie and Willis Pyle handled the publicity for the strike. After nine weeks, Disney agreed to sign a union contract and take everybody back to work. The strike caused a great deal of bitterness between those who participated in the strike and those who decided to cross the picket lines. Out that experience, Sam's career at Disney came to an end on a decidedly sad note. His wife Anne always said Disney fired those who went on strike soon after they returned to work, despite the new contract. But whether he was fired or simply asked to resign, Sam left Disney soon after the strike was concluded.
World War II soon changed everything. Like so many other young men, Sam went for his Army physical, but was classified 4F because of flat feet. Now, out of work and unfit for the Army, Sam decided to go to Washington D.C. to apply for Navy commission. While in Washington Sam sought help in finding suitable temporary employment. He was sent to a job in the U. S. Bureau of Engraving to help develop X-Rays. Cobean lasted less than a day. He found the job totally boring. His next job opportunity was as a copy boy for the Washington Post, which he seemed to enjoy. He was also fascinated by the work of Herbert Block, the famous political cartoonist at the Post, known as Herblock. It was there that Sam developed an interest in political cartoons. After two weeks working for the Post he was told that the Navy would not give him a commission. Discouraged, Sam went back to California . . . and one who was waiting for him there!
Back in California, Sam and Anne McCool were married on
May 26, 1942, after a lengthy, seven year courtship. Anne was
later to say that, after she and Sam started going together, neither
seriously considered marrying anyone else. Sam was never
particularly anxious to get married, but neither did he want Anne to
marry someone else. Having lost so many loved ones growing up,
Sam may have been a bit hesitant to make a commitment. After the
marriage, Sam went to work for Screen Gems Writers in
Hollywood. A former art director at Disney had organized the
company and hired the cream of the crop from among the former Disney
strikers. Cobean worked for them until he was finally drafted
into the Army in 1943.Anne & Sam Cobean
at their home in California
Sam Cobean entered the Army in January, 1943. He took basic training outside Sacramento. After basic training, Cobean was transferred to the Army Signal Corps training film unit, which occupied an old motion picture studio in Long Island City, N.Y. The film office soon moved to a 32nd Street Office Building in New York City. Anne eventually joined him there, finding them a small, furnished apartment on 33rd Street. She took a job as secretary to the editor-in-chief of McCall's Magazine and remained there until Sam's discharge from the army in 1946.
Of those days, his wife Anne would recall, "Our apartment was small, we
couldn't get a phone, didn't have a car, but didn't feel
deprived. I had an Uncle Elmer who was married to my Aunt Veva,
my mother's sister. He was a traffic cop in Washington, D. C. for
about 20 years on the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. by the Riggs
Bank. When Sam and I were broke, we could always go to Uncle
Elmer's and raid the refrigerator and liquor closet, which he kept
plentifully supplied, even though he drank very little. Uncle
Elmer was a family favorite and when my brother Dick got the
congressional Medal of Honor, Uncle Elmer finally got to go in the
front door of the White House. Besides President Truman, there
were Gen. Eisenhower, Nimitz, et al, Pvt Cobean and me. My dad
was city manager of Norman then and the police chief drove him, Mother
and Fran to Washington. That honor, plus Sam's subsequent
success, made him feel amply repaid for all the raids on his
refrigerator. If you see any policemen in Sam's cartoons, Uncle
Elmer was probably the
model."
Sam & Anne in New York City
Cobean worked with a
team of artists to produce animated training films for enlisted men.
The films were on the use of various equipment and combat
strategy. Sam also illustrated a training pamphlet on treacherous
tactics used by Japanese soldiers. One of the cartoonists working
with him in the Signal Corps was Charles Addams. They worked
together on a number of projects with the Signal Corps, and soon became
good friends. By that time, Addams was already a frequent
contributor to The New Yorker.
He immediately saw the potential in Cobean's cartoons and introduced
Sam to James Geraghty, the art editor at The New Yorker. Later, when
Harold Ross, editor at the magazine, saw samples of Cobean's work, he
said, "Clean em up and we'll use them." At that time, the humor being published in The New Yorker was considered some of the best in America. As a prestigious literary magazine featuring short stories, articles, book reviews and cartoons, it was one of the great achievements in cartooning to have one's humor featured in the The New Yorker. Its contributors constituted a who's who of cartooning and caricature. It was unusual for a beginning cartoonist like Cobean to be featured in such a noteworthy magazine. At 31, Sam was hardly a beginning artists, but would have still been considered an amateur or relative newcomer in the world of professional cartooning. Although Cobean was introduced to The New Yorker by co-worker Charles Addams, James Geraghty, art editor for the magazine later commented, "Sam had a definite talent and he would have made it eventually, without the introduction by Addams. You cannot fail to quickly recognize the greatness in his particular style."
One of the earliest rituals with which Cobean learned to cope were the results of Tuesday afternoon art meetings, presided over by New Yorker editor Harold Ross. Ross would often say of cartoonists, "Artists don't know anybody and they never go anywhere. They stay home at night, drinking soft drinks in cold sitting rooms, and watching home movies." Despite his views about artists, Ross devoted a large amount of time reviewing and selecting the art featured in The New Yorker. Art meetings began after lunch and often lasted until seven o'clock in the evening. In the center of a long table on a drawing board would be displayed the week's submittals: drawings, cartoons and other artwork from scores of artists, both known and unknown. Some, whose names have since become household names, tried for months to get submittals accepted by Ross, sending rough sketches by the dozens, week after week. That Ross immediately recognized Cobean's talent and accepted his first submitted drawings for publication gives some indication of Sam's native talent, both as an artist and humorist.
Sam's first cartoon appeared in The New Yorker on April 8, 1944,
while he was still serving in the Army. The drawing (shown at
left) depicted a nude woman, with a towel draped across her lap, posing
for a photograph in a phone booth with a sign that read, "Take your own
photo, frame included, 15c." From there his cartoon work took
off. Soon his humorous pictures, drawn with a minimum of lines,
became familiar to thousands of magazine readers. Cartooning had
finally become his life and he worked hard at it. Fortunately,
the army life gave him time for outside cartooning. Memos
coming out of those "art meetings", addressed to Cobean from James
Geraghty, show some of his development as a cartoonist. One
suggested "Better fence, or no fence at all. Maybe better in a
yard, rather than on a sidewalk. Better dogs, with more natural
distinctive features. Hope you will try this one again."
Another one said, "We like this idea. The spirit of the drawing
is fine and the criticism has only to do with details such as the
Wave's high heels and the dubious authenticity of the dress and
hats. Don't the Waves carry a sort of satchel with a strap over
the shoulder?" Anyhow, get the costumes correct." The slightest
slip in minor details would be challenged. But more often than
not Cobean received a note saying, "This is okay to finish up exactly
as you have it," or "it gave Art Meeting a big laugh." Upon
hearing that Cobean was still in the Army and living in a small
apartment, Ross took pity on him and provided Sam and co-worker Charles
Addams an office at The New Yorker
in which to do their drawings.Cobean had a rare and quite genuine sense of humor. He could take any situation and recognize the humor in it. In his cartoons he illustrated the functioning of the mind in humorous and often truthful moments. He had an innate ability to make people laugh, just as he loved to laugh himself. After many years at the drawing board, many cartoonists find their inspiration waning and their humor stretched thin. The craft that once gave them such joy in creativity becomes work and drudgery. That never happened to Cobean. His humor remained fresh and vivid throughout his career. He never became stale because he was always investigating new ideas or new variations on old themes. Rather than follow the trends of others, Cobean preferred to establish his own. With quick movements he would sketch drawings and sit back to look at the work with a smile or even laughter. At a time when the trend in cartooning was toward brevity in gag lines, cartoonists were striving for one line gags instead of the usual two or three. Sam Cobean carried the concept even further by popularizing the captionless cartoon. While he did not pioneer such minimalism in cartooning, Cobean contributed greatly to it's popularity.
Some cartoonists like to work from gags supplied by others, but Cobean preferred developing his own ideas. It was only on rare occasions that he would work from gags not of his own creation. At the beginning of his career Sam would sometimes accept an idea from someone else and then render it in an appropriate cartoon setting. Where Cobean received inspiration for his own ideas is anyone's guess; however, his peculiar understanding of human nature combined with careful observations of others probably account for most of his inspiration. Sam had that rare ability to see the humor in a wide variety of situations, humor that he was then able to turn into his art.
Cobean's creativity is most evident in his most notable contribution to the art form: the so-called Dream Cartoon. It is also referred to as the bubble or balloon drawing. In the cartoon, Cobean imagined what people were thinking and then revealed their inner thoughts in a bubble over their head. For example, a starting pitcher in a women's softball game leaves the mound for the "showers" and the male umpire, with a smile on his face and vision in his mind, sees the nude girl standing in the shower. In another series of cartoons, a woman makes elaborate preparations for a date, beginning with a shower, dressing, putting on makeup, and getting everything "just right" before walking down the staircase to meet her date. The woman's date then looks at her dressed "just so," all the while visualizing her in the nude. In yet another example of the genre, an office playboy, supposedly hard at work, stops to watch his secretary stroll by. At the same time his attention is drawn to a sign on the wall that says, "Think." In his dream he then sees the secretary some years later, heavier, surrounded by four screaming children, while he's patiently trying to read the evening paper. The dream suddenly bursts and he happily goes back to work. Of course, not all of Cobean's drawing were of men imagining women in the nude. In another series a woman pages through a number of outfits in Vogue until she finally finds one she likes, in her bubble we see her imagining herself in the dress. Not having the same figure as the model in Vogue, the outfit looks awful. The woman's dream bursts as she quickly closes the magazine.
It was in1945 that Sam's first Dream Cartoon appeared in The New Yorker. It depicted a man and woman walking together on a sidewalk while passing a beautiful, smartly dressed woman walking the other way. The man's dream bubble imagines the beautiful woman in the nude. In contrast, his wife's bubble eliminates the other woman altogether, visualizing only the fashionable outfit she is wearing.
Discussing Cobean, the artist and creator of this new type of cartoon, a reviewer writing for Life magazine gave the following description of his work (Life, October 17, 1947):
"Ever since women took to
wearing clothes men have been trying to visualizehow they looked without them. As an international, nonseasonal pastime, this
pleasant sort of daydreaming has long outranked stamp-collecting,
bird-watching, and sidewalk-superintending. A fertile field for cartoonists, it
first got wide public attention in 1945 at the hands of a perceptive, young New
York artist named Sam Cobean, whose hilarious early efforts along these
lines were printed in The New Yorker. For two years Cobean had the field to
himself. During this period he managed to embellish the bare original notion
with some funny, highly fanciful twists, called "switcheroos" in the trade.
Then Cobean's competitors assiduously began to till much the same soil and
The New Yorker broke out in a rash of dream cartoons."
Page 4
Sam's first Dream
Cartoon