There is a nostalgic romance to the early days of Hy Eisman's career.
There are the streets of New York City in the early fifties. There is the memory of long journeys upstairs to publishing offices that almost always resulted in disappointment or, in some instances, that had disappeared when they had just been there seven days before. Like an early episode of the Twilight Zone, there is the black-and-white television broadcasting the Kefauver hearings as he stops in a bar for a beer after another round of submissions. With both the good and the bad, there is still one part of Eisman's early career that proves to be a source of wonderment: his membership in the National Cartoonists Society.
After gaining admission in 1955, Eisman stood in awe as he first saw the ballroom they met in. "When you a young cartoonist these guys in the National Cartoonists Society are all like gods to you," he said. "Just think of the names: Caniff, Foster, Kelly, Gould, Goldberg, every one of them. When I met these guys like these, they were bigger than life. All I could ever really say in the early years was say that I like their work. It took me years to actually get comfortable talking to them. It wasn't until I became a member of the board that I started to feel comfortable around them.
"At the time I joined they were meeting at the Lambs Club in NYC. It was an actor's club, which was actually a copy of an actor's club in London. When the NCS started, Rube Goldberg, Russell Patterson and Bob Dunn had become very friendly with a lot of actors. Goldberg had even done a couple of movies and Dunn was on early TV doing a program called Quick on the Draw. They had gotten the club to allow them to use the premises as a meeting place for cartoonists. When I joined, they had what they called a Shepherd--after all, the meetings were at the Lamb's Club--who was the president, Billy Gaxton. The meetings were monthly, and there would be a dinner afterwards. There was always a lot of drinking going on. For Pete's sake, there was a bar right there in the meeting room! In order to get the meeting going, they would always have to pry the guys away from the bar!"
From the first meeting, Eisman started meeting artists whose work he had always admired. "The first guy I met, sitting right across from me at my first dinner, was Raeburn Van Buren. He was the creator of Abbie and Slats, and this was always a strip I liked. What was so nice was that even though he was much older, he just talked to me like a fellow professional. At that first meeting there was Al Capp, Walt Kelly, Alex Raymond, Ernie Bushmiller, Milton Caniff, all of them just sitting there, big as life. As I went to more meetings, I got to talk to a few of them. To me, it was unreal that so many legends were just standing around talking shop and gossip with each other. They were all, so, let's just say, normal. These were guys I had idolized for years."
Despite his nervousness and amazement at being surrounded by so many legends, Eisman found almost all of them to be easy to talk to. "At one early meeting, my friend Morris asked me if I would like to meet Hal Foster. Of course I said yes! How can you not admire Foster? Morris walks me over to the end of the bar and Foster is just standing there, all alone. He introduces me and Foster and I start talking. Foster was incredibly easy to talk to. I mean, I was just a new cartoonist with few real credits at the time, and he was talking to me like an equal."
"Foster starts telling me about how he had initially developed Prince Valiant. He begins to tell me that, originally, he only had enough material for ten years. If you look at the early strips he had the witch foretelling what Hal was going to go through in life. That was actually Foster's outline for the run of the strip. He never thought he was going to have to do more than that decade's worth of work. Then he begins to tell me how the strip suddenly began to take off. Now he found himself stuck and had to come up with more writing. At the time we met, he was beginning to do the strip over again with his young son Arn. He and Arn would, to a certain degree, retell some of the stories. The interesting thing is that after we got talking, I lost track of time. He went on for well over a half hour. As I was walking away I asked Morris how long he had actually known Foster and he tells me that ‘I just met him when I introduced you!' That is what the NCS was like when I joined."
This isn't the only time that Morris decided to introduce Eisman to someone he didn't really know. "One night, when he was doing How to Murder Your Wife, Jack Lemmon came into the club. The role required him to play a cartoonist, so apparently he had come up to see if cartoonists were ‘different' or whatever. Lemmon is walking around by himself and Morris walks me up to him and introduces me to Jack Lemmon. The three of us talked for a good while. It was a nice time. As we were walking away, I asked him how he knew Lemmon and he tells me the same thing he told me when he met Foster."
Not all the meetings took place at the Lamb's Club. "One of the early perks was a yearly outing at Fred Waring's hotel on the banks of the Delaware in Pennsylvania. He had a band that traveled and was also the inventor of the Waring blender. This guy even had a TV program and he was in a number of movies. He sponsored the trip because he was a big fan of cartoonists. Everyone who attended did a lot of stuff for him that ended up on tabletops, scrapbooks, etc."
While the NCS is known for handing out the legendary Reuben to a deserving cartoonist every year, they do give out other awards at the ceremony. Eisman has won two awards: The first was in 1975, for Best Humor Comic Book Cartoonist for his work on Nancy in the Gold Key comic books. The second award came in1984, this time it was for his work on Little Lulu's comic book. Considering that only members vote on these, each one is a pretty prestigious honor.
Eisman starts laughing as he tells the story of the 1984 award. "This is the perfect story about the comic business. The dinner takes place in the Hotel Plaza at the ballroom. There is an orchestra and it was a black tie event. I mean, this is a big deal. They do it like it is a Hollywood Oscar party. When I won, I was really surprised. I couldn't thank anyone because I was so surprised!"
After winning the 1984 award, NBC in New York called Eisman because they thought that he had actually won the Reuben. "I had to explain to them that there were several honors at the ceremony beside the Reuben," he laughed. "When I told them it wasn't the Reuben, just a plaque, they took a second or two and than said they had decided to interview me anyway. We eventually agreed that NBC would be coming down to my house with a film crew."
One of the reasons for Eisman's shock is that he really hadn't been doing that much on the Little Lulu book. Anticipating some Lulu-related questions from the NBC reporter, he called his editor over at Gold Key. "Wally Green was the one who was doing the editing on the Lulu books for Gold Key. I explained to him that really didn't know much about Lulu. I said that my win was a fluke. Not that I didn't appreciate it. I know that a lot of awards, regardless of the art form, will often reward someone's career like this. Regardless, I needed him to fill me in on the long history of Lulu."
As funny as this is to Eisman, it was now time for him to hear some laughter on the other end. "Wally starts laughing after I tell him what I need. He told me that I was going to have to wing it. I couldn't figure out his attitude. The TV coverage would mean national exposure for Gold Key Books. I asked him why and he starts to tell me that Gold Key had literally closed their doors that day. As we were speaking, he was cleaning out his desk!"
"The story gets even better and shows why it is the perfect comic book story for anyone who works in the industry. The next day NBC calls me and tells me that they are canceling the story anyway. This is after my wife and I went to all the trouble of cleaning up our living room!" Within 48 hours of winning an award from his peers for his work on Lulu, the job actually gets canceled and the publisher closes its doors.
The story doesn't end there. "I knew that Gold Key still had two Lulu stories that I had done with Fred Fredricks as a writer. Naturally, they never saw publication because Gold Key was over. Somehow, these two original stories on Bristol board were eventually found at the San Diego Convention. Form there, the Little Lulu newsletter was able to publish one of the two stories. I have no idea what the art sold for or if it just stayed with the collector who let them publish it."
"You know, Gold Key shredded absolutely everything. So it was unusual that the pages would have turned up anywhere. The fact that they shredded everything is a sin. They had Alex Toth on Zorro, and I mean he did a lot of stuff for them, and all kinds of great art. It is just lost."
Eisman misses the older meetings, but understands that progress moves everything forward. "Today the NCS is fragmented across the country. It used to be based mainly in the New York and New Jersey area. The cartoonist had to travel to meet his peers. With the technology today, there is no reason for a cartoonist to be in the New York City area. They are now divided into chapters all over the country. It is just part of the way the world changes.
"This works out great, but there was something about the romance of driving into New York City, opening the door to the Lamb's Club and seeing Caniff, Goldberg, Young, Kelly and other heroes holding a drink. The intimacy may be gone, but no matter where they are, it is still a club of cartoonists who are united by their passion and respect for the art form. Milton Caniff once said that it was a lot of guys who worked in attics and basements who shave and come to a meeting.
"I visited Geppi's Entertainment Museum on the opening weekend, and I couldn't help but thinking of how many of the artists I saw hanging on the walls inside there I had actually met. Walt Disney, Hogarth, Caniff, Raymond, Foster, all my heroes. I could only smile because of the hundreds of people at the opening, I was one of the few who once in a while I got to hang out with them, talk, relax and have a drink." |
