Collier's, May 9th 1931 / What Are You Monkeys Up To?

A quick post tonight of a slick I worked on this weekend.   I hadn't worked a slick in a while and have been trying to get my new refurbished A3 scanner tweaked how I like, so I grabbed a beautiful issue that I've had flattening for the past month since it arrived on my doorstep.  Or rather in my mailbox, but I'll not go down the dark path of beginning a blog post mad at the pickers who fail to sandwich magazines in cardboard so that the mailman can't fold them in the mailbox and have to go to the porch. Put it on a slow boat to China, just pack it sweetly, OK?

Oops, no ranting  

I need a chill pill.  Perhaps these fellows can assist.

 

Lawson Wood.  This scene reminds me of at least a couple Collier brothers, my namesake.  Get a closer look at Flickr.

Get the Darwination edition of the cover to cover high resolution scan here.

Or you can check it out online or download a .pdf on my shelf at the Internet Archive here.

My grandad had some Collier's covers framed around the house, but never any quite so awesome.  I was always curious about the magazine that carried the family name that sold for a mere nickel, and quite a magazine it is.

I have a couple scans of turn of the century issues here, but this is the first time I've scanned an issue from the thirties.  84 big luscious and slick pages for a nickel, well-printed with generous helpings of color.  Great covers, great authors and illustrators, and other fantastic features - what a production the slicks of the golden age were, and I rate Collier's one of the best. 

And, of course, the engine that drives it all, the well-produced advertisements.  The advertisers paid very high rates so they could reach a large circulation thereby enabling the public to buy the magazine for way below the price of production.  How about that.  And look what excellent things they did with these big pages they've bought and the public's attention:

J.C. Leyendecker, grab your garters, boys

 When's the last time you saw an automobile ad with any real grace?

Lucille Patterson Marsh.  You're watching these children, but maybe one of them is watching you?

Artist unknown, my favorite ad in the issue, for Clicquot Club.  Perhaps I like it as I noticed it incorporates a handle of a fellow magazine scanner.

at Flickr.
 

Advertisers actually making the price of a commodity cheaper?  It doesn't work that way too often now, but I guess that's how we get Youtube and the like.   I used to have great scorn for those that clip out ads from a magazine like this, but I do understand a little bit better as I've come to recognize the artistry of this golden age of advertisement.  In a way, it's not much different from how some of us like to share old ads on Flickr and such places.  But keep your damn scissors away from magazines of such a vintage, eh?

Ha, I said a quick post, but here I am waxing about the ad pages -

Contents!

Some samples. Donald Teague illustrates an author some might recognize from his pulp work, Courtney Ryley Cooper, who was later a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover.  The northern sun, have you seen it?

Here Teague illustrates an installment in W.R. Burnett's Protection.  Burnett is most well known for Little Caesar but also penned what would be later classic films like High Sierra and The Asphalt Jungle.

at Flickr

One last splash, John R. Flanagan illustrates Sax Rohmer's Yu'an Hee See Laughs

at Flickr

One more before I hit the racks, Dizzy Dean, I wonder if he'll make it in the big leagues?  But thinking Cardinals right now is making me sad.  What a year this one turned out to be.  But, hey, at least I got see a number of former Cardinals during the postseason on a variety of other teams 😐

at Flickr where you can easily read the page...

The Colliers know how to do it.  See you next time here on Darwin Scans.