Ronald Searle

This past Wednesday, March 3rd marked the 90th birthday of the great British artist/cartoonist, Ronald Searle.  I'm not going to attempt in this blog to write a history of Searle's work, others have already done wonderful tributes to Searle in their blogs (see http://ronaldsearle.blogspot.com/2010/03/ronald-searle-graphic-master.html) but I did want to honor the man by showing some examples of his work and to talk about how I first came to know of him.

I think my first exposure to him was when I bought the soundtrack to the film "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines."  Searle had done the artwork for both the one-sheet poster and the soundtrack cover (see image at right with detail below).   I was around 11 when this film was released in 1965 and though I don't think I saw the film until it was later shown on television, I bought the soundtrack (probably from a sale bin) mostly because I was fascinated by Searle's sketchy caricatures of the actors in the film (Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, James Fox, Terry Thomas and Gert Frobe).  Going through some of the sketch books I kept in my teens, I can see that at the time, I was heavily influenced by his style.

I think my next exposure to Searle's work came during high school, when the musical "Scrooge" starring Albert Finney was released in the early 1970s.  To promote the film, a book was published about the making of the movie.  The book was a combination of text, stills from the film and artwork by Ronald Searle (Unfortunately, I was unable to find my copy of this book or I would have posted some images from it).

Around the same time that I bought the "Scrooge" book, I bought another book at a library benefit sale, that contained artwork by Ronald Searle.  This book was put out in conjunction with the film "Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies," which was a sort of follow-up film to the more successful, "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines."  Although I don't think this film was considered a direct sequel, it did share a couple of the same actors, namely Terry Thomas and Gert Frobe.  The leading man was played by Tony Curtis opposite Susan Hampshire, the lovely star of Disney's "The Three Lives of Thomasina," and the original version of "The Forsyte Saga."

It wasn't until only recently that I learned some background on Ronald Searle.  I knew that he had created the bad school girls of St. Trinian's, which to his dismay, came to be what most people knew him for, but I had not known of his WWII experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.  After hearing about this, and learning that a book had been published containing drawings he made while in captivity, I sought out a copy.  The book is titled "To the Kwai - and Back, War Drawings 1939-1945," and it is an amazing book.  It is also at times gut-wrenching, horrifying and sad.  The images in the book are accompanied by Searle's own account of what happened while in captivity.  Together they add up to an unforgettable portrait of a 21-year old man who lived to tell the tale of a dark period in recent world history, a period that as the veterans of that war (my father was one of them) grow old and die, will soon be relegated to the history books and will sound as far off as those stories we learned in school about the civil war (I have to admit - that last phrase was paraphrased from a James Michener quote in his "Tales of the South Pacific)."

While in captivity, Searle took great risks to create some of these drawings. They only survive because he was helped in hiding them by men who were sick and dying of cholera.  Searle knew that his captors were terrified of the disease and would not dare search the beds of the dying men who were just days away from death.

This sketch was done on a form that Searle and his fellow captors were forced to sign, promising that they would not attempt to escape.

 "Dawn parade."

"Prison headgear, 1944."

"Siam 1943: Man dying of cholera."

A plane drops leaflets over the camp announcing the end of the war (right).

Here is what Searle has to say in his own words about these drawings:

"These drawings were not a means of catharsis.  Circumstances were too basic for that.  But they did at times act as a mental life-belt.  Now, with the perspective and detachment that a gap of forty years or so can achieve, they can be looked on as the graffiti of a condemned man, intending to leave rough witness of his passing through, but who found himself - to his surprise and delight - among the reprieved.  This book - these drawings for what they are - belong to those who were not.

Happy Birthday Ronald Searle.

Manga Kamishibai

In a trip to Chicago last weekend, while browsing in 'Unabridged Books,' one of my favorite bookstores, I purchased a book called "Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater" by Eric P. Nash, published by Abrams Comicarts. The book takes a fascinating look at an art form that I was largely unfamiliar with.  A forerunner of manga comics, Kamishibai was a type of pictorial street theater where a traveling kamishibaiya (kamishibai performer), usually on a bicycle, would stop in villages and entertain children and adults with various stories. The stories were told with the aid of illustrations that were attached to boards and then slid in and out of a box that was made to look like a miniature stage.

The stories were often adventures or folk tales, but there were even tales of super heroes and interpretations of classics like Cinderella and The Prince and the Pauper.  The character in the upper left is from a story called "Prince of Gamma and the Sea Monster."  According to the book, this story seems like a cross between "Superman" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."  Even though he looks somewhat villainous with his skull like face, the character of "Golden Bat," (lower left) was an early example of a super hero, his appearance in 1931 predates Superman.

During WWII the medium was also used for propaganda (kokusaku kamishibai). The image on the right is from a tale warning soldiers about the dangers of being captured by the Americans.  In the book, this image has a caption describing the character as a "Red-faced Sadist."  Even though the movie was made after WWII, this image reminds me of the character Alec Guinness played in "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

After the war, and the end of the American occupation, some stories tackled the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the end of this story about a girl searching for her mother in the ruins of the bomb, the mother dies in her daughter's arms.

An interesting bit of trivia in the book states that Max Fleischer's Betty Boop, with her oversized eyes, was an influence on Ozamu Tezuka when he created "Astro Boy," considered to be the style-setter for later anime characters.

Below are some other images from the book showing illustrations used in kamishibai performances.