Famed New Yorker cartoonist Syd Hoff drew cartoons for The Daily Worker under the nom de plume A. Redfield.
Author and archivist Jeff Kisseloff (he wrote, among other books, The Box, the best history of early TV ever written) is opening up his files and airing them on the Web, and the results are never less than captivating.
Kisseloff's gotten a lot of attention for the Harry Dubin pictures, an off-center visual record of New York City street life in the 1940s, and the Dubin pictures are spectacular — vibrant and bright in the way only Kodachrome can be, but composed like living cartoons. They're really just the tip of the archival iceberg, though. The Kisseloff Collection is like one of those creaky old general stores that still exist in mid-sized towns off the interstate, all worn wooden floors and decades of dust, and you wander its aisles never knowing what you're going to find.
An application for membership in the Worker's Party of America? ("…the above-ground unit of the Communist Party USA," Kisseloff helpfully notes, "formed after its leadership was forced underground in the 1920s by the goon squad, also known as the Justice Department… ") Got it. Dutch Schultz's NYPD Wanted circular? Got it, accompanying a photo of Kisseloff visiting the gangster's grave. Cartoons from The Daily Worker, drawn under a nom de plume by kids' book author and longtime New Yorker cartoonist Syd Hoff? Got 'em. A 1948 NBC censor's report? Yep. ("The Lewis-Howe people on behalf of Tums are soon to introduce an animated cartoon. We have seen the proposed animation and, if anything, were surprised at the excellent taste with which it was handled.")
What happens to a historian's files when the history is written? If we're lucky, this is what happens. Kisseloff's a one-man museum of 20th century ephemera, and his collection is well worth a visit. Just be prepared to lose an afternoon doing it.
