January 6, 1921Obviously he could draw, but Gluyas Williams also wrote well, and funny. In the early 1920s he seems to have spent nearly as much time at the typewriter as he did at the drawing board. He introduced the blowhard Senator Sounder in the
May 27, 1920 issue of
Life, a feature (and the subject of a future post) that would become increasingly text-heavy over the next few years. Williams also wrote humorous articles lampooning a variety of contemporary topics that were, best yet, illustrated by the author.
February 24, 1921
August 18, 1921
November 3, 1921
January 26, 1922
May 25, 1922
July 27, 1922Drawings created solely as illustrations for
Life's text pieces were extremely rare
. The wall between the art in the magazine and the writing was breached only slightly more often during the '20s. Below is one of those occasions, with Williams illustrating a story by
Alan Patrick Herbert.
August 10, 1922
September 28, 1922Happily, while all this writing was going on Williams did not completely abandon the sequential strips or the full-page drawings showcasing the amazing play with perspective, crowd control and deftly spotted blacks that he was known for.
August 17, 1922
September 14, 1922
October 5, 1922Turns out there actually was a
game played in London that involved spotting men with beards and shouting,
"Beaver!" Williams seems to have been right on top of things with this drawing, as most citations date the origin of the game at 1922. He may have been the first, but he wasn't the only
Life artist to do a
beaver cartoon
. It's worth mentioning that this game is likely the source of
beaver's more
contemporary usage, which first appeared in England in 1927.
October 12, 1922
November 23, 1922
Devember 7, 1922
December 21, 1922
Reports of Boney Island's demise weren't exaggerated or premature but they are now happily inaccurate. The annual Halloween lawn party in Sherman Oaks has returned with many new displays as well as a few of the old ones that didn't get snapped up on Ebay. Go to the Boney Island website for times and directions. And, of course, they can be followed on Facebook and Twitter.
The amazing treehouse is still there, now with a water show. It's like a Bellagio of slime.
Sing-along with the shrubbery.
