Everybody's from 1931

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So the saying goes and from two issues of Everybody's from the summer of 1931 you'll see that public taste isn't so different: dressing up animals, and photographs of scantily clad lasses and cute babies were all the rage eighty years ago, just as they are now.

It's not just the photos... there's an article in one in which the Rev. D. Morse-Boycott discusses clergymen who suffer lapses and the painful publicity that can ensue from a savage press: "Need he also lose his chance of starting life afresh because the Daily Headline has published his one and only fall with every detail, and the Sunday Scavenger followed with a re-hash for the entertainment of all sorts and conditions of sinners?"

Other headlines involve a sporting scandal (horse doping), "Public services need bucking up", "Why love doesn't always run smooth", "Your face needs tidying" (beauty hints on how to remedy "holiday damage"), a member of the Harmsworth family praising the Germans ("My Night Out in the Zeppelin" by Geoffrey Harmsworth), praise for the idol rich and any excuse to show lots of skin... it could almost be any issue of the Daily Mail.

(* All images © IPC Media.)

Bill Lacey's Everybody's Illustrations

Following on from yesterday's 'Sinister Island' treat, here are some illustrations produced by Bill Lacey for the magazine Everybody's in 1959.

I've had these hanging around for ages just waiting for the right moment. My thanks to Norman Boyd of the Frank Bellamy Checklist blog for the original photos, which I've had a fiddle around with as the pages photographed had turned a nasty, smoky yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

(Illustrations © IPC Media.)

H W Hailstone

Harold William Hailstone was a cartoonist and illustrator who contributed to many magazines during his long career as an illustrator. Born in London on 14 July 1897, he was the eldest son of William Edward Hailstone and his wife Nellie Mary Kimbell (née Collins). William Hailstone ran a chemist’s in Hadlow, Tonbridge, Kent, and was later sub-postmaster in the same village. A large family, his younger brother Bernard—the seventh child—was a war artist and painter, known for his portraits of royalty and leading wartime figures such as Churchill and Mountbatten.

Harold Hailstone was educated at Sir Andew Judd School, Tonbridge, before joining the army. After two years he transferred to the R.F.C. and trained as a pilot but passed too late to fly in action. A number of his illustrations and cartoons featured aircraft and his brief connection with comics is as the illustrator of two "Biggles" stories that appeared in Eagle Annual in the early 1950s.


On his release from service, Hailstone studied at Goldsmiths’ College School of Art (1919-22). He visited America 1928-29 and worked in Canada in 1929-30 for Messrs. Batten Ltd., in Toronto, Ontario. Returning to England, he began contributing to Punch in 1931.His cartoons and illustrations appeared in dozens of periodicals and newspapers, including the Illustrated London News, Pearson's, Passing Show, Bystander, Tatler, Humorist, Sketch, Britania & Eve, Strand Magazine and Everybody's. For a time he was a staff cartoonist on the Daily Mirror. He was often called upon to produce sketches of events where cameras were not allowed, and his illustrations included Lenin's tomb during a trip to Russia in the 1920s and the lying-in-state of King George VI.

His career was interrupted by World War II, during which he was recalled to serve as a Flight-Lieutenant with the R.A.F., helping maintain the balloon barrage against German bombers. In 1944 he became an official war artist, recording operations with the partisans in Yugoslavia and the recapture of the Channel Islands as well as sketching troops in France soon after D-Day. Some of his work can be seen at the Imperial War Museum.

In later life, Hailstone worked as a councellor with the Citizen's Advice Bureau in Tunbridge Wells and assisted with Home Finding for the Elderly. He continued to work and draw until the late 1970s when he began to loose his sight.

Hailstone lived at various times in Staplehurst, Tunbridge Wells and Hadlow, all in Kent. He died suddenly at Hadlow, Kent, on 21 November 1982, aged 85. He was married in 1918 to Olivia Henderson Beale, formerly of Sheerness. Olivia died in Croydon on 26 June 1928, aged only 32. Hailstone was survived by three daughters.

Illustrated Books
With Malice Towards Some by Margaret Halsey. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1938.
The Master of Magic by Michael Stone. London, Peter Lunn, 1947.
Many Waters by Neil Bell. London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954. [dust jacket]

(* illustration from Everybody's © IPC Media; cartoon from Punch © Punch Ltd.)

Everybody's strip cartoons

Back in 1939, Everybody's magazine ran a full page of cartoon strips featuring two regular characters; the third was a random humour strip by various artists. Dealing with the latter first, two of the strips below are signed 'Moore' and a third with an unrecognisable scrawl. I suspect these are originals to Everybody's. The second feature, so to speak, was "Abel the Seaman", a three panel pantomime gag strip about which I've been able to find nothing.

The main attraction on the page was "Skippy" by Percy L. Crosby, a Brooklyn-born artist who created the character of Skippy in 1923 for Life magazine. A daily strip was syndicated by King Features Syndicate between 1926-45. Skippy Inc. was incorporated in 1932 and issued licenses for dozens of items, ranging from children's clothing to ice cream. The astonishing story of Percy Crosby is told in full at www.skippy.com/. How he lost control of Skippy and was detained in a mental hospital for the last 16 years of his life and how his heirs have subsequently tried to regain control over the Skippy trademark makes for a harrowing (and, it has to be said, one-sided) story. But well worth reading.

(* Skippy comic strip © Skippy Inc./Percy Crosby Estate; others possibly © IPC Media.)

Everybody's cartoons

Continuing our trip through the pages of Everybody's magazine. The magazine had a good sprinkling of cartoons in its earlier days spread around the pages as fillers. By 1942, there was a page dedicated to cartoons as well as Arthur Ferrier's spotlight on stars panel. This page continued well into the 1950s and possibly all the way through to when Everybody's was relaunched as Today in February 1960.

In 1939, cartoons made up a major portion of the cover, if not the full cover. The only cartoonist to sign his name (amongst the handful of issues I've seen) was Edgar Spencerley, whose cover appears as our column header. Today's column is dedicated to everyone like myself who leaves doing their income tax returns to the last minute. Hopefully you'll get a laugh out of some of the images below.

(* All images © IPC Media.)

Harry Zelinski

One of the names that kept cropping up as I was looking through Everybody's and John Bull was Zelinski. Not a common name and definitely one worth some investigating, I thought. And here's the results, bolstered by a handy little editorial featurette and photograph I stumbled across in the pages of John Bull.

Harry Zelinski was born Harris S. Zelinski, his birth registered in Rochford, Essex, in 1922. He once crewed a boat that came third in a race at Burnham-on-Crouch but would later claim not to remember what sort of boat it was. He served during the war as a pilot and met his wife, Mary, whilst both were serving in the air force. They had two daughters, Diana and Pauline.

Described as "a ruddy-faced, relaxed man," Zelinski was living in an attractive Georgian house at 5 Priory Crescent, Lewes, in the mid-1950s. He would later move to Hollands, Warren Lane, Friston near East Dean in East Sussex [1959/62] and thence to various addresses in Seaford, East Sussex: 31 Beacon Road [1963], Green Walk [1964/66], 59 Dane Road, [1968/75] and Taras, Marine Parade [1978]. He subsequently moved to Corfe Castle, Dorset [1981/84] where, unfortunately, the trail grows cold. Mary Zelinski died in Dorset in 1997 but I've found no further sign of her husband.

Zelinski appears to have been a prolific and popular illustrator with various magazines, where he was noted for his exotic use of flat, rich colours . He claimed to be naturally lazy, "particularly in the autumn" when he would rather while away the hours in a armchair with a pile of records for his gramaphone. While working, he always had music playing in the background—anything from Bach to Eartha Kitt. He was a happy painter, working wherever and whenever he wanted, but had no great sympathy for art for art's sake. "If I really had something vital to say to the world, I should like to be able to say it with music."

Since no great statements were made by Zelinski through music, here's a little gallery of his artwork which I (and I'm sure he would appreciate the gesture) shall leave to speak for itself.

(* Artwork © IPC Media.)

Everybody's Illustrators

Looking through issues of old weekly magazines like Everybody's really highlights the difference between magazines in the 1950s and those of fifty years later. The use—and quality—of illustrations was much higher and added a dimension that's lacking in today's magazines. By the time I was seeing what could be called the general weekly magazines—Tit-Bits, Weekend and the like—in the 1970s, they were filled with sensational, true-life confession style articles and were well on the way down the path to the celebrity-obsessed crap that passes for magazines these days, which are all about pointing and tutting. Who cares if someone has put on a few pounds or lost a few pounds? Is that really what passes for entertainment these days?

The illustrations below represent a tiny snapshot of the diversity of the stories that appeared in Everybody's—crime, war, nature, romance, science fiction, humour... nothing seemed off limits. Yes, they also had their interviews or articles about film and TV stars, but the next article along would be historical, or travel, or political. In many ways the Sunday supplements took over that role, leaving the general magazines to sink... or swim briefly before sinking in some cases. Sad, eh?

Gordon Nicholl
R. M. Sax
Eric Tansley
Laurence Houghton
Eric Tansley
Eric Tansley
Edwin Phillips
Leslie Caswell
H. W. Hailstone

(* All images © IPC Media.)

Sporty Shorty by Roland Davies

Long-time readers will know I'm a big fan of Roland Davies, whose "Come On, Steve!" has been mentioned here quite a few times over the years, so you can imagine how pleased I am to have stumbled across a previously unrecorded strip by Davies in the pages of Everybody's: "Sporty Shorty"—or "Sporting Shorty" as the title seemed to change each week. Davies was a master of the pantomime gag strip... and here's a small selection (sadly all I have) so you can judge for yourself. All date from 1939, the first appearing on 15 April.

(* Everybody's © IPC Media.)