Stan Mack – DarylCagle.com

Here’s another Randy flashback. See Randy’s editorial cartoon archive here. –Daryl

In the late 60’s and into the early 70’s, I became aware of a series of pretty avant-garde children’s books being published by someone named Harlin Quist. I think I first saw them in Graphis, an international magazine published in Switzerland and also in a similar publication, Gebrauchsgrafik, from Germany. Quist was an American publisher with offices in New York and Paris. I couldn’t believe how beautiful these books were. Many of my favorite artists were doing work for Quist, people like Reynold Ruffins, Murray Tinkelman, Eleanor Schmid, Phillipe Weisbecker, Charlie Slackman, Stan Mack, Edward Gorey, Étienne Delessert, Alain Le Foll, Alan Cober and Heinz Edelman. It was revolutionary! Realism was fading from the illustration field and in its place was a vibrant, refreshing breath of graphic grandeur. I wanted in.

So, I found Quist’s phone number and called him up for an appointment. He told me to come by on Thursday. Thursday found me in front of an ordinary, rather bleak-looking old brownstone with my trusty portfolio in hand. I was surprised to see that his office was in his apartment. I climbed the stairs and knocked on his door. It took a while for the door to be opened a crack. It was dark in the apartment.

I couldn’t see anything but a hand that had opened the door. Then I could make out an eye peering out at me.

“Mr. Quist is not here” said the voice in answer to my, “I have an appointment with Mr. Quist”.

“He’s in Paris” said the voice behind the door. “You can leave your portfolio until next Thursday!”

It was fairly common practice in those days to sometimes leave a portfolio for a week. I was disappointed but I agreed to leave it and a hand emerged snatching it from my grasp. The door shut. I needed that portfolio but I had high hopes that I would soon be joining that stellar group of outstanding illustrators in the Quist pantheon.

A week went by and I again climbed the stairs to the ominous apartment and knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked again… and again. No response. The whole apartment building was soundless. No one seemed to be around. I didn’t know what to do. I went downstairs to see if I could find a door that said “Super” on it … or something. NOTHING. I went outside and looked for an entrance to a basement where I might find someone to give me assistance. I found a door that looked promising. I opened it and entered going down a few steps into a dark musty basement. It was EXACTLY like being in one of those horror movies. There were passageways, overhead pipes, electrical fuse boxes. It was dank, quiet, dark and eerie. After trying different paths that wound through the vast basement, I started to hear faint music coming from a radio. I followed it to a small room where I surprised an old fellow who was sitting there. I enquired about Mr. Quist.

“He’s gone” the super said.

“But … but” I stammered, “I need my portfolio that is in his apartment”.

“NO” he said, “He doesn’t pay his rent. We kicked him out and everything in that apartment belongs to us.”

I explained that I didn’t even know Harlin Quist. That I had never even met him. That I had just left MY portfolio for him to look at. It belonged to me. I had nothing to do with Mr. Quist. He replied that nothing could be done. Everything in the apartment was confiscated. I guess I started pleading, maybe even sobbing, about how my livelihood required that portfolio and etc. and etc., because he grudgingly relented and I followed him up the stairways to the foreboding apartment which we entered and finally found my portfolio, among others strewn about the place. I showed him my name on it and I left.

Now, I see that Quist has died and that my good friend Étienne, who had done four books (sometimes written by his friend Ionescu) for Quist, has written in a recent interview that Quist and his partner Francois Ruy-Vidal were con men, crooks and charlatans that didn’t pay proper royalties (if they paid anything at all) to their contributors and even though many illustrators were warned by Etienne and others of this fact, the illustrators continued to flock to his door hoping to do one of the beautiful, Harlin Quist award-winning books.

–Randy Enos

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Harlin Quist passed away in 2000 at the age of 69. Read Harlin Quist’s obituary in the New York Times. –Daryl

Read more more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Monty Python Comes to Town

Riding the Rails

The Pyramid of Success

The Day I Chased the Bus

The Other Ol’ Blue Eyes

8th Grade and Harold von Schmidt

Rembrandt of the Skies

The Funniest Man I’ve Ever Known

Read “I’m Your Bunny, Wanda –Part One”

Read “I’m Your Bunny, Wanda –Part Two”

Famous Artists Visit the Famous Artists School

Randy Remembers Tomi Ungerer

Randy’s Overnight Parade

The Bullpen

Famous Artists Schools

Dik Browne: Hot Golfer

Randy and the National Lampoon

Randy’s Only Great Idea

A Brief Visit to Outer Space

Enos, Love and Westport

Randy Remembers the National Cartoonists Society

My cartoonist buddy, Randy Enos, is a generation older than me and comes from the same New York City illustration background that I jumped into, fresh out of college in the 1970’s. I grew up following Randy’s work in the National Lampoon and all the top magazines as I was a budding illustrator. Randy knows all of the famous illustrators who were my heroes in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I’m delighted to syndicate Randy’s off-beat editorial cartoons and I’m enjoying the memories he’s writing for my blog –especially this one. –Daryl

Toward the end of November 1973, my buddy, Stan Mack, called me in to The New York Times to do a cover for the Sunday magazine section which he was art directing at the time. They were doing a story on John Wooden, the famous coach of the UCLA basketball team. Wooden was famous for giving his players a mimeographed sheet of platitudes which reflected his recipe for succeeding in sports and in life. He arranged these platitudes on the paper, in ruled boxes that stacked up to form a pyramid. He called it his “Pyramid of Success.” It was just a simple typed up sheet of words to live by. Each time a player was recruited, he would find this sheet of paper in his mailbox the next morning.

Stan had been at a loss as to how to feature Wooden on his cover. He wanted to avoid he obvious montage of, perhaps, a head shot with a basketball player in the background. Then he stumbled upon Wooden’s “Pyramid” in the text. Stan had seen a couple of jobs (one I remember was for Esquire) where I had done some wood-block or lino-block lettering and he thought that I could take this homely little typewritten page and do something nice and artistic and colorful for his cover. So, I tackled it in my normal lino-cut collage technique where I would print my lino block on different colored papers (in different colored inks) and then collage the whole thing together. The finished art appeared on the cover, Sunday, December 2nd, 1973.

The Randy Enos version of UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” that ran on the cover of The New York Times Magazine.

Bright and early Monday morning the telephones started ringing at The New York Times – and they continued ringing until finally the Times had to recruit outside help to man the phones. Then the mail started pouring in, sacks of it. Then the Times gave out my phone number and address to callers and my phone started ringing and my home mailbox started filling up. Each time, I would go to the Times to pick up or deliver a job, I would be presented with a sack full of mail addressed to me at the Times. They dealt with the ones addressed to them.

This deluge was caused by readers, who seized with the passion of Wooden’s words, were demanding copies, re-prints, ANYTHING we had to offer. We were getting correspondence and calls from, mayors’ offices, corporations, law enforcement bureaus, libraries, universities, along with just plain ol’ ordinary citizens – LOTS and LOTS of them. Some were upset because they had also written to Wooden and received only a dopey little mimeographed sheet in black and white. They wanted the one in color – the POSTER!

I had created a FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER!

It went on for months and months and finally years and years … and years. My son recalls visiting a friend in college and seeing it on many students’ walls. My wife was getting tired of the constant phone ringing and cursed the Times for giving out our number and address.

Years later, people would write or call and say that their copy of the Times cover was yellowing on their wall and did I know where they could get a better reproduction of it. My answer to all of them was that I couldn’t sell them or give them a copy or a poster of it because it wasn’t totally mine. It was Wooden’s thing. I merely had interpreted it in color. They would have to get his permission and then maybe something could be worked out. They never got back to me. Finally I contacted Wooden by letter and said that he was obviously getting the deluge that I was and so perhaps we should get together on this and make reproductions of it for sale or something. Leann was already imagining a life of exquisite bliss on a tropical island where we and our 5 horses would be sipping daiquiris and never having to work again. But Wooden never replied.

Years would go by and I would think that maybe it had finally gone away. And then, the phone would ring, or I’d get a letter with the familiar phrase, “Back in 1973 you did a cover for the …”

Okay. I lied. One entity got through to Wooden. It was McDonald’s. They sent me a letter from the coach that said that I could give them the art for a Christmas card for their employees. I had previously told them that if they got permission from Wooden that I would let them use my picture for free. Of course, I never thought they’d get it. So a big black limo pulled into my driveway and I handed over my original art. Later they returned with it and magnanimously provided me with a coupon entitling me to two free hamburgers and a coke. I never redeemed the coupon. And I never saw the Christmas cards.

The Times had given out repro rights to some people like IBM, who used it as the cover bearing the Times masthead.

Many decades have passed and I haven’t had any more letters and calls for a while. Of course, I haven’t checked the mail yet today. Out of the thousands and thousands of requests that the Times and I received, not one single one was complimentary about my art (I’m sure Wooden hated my grotesque version of his beloved, mimeographed Pyramid). It was only the sentiments expressed by Wooden that captured their imagination and desire to own a copy of it (suitable for framing).

Years and years after 1973, I was at the Times one day and one of my art directors said, “Randy, I want to show you something.” I followed him to a back room where there was a closet. He unlocked it with a key and there before my astonished eyes were shelves laden with copies of the Sunday, December 2nd, 1973 edition of The New York Times Sunday Magazine.