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Home , Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder

HARVEY KURTZMANTHE MAN WHO CREATED THE MAN WHO CREATED

AND REVOLUTIONIZED humor IN AMERICA

A BIOGRAPHY BY FOREWORD BY CONTENTS

Foreword by Terry Gilliam ...... vii Author’s Preface ...... ix

PART ONE: PART TWO: EDITOR 1 A Community in Chalk ..... 17 10 A War Comic with 2 The Castle on the Hill ...... 33 a Conscience ...... 165 3 The Little Schnook ...... 53 11 A New Kind of 4 Kurtzman in Uniform ...... 71 Comic Book ...... 185 5 “We of a Certain Milieu” ... 83 12 Mad Beginnings ...... 217 6 The Three Musketeers ...... 99 13 From GI to General ...... 241 7 Desperation ...... 121 14 Mad Takes Off ...... 257 8 Son of Gaines ...... 131 15 Mad Goes Monthly ...... 277 9 From Zero to Sixty ...... 145 16 Mad at Each Other ...... 299 17 Mad Goes “Legit” ...... 315 18 Nine Glorious Months ...343 19 Humbug ...... 359 20 Climbing Back ...... 387 21 Help! ...... 409 22 A Lifeline ...... 435

PART THREE: ICON 23 Children of Mad ...... 461 24 Kurtzman in the 1970s ...... 479 25 Tuesday Afternoons with Harvey ...... 515 26 Being ...... 531 27 “It Burns Me Up!” ...... 561 28 In Memoriam ...... 581

Acknowledgments ...... 585 Chronology ...... 591 Endnotes ...... 603 Index ...... 631 viii xiii

Alfred E. Neuman as he appeared in Mad #27 (1956). A Community in Chalk 17

1.

A Community in Chalk

THE IMMENSE, CASTLE-LIKE building dwarfed the boy who stood before it. An activist government had dedicated the special school in the imposing structure to his artistic development. America’s promise of opportunity through education was about to be fulfilled for young Harvey Kurtzman. In the autumn of 1937, as the United States struggled to surmount the effects of the , the New Deal embraced government spon- sorship of the arts. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed artists to create murals and sculptures in public settings. Art was seen as a way to uplift the nation’s morale. The City of New York showed its concurrence by subsidizing a public high school for talented young artists and musicians from its five boroughs, regardless of their economic, ethnic or racial status. Both the boy and the building were twelve years old. Architect William H. Gompert chose the Gothic Revival style, inspiring the build- ing’s nickname, “the Castle on the Hill,” although the structure Harvey approached for the first time that fall was properly known as the High School of Music and Art. He was determined to make the most of this grand opportunity.

SUCH AN OPPORTUNITY would not have been available to Harvey Kurtzman if his parents had stayed in , in , where they grew up. Since the , the once-vibrant in the city had been decimated. By 1937, its educational system had disap- peared, and unemployment was at record highs. The city’s Jewish popu- lace had always received more than its fair share of hard knocks. 18 HARVEY KURTZMAN

David Kurtzman, date unknown, and Edith Sherman, ca. 1914. All family photographs in this chapter are courtesy of Adam Kurtzman.

At the turn of the century, Odessa was a bustling tourist city on the north coast of the Black Sea. The fourth largest urban center in Ukraine had a rich cultural heritage, influenced by Greece, France, Turkey, Russia and various Asian countries. The climate was mild, and the beaches were sandy rather than pebbled. had lived in Odessa and contributed to its culture since the eighth century. In 1920, they made up about 35 percent of the city’s population. Despite their numbers, and the fact that they were often better off and more literate than their rural brethren, the Jews of Odessa suffered for decades under the May Laws enacted by Alexander III of Russia, which imposed strict limits on the number of Jews permitted to obtain educa- tions and enter certain professions. Periodic pogroms and other forms of anti-Semitism had caused more than two million Jews to flee Russia from 1880 to 1920. After the czar was deposed, and Ukraine became a founding member of the Soviet Union, Jews continued to flee. Most of them chose the United States as their destination. America offered a better life, in- cluding full citizenship. David Kurtzman, Harvey’s father, was one of those Jewish émigrés from Odessa who came to America after . He was a slender, bespectacled man who was a jeweler by trade. Nothing is known of his The Castle on the Hill 39

Al Jaffee and goofing around in the cafeteria of Music & Art: courtesy of . pal, a scrawny teen with unruly hair and a rubbery face. Jaffee had orig- inally met Wolf Eisenberg at Herman Ridder Junior High in . Eisenberg became better known by the pen name he adopted after World War II: Will, Willy or Bill Elder. Born Wolf William Eisenberg in 1921, he was given the Yiddish nickname “Meshugganah Villy” (Crazy Willy) by his family. As the youngest sibling, he sought the spotlight by incessantly playing practical jokes. “Willy” also demonstrated remarkable art talent from an early age, with a special gift for portraiture. His drawing of a Dutch peasant gained him entry to M&A, where he was a poor student academically but a star artist. (For the sake of simplicity, this book refers to him as Will Elder throughout.) “I remember seeing Will, originally, in the lunch room,” Kurtzman said. “He used to have a routine with Al Jaffee. He was Costello to Jaffee’s Abbott. Will was very physical back then. He was the Chaplin of that particular class. He moved very well. He was kind of a natural dancer, and he’d do all these physical things. One minute he’d be a ventriloquist’s dummy. The next minute he’d be a fighter pilot in a telephone booth, with 50 HARVEY KURTZMAN

Kurtzman’s woodcut, from the High School of Music and Art Vol. 4 (1941) yearbook. Right: second Kurtzman woodcut from the yearbook. The Castle on the Hill 51