George Stevens, Jr., Lecturer the Seventh Annual Herblock Lecture April 15, 2010, the Library of Congress
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George Stevens, Jr., Lecturer The Seventh Annual Herblock Lecture April 15, 2010, The Library of Congress The Herblock we know and honor really emerged when a young Herbert L. Block left his job at the Daily News in his native Chicago for Cleveland to be a cartoonist for the Newspaper Enterprise Service – a syndication company with the odd acronym NEA. He drew about the Depression and the New Deal and the rise of Fascist dictators in Europe – and he didn’t hesitate to let his readers know that he saw isolationism as a threat to Main Street America. After a time he couldn’t help but notice that NEA, which was owned by Scripps Howard, was getting “jittery” about his cartoons. His work expressed sharper opinions than his employers were accustomed to. And NEA was concerned that if a client cancelled Herblock, they might cancel the entire service. So when he was summoned to New York by Fred Ferguson, the NEA President – who was known around the office as Little Napoleon – and who started meetings by saying, “Well, have you seen what Roosevelt has done now?” It was pretty clear that Herb was about to be fired. He remembered sitting for a long time in the outer office cooling his heels, until Ferguson finally summoned him inside with what Herb remembered as an anguished smile – “an expression of mixed feelings never showed so clearly on a man’s face,” as Herb put it. It turned out that Ferguson had just been notified that Herblock had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. For 32 year old Herb it meant that he kept his job – and he was on his way to becoming America’s most important political cartoonist. I knew Herb Block for nearly forty years and now that I’m making a film about him – in collaboration with my son, Michael Stevens, and my long time associate, Sara Lukinson – I’m getting to know him a little better…this modest genius who spent his 72 working years on the side of the little guy. Let’s say he was a man for all seasons – seven decades observing and commenting on the events and compelling issues that shaped our history – from the stock market crash of 1929 into the new Millennium. He drew 13 Presidents – from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush – and so many of those portraits still linger in the mind’s eye. He created over 14,000 cartoons and wrote twelve books. And, lest we forget – won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Medal of Freedom. Senator Barack Obama gave the Herblock Lecture in this room in April of 2005 and described what he called “the simple, graceful and challenging philosophy that Herb’s parents passed down to him: ‘Be a good citizen and think about the other guy.’” Pretty simple. Herb remembered growing up in a “world of horse drawn milk wagons, long Sunday dinners, vaudeville houses and lots of newspapers. No radios, no TVs, no jet planes – and films were silent.” He was a Cubs fan, as he put it, “at a time when there were eight teams in each league – as God intended.” He started drawing as a boy and recalled that his first picture was in chalk and he drew it on the sidewalk in front of his house. It was a likeness of the despised Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany with his V shaped mustache and a spike in his hat. “People could see and admire my work,” he said. “And I could feel satisfaction when that hateful face was walked on, or stomped on.” That’s when Herb first realized the power of his drawings to affect people’s feelings. Shortly after Mr. Pulitzer saved his NEA job in 1942, Herb got a call from Uncle Sam and served in the army until the end of the war. In 1946 he met a man who had bought at auction the fourth ranked of Washington D.C.’s four newspapers. Publisher Eugene Meyer – remembered primarily today as the father of Katharine Graham – promised him editorial independence. Herb’s new job meant that Washington leaders would be reading his Washington Post cartoon with their Post Toasties – every day Herb would be weighing in on the national debate. As I understand it there are several models for the job of political cartoonist. At some papers the editors tell their cartoonist what they’d like that day – a cartoon on the election or a cartoon about the war. At some papers the cartoonist does one or two or three 2 cartoons and submits them to the editors and they choose one – or suggest changes. Herb had a different kind of job. He decided what he was going to do. He did the research, calling upon reporters in the Post newsroom for special insight. And the cartoon he submitted went in the paper – sometimes six days a week. This understanding worked well until the presidential election of 1952. Phil Graham was now the publisher and the Post was supporting General Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson. Herb drew cartoons that were not altogether flattering to Ike and his running mate, Richard Nixon. As Election Day drew near the editorial page editor informed Herb that his cartoons on Ike were embarrassing to Phil Graham. The Post pulled Herb’s cartoons but he still sent them out to his 200-paper syndicate. We have learned – thanks to research by Herb’s longtime associate Jean Rickard – that the Herblock cartoons of October 28, 29, 30 and 31 did not appear in the Post I thought you’d enjoy seeing what the fuss was about. Senator Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon were smearing Adlai Stevenson with some regularity, and here’s Herb’s October 29, 1952 cartoon – one of those that Washington Post readers missed out on. (CARTOON: Unshaven McCarthy and Nixon hold large dripping paint brushes with a painted out Stevenson poster behind them. A smiling Eisenhower is shaking his finger. The caption: Naughty Naughty.) Well, the Stevenson campaign claimed censorship, the Washington Daily News ran an editorial about the “missing cartoonist,” Post readers complained – and by November 1st Herb’s cartoons were back in the paper where they would appear without interruption until his dying day. A few years later the Post was desperately short of cash and Phil Graham came to Herb saying he would exchange some of the Post’s privately held “A Stock” for cash. The Post was by then the capitol’s third ranked paper but Herb was a believer – so he plunked down his savings to invest in the paper he worked for. 3 What made Herb as good as he was? It starts with his skill as an artist. He could draw and create caricature with the best of them – recalling Daumier and Thomas Nast. His caricatures were simple and fun, clear and concise. His cartoons were informed by his keen interest in politics and world affairs and driven by a reporter’s intrepid curiosity, his brilliant sense of humor and a passion for justice. And finally, there was his courage – the virtue that guaranteed the other qualities. One might assume that the man who was capable of such savage satire would be a man of some darkness. Not Herb. He was this modest, sweetly playful sort of man who loved to laugh. His friend Bob Asher said that Herb could boil down global complexities brilliantly, but he could never deal with the basics of existence, such as how to drive a car, buy a new refrigerator, or get to Virginia. Roger Rosenblatt, who had an office next to Herb’s said it was like having your office next to the Marx Brothers. He had a cap he called his Thinking Cap – a toy helmet topped with a light bulb that he could set blinking to indicate he had an idea. And while he fought off interference from above, he enjoyed taking four or five drafts of the day’s cartoon around the newsroom for insights and opinions from below. One friend described Herb shuffling around the Post newsroom in his slippers like Mr. Rogers. Herb’s friend, John Kenneth Galbraith noted, “While Herb appreciates virtue, his real interest is in awfulness. He turns his attention to rascals, scoundrels and frauds. And once they have been so identified – the odor – skunk like, never leaves them.” Herb saw a cartoon as a means for poking fun, puncturing pomposity, scoffing at the high and mighty – with the acid test being whether or not it gets at an essential truth. Often he was just reminding public servants that they are public servants. His fellow cartoonist, Gary Trudeau admired Herb’s unwavering idealism and hope: “I never thought of him either as a liberal or as a conservative but as a satirist with a satirist’s conviction that because this is America there is always room for improvement.” Herb was fond of quoting a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln – “the object of government is to do 4 for people what they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot do well for themselves.” Herb knew you didn’t have to act tough to be tough. He knew that McCarthy was out to get him. But he never flinched. During Watergate his newspaper was under great pressure but he never pulled a punch. And years earlier – after having been rough on Nixon in the 50’s, when he became President, Herb decided the new President deserved a fresh start. He drew a cartoonist’s office with pens and brushes in bowls, with a stars and stripes barber pole at the door.