Philadelphia Bulletin - Beauty Contestant
Here's a great slice of advertising history. Richard Decker was primarily known as a cartoonist for the New Yorker, which published over 900 of his pieces, including 4 covers, over a period of some forty years. Described by one author as "a virtuoso of the panoramic full-page gag,” in 1941 the Philadelphia Bulletin tapped him to create cartoons for an ad campaign that ultimately ran for 28 years -- one of the longest in history. Each of these ads worked from the same premise: while a scene of some drama unfolds, everyone in the crowd, except one excited, skinny, balding fellow, is complacently reading their copy of the newspaper. The caption is also consistent throughout: "In Philadelphia nearly everybody reads The Bulletin." This piece is a fairly polished preliminary drawing for one such ad. The final version (not sold here) was published in a number of magazines, including the New Yorker's July 25, 1959 issue, where it appeared as a full page. Apparently to distinguish it from