Created as a sales tool for automobile showrooms beginning in the 1940's, Friends Magazine is an odd place to find Edward Gorey illustrations, but they are there! Chevrolet produced this magazine from around 1948 into the 1980's as a giveaway extolling the virtues of owning your own car so you could travel and see the "real" America. Article topics included places of interest, family pastimes and even recipes - usually for picnic foods. Of course, in between all the articles were ads for the latest cars being produced by Chevrolet!
I have an enlarging collection of Friends, some of which are shown below.
How did Gorey's artwork end up in a car magazine? The art director for Friends was a personal friend of Edward Gorey's. Robert Weeks commissioned spot illustrations for the magazine and the drawings Gorey created were primarily of children playing. Gorey presented the original drawings to Mr. Weeks after they were used, and they remained in his collection until 1993 when they were obtained by Gotham Book Mart, becoming available to the market for the first time. I will show some of these images in later posts.
I wrote, as a staff writer, for Chevy FRIENDS in 1985-88. It was a wonderful, thriving pub at that time...and I've freelance written for it since then.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking for the article on John Snook, I'll pay you to scan it. The only institution with an archive that I can find is Bowling Green KY.
ReplyDeleteI went through my magazines and and do not have the article you mention...maybe a reader of this blog will have it.
ReplyDeleteI believe Friends was first published in 1949, when postwar car production picked up enough to justify the marketing effort. I have seen images of a June, 1948 issue. I edited Friends in the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteIt was earlier than that. I have a copy of Friends from October 1941, with a lovely photo of model Suzanne Shaw on the cover
DeleteI have seen Chevrolet Friends magazines from as early as June, 1948. I edited the publication in the 1980s.
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