Dorothy McKay in College Humor, May 1937

The first of Dorothy McKay's cartoons in the May 1937 issue of College Humor is set at a burlesque show featuring a striptease. Such shows were still extremely familiar, presumably, even during the Great Depression. In any event, the audience as depicted by Ms. McKay consists strictly of older male patrons, not college-age students, and the joke is made at their expense. Clearly, these middle-aged men don't even remember what they're supposed to be looking at.

"Look, Marcus! Isn't that one of our dresses?" Dorothy McKay, College Humor, May 1937, page 44

Not bad! This predates by more than two years a classic Peter Arno New Yorker cartoon with a similar, but perhaps not identical, take:

Peter Arno,The New Yorker, December 10, 1938

"Hello—Helen?" Dorothy McKay, College Humor, May 1937, page 50

Note:  The May 1937 number of College Humor can be found in the Steven Boss humor magazine collection at Columbia University tucked away in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, naturally. My thanks to Karen Green, the—ahem!—Curator for Comics and Cartoons, for her able assistance in guiding me to it.

If anyone can shed some light on the "Hello—Helen?" gag, please go ahead and shed.


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