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Looking Back at the Future, Circa 1964
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: ads, Alan Dunn, Benjamin Chambers, cartoons
Benjamin Chambers writes:
What did the future look like back in 1964? Here’s a clue: this rather puzzling cartoon by Alan Dunn (click to see it full-size) from the October 3, 1964 issue of The New Yorker.
Judging from the globe in the background, you probably could find phone booths like the one drawn here at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. So far, so good. But what the heck is the kid riding in, and what’s so funny about the cartoon?
As to the first question, the Complete New Yorker index describes the kid as sitting in an “automobile pushcart.” Perhaps these were commonly available at the World’s Fair, perhaps not—but I don’t think it’s supposed to attract our attention. Instead, the kid’s dismayed look tells us what’s funny: the phone booth itself.
No doubt such booths were a radical departure from the full-size, glassed-in phone booths typical of the period, an intimation of the future. (Though those were not as ubiquitous as I thought. According to this advertisement posted by the folks at The Phonebooth, the first outdoor telephone booths weren’t installed in Manhattan until around 1960.) Is it possible that the joke here is simply that the kid can’t see his mother? Your ideas welcome.
[UPDATE: I’ve gotten a lot of useful information from commenters and elsewhere that throws some light on the cartoon, so I’ll collate it here. First, thanks to Marc Francisco of www.phonebooth.org, who sent me this photo from a Bell System press release:
According to him, the copy read, “A pretty World’s Fair visitor makes a call from a Serpentine booth, so called because of its unique serpent-like design. All booths on the Fairgrounds are equipped with the Bell System’s newly developed Touch-Tone service which speeds calling by push buttons instead of a dial.”
(Touch-Tone! Another intimation of the future!) Note that the “pretty visitor” is wearing pumps, like the woman in the cartoon. No kid in a pushcart, though. Perhaps she’s calling the operator to find out where he went.
Then Bill Cotter sent a link to a shot of the booths in use at the time of the Fair, as well as a photo explaining the kid’s “pushcart”. Thanks also to Mike for sending another link to photos of the booths at the time of The Fair, and several shots of them in their current state of tragic disrepair. He’s got more to say in his comment below …
Finally, for those of you astonished to learn that outdoor phone booths weren’t installed in Manhattan until about 1960—where did Superman change clothes when he was outside?—this ad from 1955 suggests they came late (?!) to Manhattan.]
In the same issue, too, I accidentally ran across an ad for perfume that was so modern, it jumped off the page (click for larger size):
Compare it to these two ads, one for perfume, and the other for makeup, taken from the same issue, that exemplify the competition (click for larger size):
By comparison, the ad for the Fabergé perfume stands out, doesn’t it? Unlike the other two, it’s selling a feeling, an impression of carnality, rather than features (“the modern way to carry spray,” “glides on easily”). It’s like an ad for, well, the future.
Often, though, the future has been around for longer than we think. Lycra® (generic name: Spandex) is a case in point. I always thought that it was a relatively recent invention. Turns out I’m wrong: it was invented in 1959. Didn’t take long to get it to market, either, evidently. Check out this ad featuring it from the February 3, 1962 issue of TNY:
Still, I’ll bet you not one Beatles fan who saw this ad suspected that “hair bands” were already a foregone conclusion…
Comments
The phone book in the cartoon was used only at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. There’s a picture of a real one at http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/phones.htm
As to the stroller the kid is in, those were rented from Hertz: http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/hertz.htm
The kid may have been scared to have mom on the other side of the phone booth, but he may have also just wanted to see more of the Fair!
Bill
If you look at her feet (in the telephone booth cartoon), she is facing outwards, so he can see her. I think the joke is simply that she stopped to make a phone call, and he wants her to continue pushing him along.
People found stuff funny in the 60’s that seem pretty banal now. Go figure. Someone probably looked at that cartoon and said, “Awwwwww, cuuuuuuute.”
Or maybe the cartoonist foresaw the cell phone, and the kid is thinking, “when will she be able to talk and push me at the same time? maybe around 2001?”
It’s unlikely to be that banal, I think. I take the mild distress on the child’s face to derive from not being able to see mommy’s face. The kid is at 9 o’clock, and the woman is facing twelve noon, or even possibly 1 o’clock. (Do I detect, in the subtle leftward tilt of the skirt, a slight leaning of the woman’s body/face/eyes to the right?) And if you look at Mr. Cotter’s first pic, those booths curved around quite a ways. I think the handle of the cart is supposed to be very much emerging from underneath the booth’s edge, not astride it. The kid can’t see her.
Of course, any cartoon that requires this degree of documentary support has got something wrong with it….
Hey Bill - thanks a lot for dropping by with those handy photos. I had a suspicion that the pushcarts were something special for the Fair - interesting to learn that “Hertz” was a sponsor. My contact at The Phone Booth (www.phonebooth.org) sent me another great shot of the Serpentine phone booths (this time with a woman in pumps, as in the cartoon) - I’ll post it when I get a chance, and re-link to yours.
@ Carolita: I agree with Martin with regard to which way the mother is facing, but you have a point about a shift in what’s funny.
@ Martin: I agree on both counts. But humor is always contextual, and it has a half-life; it might have been uproarious then, to anyone who’d been to The World’s Fair.
Hmmm…I’m also failing to detect anything ha-ha funny about the cartoon, though the cute, Family Circus-ish element is there. Maybe the joke is that the kid, let’s call him Marcus, has such a sophisticated vehicle and his mother isn’t letting him use it because she’s so engrossed with the phone booth. Who is she calling? The father? Her lover? Or she is getting a dial tone? Were dial tones invented yet? So many questions…
Paul - That’s an interesting question about the dial tone. One presumes so. But I’ll be doing a follow-up post soon, as I’ve got another photo of the phone booth, and some ad copy that gives yet another glimpse of the telephonic future …
Here are some views of a surviving “serpentine” telephone booth:
http://64nywf65.20m.com/Booth/Booth.htm
Notice the weather canopy also provided illumination at night.
Dial tones date back to the introduction of dial telephones, I believe.
All payphones at the Fair, as well as all private phones, were 10-button TouchTone sets (no * and # buttons).
Thanks a bunch, Mike. I’ve updated the post above to include your link, as well as the others sent in by commenters.
Well, Martin may think it’s funny haha that a kid is experiencing separation anxiety due to his mother being on the phone, but I doubt that the sense of humor of the time was quite that sadistic at the time! :)
I think there’s something else. In fact, I wonder if this was not a cartoon per se, but perhaps an illustration. Notice that in present day, cartoonists are often called upon to illustrate short pieces, such as Crawford’s tiny illustration of a man in a crib last week. Taken alone, nobody would think it’s hilarious….
Who knows who and how they archived stuff from the old issues? (Rhetorical question).
Slightly off-topic, but the most exciting thing I remember as a child at the NY World’s Fair was the picture-phone. You could go in an AT&T booth and talk to someone in a booth at Disneyland. This was the coolest thing. Now we have the picture-phone for real. It’s called the Internet.