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P & Q *
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In 1941 Elliot Paul and my father appeared, for the first time, as the co-authors of a humor book. A "mere bagatelle," as Elliot described the book, its theme was the preparation of a Spanish rice. The title was Intoxication Made Easy and it was published by Modern Age.
Here is a sampling from the 46 drawings. |
| "Filled
with imaginative energy and excitement, Elliot promptly dashed off the
text and my father supplied slight fanciful sketches to accompany it.
The rice book became Intoxication Made Easy and presented P
and Q as co-authors to the world for the first time. And the title thoroughly
captures the book's spirit. The numerous quickly drawn sketches portray
a variety of scenes to accompany Elliot's myriad observations related
to food and good eating. For both Elliot and my father eating had never
been a mere matter of slapping two slices of bread together, spreading
some mayonnaise over some ham, garnishing it with a slice or two of
tomato and lettuce, and hurriedly gulping it down. Lunch or dinner could
last up to two or three hours and was entered into with a joyous sense
of eating for its own pleasure. |
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"As Elliot put it in the book: 'Eating is a vice and should be done for its own sake. That is true with all the vices. A. E. Houseman truly wrote: the night my father got me, His mind was not on me. With equal poetic accuracy may the eater of our Spanish rice assure his lights and liver that while he is eating he is not thinking of future dividends, in the way of health and strength. That the ingredients include the best that is yielded to man by the animal and vegetable kingdoms may be granted, but the object of our festival is to enjoy the food and liquor as they go down, and as long as the memory of them lingers. That may be for years, and it may be forever... Vice for its own sake. That is the wholesome slogan for the civilized man.'"
From Waiting at the Shore |
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Hollywood
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Then
in 1942 a spoof on Hollywood's Hays Code came out. It was published
by Random House and had sixty five drawings. It was entitled With
a Hays Nonny Nonny and what the book did was present several stories
from the Bible as they would have to be reworked to become acceptable
to the censors in the Hays Office, which at that time was the ultimate
arbiter of good taste and moral standards in Hollywood. |
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"In
the book's preface Elliot states that if God Himself had written the
Bible, or at least dictated it to one of His servants, 'it becomes evident
that The Author did not share the ideas of censorship now prevalent
throughout the world and virulent in Hollywood. Unpleasant, even the
most shocking, realities were not glossed over by Him. Knowing full
well that little children and adults with undisciplined minds would
read His work throughout the centuries, He did not soft-pedal the sex
life of Biblical heroes and heroines or dilute His war stories to spare
the nerves of anxious mothers. He did not sidestep racial animosities
or political controversies. Nothing is clearer than the fact that if
God wrote the Bible, or dictated It to historians, prophets and bards,
He took it for granted that the human race could face the facts...'
And with such a basis it is easy to see how the Biblical stories would
have to be altered and cleaned up in order to meet the standards of
the Hays Code, which would not have found them acceptable for a general
movie-going public. |
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"So they took several stories, Noah and the Ark, Samson and Delilah, Ruth and Naomi, Jonah and his whale, and appearing once again as P and Q went through each Biblical tale discussing the ridiculous and amusing alterations which would have been required to obtain the seal of approval. My father did sixty five drawings, and they were superior in kind, I think, to the Intoxication Made Easy sketches. For by now he had discovered his stride for this form of illustration. Many of the drawings are hilarious and depict well known Hollywood stars in various absurd scenes related to P and Q's ongoing conversation, which occasionally included a Hollywood executive as well as a fictional director named Hauptman Himmelkopf, a Brooklyn born Eastern European who in Europe was considered to be an American genius and in America a European genius." From Waiting at the Shore |
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