PULP ART GALLERY: Don Hewitt

   Don Hewlitt was born in England in 1904. When he was 3, his father emmigrated to the US , taking him along. His mother stayed in England. 2 years later she was able to join them and the family moved to Chicago, poor but together.

   In 1924 he began to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. He wanted to do magazine illustrations and felt he had to move east to do so. By 1929 he was getting enough work to afford to open his own professional art studio at 145 East 26th Street in New York City.

   In 1934 he was granted U.S. citizenship. His official documents describe him as five-foot-seven, one-hundred-and-forty-five pounds, medium complexion with brown hair and blue eyes.

   His post-war illustration career was devoted to a few advertising clients, such as The Boy Scouts of America. He also created a permanent display of his paintings at Flag Plaza of Pittsburgh, PA. He remained an active member of the New York Society of Illustrators for the rest of his life.

   Don Hewitt died in Flemington, NJ, at age ninety-four on December 11, 1998.

click on each image to enlarge

1930

1931

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1936

original artwork for cover of Popular Complete Stories December1931

1933

1936

1933

Dell educational page from Four Color 1294

During the last half of its long run, the Dell Four Color series began placing , on its last page or so, an educational short often related to whatever that particular issue was about.Gold Key continued this for their first few years too.

Comic Book Short Story- The Grey Comet

Unusual comic in that it featured aerial photographry and recon pilots, Camera Comics was published by "US Camera" for 9 issues from late '44 to the middle of '46. Here is a story fromt the first issue, art by Bill Allison. The cover is by Louis Schroeder

Bonus: Here's an "info page" from that issue, well before Dell/Western started doing them.

Sleazy paperbacks, Shelf #1

This is the kind of thing I used to cruise the thrift stores for, before they got all uppity and starting stocking decent things.

Never read any of these. Feel free to mock and ridicule.

 

LIFE Magazine cover, 1921 by Gustaf Adolf Tenggren

Gustaf Adolf Tenggren (November 3, 1896 - April 9, 1970) was best known for his character designs for Walt Disney, the Seven Dwaarfs in particular. He also designed the final sequence for Fantasia. Click to enlarge

You'll never see this ad nowadays

Since it dosen't make a man look like a bufoon.............


From late 1960s LIFE magazine.

1960 Corvette

 

1960 was a banner year for car history. The Big Three all introduced their new designs which , except for Chevrolet's, would define , more or less, Americaan cars for the next three decades, I'll examine the Ford Falcon, Chrysler Valiant and the less lasting Corvair in future sessions.

One thing that Chevy did have that lasted was the Corvette. Already 7 years old, the C1 design would have a few more years to go, and the '60 model was close to the pinnacle of that design.

When the Chevrolet Corvette debuted in mid-1953, no one could have imagined that this quirky plastic-bodied car would still be selling almost 60 years later. As of 2010, there have been seven generations of Corvette:

C1= 1953-1962

C2= 1963-1967

C3= 1968-1982

C4= 1984-1996

C5= 1997-2004

C7= 2005-

The 53-55 Corvettes had a different body and is really a quite different car than the later C1s. We'll look at the earlier ones later.

By '60 the Corvette was preety much locked into the title as Americ'a's Sports Car. Ford had attempted to compete with their Thunderbird, but by the end of the 50s they'd thrown in the towel and turned it into a "Personal Luxuary Car", which was successful in its own right and had many imitators. To be fair, the T-bird was probably much more of a success and asset to Ford than the Corvette has ever been to GM.

So in 1960, 4 or 5 years before the advent of muscle cars, if you wanted a domestic sports car, you got a Corvette.

You could go from zero to sixty in under 9 seconds, not impressive by today's standards but not bad for a street auto 50 years ago.



But this blog isn't so much about performance and nuts & bolts as it is about style and automotive culture.

Here's a page from the 60 Corvette brochure.

By 1960 the lines of the Corvette were less clutter by chrome geegaws which had reached their height with the '58 model. Like all Corvettes, it offered a passnger compartment grudgingly, a tight cockpit with a useful passenger grab bar. Trunk space was limited, but then this wasn't intended as a family truckster. In the fall of '60 an iconic TV show premired, "Route 66" which featured 2 guys travelling 'cross country from adventure to adventure in a blue Corvette. Of course, it would have been more practacal and comfortable had they taken a station wagon, but it just wouldn't have had the same flair.

And flair really has been a Corvette trademark for six decades now. They are fast as hell, but really, when do you ever use that performance on the street? They're uncomfortable and hard to get into unless you're an agile athelete. They are sky high in price and insurance premiums. But hell, we still love 'em and at least for me, they're still the true American Sports Cars.

Slot Car Track

Oh be still my fluttering 10 year old heart!!!!
This giant 1/32 scaled slot car track wouldn't have fit it many kid's bedrooms, so the living room floor would have to be comandeered, causing a rukus with Sis and her doll house..it would have been fun. The cost of this monster was $100 in 1966.... that would be over $660 today. Lucky kid!!

Smeggy's Garage- GURGEL

Welcome to Smeggy's Garage, where I'm going to blather on about some of my favorite cars and if you're so inclined you may add your comments and observations.

Gurgel was the brand name of Gurgel Motores (later Gurgel Motores S/A), a Brazilian automobile manufacturer, named after its founder João do Amaral Gurgel. The company was founded in 1969 and first specialized in buggies and off-road vehicles. Early models were fiberglass bodies installed on Volkswagen Beetle chassis and machinery, but VW bodies and chassis were later replaced by a unique solution made of Plasteel - which consists on fiberglass and steel joined together, a system patented by Gurgel. Gurgel also introduced Brazil's first fully domestically designed and manufactured car, the BR-800.

The 800, foiled by a tree.




The trade mark Gurgel expired, and have been bought from another business, now used by a small Brazilian importer of tricycles. The current Gurgel has nothing in common with original Gurgel company, except the name.

The vehicles produced by the original factory are still running on Brazilian roads nowadays. It is not uncommon to see X-12, Tocantins, Supermini or BR-800 models on the streets, despite of the reduced number of specialized workshops and lack of specific parts for replacement.