{"id":16992,"date":"2024-02-12T09:07:11","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/?p=16992"},"modified":"2024-02-12T09:07:11","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:07:11","slug":"the-cold-war-dick-van-dyke-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/the-cold-war-dick-van-dyke-show.html","title":{"rendered":"The Cold War Dick Van Dyke Show"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One night as an 11-year-old in 1965, I watched an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the family living room\u2014the CBS sitcom was produced in glorious black and white and ran from \u201861 to \u201866. I was an avid young fan even though I didn\u2019t always understand the story lines, but it was the early \u201860s when \u201cfamily entertainment\u201d actually spoke to young and old alike.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Already making pencil drawings and dabbling with oil paint, I appreciated the premise of the show. Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) was the head writer for a comedy\/variety TV show along with fellow writers Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) and Sally Rogers (Rose Marie). I\u2019ve always been interested in creative types, even as a child.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16995\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16995\" style=\"width: 949px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16995\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/dick_van_dyke_cuba.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"949\" height=\"912\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/dick_van_dyke_cuba.jpg 949w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/dick_van_dyke_cuba-300x288.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/dick_van_dyke_cuba-400x384.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/dick_van_dyke_cuba-768x738.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 949px) 100vw, 949px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16995\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scene from the Jan. 27, 1965 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Note the &#8220;Cuba&#8221; poster in the background.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I \u201ccame of age\u201d watching the show. Petrie\u2019s young wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) was a dancer before they married. Their young son Ritchie provided youngsters like me entry into the show\u2019s adult world. Despite the fiascos of the Petrie family, Rob and Laura were talented and dare I say, glamorous. It seemed to me the two were a reflection of President John F. Kennedy and his lovely wife Jackie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Speaking of coming of age. On Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Texas. That same day I watched Walter Cronkite on CBS <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6PXORQE5-CY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tell the nation of the president\u2019s death<\/a>. I saw the live televised reports of accused killer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AOx_tTQlEfY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lee Harvey Oswald being shot and killed<\/a> by Jack Ruby on Nov. 24. The Dick Van Dyke Show filmed the episode <i>Happy Birthday and Too Many More<\/i>, on Nov. 26, 1963. As the nation mourned, the show attempted to lift our spirits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The Dick Van Dyke Show continued to supply us with gleefulness, but as some scruffy folk-singer once crooned in 1964, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9ywYohqoM60\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>The Times They Are A-Changin<\/i><\/a>. When the sitcom ended on June 1, 1966, Americans were just waking-up to a full blown ground war in a far away place called Vietnam.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16997\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16997\" style=\"width: 1257px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16997\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rob_and_laura_esoteric.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1257\" height=\"939\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rob_and_laura_esoteric.jpg 1257w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rob_and_laura_esoteric-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rob_and_laura_esoteric-400x299.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rob_and_laura_esoteric-768x574.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1257px) 100vw, 1257px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16997\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scene from the Jan. 27, 1965 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Note the \u201cBeatnik\u201d poster in the background.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That notwithstanding, this essay is not about President Kennedy, the Vietnam war, or even The Dick Van Dyke Show in and of itself. It\u2019s about Cold War era American culture, with a surprising tie-in to The Walt Disney Company of the \u201860s\u2014long before it became the Rat Empire so many Americans loath today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show I saw as a child and mentioned in the opening of this essay, aired on Jan. 27, 1965; it was titled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0559806\/fullcredits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>Stacey Petrie: Part II<\/i><\/a>. Six decades later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ElmObuhEIv8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">I found an online copy and viewed it<\/a> once again, this time in the 21st century.\u00a0The plot was simple enough. In a nutshell Rob\u2019s brother Stacey (played by Dick Van Dyke\u2019s real-life brother Jerry), bought a run-down bohemian coffeeshop in New York City, and Rob and Laura were left to clean-up and renovate the caf\u00e9. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">During my recent view of the <i>Stacey Petrie<\/i> TV sketch, I became fixated on the art used to decorate the coffeehouse interior. I had never before seen those artworks, yet they were familiar aesthetically. In my mind they were associated with the Beat Generation, the nonconformists of the late 1950s and early 1960s that were given to jazz, poetry, and anti-materialist philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16999\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16999\" style=\"width: 946px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16999\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/jerry_van_dyke.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"946\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/jerry_van_dyke.jpg 946w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/jerry_van_dyke-300x285.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/jerry_van_dyke-400x381.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/jerry_van_dyke-768x731.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 946px) 100vw, 946px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16999\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jerry Van Dyke &amp; Banjo, in a scene from the Jan. 27, 1965 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the insert I placed an uncensored copy of the 1961 \u201cSitting Pretty\u201d poster by Rolly Crump. In the TV show a censored version of the poster was glued to the stage backdrop.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Every time one of those posters appeared on the TV screen, I would hit pause and squint trying to identify something revealing about the origins of the artworks. I finally went to my computer, and after protracted research discovered answers to the enigmatic puzzle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The posters were published in 1960 and 1961 by the <i>Esoteric Poster Company<\/i>. The business was founded by Howard Morseburg, a California art dealer who represented West Coast American artists. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">By chance Morseburg met an artist in the San Fernando Valley community of Los Angeles (where I was raised). The youthful fellow was a 22-year-old that in 1952 got a job working at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, CA as an \u201cIn-Betweener.\u201d He made $35 dollars a week. His name was Roland Fargo Crump, or Rolly for short. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Experienced animators create key animation drawings, while unseasoned animators finish a scene by drawing \u201cin-between\u201d the completed key sketches. Crump worked as an \u201cIn-Betweener\u201d prior to becoming an assistant animator on <i>Peter Pan<\/i>, <i>Lady and the Tramp<\/i>, <i>Sleeping Beauty<\/i>, and <i>One Hundred and One Dalmatians<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As Beatnik jazz clubs, bookstores, and coffeehouses proliferated in the \u201860s, Howard Morseburg was introduced to the Beat Generation\u2014and he thought them ripe for satire. He recognized Crump\u2019s talent and contracted him to produce a line of posters satirizing the Beats. But Morseburg also had his eye on world politics&#8230; it was the height of the Cold War. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Having encountered Nazis and Soviets in Europe during WWII, Morseburg grew opposed to totalitarianism, and he was concerned about human rights behind the \u201cIron Curtain.\u201d So he also had Crump producing humorously thought provoking anti-communist posters.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17002\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17002\" style=\"width: 1242px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17002\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_detail.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1242\" height=\"827\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_detail.jpg 1242w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_detail-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_detail-400x266.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_detail-768x511.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1242px) 100vw, 1242px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17002\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"s1\">Detail of the &#8220;Fly To Cuba&#8221; poster seen on The Dick Van Dyke Show on Jan. 27, 1965. Artist: Rolly Crump. <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In 1960 Rolly Crump designed and illustrated a poster for Morseburg\u2019s Esoteric Posters titled <i>Fly To Cuba<\/i>. This was one of the posters I spotted in the <i>Stacey Petrie<\/i> episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">On Jan. 1, 1959 Fidel Castro led a violent revolution that overthrew the US backed government of Cuba. On Oct. 3, 1965 the Fidelistas declared the Communist Party of Cuba as the exclusive director of the one-party state that still rules the island nation today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Crump\u2019s satirical poster excoriated the Fidelistas; it was exactly the kind of rude critique that would have placed a Cuban dissident in prison&#8230; or in front of a firing squad. In fact, the text on Crump\u2019s poster read; \u201cFly to Cuba\u2014And Get Shot Down (live dangerously),\u201d as well as \u201cDemocratic Trial Guaranteed Before Execution.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17004\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17004\" style=\"width: 1500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17004\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_poster.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_poster.jpg 1500w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_poster-300x440.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_poster-400x586.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_poster-768x1125.jpg 768w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_poster-1048x1536.jpg 1048w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/fly_to_cuba_poster-1398x2048.jpg 1398w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17004\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Fly To Cuba.&#8221; Rolly Crump. Pen &amp; ink. Offset lithograph. 1960. Published by the &#8220;Esoteric Poster Company.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There was an Exotic Drinks menu included on the poster, one description read; <i>Execution Daiquiri (Pint Rum-Ice-Lemon Twist)<\/i>. In small print there was \u201cNational Anthem by Raul Castro\u2014\u2018<i>Paredon, Mi Amigo, Paredon.<\/i>\u201d In Spanish pared\u00f3n means wall, so essentially the fake national anthem was titled <i>To the wall, friend, to the wall.<\/i> Mind you, Raul Castro (Fidel\u2019s brother), led Cuba from 2008 to 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Crump took a jab at Che Guevara, the Argentinian Marxist who in 1959 was 2nd in command to Fidel. When their revolution triumphed on Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel put Che in charge of the firing squads that meted out \u201crevolutionary justice\u201d to members of the vanquished regime. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">At a Jan. 22, 1959 mass rally outside the presidential palace in Havana, Fidel asked the crowd of one million if they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wUPqsh52QPc&amp;t=26s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">supported mass executions<\/a>. The crowd roared back \u201c<em>\u00a1Al Pared\u00f3n!<\/em>&#8221; (To the Wall!). On his <em>Fly To Cuba<\/em> poster Crump included the line: &#8220;See Fidel&#8217;s Daily TV Spectacular with Yogi Gue Verra&#8221;\u2014the name being a pseudonym for Che Guevara.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What\u2019s fascinating is that Dick Van Dyke and the show\u2019s producer Carl Reiner (1922-2020), who also acted in the show, were fervent liberals, yet Crump\u2019s anti-communist poster appeared on the show. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I don\u2019t know what the studio bosses were thinking, but with today\u2019s left-wing socialists of The Squad firmly entrenched in the Democrat Party, it\u2019s hard to imagine anti-socialist muckraking like this being initiated by present day liberal networks. This seems an excellent illustration of the leftward shift that\u2019s occurred in liberalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17006\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17006\" style=\"width: 903px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17006\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/esoteric_exhibit_crump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"903\" height=\"1117\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/esoteric_exhibit_crump.jpg 903w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/esoteric_exhibit_crump-300x371.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/esoteric_exhibit_crump-400x495.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/esoteric_exhibit_crump-768x950.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 903px) 100vw, 903px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17006\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Esoteric Exhibit.&#8221; Rolly Crump. Pen &amp; ink. Offset lithograph. 1960. Published by the &#8220;Esoteric Poster Company.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Crump was something of a Beatnik himself, as evidenced in the early 1950s photo shown below. In 1960 he designed and illustrated a print for Howard Morseburg titled <i>Esoteric Exhibit.<\/i> This artwork also appeared in the <i>Stacey Petrie<\/i> episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">With <i>Esoteric Exhibit<\/i>, Crump took a shot at the Beats, aiming at their minimalist anarcho-primitivism. He pictured a fictional bearded, beret-wearing artist named Go Mango, holding a frazzled paint brush and a framed painting of a broken trumpet. Above the canvas were the words; \u201cSee Go\u2019s famous painting, \u2018<i>Why Doesn\u2019t My Horn Blow?<\/i>\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17008\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17008\" style=\"width: 939px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17008\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"939\" height=\"525\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump.jpg 939w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump-400x224.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump-768x429.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 939px) 100vw, 939px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17008\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rolly Crump with one of his mobiles, circa late 1950s. Photographer unknown.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Was Crump being self-deprecating, upbraiding himself for being fixated on kinetic mobile art? Was Go Mango his stand in? <i>Esoteric Exhibit<\/i> included two mobiles made from cans and bits of detritus. The irony is that in real life a fellow artist at Disney, a background painter named Frank Armitage, once made a mobile from a coat hanger, string, and an eraser. Crump had never seen a mobile before and was amazed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Armitage told Crump to research Alexander Calder, so he went to the Disney Studios library and looked him up, along with kinetic sculpture, and mobiles&#8230; that inquiry changed Crump\u2019s life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Crump grew obsessed with creating mobiles. A studio animator suggested he mount an exhibit of his mobiles in the Disney library. He did, and Walt Disney not only noticed the works, in 1959 he moved Crump from the animation department to Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), where research and development melded imagination to engineering. Crump become what Walt called an \u201cImagineer.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The Imagineers designed, created, and constructed all attractions seen in Disney theme parks. In time Rolly Crump became world famous, not so much for his drawings, but for his whimsical architectural designs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Crump once commented on his works being on television; <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI learned that some of my posters were featured on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s. There were a few scenes in a coffee shop and some of my posters are on the wall behind them, and I got a kick out of that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17010\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17010\" style=\"width: 755px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17010\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/unicorn_crump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"755\" height=\"1097\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/unicorn_crump.jpg 755w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/unicorn_crump-300x436.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/unicorn_crump-400x581.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 755px) 100vw, 755px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17010\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cThe Unicorn.\u201d Rolly Crump. Pen &amp; ink. Offset lithograph. 1960. Published by the \u201cEsoteric Poster Company.\u201d A poster for The Unicorn coffee house of Los Angeles, CA, &#8220;Where Casual Craznicks Climb Circular Charcoal Curbs For Cool Calculated Confabulations.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In 1960 Crump created a poster for <i>The Unicorn<\/i> in Los Angeles, California. It was <i>the very first coffee house<\/i> in all of LA, and it was located on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. Moreover, it was a folk music venue and became a beacon for every expresso loving hipster in Southern California. As Crump wrote on the poster, the caf\u00e9 was \u201cWhere Casual Craznicks Climb Circular Charcoal Curbs For Cool Calculated Confabulations.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The <i>Unicorn<\/i> also had an upstairs book loft for poets and intellectual types. The place was opened by Theodore Bikel and Herbie Cohen in 1955, and daddy-o if you don\u2019t know who they were, you\u2019re slated for crashville, dig?<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17016\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17016\" style=\"width: 746px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17016\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/crump_petes_poop_deck.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"746\" height=\"955\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/crump_petes_poop_deck.jpg 746w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/crump_petes_poop_deck-300x384.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/crump_petes_poop_deck-400x512.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 746px) 100vw, 746px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17016\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Petes Poop Deck.&#8221; Rolly Crump. Pen &amp; ink. Offset lithograph. 1960. Published by the \u201cEsoteric Poster\u201d company.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Also in 1960 Rolly Crump created a poster titled <i>Petes Poop Deck.<\/i> It advertised the now legendary jazz club <i>Pete\u2019s Poop Deck<\/i>, which was founded in 1957 and located in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of downtown Seattle, Washington. Jazz aficionados call the place one of the city\u2019s first modern jazz clubs. By the look of Crump\u2019s poster, it must have been a wild place, at least initially.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The artwork depicts beatnik musicians bringing to life the club\u2019s byline of \u201cCarefully Calculated Confusion.\u201d The red-headed sex-bomb plays a finger symbol, while oddly enough three cool cats individually play a ping-pong paddle, a toilet plunger, and a conga drum.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Howard Morseburg personally sold Crump\u2019s Beatnik and anti-communist posters to bookstores up and down the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego. They proved to be fairly popular, it\u2019s amazing these broadsides from the <i>Esoteric Poster Company<\/i> predated the Psychedelic poster craze by several years\u2014Morseburg would have his hand in that as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Jeffrey Morseburg inherited the <i>Esoteric Poster Company<\/i> collection from his father Howard Morseburg, and continued in his father\u2019s footsteps as an art dealer, curator, lecturer, and gallerist. Jeffrey has long been associated with the California Art Club, the oldest arts organization in the state, and if I\u2019m not mistaken he sat on its Advisory Board.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When writing his thoughtful rumination, <i>The Story of the Esoteric Poster Company<\/i>, Jeffrey Morseburg made some flabbergasting remarks about Mario Savio (1942-1996), a leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the early \u201860s. I was inspired by that movement as a teen, particularly by Savio\u2019s unforgettable oration at Berkeley University of Dec. 2, 1964, known as <i>Bodies Upon the Gears<\/i>. In that speech <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ES6tjnJ9_XU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Savio said<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThere is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can&#8217;t take part&#8230; you can&#8217;t even passively take part! <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you&#8217;ve got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you&#8217;ve got to make it stop! And you&#8217;ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you&#8217;re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I still believe those are words to live by, they express an American ideal that applies internationally, an enduring verity embodied in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Though perhaps Savio held a different perspective. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Jeffrey Morseburg accused Savio of censoring his father\u2019s <i>Esoteric Poster <\/i>artworks \u201csatirizing life in the Soviet Union and Castro&#8217;s adoption of Soviet methods in post-revolutionary Cuba.\u201d As per Jeffrey\u2019s memories:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThese satirical political posters sold well in college bookstores, until, ironically, those bearing the images of actual totalitarian leaders like Ho Chi Minh, Mao and Lenin replaced them! In Berkeley, Mario Savio and the perhaps no-so-well-named \u2018Free Speech Movement\u2019 demanded that the Berkeley Bookstore (still located across from Sproul Hall) stop selling the Esoteric line of posters. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The sixties were a time of excess and radicalism and no place embodied the sixties ethos more than Berkeley. However sadly, the Berkeley Bookstore complied with Savio&#8217;s censorship request and discontinued the sale of Esoteric&#8217;s Posters, much to the dismay of a faction of students.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The only source for Jeffrey Morseburg\u2019s allegation that Mario Savio successfully waged a censorship campaign against the Esoteric Poster Company, came from Jeffrey&#8217;s online essay, <a href=\"http:\/\/67.199.10.175\/back.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Story of the Esoteric Poster Company<\/a>, published in 2003. I haven\u2019t found any evidence that the assertion is true, or untrue. Perhaps in time, other investigators will dig up some evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17018\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17018\" style=\"width: 906px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17018\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/khrushchev_crump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"906\" height=\"1139\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/khrushchev_crump.jpg 906w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/khrushchev_crump-300x377.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/khrushchev_crump-400x503.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/khrushchev_crump-768x966.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 906px) 100vw, 906px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17018\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cWe Will Bury You\u201d (Khrushchev Wants You). Rolly Crump. Silkscreen. 1961. Published by the \u201cEsoteric Poster Company.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In 1961 Rolly Crump created his <i>We Will Bury You (Khrushchev Wants You)<\/i> poster for Esoteric Posters. Nikita Khrushchev was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964. In 1956 Khrushchev infamously said of the capitalist West, \u201cWe will bury you.\u201d Numerous Americans took those words as threatening atomic warfare; in his poster Crump gave Khrushchev a necklace of atomic fire.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">On Sept 15, 1959 Khrushchev visited the US after an invitation from the US government. He was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/this-day-in-history\/khrushchev-barred-from-visiting-disneyland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">scheduled to visit Disneyland in Los Angeles<\/a> on Sept. 19, 1959, but the visitation was cancelled because US officials were worried they couldn\u2019t handle a hostile crowd opposed to the Soviet leader. Khrushchev was infuriated, but I can imagine Crump being in that crowd. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In 1962 Khrushchev sought to \u201cdefend\u201d Cuba when he sent Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles to the Castro regime. Parked 90 miles from the US coast, the missiles initiated the Cuban Missile Crisis. Americans went nuts. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I distinctly remember my parents, like many other Americans, readying a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/a-look-back-at-americas-fallout-shelter-fatuation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fallout shelter<\/a>\u201d supplied with food and water in the event of atomic war. Castro <i>urged<\/i> Khrushchev to launch a nuclear attack on the US if Kennedy invaded Cuba. The crisis was averted when Khrushchev withdrew the missiles. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Inevitably hard-line Soviet elites decided Khrushchev wasn\u2019t Red enough. On Oct. 14, 1964 they forced his retirement. He was given a dacha in the countryside and made a non-person. Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary of the Communist Party. During his 18-year rule the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to stop the Prague Spring democratic reforms, and of course the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There\u2019s no doubt Khrushchev believed communism was a superior system that would outproduce and ultimately \u201cbury\u201d the free enterprise system of the West, but it was Soviet communism that totally and utterly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/story\/why-did-the-soviet-union-collapse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">collapsed on Dec. 26, 1991<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17020\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17020\" style=\"width: 1019px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17020\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/visit_siberia_crump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1019\" height=\"1562\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/visit_siberia_crump.jpg 1019w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/visit_siberia_crump-300x460.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/visit_siberia_crump-400x613.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/visit_siberia_crump-768x1177.jpg 768w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/visit_siberia_crump-1002x1536.jpg 1002w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1019px) 100vw, 1019px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17020\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Visit Siberia&#8221; (Make Your Next Trip Abroad Your Last). Rolly Crump. Pen &amp; ink. Offset lithograph. 1961. Published by the \u201cEsoteric Poster Company.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In 1961 Crump created his poster; <i>Visit Siberia (Make Your Next Trip Abroad Your Last).<\/i> The work criticized the Soviet Union\u2019s forced labor Gulag camps that existed in Siberia. Between 1923 and 1962 some 18 million Russians were interned in them. Historians estimate between 1.6 to 1.7 million people died in the Gulags.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Crump\u2019s poster featured four male prisoners behind barbed wire. The poster is arranged like a travel poster meant to entice with an exotic destination, food, and activities\u2014the verbiage on the artwork screams; \u201cClosed Box Cars Leaving Moscow Daily,\u201d \u201c16 Hour Daily Tours Of Salt Mines,\u201d and \u201cQuiet&#8230; Except For Early Morning Firing Squads.\u201d My favorite is the menu; \u201cEnchanting Potato Peel Soup. Buggy Black Bread Baked by Bourgeoise Bankers. Hot Vinegar.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The artist named Roland Fargo Crump passed away at the age of 93 on March 12, 2023. He wasn\u2019t the greatest artist in the world, but he was more inspirational, authentic, and conscientious than the majority of no talents and plagiarists comprising today\u2019s postmodern art world. He genuinely sought to uplift everyday people with his artworks. No doubt he succeeded.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17021\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17021\" style=\"width: 969px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17021\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump_walt_disney.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"976\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump_walt_disney.jpg 969w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump_walt_disney-300x302.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump_walt_disney-400x403.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump_walt_disney-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/rolly_crump_walt_disney-768x774.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 969px) 100vw, 969px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17021\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rolly Crump &amp; Walt Disney pose with a model of Crump\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com\/2013\/09\/meet-me-under-tower-of-four-winds.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tower of the Four Winds.<\/a>\u201d At the 1964 New York Worlds Fair, a 120-foot-tall version of the tower was built, installed, &amp; displayed at the pavilion named \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World.\u201d Too heavy to ship to Disneyland in Anaheim, it was destroyed after the fair.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I knew of Crump because of his legendary works as an Imagineer. He designed the <i>Enchanted Tiki Room<\/i>, <i>The Haunted Mansion<\/i>, and a myriad of other Disney attractions. He worked on designs for the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, contributed to Disney\u2019s EPCOT Center theme park, and labored on the Adventureland Bazaar in Disneyland Paris. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s not within the scope of this essay to touch upon all the wonders Crump left us\u2014read his 2012 autobiographical book <i>It\u2019s Kind of a Cute Story <\/i>for those histories. And of course, there\u2019s a treasure trove of online info to be found on the man. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I only discovered Crump\u2019s polemical posters because of an old episode from The Dick Van Dyke Show. It\u2019s not surprising there\u2019s a scarcity of contextual information regarding Crump\u2019s Beatnik and anticommunist posters, so I sought to shed some light on the matter. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I guess old TV re-runs are good for something after all.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One night as an 11-year-old in 1965, I watched an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the family living room\u2014the CBS sitcom was produced in glorious black and white and ran from \u201861 to \u201866. I was an avid young fan even though I didn\u2019t always understand the story lines, but it was the early \u201860s when \u201cfamily&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-art","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}