Happy New Year, my loyal Non-Paraders! For the inchoate annum (I’m just tired of saying New Year), I thought I'd pick up a project that I've considered on-going: reproducing the Newsday (Long Island, New York) illustrations of long-time staff artist Gary Viskupic. I had been thinking he died last year, but I just double-checked and nope--it was the previous year, July 2024! To further accentuate this distressingly swift passage of time, I just looked at the last time I published some of his work, thinking it was just a couple of years ago... and it's been ten-and-a-half years!
So, if you're new to this blog, and are unfamiliar with his mesmerizing and often unsettling work, here come a few links:
My first post serves as a nifty introduction (well, nifty enough, I guess), with most of his color covers of my collection;
The second post has one more cover, some regular close-ups plus Christmas-themed illustrations;
The third and most recent post has all close-up features and one editorial piece.
This time out, I'm going for broke. Everything I can find by Visk will end up right here. I'm proceeding chronologically, and I'll try to provide a date when it's not evident in the scan.
I probably could have contacted Viskupic at some point, but it just felt strange. I’m not a journalist, not even a student of art, particularly. Why would I bother this poor guy with questions—to publish it on my dopey blog that no one looks at? I was afraid it would seem insulting.
I think there are more and more of his pieces for sale online. There’s a print I occasionally think of getting for my Nerd Room.
If you dig the reviews that go along with the movie close-ups, that's the work of Newsday writer John Cashman. And wouldja lookit that--I also have a whole dang blog devoted to his work! Enjoy!
First, here's a couple I already had scanned but I forgot to add the dates, first for Beauty and the Beast. I love how, without actually seeing his eyes, the light on the eyelids evokes the sadness of the Beast.
(Don't forget to click on or tap the pic to make it larger and clearer.)
The other one (apparently from 1979--unusual for GV to add a date) is for Paper Moon.
Johnny Cash co-hosts
Opryland, USA in May 1972.
A PBS special (local?) on busing programs.
June brought the 104st Belmont Stakes.
Also from June, a simple sketch of George Washington for D.W. Griffith's silent America...
...and a much more expressive one for the 1961 Indian film
Two Daughters.
Two from July, a Democratic fundraiser and golf's British Open.
Two from August, an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D....
...and an NBC
White Paper examining the "deepening involvement in the Vietnam War."
September brought several famous faces, including Dizzy Gillespie...
...Justice William O. Douglas...
...
Bill Cosby on Prejudice...
...and finally, Charlie Chaplin on The Toy That Grew Up, a Chicago PBS series at the end of its ten-year run.
October: George C. Scott in They Might Be Giants.
The jazz doc 'Til the Butcher Cuts Him Down.
On Playhouse New York, "The Rimers of Eldritch," described as a "comedy-drama about the human remnants of a once-prosperous mining town." Sounds like a hoot!
Two for November:
Patton and
Salome.
As the year came to a close, Viskupic memorialized the specials of the day (including Joe Franklin's!), and drew the pic for the cover story about Guy Lombardo, et al (actually a two-page spread I edited together).
1973 kicked off with Antonioni's
China, Jack Paar and Dick Cavett getting teed off, and Nixon's inauguration.
February brought a Viskupic Bogart, a face he seemed to enjoy portraying.
"Freedom of the Press," an episode of
America '73.
The 1966
Peter Pan with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard.
March is represented solely by this heady, leggy take on
Liza with a Z.
April makes up for last month's dearth by offering
seven awesome entries, beginning with Elvis and Ann-Margret, together again (on the same network, anyway).
Dick is back--and he's got the
VD Blues!
The Forbidden Desert of Danakil.
Easter services are televised, with local stations WOR and WABC coming from St. Patrick's.
1948's Oliver Twist.
Sartre's Roads to Freedom trilogy was dramatized in 13 episodes.
An All-Star Swing Festival brought out the stars.
For May, a semi-portrait of Peter Ustinov as George III, and lovely depictions of Barbara Bel Geddes and Irene Dunne in I Remember Mama.
In June, Dean Martin hosted Jonathan Winters.
Now Dick's got Marlon Brando.
For art lovers, Rembrandt was on the tube as a poor old man...
...and classical lovers enjoyed Music from Ambler, although I have absolutely no idea what's going on in this illustration.
On to July, with an episode of Not for Women Only called "Fat Isn't Funny," although Viskupic clearly takes issue with this notion.
The Queen has a big hand and an even bigger ball for that year's British Open.
Another Playhouse New York, this one adapting a Broadway play about Harriet Beecher Stowe for TV.
Lastly for July, a striking if not overly inspired piece for NBC's Music Country.
Cavett now had Norman Mailer, who thought Marilyn Monroe was murdered.
(For a little while, anyway.)
"The Cave People of the Phillipines" refers to the Tasaday (who, it turned out, were not the primitive savages the government portrayed them to be for their own gains).
Heading into September now with another DNC fundraiser; then, on the 16th, the infamous "Battle of the Sexes" tennis tournament between King and Riggs.
A couple of movies: Bonnie and Clyde, and Kelly's Heroes (with a creepy anthropomorphic tank).
October brought this drawing to go with the TV series adapted from the movie Shaft. I've always found it odd. His head is a gun?
A rather stunning portrait for a Chinese opera adaptation on Festival of Lively Arts for Young People.
Opera meets Opry.
Viskupic is in his World War II element--he was an ardent buff--with these simple but distinctive helmets to illustrate The Bridge at Remagen.
In November, a "Tribute to Louis Armstrong" was broadcast on PBS.
For a network airing of Airport that month, Visk took the infamous National Airlines tagline "I'm Cheryl. Fly me." quite literally.
For December, the Hallmark Hall of Fame gave us "The Borrowers."
Viskupic created a massive Nelson Rockefeller noggin worthy of Easter Island for CBS Reports.
Christmas at Pops and the big day's religious services put GV in an angelic mood.
Now we're on to 1974, with these amusing drawings for the college football bowl games of New Year's Day. NBC Reports looked at "College and the Middle Class."
Here's a goofy one for The Way West, with another funny Cashman take.
From the silly to the chilling, Viskupic presents an intense-looking vampire for the first Night Stalker TV movie.
Two weeks later, more blood-sucking from producer Dan Curtis, and a re-tooled illustration for the re-scheduling of his Dracula with Jack Palance. (See the original version
here.)
Viskupic literally roasts Jack Benny.
Raquel Welch gets strung up for working with Sid and Marty Krofft on Really, Raquel.
The World You Never See gets seen by Hugh Downs.
I hate to accuse Gary of phoning it in, but sometimes I'm compelled to assume he was too busy with other projects to make the TV Book close-up a priority.
Here's a star-spangled movie camera for a docu-series on the history of American cinema.
I neglected to add the date for this next one, so I'll just drop it here for March, although I'm absolutely certain it was not scheduled for St. Patrick's Day. It's another one that would have totally spooked me the fuck out as a kiddie.
The depiction of Jesus for this Easter presentation always, at first glance, looks to me like he's not wearing a Crown of Thorns so much as a Santa Hat of Thorns.
I wonder who Viskupic had in mind when he drew the woman in this cash register bed. I looked up the portrayer of Nana in this production, and it definitely ain't Katherine Schofield.
This mini-series about the prosecution of wartime atrocities was named QBVII after the courthouse where the fictional proceedings take place. Who the hell decided QBVII would be a good name for a TV show? It's not even a good name for a courthouse!
Gert Frobe gets a hand (or becomes one, really) as Goldfinger.
Another Nazi, this time for The McKenzie Break.
This one for the "California Jam All-Day Music Festival," seen on ABC for their late night In Concert series, is nothing all that special, but I'll note that co-host Don Imus will get his own Viskupic portrait, coming up...
Another benign topic, another Viskupic creep-out: a young woman sheds her old self, cicada-style.
The end of May brought out the gearhead in Viskupic. In fact, here's a literal car-head, or head-car...
...followed a few days later by a winged racecar for the Indianapolis 500.
June found GV working overtime, with ten contributions to the NTVB for that month.
The Anderson Tapes.
A half-cow (unlivestock?) representing feast and famine.
The actual "Tiger of Malaya" gets portrayed with flags for eyes.
Elizabeth Taylor and her viper's tongue for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The dollar was shrinking, and so was George Washington.
Renoir gets framed.
It's ladies' night on Public Television. The big decision for Joyce Chopra, I guess, was if she really wanted to film herself giving birth for the doc Joyce at 34.
Visk doesn't get much more literal than this take on Downhill Racer.
More Curtis/Palance horror, yet another interpretation of the Jekyll & Hyde story. It was actually released in Canada five years earlier (according to Wikipedia, which is not infallible but still more reliable than anyone you know).
Amerasian orphans become medals in this one for an NBC News special.
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