Even More Viskupic!

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? 

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, for Beauty and the Beast...

...and one (apparently from 1979, though it's unusual for GV to add a date) 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.

[There's more to come, 1974 and beyond!]