"The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons, 1913-1940" by San
Francisco-based comic's herstorian Trina Robbins is out from Fantagraphics.
By Thomas Gladysz
SF Silent Film Examiner
Throughout the teens, twenties, and early thirties, Nell Brinkley was about as big a name as there was in the world of cartooning and illustration. Brinkley’s independent-minded and always pretty heroines pirouetted, waltzed, shimmied, and vamped their way through various adventures – often with a dashing young man by their side.
Brinkley’s celebrated illustrations were widely syndicated in newspapers across the country, including the “Monarch of the Dailies,” the old San Francisco Examiner. (Locally, Brinkley’s work also ran in the defunct San Francisco Call and its later incarnation, the Call-Bulletin.) As well, Brinkley’s illustrations appeared in national publications like Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Harper's Magazine.
Reportedly, young girls saved her drawings, copied them, colored them, and pasted them into scrapbooks. And women, aspiring to the masses of curly hair with which the artist adorned her plucky characters, bought Nell Brinkley Hair Curlers.
Advertisements and sheet music also featured her Brinkley’s idealized art. And the artist’s signature creation, the Brinkley Girls, inspired songs as well as routines performed at the Ziegfeld’s Follies.
As the successor to Charles Dana Gibson’s often static Gibson Girls, Nell Brinkley’s always in motion Brinkley Girls helped define their era.
But then – tastes and styles changed. Brinkley’s florid, sweet tempered illustrations gave way to a leaner, harder-edged sensibility – as well as photography. The demand for illustration, a la the Brinkley Girls, faded. And, it’s fair to say, so did interest in the work of Nell Brinkley.
For decades, the artist’s work has largely remained out of public view . . . until now. Trina Robbins, the San Francisco-based, self-described comics "herstorian" has championed the artist in the form of a new book, The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons, 1913-1940. This sumptuously designed, beautifully printed hardcover book has recently been published by Fantagraphics.
The Brinkley Girls features an informative introduction by Robbins, as well as a sampling of Brinkley’s exquisitely colored art dating from before the First World War to just before America’s entry in the Second World War.
Notably, this new book includes the artist’s earliest silent movie serial-inspired adventure series, “Golden Eyes and Her Hero, Bill” as well as her romantic series, “Betty and Billy and Their Love Through the Ages.” Brinkley’s snappy flapper comics from the 1920s, and her 1937 pulp magazine-inspired “Heroines of Today” are also depicted. These later works show a distinct evolution in Brinkley’s style.
A lot of the work found in The Brinkley Girls might be thought of as pretty, or merely pretty. However, Robbins makes a case for Brinkley as more than just a drawer of pretty faces. Robbins suggests that beneath the surface was a feminist struggling against the artistic and social conventions of her time.
“It’s hard to define Brinkley,” Robbins states. “Certainly she was a cartoonist, and an illustrator. But what she illustrated, with her trademark hair-thin double-lines, was her own column of daily commentary. So the names Columnist and Commentator must be added to her description. Her commentary usually was about women: what they were wearing, what they were thinking, saying, reading and dancing, whether they had the vote, whether they could have careers. Most of the women she drew were her Brinkley Girls, bright-eyed and laughing with cupid’s bow lips and innocent sexuality, their fashionable clothing swirling revealingly around their bodies. . . . But just as often she drew real women.”
Those interested in silent film and its personalities will find much of interest in The Brinkley Girls. As Robbins notes, early in her career Brinkley drew actresses such as Mae Murray, Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, as well as entertainers like Irene Castle, Evelyn Nesbit, and the Dolly Sisters.
One of her more frequent subjects was Marion Davies, the one-time Ziegfeld Follies girl and silent film star who was also the mistress of William Randolph Hearst. Davies’ likeness can be found in a illustrations included in Robbins’ new book. Other characters on other pages (though not identified as such) bear a strong resemblance to silent stars Ronald Colman, Nils Asther, John Gilbert, and Gloria Swanson.
Robbins has long been the champion of women cartoonists. Her earlier books include A Century of Women Cartoonists (Kitchen Sink Press) and Great Women Cartoonists (Watson-Guptill), as well as a 2001 title on Brinkley, Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century (McFarland). This later book, more text than illustrations, tells in greater detail the story of Brinkley’s remarkable life and career. It’s a story well worth checking out.
Trina Robbins will be signing copies of The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons, 1913-1940 on July 11th at the Castro Theatre. Robbins’ signing, which takes place during the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, is scheduled to follow the John Gilbert film Bardelys the Magnificent at approximately 1:45 pm.
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