Al Jaffee On Drawing Cartoons in the Dirt to Survive

David Gerlach: Today’s conversation is with Al Jaffee, an artist who has spent more than five decades drawing detailed, full-page spreads for Mad magazine. Yes: That Mad magazine, as in Alfred E. Neuman. The cartoonist is the focus of a new biography written by Mary Lou Weisman with dozens of illustrations by Jaffee himself. It’s Called Al Jaffee’s Mad Life and from the interviews Weisman gathered along the way, we get to hear Jaffee on how drawing in the dirt and on the sidewalk helped him make it through a pretty rough childhood. Jaffee will take us on an amazing odyssey that began in Georgia, made an extended, difficult stop in Lithuania, before finally ending up in New York City. This is Blank on Blank.
Al Jaffee: I was born in Savannah Georgia, a long time ago. 1921. I was a typical little southern kid. Running around. Jumping. Climbing palm trees and jumping around. When at the age of six my mother decided she would like to take us back to the little town in Lithuania where she was born, I think, and visit her father and sister and other relatives.

Song: Ardei Lute (Moldavian string band) “Klezmer Hora”

Al Jaffee: I was a stranger there. I didn’t speak any of the languages. I had a difficult time integrating into the society of little kids that I met, but to the rescue came my ability to draw cartoons. Because I would get a stick and start drawing cartoon characters that I had loved when I was a little kid in Savannah and sort of ingratiated myself with my ability.

David Gerlach: Now a world away back in Savannah was Jaffe’s father. He’s the one who had introduced his boys to the Sunday funnies. To their amazement they would watch as he would produce near exact replicas of the cartoons they saw in the paper. Then young Al Jaffee, he went by Abraham back then, would emulate his did and try to draw his own copies. But now father and son were thousands of miles apart. Months separated turned into years. Jaffee was stuck living in Zarasai, Lithuania and he wasn’t coming home.

Al Jaffee: Life there was not easy for me and my brother. We were frequently hungry and neglected. My mother did a lot of… she was a religious woman and spent a lot of time in the synagogue. And also did a lot charity work for poor people, helping the elderly and so on and cooking for them and she would forget to do the same thing for us.

Mary-Lou Wiseman: Is it true that your father kept sending money to your mother for passage for you and your brothers home and your mother just would just give it away to the rabbi?

Al Jaffee: That’s true. My father who remained in America, because ostensibly this was supposed to be a relatively short visit for my mother to see her father and sisters. But somehow my mother list track of time and became involved in the town and apparently it was a society she loved very much. She just was more comfortable than in Savannah, Georgia. So she just forgot to come back. My father kept sending money and letters and pleading with her to come back to America. But as time went by it just looked more and more like my mother was never voluntarily going to return. And my father subsequently came over and took most of us back.

David Gerlach: In total it took six years for Jaffee’s dad to raise the money and get over to Lithuania to bring his children home. Six years: Can you imagine? But after all of this Al Jaffee was finally headed home. To a new home that is: One in New York.

Al Jaffee: When I returned to America at the age of 12 it was another adjustment that I was not crazy about. But as an aside, I would say once again my cartooning ability helped a great deal, because I would start drawing cartoons on the sidewalks with chalk and other little 12-year olds and even older kids were entranced by it, because I knew how to draw Mickey Mouse by heart.

David Gerlach: Now even with Mickey Mouse on his side, kids still called Jaffee a greenhorn. They made fun of his accent. I guess It must have been tinged with Russian, or Lithuanian or Yiddish, all of which Jaffee had picked up by then. But he also still knew English. His mother spoke it with him in Lithuania and that helped Jaffee quickly get up to speed at Herman Ritter Junior High in the Bronx. And it was there one school day that Jaffee, along with about 50 other kids were sent down to the art room. The teacher in the room said: ‘Draw something. Anything.’

Al Jaffee: The only thing I could think of drawing was the town square, which I had so recently come from. I drew the town square with the old church and the horse and so on.

David Gerlach: The story goes that all the kids except for two were sent back to their classrooms. Those two singled budding artists were Al Jaffee and another kid named Will Elder. The pair was then told to go the principal’s office.

Al Jaffee: While we were sitting in the principal’s office waiting to be called in, this little guy, little Willy, who I’d only met just a few minutes ago, turned to me and said, ‘I think they are going to send us to art school.”

David Gerlach: Little Willy was right. They were going to art school. Jaffee and Elder became part of the first class of the famed high school of music and art. They would remain lifelong friends and down the road Elder would become one of the founding cartoonists for Mad Magazine. A few years after that Al Jaffee would catch on with Mad as a freelancer and he’s been a fixture there ever since. Now you can hear Jaffee reveal the story behind lots of Mad Magazine adventures–the birth of his intricate fold-ins, his snappy answers to stupid questions–by heading over to Blank on Blank dot org. I do wish to thank Mary Lou Wiseman for adding her interview to the archive and you can check out her new book, Al Jaffee’s Mad Life. It’s being put out by It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Once again this is Blank on Blank and I’m David Gerlach. Keep listening.