And birthday greetings to Arnold Roth

One of the legendary illustrators turns 80 on Wednesday.

Roth is instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever passed a newsstand. His work has appeared in dozens of magazine over the years, from The New Yorker to Playboy to Scientific America, to name but a few. Most recently, his Oscar-themed picture graced the cover of The Sunday Times’ arts and leisure section. But for the purposes of this blog, it’s his sports work that makes us smile.

I had the pleasure of interviewing him for this piece a couple of years ago. Our correspondences have been conducted by e-mails, but occasionally he would respond via fax, drawing a spur-of-the-moment cartoon suitable for the situation.

One of my favorite Roth caricatures appears on the first-edition cover of Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville, a collection of essays on baseball by the late Stephen Jay Gould. He was given the task of portraying several legends of the game, including Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and other more contemporary athletes.

The cover, which spans the entire book jacket rather than just the front, “was probably done within what would be three normal working days,” Roth said in 2006. But for him, a “normal working day” can be almost 14 hours. “I really got into it. It probably looks more tedious [to draw] than it was.”

On a personal note, he also did me the amazing kindness of rendering me in his unique style. I was floored when the full-sized image was delivered shortly after the interview ran. A version appears on this blog.

When I sent him a note this morning just to catch up following the Times’ latest cartoon, his charming wife, Caroline, replied that he was in his studio, working on another piece for The New Yorker.

So happy birthday, Arnold. Here’s looking forward to many more
covers to come.

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Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2009 New Jersey Jewish News

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