Jr John Held

Born: 1889

Death: 1958

Biography:

John Held Jr. was an American cartoonist, printmaker, illustrator, sculptor, and author. One of the best-known magazine illustrators of the 1920s, his most popular works were his uniquely styled cartoons which depicted people dancing, driving, playing sports, and engaging in other popular activities of the era.
Held grew up in an artistic family that encouraged his pursuit of arts from the beginning. He began selling pieces of art by the age of nine. He never graduated from high school, finding his time was better spent honing his skills which he began at The Salt Lake Tribune as a sports illustrator during his late teenage years. His friendship with Harold Ross, creator of The New Yorker, served him well in his career, as his cartoons were featured in many prominent magazines including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and Life magazine.
Due to his sense of humor and keen observation of his surroundings, Held was praised for his cartoon depictions of the cultural paradigm shift in the 1920s. The drawings depicted the flapper era in a way that both satirized and influenced the styles and mores of the time, and his images have continued to define the Jazz Age for subsequent generations.
The oldest of six children, John Held Jr. was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Annie Evans and John Held, who met at a church social. His father was born in Geneva, Switzerland to Jacques Held, a watchmaker, and was noticed by Mormon educator John R. Park who was scouting Europe for talented young people. He adopted Held Sr. and brought him back to Salt Lake City. He decide not to pursue a career as an educator like his mentor, but instead pursued a diverse career in copperplate engraving, manufacturing fountain pens, and operating a stationery shop. He privately developed his musical abilities on the cornet and organized Held's Band, which performed at all major Utah events for about fifty years. John Held Sr. contributed illustrations to the 1888 The Story of the Book of Mormon. Annie Evans, his mother, acted in the local theater. John Held Jr.'s maternal grandfather, James Evans, was an English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who traveled to Salt Lake City with the Mormon handcart pioneers.
Thriving in a home where the arts were appreciated and encouraged, Held showed a talent for the arts at a young age. He learned woodcutting and engraving from his father, and sold a drawing to a local newspaper at the age of nine. The wood block was his preferred medium in his youth and he would return to it several times throughout his career. He loved Western culture including horses, deserts, and cowboys, and this was a recurring theme in his art, both as a child and as an adult. He sold his first cartoon, a Western-themed one, to Life magazine at the age of 15.
In 1905, he began working as a sports illustrator and cartoonist at the Salt Lake City Tribune with his fellow West High School classmate Harold Ross. During his years at the Tribune, he obtained no formal art instruction claiming that his only teachers were his father and the sculptor Mahonri M. Young, a grandson of Brigham Young. In 1910 Held married Myrtle Jennings, the Tribune's society editor. In 1912 he relocated to New York, without his wife, to find a good job. While living in a flat with Hal Burrows and Mahonri Young, he drew posters for Collier's Street Railway Advertising Company and ads for Wanamaker's Department Store, and designed costumes and sets for the theater to make ends meet. In 1914, he returned to his linoleum block print style.
In 1915 Vanity Fair began publishing his drawings, for which he used the pseudonym "Myrtle Held", because he was too shy to use his own name. He also began doing woodcuts for his "Frankie and Johnny" series, which would be published in limited quantity in 1930 and greater quantity in 1971.
During World War I, he worked for US Naval Intelligence in Central America as an artist and cartographer. During this commission, he participated in an expedition co-sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Foundation with archaeologists Sylanus Morley and Herbert Spinden. His duties were to look for German submarine activity off-shore, make coastal maps, sketch any signs of military operation, and record the Mayan hieroglyphics and sketch any finds in the expedition. His friend and roommate Marc Connelly, a famous American playwright, later wrote of Held's distinct humor, recounting that he teased friend Ernest Haskell for wearing a terrible homemade camouflage costume by crying out, "My God! Where's Ernie?"
In 1925, his old high school friend Harold Ross started The New Yorker. By 1927, Held's work had appeared in Life, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and The New Yorker, and he had also contributed illustrations for other influential magazines, including Judge and The Smart Set. His work, which quickly became popular, defined the "funny, stylish image of the flapper with her cigarette holder, shingle bob and turned-down hose and of her slick-haired boyfriend in puffy pants and raccoon coat," whom he named Betty Co-ed and Joe College; the perfect archetypes for the generation. According to Held, he didn't really intend to create the flapper ideal; he just drew what was around him, and it became popular so he kept drawing. He was reportedly becoming so popular that people were sending him blank checks, offering anything for an original piece. From a 1957 interview with the New York Post, an editor explained that Held was seen as a man who could pull a magazine out of trouble, which made his cartoons valuable and coveted.

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