Call Number:

Item 0001

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

• 10 volume
• 1 oversize box

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0093, Item 0001, Robert S. Mallouk scrapbooks of World War II cartoons, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1941-1946 (inclusive)

Creator:

Mallouk, Robert S.

Form:

Autobiographies and Editorial cartoons

Abstract:

American editorial cartoons from World War II era collected by Brooklyn, New York, resident Robert S. Mallouk and an autobiographical essay about his experiences as a soldier.

Robert S. Mallouk (b. 1926), a native of Brooklyn, New York, closely followed the progression of WWII. He joined the Army at 18 and went on to study chemistry and engineering and work at the Delaware firms, DuPont and Gore.

Mallouk, son of a Brooklyn merchant who had emigrated from Damascus at age 10 in 1889, was just shy of age sixteen when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Joining the national tide of patriotism and unity after the attack, the teenage Mallouk immediately began collecting the daily editorial cartoons about America's entry into World War II. As a boy, he collected stamps and built model airplanes, so he easily applied his habits toward building a nearly comprehensive daily collection of these editorial cartoons for the duration of the war.

Mallouk completed one year at Princeton before being inducted into the army at age eighteen in 1944, eventually serving in the 172d Infantry Regiment of the 43d Infantry Division in the Philippines during the war. He was in the occupation army in Japan with the 1st Cavalry Division until September 1946. He then returned to Princeton, where he was graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1948 and a Masters in Engineering in 1950. Mallouk pursued a career in polymers at DuPont and Gore companies in Delaware, with several patents to his credit before retiring from Gore. Biographical information derived from collection.

The Robert S. Mallouk scrapbooks of World War II cartoons includes an autobiographical essay, "Soldier Boy," as well as 649 wartime editorial cartoons from American newspapers that were collected by Mallouk between December 9, 1941, through August 26, 1946. All together, the personal narrative of "Soldier Boy" and the graphics of the collection document what Mallouk described as the "total war" experience of Americans in World War II.

Propagandizing slogans such as "Keep the Eagle's View! Ultimate / Certain / Victory … Temporary Successes / Temporary Setbacks" (Burris Jenkins, January 2, 1942) illustrate the role of the press in supporting the war effort in the States. "Stamp Him Out!" depicts a gorilla-like swastika- and fascist-arm-banded "Jap" Axis figure becoming obscured by a sheet of U.S. Savings Bonds, with a small banner waving "Remember Pearl Harbor" in the corner of the cartoon (Paschke, December 24, 1941). The cartoons present strong graphic communication of America's response to the war, with the emphatic message that there was strength in unified resistance at home and abroad.

Ranging in size from 6 x 8 inches to 8 x 10 inches or even full-page for some headline events, the cartoon clippings were pasted onto wood-pulp paper that was hole-punched and stored in ring binders. One cartoon clipping was pasted on the recto of each leaf of paper, with dates also clipped or written on each page.

Because of the acidic quality of the newsclippings and page supports, as well as the rusting binder rings, the collection has been rehoused for preservation purposes into mylar sleeves with buffered interleaves. These sleeves are now in new board covers, in housing constructed to enable handling without crumbling and continuing deterioration.

A resident of Brooklyn, Mallouk clipped most of his cartoons from Brooklyn and New York papers, including the

New York Tribune and the Journal-American (a Hearst paper). Mallouk's mother continued the clippings when he left for college and subsequently entered the service, and there is some greater variety of sources for the cartoons. Burris Jr Jenkins (1897-1966) was strongly favored by Mallouk and his editorial cartoons appear most frequently through the collection. Burris was featured contributor to the New York World and the New York Journal and Journal-American . Other regular and syndicated editorial cartoonists represented in the collection are Ed Paschke Sr., Gale, and Clifford Berryman.

The cartoons are arranged in chronological order.