Description
Collector’s Note – Why This Issue Matters
The June 3, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post features Coby Whitmore’s illustrated cover “Fishing Season,” a polished domestic comedy centered on a husband’s enthusiasm for angling. Seated in a bright red chair, the man examines a fishing lure while balancing an open tackle box on his lap and keeping a rod close at hand. His wife stands behind him with her chin resting on one hand, observing his preparations with an expression that combines patience, skepticism, and resignation. The contrast between his animated pleasure and her restrained response creates the central humor without requiring a printed caption. Fishing equipment fills the immediate foreground, while the couple’s formal clothing makes the husband’s intense preoccupation with his hobby appear even more conspicuous. Whitmore transforms a familiar disagreement over leisure time into a compact narrative about marriage, personal interests, and competing expectations. The resulting image is graceful and visually attractive, but its real effectiveness comes from the emotional difference between the two figures.
The magazine’s “This Week’s Cover” note extends this domestic joke by describing the young husband as more fascinated by artificial fishing hair than by his attractive spouse. It also explains that Whitmore himself was not a devoted fisherman and recounts his sole memorable encounter with a large and uncooperative pike. According to the editorial anecdote, the fish made threatening movements after being pulled into the boat, forcing Whitmore to subdue it with his shoe. The experience apparently encouraged him to redirect his recreational energy toward fast automobiles rather than further fishing trips. The note mentions that Whitmore and his wife owned an imported two-seat Jaguar capable of considerable speed, although they enjoyed knowing its potential more than testing its upper limit. It concludes by placing the couple at the Indianapolis races as spectators rather than participants. These details connect the fictional husband’s obsession with the artist’s own interests while reinforcing the magazine’s playful presentation of hobbies, marriage, and masculine enthusiasm.
The interior contents make the edition considerably more important than its humorous cover alone might suggest. Its fiction includes stories about marriage, labor, sailing, transportation, danger, and personal conflict, together with continuing installments of two serialized narratives. The eight nonfiction articles address American oil supplies, village policing, European travel, baseball manager Leo Durocher, Senator Robert A. Taft, dangerous occupations, wildlife management, and postwar Berlin. Arthur W. Baum’s “Now We Have Plenty of Oil” reflects contemporary confidence and anxiety surrounding energy resources during an era of expanding automobile ownership and industrial production. Stanley Woodward’s “That Guy Durocher!” examines one of professional baseball’s most controversial and recognizable managers, while Beverly Smith considers Taft’s political prospects and challenges. Ernest Leiser’s “Germany’s Wide-Open City” brings readers into the divided and unsettled environment of postwar Berlin only a few years after the Allied occupation began. Together, the cover and contents make this edition a valuable part of the Saturday Evening Post historical archive and the broader record of magazines published in 1950.
About the Publication
The Saturday Evening Post is an American general-interest magazine historically associated with fiction, journalism, humor, commentary, advertising, and narrative illustration. The title emerged during the nineteenth century and later entered its defining mass-circulation period after Cyrus H. K. Curtis acquired the publication in 1897. Under editors including George Horace Lorimer and Ben Hibbs, it developed a broad editorial format intended to reach readers throughout the United States. Weekly issues commonly combined complete short stories, serialized novels, political profiles, social reporting, travel writing, sports journalism, editorials, poetry, cartoons, and regular departments. Fiction was one of the magazine’s principal attractions because both established and developing writers could reach a large national readership through its pages. The Post also became one of the most influential showcases for American commercial illustration. Cover artists included Norman Rockwell, J. C. Leyendecker, John Falter, Coby Whitmore, George Hughes, Stevan Dohanos, and Constantin Alajálov. Their work frequently transformed ordinary activities into complete visual narratives involving families, workplaces, transportation, recreation, holidays, and public life. Whitmore was particularly recognized for elegant figures, sophisticated clothing, romantic situations, and subtle emotional relationships between men and women. By 1950, the publication functioned simultaneously as a literary platform, a source of national reporting, an advertising medium, and a visual interpreter of American culture. Surviving editions now provide primary-source evidence of illustration, popular fiction, political attitudes, consumer behavior, gender expectations, and the changing appearance of twentieth-century magazine publishing.
Key Highlights Inside
- “Fishing Season” by Coby Whitmore depicts a husband absorbed in his fishing gear while his wife watches with restrained disappointment. The accompanying cover note turns the scene into a joke about the so-called fishing widow whose spouse temporarily values his hobby above domestic companionship. It also records Whitmore’s own unsuccessful fishing experience and his greater personal enthusiasm for high-performance automobiles.
- The fiction section includes “The Man Who Married Money” by John Reese, “Ouch for Me!” by Cyril Hume, and “Botts Bogs Down” by William Hazlett Upson. Jacland Marmur contributes “Sailor’s Blood,” while Michael Foster supplies “The Highwayman.” Their titles and authors are documented, but their characters, settings, and conclusions should not be reconstructed without examining the complete stories.
- Arthur W. Baum’s “Now We Have Plenty of Oil” considers American petroleum supply at a time of rapid industrial expansion, suburban development, and increasing automobile use. Francis J. Faherty’s “I’m a Village Cop and Like It,” as told to Malcolm G. Rollins, presents law enforcement through the experience of a local police officer. Together, the articles contrast a large national resource question with the daily responsibilities of public service in a smaller community.
- Ernest O. Hauser contributes “Want to See Europe? Here’s How,” a travel feature appearing during the early postwar revival of American tourism abroad. Stanley Woodward’s “That Guy Durocher!” focuses on Leo Durocher, the outspoken baseball manager whose career attracted both admiration and controversy. The two articles demonstrate the Post’s ability to place practical international travel advice beside personality-driven professional sports reporting.
- Beverly Smith’s “Can Senator Taft Win His Biggest Fight?” examines an important political challenge involving Ohio senator Robert A. Taft. Robert M. Yoder’s “They Gambled Their Lives” presents a separate narrative involving individuals who accepted serious personal danger. The precise political contest and the circumstances of the reported gamble should be taken from the original articles rather than inferred beyond their titles.
- Richard Thruelsen’s “Nature’s Million-Dollar Mistake” introduces a subject involving wildlife, agriculture, environmental management, or an unexpectedly costly natural development. Ernest Leiser’s “Germany’s Wide-Open City” examines a German urban environment during the unsettled years following World War II. The latter feature is particularly relevant to the history of postwar occupation and the growing political division between Western and Soviet-controlled Europe.
- Mary Hastings Bradley’s “Murder in the Family” reaches the third of seven installments in this issue. Garnett Weston’s “Legacy of Fear” appears in the fifth of eight parts, placing both serials near different points in their continuing narratives. Readers would have needed earlier and later editions to experience the full development and conclusion of each story.
- Regular departments include Letters, Editorials, Keeping Posted, Post Scripts, Verse, and This Week’s Cover. These recurring sections surrounded the major fiction and articles with reader correspondence, institutional commentary, shorter observations, poetry, and information about the cover artist. Their consistent placement helped provide a familiar weekly structure even as the principal stories and public subjects changed.
Condition & Rarity
The supplied description does not assign this June 3, 1950 issue a standardized numerical or letter grade. It states that the magazine pictured in the original listing is the exact example represented rather than a stock image of another issue. The associated photographs should therefore serve as the primary evidence for evaluating the cover, corners, page edges, spine, binding, and visible surface condition. No written inventory has been supplied concerning creases, rubbing, fading, discoloration, edge wear, corner loss, or binding stress. The presence or absence of a subscriber mailing label is also not identified in the description and should remain unconfirmed. No definite information is provided regarding tears, missing pages, clipping, handwriting, staining, moisture exposure, detached sections, tape repairs, or restoration. These characteristics should not be assumed merely because the magazine dates from 1950. Completeness is especially important because the edition contains five short stories, eight nonfiction articles, two serial installments, and several recurring departments. Preservation of the cover is also significant because the figures’ expressions, fishing equipment, vivid chair, and surrounding domestic details collectively create Whitmore’s narrative. A plastic protective covering is reported to accompany the magazine and may help reduce contact with dust and unnecessary handling. That covering is a later storage accessory rather than an original component of the June 1950 publication. Historical and collector interest should be based on the “Fishing Season” cover, documented editorial contents, completeness, and observable physical condition rather than on an unsupported assertion of exceptional rarity.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
Additional examples of American narrative illustration can be explored through the Saturday Evening Post magazine archive. Comparing Coby Whitmore covers across different years can reveal how he portrayed romance, marriage, fashion, leisure, family life, and changing relationships between men and women. His elegant figures and psychologically expressive poses can also be studied beside the work of John Falter, George Hughes, Norman Rockwell, and other prominent Post illustrators. The June 3 cover is particularly useful for examining how a complete domestic story could be communicated through gesture, facial expression, clothing, and a few carefully selected objects. Fishing-themed covers from other dates may show how different artists approached outdoor recreation, anticipation, rivalry, frustration, and family reactions. Interior fiction offers another route for tracing authors, recurring characters, serial narratives, and popular story genres across consecutive weekly issues. Political researchers can compare the Taft article with other contemporary coverage of Congress, presidential politics, and the Republican Party. Sports historians may place the Leo Durocher profile beside additional Post reporting on baseball managers, players, controversies, and the changing professional game. The wider 1950 magazine archive provides complementary perspectives from news, travel, family, entertainment, television, and business publications. Studying these titles together helps reveal how energy, policing, European recovery, politics, wildlife, sports, and domestic leisure were interpreted for different national audiences. The June 3 Post contributes an especially balanced record by combining Whitmore’s light marital comedy with substantial reporting on resources, public life, international travel, baseball, politics, danger, nature, and postwar Germany.