by James Taylor
James Montgomery Flagg died on 27th May 1960 in New York City, three weeks before his 83rd birthday. Flagg the man might be forgotten, but his art through posters lives on in the minds of millions.
It is notable that there are only two letters within the PRC record files – this highlights how difficult it was to promote Britain’s interests in the USA.
The Manchester Ship Co., 16, Beaver Street, New York City, 17th December 1915
‘Your posters have been used to considerable advantage, and find they are most useful where Red Cross work is being done.’
Mr W.S. Waudby, 616, Lamont Street, N.W. Washington. D.C.
‘Your posters are wonderfully fine productions, and certainly must have been productive of results, for everyone that has seen them expresses the opinion that they must certainly warm up the blood of even the most sluggish observer.’
American adaptation of Leete’s cartoon slogan (LoC)
German poster by Julius Engelhard Ussy (IWM)
CHAPTER 6
THE LEGACY OF LEETE AND FLAGG
POSTER ICONS FROM THE WORLD WARS TO THE PRESENT DAY
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT the posters of Leete and Flagg have now become design classics, reaching iconic status – but when did this actually happen?
An American legacy
Flagg’s I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY poster was reissued during World War II, and was adapted for charitable causes, lobbying groups and political parties in the following decades. Variants of Flagg’s recruitment poster have appeared on several covers of the American humorous magazine MAD, notably the edition of July 1959. It has been used as an anti-war poster during the Vietnam War (1955–1975), featuring a skeleton wearing Uncle Sam’s top hat and beckoning with his left arm. Various versions are known carrying Flagg’s original slogan and also the words ‘I Want Out’. The original poster was also reintroduced for the first Gulf War, 1990–1991.
An x-rated interpretation of Flagg’s image, 1970 (Priv.)
The cartoons of Leete and Flagg, as well as earlier commercial designs from Britain, are likely to have influenced the advertisements promoting the soda drink called Moxie in the USA. Originally created in 1876 by Dr Augustin Thompson of Union, Maine, it was marketed as a patent medicine in Lowell, Massachusetts, under the product name ‘Moxie Nerve Food’. From 1928 until 1953, Moxie was bottled in an area of Boston, Massachusetts and some adverts from the early years depicted a man with outstretched arm and pointing finger. This format can still be found on some bottles and tins today.
The design has even been adapted into posters promoting pornographic films. One from 1970 featured the words ‘I Want You! To Enlist In The Army Of Love’. The poster (see image, left) promised ‘An exceptional film for adults only – Starring John Holmes’ and called for ‘All Men Between the Ages of 18–75’. It depicted a glamorous blonde woman wearing a skimpy ‘Stars and Stripes’ bikini, bow tie and top hat, pointing with her right hand.
Another version dating from 2002 portrayed the pin-up Lauren Anderson, who modelled nude in an American magazine to raise money for stray animal shelters. In I WANT YOU TO GO VEGETARIAN the viewer of the poster is told ‘Recruiting Now At GoVeg.com’. Anderson was endorsing the organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
Flagg’s original poster design still resonates powerfully in the USA and has been used both officially and unofficially in recent decades. It has appeared at auction and its value appears to be tied, in part, to patriotism. Deborah Brewster of London’s Financial Times reported on 16th August 2003 that ‘The war with Iraq dampened sales at most US antique auctions and dealers this year, but there has been one bright spot: the prices paid for vintage war and propaganda posters have rocketed. Americans have been snapping them up in recent months in an apparent burst of patriotism following the war. However, dealers and auctioneers warn that the prices being paid may be excessive and are unlikely to be maintained.’
And that ‘New York’s Swann Galleries last week included 106 war posters in their big poster auction, selling 89 of them – an unusually high sale level – with several records set. Nicholas Lowry, the president of Swann, said: “The results are breathtaking. The sale was one-third war posters. The war posters were hot, the rest were not.”’ The iconic I WANT YOU 1917 poster by James Montgomery Flagg, showing Uncle Sam pointing, sold for $12,650 – three times the price it was selling for a few years ago, and three times its estimate.
Lowry continued: ‘After September 11 there was an upsurge in all things patriotic. Poster stores started putting vintage posters with flags in their window, and they sold very well.’ However, he warned that the prices may not be maintained. The Swann Galleries auction record set in 2003 has only recently been broken with one poster selling on 6th September 2012 for $13,200.
Six years earlier, Flagg’s oil painting ‘Uncle Sam assisting Chinese refugees’, dated 1942, (which was also produced in poster form), sold at Illustration House, New York, on 20th May 2006 for $70,000, against a pre-sale estimate of $35,000–$50,000.
An anti-Vietnam variant of Flagg’s design (Priv.)
A design etched on our collective memory
In terms of the popularity of Leete’s BRITONS – WANTS YOU poster, it is known that some copies were sent abroad to Australia and Canada, and it was seen by some in Britain, especially in London. However, the number of people claiming to have seen it during World War I remains incredibly small in comparison to the poster’s remarkable modern-day familiarity. The poster itself was only acquired by the Imperial War Museum in the 1950s.
In 1915, some British PRC posters were sent over to Berlin for an exhibition, although there is no evidence of Leete’s designs being included. According to Martin Hardie and Arthur K. Sabin’s War Posters Issued by Belligerent and Neutral Nations 1914–1919 (A & C Black Ltd., 1920), the Germans believed those exhibited to be ‘poor and inartistic designs’, although their criticism was in part fuelled by nationalism.
Italian poster by Luciano Mauzan (LoC)
In terms of the many adaptations and variants of Leete’s Kitchener cartoon that were created abroad, it is almost certain that they were primarily derived not from the BRITONS – WANTS YOU poster, but rather from the London Opinion cover design, which featured the words ‘Your Country Needs YOU’. This design was also reproduced on postcards, fine art paper and within newspapers. There were adaptations of the design printed in Australia, Canada, India and South Africa. Towards the end of the war (though mainly after it), there were also variants printed in Austria, Brazil, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Turkey and, of course, the USA.
Notable among the posters produced overseas were Luciano Mauzan’s PERFORM YOUR DUTY! SUBSCRIBE TO THE CREDITO ITALIANO BOND ISSUE (1917) (which was produced as a postcard; see image, left), Julius Ussy Engelhard’s YOU SHOULD JOIN THE REICHSWEHR TOO, SO REPORT TO THE NEAREST RECRUITMENT OFFICE (1919) and Dmitri Moor’s YOU – ARE YOU A VOLUNTEER YET? (1920) (see image on page 149). Further variants are associated with the Basque Nationalist Party in Spain and the Spanish Civil War, notably in 1936 when posters appeared in Barcelona featuring a finger-pointing woman calling women to arms. Additional adaptations can be found featuring Winston Churchill in place of Kitchener during World War II.
Many writers on posters have misdirected the public by overstating the popularity and effectiveness of the ‘BRITONS – Wants YOU’ poster during World War I. In The Great War – The Standard History of the All Europe Conflict, published in parts during and after the war and edited by H.H. Wilson and J.A. Hammerton, there is a chapter dedicated to ‘The Influence of the War on Art’ (Volume 12, published in 1919) by Frank Rutter, the art critic and curator of Leeds City Art Gallery. Writing after the war had ended, Rutter made one of the very few specific references to the London Opinion poster featuring Leete’s design, although he did not use the proper title but rather described it as ‘Kitchener Wants You!’ Mistakenly, he associated the poster with the PRC but he noted
that ‘it cannot be maintained that many of these posters had any serious pretensions to be considered as examples of fine arts, but they were undoubtedly striking and efficient. Alfred Leete’s “Kitchener Wants You!” was a poster not easily forgotten… and may be cited as a poster both efficient and artistic.’
Following Rutter’s lead, Martin Hardie and Arthur K. Sabin’s War Posters… also noted that ‘Hardly one of the early [British] posters had the slightest claim to recognition as a product of fine art; most of them were examples of what any art school would teach should be avoided in crude design and atrocious lettering. Among the best and most efficient, however, may be mentioned Alfred Leete’s – KITCHENER.’
On far more occasions the illustration selected by writers was not the poster produced by London Opinion, or the David Allen and Sons variant, but rather Leete’s artwork cover for London Opinion. In Philip Magnus’ Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (first published by John Murray in 1958 and again a decade later by Penguin), his illustration number 17, entitled ‘Recruiting Poster, 1914, designed by Alfred Leete (Imperial War Museum)’, is not a poster but rather the artwork for the London Opinion cover.
In Posters of The First World War, selected and reviewed by Maurice Rickards (Evelyn, Adams & Mackay, 1968), the image on the title page was again Leete’s London Opinion magazine cover design rather than a poster. He wrote: ‘It must be said that the British poster scene was not wholly unredeemed. Alfred Leete (whose other claim to immortality was a trade-mark figure for a beer firm) came up with a novelty – Lord Kitchener himself. Your Country Needs YOU is by no means a major work [he is clearly referring to the cover for London Opinion], but its posterly simplicity has impact far in excess of any of its contemporaries. His lordship’s accusing finger has haunted Britons since they saw it. It is the archetype of all wartime father figures, crib-sources for a host of mimics. Like the man himself – brooding, compulsive, and final – it has entered into the mythology of the nation; it has become a trade-mark figure for World War I. In a multitude of contexts, sacred and profane, it has been revived in parody. In the wave of mock-nostalgia that swept the last of the nineteen-sixties, the image was again revived – this time as a pop-art decoration piece. Kitchener, killed at sea in the summer of 1916, would have been greatly mystified.’
Maurice Rickards was a man of some repute. He was a publications designer, editorial consultant, writer and photographer, perhaps best known for his creative contributions to international fundraising campaigns for refugees. He was responsible for devising the titles for Christian Aid for Inter-Church Aid and the Refugee Service of the British Council of Churches. A conscientious objector during World War II, he served in a Methodist Mission in South London, and also worked for the London Missionary Society and the World’s YMCA. He was a Member of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers and a Fellow of the Institute of Incorporated Photographers. It is the creative words from Rickards himself, and many other writers like him, that have helped to propagate the myth that the dominant recruitment poster of the war was YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU.
The poster historian Mark Bryant, writing in ‘Poster Boy: Alfred Leete’ for History Today (Volume 59: Issue 7, 2009), noted that ‘130 official designs had been published before conscription was introduced in May 1916; the most effective of these was Leete’s Kitchener image’. This claim follows those of Rutter, Hardie, Sabin and Rickards.
Stephen J. Eskilson has also contributed to the modern-day confusion through a claim made in his Graphic Design: A New History, which has been described by the publisher’s marketing department as a ‘wide-ranging, seminal text [that] offers an accessible account of the history of graphic design from the nineteenth century to the present day’. In it, he noted that ‘Among the most influential types of poster designed to bolster British recruitment were those that used a direct appeal, bordering on command, from a respected military leader. The most memorable of this group was a 1914 poster by Alfred Leete depicting Lord Kitchener, a national icon and the secretary of state for war.’
Whether memorable now, or then, is a legitimate question. Leete’s Lord Kitchener cartoon was noticed and adapted but there is no conclusive evidence to support the claim that Leete’s poster featuring Lord Kitchener issued by London Opinion was the most memorable during World War I.
Modern-day illustrations and commemorative items also contribute to the widespread confusion. For example Frank Bellamy, who worked extensively for Look and Learn magazine, produced an illustration captioned ‘Your Country Needs YOU’ for the magazine in 1971. It prominently featured Alfred Leete’s artwork for London Opinion as if it was an actual recruitment poster. Perhaps Bellamy’s interest in Alfred Leete can be traced to the fact that both men, who worked as commercial artists, were born in Northamptonshire.
In 1999, Royal Doulton produced a limited edition character jug to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lord Kitchener (24th June 1850). The BRITONS – WANTS YOU poster incorporated into the handle mixes the slogan ‘Your Country Needs YOU’ with the heading ‘BRITONS’, which was part of the authentic poster title issued by London Opinion. So this jug design also helps to propagate the myth of a fictitious recruitment poster.
German poster printed in 1919 (IWM)
Richard Slocombe of the Imperial War Museum has outlined the exhibition history of Leete’s Kitchener cartoon (for London Opinion): ‘The artwork didn’t have much of an exhibition history prior to 1972, the year of Joseph Darracott’s “War Posters” exhibition, which was the year after the poster collection came to the IWM Art department. It was only really from then onwards that the value of the collection began to be realised (times do change). From 1982 onwards the artwork mainly formed part of our permanent First World War galleries and didn’t move much from there until we had a display facsimile made in 2007. The “BRITONS” poster was the work that tended to be exhibited instead, for example in “The Power Of The Poster”, V&A, 1998. We did not use the artwork in our “Weapons of Mass Communication” exhibition in 2007–2008, but it did feature in the museum’s “In Memoriam” show in 2008.’
Bellamy’s Look and Learn illustration (Look and Learn)
The British Cartoon Archive’s Nicholas Hiley has suggested it is striking that there are no significant references to the Leete artwork dating from before his donation of it to the IWM in 1917. When images of the Leete KITCHENER poster appear in the 1920s/30s/40s, it is almost always the IWM artwork for London Opinion that is shown. For example, it appeared on the cover of Picture Post on 1st June 1940. In 1949, it also appeared in the Movietone newsreel. The index card flagged up the famous KITCHENER poster, but if you follow the links and register, you find that the picture they show is not the poster, but the Leete artwork from the IWM.79
Hiley is convinced that the universal recognition of the Leete design is down to the IWM’s distribution of this image, first as the artwork for London Opinion and later as the poster. This was grafted on to memories of the actual PRC KITCHENER poster, until even the veterans couldn’t tell the difference.80
First published in 1949, the opening scenes of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four described posters of Big Brother: ‘At one end of it [the hallway] a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features… On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.’
Although various Internet commentators have suggested that Orwell’s reference derives from the BRITONS – WANTS YOU poster, it is more likely that Orwell, who worked for the Ministry of Information during World War II, and as a youth penned poems in honour of Kitchener, was referencing the popular PRC LORD KITCHENER poster that was produced in very large nu
mbers and in a large format. Orwell made no reference to an outstretched arm and pointing finger in his work of fiction.
The confusion surrounding Leete’s artwork, recruitment poster(s) and slogans can be followed across five decades in The Times newspaper, commencing with his obituary notice on Monday 19th June 1933: ‘Leete died on Saturday at the age of 50. During the War he drew the famous Kitchener cartoon “Your King and Country Need You”, for the recruiting campaign, and in recent years he was much in request for poster advertising.’ This erroneous account also later found its way to Australia. The Queenslander newspaper obituary of Thursday 8th February 1934 reported Leete as the ‘artist who drew the famous Kitchener recruiting poster, “YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU”.’
Clearly The Times journalist was in a hurry to create a memorable obituary and muddled Leete’s wartime cartoon with the official ‘Call to Arms’ proclamation from the king. On the same day, this copy was telegraphed across to the New York Times, which reported: ‘Alfred Chew Leete, English Artist, Dead – Drew the famous Kitchener Cartoon at beginning of World War’. It continued: ‘Leete, one of the best known of the British black and white artists died today… During the War he drew the famous Kitchener cartoon “Your King and Country Needs You”, for the recruiting campaign.’
On 22nd November 1949, in a feature on ‘Army Recruiting Technique – Posters of Peace and War’, The Times reported: ‘The Exhibition of Army recruiting posters that have opened yesterday at Charing Cross Underground station provides an illuminating survey of the varied motives to which this kind of advertising has addressed itself from time to time. In peacetime it has, naturally enough, chiefly emphasized the material advantages and amenities attached to soldiering, and most of the 40-odd placards on show are designed to do so though they also include the most famous of all recruiting posters, Alfred Leete’s vigorous black and white drawing of Kitchener’s stabbing forefinger as he says, “Your Country Needs YOU”.’ The writer is clearly describing the artwork for London Opinion, lent for the exhibition by the Imperial War Museum. At this time, the IWM had not yet acquired its BRITONS – WANTS YOU poster.