Look
Look Magazine debuted in 1937 and by 1948 it sold 2.9 million copies per issue. Circulation reached 3.7 million in 1954, and peaked at 7.75 million in 1969. Of the leading general-interest, large-format magazines, Look had a circulation second only to Life and ahead of The Saturday Evening Post, which closed in 1969, and Collier’s, which folded in 1956.
“Hoff—He Cartoons the Home Folks”
(Look, 25 Jan. 1944, p. 51)
Born in New York’s Bronx, Syd Hoff draws the people he knows best with warm, homespun wit
When Syd Hoff was four years old, he used to sprawl on the sidewalk outside this father’s small general store in the Bronx and draw caricatures of the Kaiser—so the other kids could spit on them. At five, he created cartoons for free on backs of papa’s candy boxes; at seven was both class and school artist of a Bronx public school.
Hoff gave up book learning when he was fifteen to work his way through the National Academy of Design. His dream then was to be another Picasso. But, after a brief fling at art in a windowless garret studio—supporting himself by working nights as a soda jerker—his appetite and sense of humor prevailed. Along with his oils, he began to draw cartoons of Bronx characters. When he sold his third to The New Yorker, he gave up oils permanently.
Now married and the father of two girls, 31-year-old Hoff lives in Belle Harbor, Long Island. But his heart still belongs to the Bronx and its home folks. For 13 years, he has been cartooning it—in drawings for leading magazines, in a King Features comic strip, and in his own comic books.