The Open Road for Boys

The Open Road for Boys, a boys' magazine encouraging the outdoor life, was published from November 1919 to the 1950s. Clayton Holt Ernst was the president and editor-in-chief of the Open Road Publishing Company, located in Boston, Massachusetts. Beginning in 1944, the art director was Jack Murray (1889-1965), who was also the art director of "Outdoors", "Child Life" and "Salt Water Sportsman". [ [http://www.brookmanstamps.com/Netcat/federal/rw14info.htm A Little History on the 14th (1947-48) Duck Stamp Artist] ]

Contributors included Ellis Parker Butler, Jonathan Eldridge, Edward C. Janes, Kenneth Payson Kempton and Charles G. Muller, Alpheus Hyatt Verrill and Kerry Wood. Some authors, such as Albert Capwell Wyckoff, wrote for both "Boys' Life" and "The Open Road for Boys". In addition to adventure fiction, there were many articles and ads about the construction of model airplanes. The appeal of "Open Road for Boys" and the magazine's advertising, specifically an ad for the Red Ryder air rifle, was captured by Jean Shepherd in his short story, "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid." This story was collected in "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash", source of the film classic "A Christmas Story" (1983):

::I remember clearly, itchingly, nervously, maddeningly the first time I laid eyes on it, pictured in a three-color, smeared illustration in a full-page back cover ad in "Open Road For Boys", a publication which at the time had an iron grip on my aesthetic sensibilities, and the dime that I had to scratch up every month to stay with it. It was actually an early "Playboy". It sold dreams, fantasies, incredible adventures, and a way of life. Its center foldouts consisted of gigantic Kodiak bears charging out of the page at the reader, to be gunned down in single hand-to-hand combat by the eleven-year-old Killers armed only with hunting knife and fantastic bravery. Its Christmas issue weighed over seven pounds, its pages crammed with the effluvia of the Good Life of male Juvenalia, until the senses reeled and Avariciousness, the growing desire to own Everything, was almost unbearable. Today there must be millions of ex-subscribers who still can't pass Abercrombie & Fitch without a faint, keening note of desire and the unrequited urge to glom on to all of it. Just to have it, to feel it.

A popular "Open Road" feature was a cartoon contest which showed a drawing of a problem or situation, inviting the magazine's readers to do a follow-up cartoon showing the resolution of the problem. Well known cartoonists, such as Paul Coker, George Crenshaw, Dan Heilman, Eldon Pletcher, Mort Walker, Bill Yates and Bob Zschiesche, ["Bob Zschiesche," "Cartoonist Profiles" 44, December 1979.] saw their first printed cartoons in the "Open Road" competitions, which also had an influence on illustrators and fine artists, as the painter Wayne Thiebaud noted in an interview with Susan Larsen:

::I got very interested in cartooning... mostly just the American comics in the newspapers. For a long time, I remember I cut out strips and kept them around. Then I would copy them and so on and got more and more interested. By the time I was maybe 16, I guess, 15, I started sending in cartoons to magazines. They had these contests in a magazine called "Open Road for Boys". They would say: "Draw a cartoon in which you would say how this problem is solved." So I did that and I remember having a couple of things published, and I was very excited and so on... I think I got a dollar, a dollar prize. [ [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/thieba01.htm Larsen, Susan. "Interview with Wayne Thiebaud," Smithsonian Archives of American Art, May 17, 2001.] ]

Cover artists included Jacob Bates Abbott, George Avison, Clarence Doore, William D. Eaton and Charles Hargens.

In 1927, the magazine began a club for boys called Open Road Pioneers. The club's official pin, in gold and dark blue, displayed the left profile of a Davy Crockett-type adventurer wearing a coonskin cap and carrying a rifle.

References

External links

* [http://www.ellisparkerbutler.info/epb/coverart.asp?p=Open+Road+For+Boys Ellis Parker Butler]
* [http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/rx/tr01/pringle.shtml Larry Pringle interview]
* [http://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2007/07/open-road-for-boys-cartoon-contest_05.html Mike Lynch Cartoons: "Open Road for Boys" Cartoon Contest, March 1939"]
* [http://pulprack.com/arch/2002/11/raoul_fauconnie.html Raoul Whitfield]