Cartoonist George Price and the levitating men

George Price worked for the New Yorker magazine for 62 years. His first drawings appeared in 1929. He was invited to join the magazine’s staff, but he would only do it if someone else wrote the gags. That information came from the 2006 book, Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker. I don’t know who did those gags, or if a lot of different writers and/or other cartoonists joined in and submitted gags. It must have worked, because Price came up with about 1200 published cartoons over his (and his gag writer(s)) long careers.

I found this series of jokes about a levitating man in 1934 and 1935 issues of The New Yorker. Together they form a continuity, so I have arranged them chronologically.

All drawings are Copyright © The New Yorker

Price had a way with floaters. These two cartoons are not part of the continuity, but have levitation. The 1934 anti-gravity joke was published before the levitating man jokes, and the Indian rope trick gag was done after, in 1936.

Here is a gag picture of Price as his own levitating man. Date unknown.