the fabulous victor hicks and his whimsical postcards
The Artist
Victor Hicks (1893-1946) is one of those artists that are virtually unknown in the postcard world. Although he doesn’t seem to have designed too many postcards, the ones I have been able to find are splendid: very whimsical, witty, and original.
According to Mark Bryant’s Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists, Victor Hicks was a “caricaturist, strip and joke cartoonist, illustrator and commercial artist” who “became interested in drawing when suffering from mumps as a child”, presumably because he had to stay in bed for such a long time that there wasn’t anything better to do.
His main design output seem to have been theatre programmes and posters (for instance for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1925) as well as book covers (such as Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu). He also wrote and illustrated a few rather charming books, among them Modern Play-Craft (1937), a “book of things to make and how to make them”, containing among other things various funny animal models to be cut out and put together, and another, equally inventive model book for children called the Tableaux Book (1944). He also created a couple of short animated films. One of them, “A Genie and a Genius” (1919), featured Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp character having various adventures, which eventually, thanks to a genie who grants him every wish, even take him to Mars.
Theatre
With music by the German Romantic composer Robert Schumann, The Golden Toy ran for over three months at the London Coliseum in 1934. It was adapted from a play by the German playwright Carl Zuckmayer.
Twenty to One is another enormously successful comedy staged at the Coliseum in London. It was first performed in 1935. The back of this card claims that it is “the funniest musical sporting farce” and cites the News of the World, according to which it provides “rollicking hours with Lupino Lane”.
Another card promoting the performance of Telling the Tale at the Ambassadors Theatre in London.
The comedy Telling the Tale opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 1918 and appears to have been a great success running to 90 performances, thanks to the French actress Edmee Dormeuil, who played the lead, and the music, which included the Cole Porter song “Altogether Too Fond of You”. According to The Tatler, Telling the Tale was adapted from the French comedie-bouffe Le Fils Surnaturel.
An advert for the “Eastern American comic opera” Medorah, produced at the Alhambra Theatre in London in 1920. According to this card, which was published by John Waddington, Medorah was the wittiest and prettiest play in town, promising (or threatening) those who came to see it that they would be “tickled to death”.
Stage and Screen
This one is unsigned, but I’m fairly sure it’s Hicks’ work. It promotes the 1935 comedy film Can You Hear Me, Mother?, starring the comedian Sandy Powell, who is also the one pictured on this card.
Blackbirds was a musical revue with an all-Black cast created by Lew Leslie in 1926. It was followed by a series of similar revues, some of them in Paris and London. The last one took place in 1939. This postcard promotes the 1935 production at the Coliseum Theatre in London.
Advertising and Wartime Humour
Fry’s produced many different advertising posters for their chocolate products. This one must be one of the rarest. I’ve only ever seen this one copy. If it is indeed a genuine advert, because it might actually be a parody. After all, who in their right mind would promote cocoa with the picture of a toppled ink bottle and the caption “Wisdom in a drop of Ink!”?
I’m not sure what to make of this one. It was posted in August 1918 and published in Photochrom’s Celesque Series. The card appears to comment on the low-strength diluted beer that Lloyd George promoted towards the end of the war. In the words of the music hall comedian Ernie Mayne, who wrote a song about it, “it’s a substitute and a pubstitute” and “the worst thing that ever happened in this war.”
The Kaiser Series
Like many other accomplished illustrators during WW1, Hicks designed several postcards making fun of the Germans. This one, published in 1915 in Photochrom’s Red, White and Blue Series (No. 22), has the German Crown Prince proudly display a letter by this father, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, in which he touts his various imagined achievements: “My son, I have successfully accomplished the following: Burning of Louvain and Reims. Violating Belgian neutrality. Successfully deceiving my subjects. Wrecking various hospitals – and convincing all by outrage and cruelty that I am the greatest thing that ever happened and am Master of the Universe! Thine Father William.” Does that remind you of someone?
A football-themed card issued by an unknown publisher, showing a well-booted lad kicking the Kaiser off the Earth. Good riddance!
A Photochrom Novelty card. In anticipation of a German defeat, it has a lever that when pulled makes the Kaiser open his mouth wide in shock and dismay.
Another card in Photochrom’s Red, White and Blue Series (No. 12), posted in 1915, again promising the imminent defeat of the Germans. The writing on the wall is that Germany is “riding for a fall”. The Kaiser is not amused.
The Kaiser is forced to dance with a (presumably Russian) bear who grabs him by the throat. Published in Photochrom’s Red, White and Blue Series (No. 23).
A British sailor preparing to discipline a suddenly very small Kaiser. This one, too, was published in Photochrom’s Red, White and Blue Series (No. 9).