Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [9]
“Clinton Commerce”: A woodcut appearing in the November 9, 1934 issue of the Clintonian. (Will Eisner Collection, the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum)
Even as a high school student, Eisner was extremely curious, with a capability of seeing, grasping, and retaining large volumes of information. He aspired to be a syndicated cartoonist—“[it] represented a way out of the ghetto,” he’d explain later, adding that this was his “primary motivation”—but after working on the drama projects, including the variety show, which was written by fellow student Adolph “Singin’ in the Rain” Green, Eisner seriously contemplated following in his father’s footsteps and working as a stage designer. As Eisner would recall, George Dunkel, a fellow student and the son of the designer of the Metropolitan Opera’s scenery, mentioned that he could find them work with his father on road productions—a proposal that Eisner found enticing. Predictably, Fannie Eisner opposed the job, which would have taken her son away from home for extended periods and exposed him to all the wrong types of people.
“She had an aunt or a sister who was a showgirl,” Eisner remarked, “and this would lead to all kinds of terrible things for her boy. And, not only that, but I had to stay around and make some money. So that fell apart.”
“My mother stepped in and put a stop to it,” he said on another occasion, “because, she said, ‘that kind of life, actors were nothing but bums and the women were trash, and if you get involved in that, you’re going to be ruined.’ She would hope I’d get a nice, honest job.”
This setback was nothing in comparison with the clash that Eisner had with his mother when, while still a high school student, he attended classes at the prestigious Art Students League of New York—an institution that gave starts to such artists as Georgia O’Keeffe, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jackson Pollock. The school boasted a supremely gifted staff, and Eisner studied under George Bridgman and Robert Brackman, two of the finest teaching artists of their day.
Fannie Eisner wasn’t impressed by the artists or the school’s credentials. Instead, she was mortified when her son showed her his paintings of live models.
“She was extremely shocked when I went to art school and came home with a painting of a nude woman,” Eisner told interviewer Jon B. Cooke in 2002. “She couldn’t understand how they would allow 16-year-old boys to ‘watch naked women,’ which is how she said it. And Father, he tried patiently to explain to her that this was the way art schools worked.”
Ironically, as Eisner told biographer Bob Andelman, the nude studies marked the first time he felt like a professional. He had an adolescent’s interest in sexuality and nudity—he lost his virginity to one of the school’s young models in a brief after-school encounter—but he was more interested in how the studies affected his future as an artist.
Eisner’s growth as an artist accelerated under Bridgman and Brackman’s tutelage. Bridgman had an artiste’s ego and temperament, but his lessons in anatomy impressed Eisner to such an extent that he eventually incorporated many of them into his own textbook Expressive Anatomy. Eisner was also taken by the fact that both these men were working artists, more than willing to set aside their more highbrow tendencies if a decent commission was involved. Art and commerce were more compatible than Eisner had believed.
There were other classes as well, federally funded by Roosevelt’s Depression-era Works Progress Administration programs, all free to students. Eisner took as many as he could, absorbing every tidbit of information as if his life depended upon it. He knew, even at that point, that it did.
Sam Eisner’s cousin Lou Stillman owned one of the city’s best training facilities for boxers, and through Stillman, Bill Eisner met two of the premier comics artists of the day. Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, hung out at the gym,