1950.04.22 “Unhappy Birthday”
by Gerald Aloysius (Jerry) Doyle, Jr. (1898-1986)
15 x 18 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
https://www.libraries.psu.edu/findingaids/9746.htm
Jerry Doyle spent most of his career at The Philadelphia Record, The Philadelphia Daily News (1951) and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He retired in 1973. Doyle's support for the New Deal meant that his cartoons generally expressed support for President Roosevelt, whom he depicted as tall, imposing, powerful, and larger-than-life. Doyle’s early and continual criticism towards Hitler and Mussolini made him the only American cartoonist to be put on the Nazi hit list. He wrote the book “According to Doyle - A Cartoon History of World War II” (1943). His son, who carried his name, was also a part-time cartoonist (1926-2009).
“Unhappy Birthday” is a critique of the Soviet Union and its ideology, using Lenin’s 80th birthday anniversary as the occasion.
The Cold War is intensifying. The USSR has detonated its first atomic bomb. China has turned Communist under Mao. Eastern Europe is under tight Soviet control, and the West is turning increasingly hostile toward Communist expansion, as seen in NATO’s formation and the soon-to-come Korean War.
The ghost of Lenin is depicted clutching his head in horror, against a spatter of blood on the wall, as the original ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution have been betrayed or corrupted… as seen by Western commentary.
Karl Marx’s face appears on a torn book, a rejection or perversion of Marxist theory. A grinning Stalin portrait lies in the trash, a criticism of the current regime. The safe marked with the hammer and sickle is broken and empty—once the “vault” of revolutionary ideals, now bankrupt… deserted and housing a skull, symbolizing death or rot at the ideological core. The dove skewered with scissors implies the death of peace, possibly referring to Soviet aggression in Berlin and the continued repression in Eastern Europe. A picture of Chairman Mao hangs riddled with knives, another betrayal of the original ideology for personal purpose and gain.
