1941.02.25 “Up or Down?”
by Marshall Alston (MA) Dunning (1894-1949)
13 x 16 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
M. A. (Marshall Alston) Dunning enlisted in 1918, serving first with the 158th Depot, then with the Medical Department at Debarkation Hospital no. 52 at Richmond College (now University of Richmond) in Richmond, Virginia. Dunning’s cartoons began appearing in the hospital newspaper Head’s Up January 4, 1919 and ran until the paper ended on April 7, 1919.
After being honorably discharged from the army in 1919, Dunning returned to Cleveland, graduating from the Cleveland School of Art (now Cleveland Institute of Art) in 1921. Over the next 28 years, his career spanned the continent, as he worked for the Akron Times and Cleveland Press in Ohio, and the Miami News and Jacksonville Journal in Florida. Dunning travelled west to California, where he worked for the San Diego Tribune, as well as for the Walt Disney Company and Columbia Pictures as an animator. As an animator, Dunning contributed to movie shorts for Walt Disney Company, including The Three Little Pigs (1933) and the Krazy Kat shorts at Columbia Pictures.
In 1938, Dunning joined the Austin American-Statesman staff, focusing on international political issues as well as local Texas issues for his editorial cartoons. He returned to Florida in 1943, and died of a heart attack in Jacksonville in June 1949.
Bulgaria is the next anticipated move, but hasn’t yet been invaded.
Hitler's desire to secure his southern flank before "Operation Barbarossa" made the invasion of Greece nearly certain by mid-February. News reports intensify that Bulgaria is on the verge of yielding to German demands. The situation is still unresolved, perfect for “Up or Down?” ambiguity.
February 28 is essentially the last full day before the decision becomes reality: on March 1 Bulgaria joins the Axis and becomes the launching point for additional invasions.
The actors are in position, and the audience (the “Worried World”) is watching.
