1945.07.30 “All in the Point of View"
by Ralph Lee (1906-1947)
14.7 x 23.3 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
Ralph Lee was an editorial cartoonist for the Portland Oregonian. He died suddenly, at 41, in January 1947. His cousin, Art Bimrose, was the editorial cartoonist for the Oregonian for more than three decades. In 1937, the Oregonian hired him part-time to work on printing plates. Following Lee’s death, Bimrose was hired as the Sunday editorial cartoonist.
On July 28, 1945, a U.S. Army B-25 bomber, flying in thick fog, crashed into the Empire State Building between the 78th and 80th floors, creating a large hole, fires, deaths, and damage across a half-block of Midtown Manhattan. While the building did not collapse, the dramatic accident dominated the front pages of New York papers on July 29 and 30.
That collision was one of the most widely reported urban disasters in US media during the late war period, so the idea that “New York is almost in ruins” would have had an ironic contrast with real wartime ruins overseas, the rubble in Europe and Pacific cities publicly reported in news dispatches and photographs.
