Rowland Wilson (1930-2005) was a frequent contributor to
The New Yorker, Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post and
Esquire, all four of the magazines that both paid the best and had the best cartoon features. He had a wry and often understated sense of humor that translated well into a variety of features. A trademark of his was showing people amusingly under reacting to extreme situations. He participated in some of the most memorable advertising campaigns of all time. It’s a little-known fact that he was long a member of the Disney team and had a hand in Disney’s second golden age of animation (roughly from
The Little Mermaid to
Hercules).
This piece is for a 1984 satirical article for TV Guide entitled “Let’s Hear it for Brooke Shields’ Doctor’s Dog”. I actually tried to figure out the date from the internal references, Tartikoff, (Grant) Tinker, (Fernando) Valenzuela etc. before spotting the 1984 copyright notice on the ad on the back. It’s about a future where programming decisions are made by the public in a stadium. Many thanks to Rowland’s widow, Suzanne Wilson, for letting me have this so reasonably and for scanning the pages.
