Manuel Rosenberg

Manuel Rosenberg (January 29, 1897-April 28, 1967) was a noted illustrator, cartoonist, writer, lecturer, teacher, editor, and publisher. From 1917 to 1930, he was the chief artist for the E. W. Scripps Company of newspapers and the art editor of the The Cincinnati Post. In 1928, he was involved in a second career as the founder and publisher of the Advertiser and Markets of America, a well-known monthly publication devoted to the interests in national advertising in the US and Canada.
== Biography ==
=== Early years ===
Manuel Rosenberg, or “Rosie”, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 29, 1897 to Russian Jewish immigrants. Father, Benjamin Rosenberg, (1869-1941) was a cap maker born in Minsk and mother, Celia Jasin Rosenberg, (1873-1958) was born in Kiev. Celia travelled from the Bronx in New York to New Orleans in 1893 to marry Benjamin. New Orleans in the late 19th century was a vibrant Jewish community. The city also had terrible sanitation so when the yellow fever pandemic broke out when Manuel was one year old, the family moved first to Atlanta and then to Cincinnati where Celia’s older brother Joseph Jasin lived.
The Rosenbergs were a working-class family that lived in the Over-the-Rhine immigrant neighbourhood near downtown. Manuel’s two siblings, Simon (1899-1967) and Jessie Rosenberg Tyroler (1901-1987), were both born in Cincinnati. Simon ran “Rosenbergs” the family dry goods store, with mother Celia. Jessie married an optometrist and moved to Columbus. Father Benjamin left the family and headed for the west coast -- Los Angeles and San Francisco. Manuel was the only family member to stay in touch with his father after he left. 
=== Career ===
Rosie was considered one of the foremost experts and authorities on illustration and cartooning -- recognized as one of the greatest newspaper sketch artists of his time. His first cartoon was published in New York City when he was 15. In 1915, he was the creator of a page of cartoons which appeared in the London Herald. He sold newspapers to earn money to attend the Art Academy of Cincinnati where he studied portraiture with Frank Duveneck and landscapes with Lewis Henry Meakin. His talent and artistic ambitions caught the attention of local Cincinnati realty operator Walter S. Coles, who send him to art school. He attended the National Academy of Designing in New York City, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and studied in Paris. At 21, he was considered one of the most skillful and one of the youngest cartoonists in the world.
By 1918, he was working for well-known newspapers in large eastern and western cities; Cartoons Magazine in New York, The Toledo News-Bee, The Day Book, and Chicago Abendpost]. He enlisted in the navy on June 5, 1918 and became the official cartoonist of the United States aviation training department in Great Lakes, Illinois. The Recruit magazine had a circulation of more than 50,000 and contained work by some of the brightest artists and the most brilliant authors of the nation. 
During his thirteen years as chief artist of the E. W. Scripps Company Howard newspapers from 1917 to 1930, Rosenberg carried his drawing board to every corner of the world to cover the major news stories. He interviewed and sketched almost every famous personality of his time, including statesmen, soldiers, chorus girls and even criminals. He had audiences with most of the kings, popes, and dictators of Europe. He knew and sketched every president from William Howard Taft to Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. 
=== Travels abroad ===
Rosie chronicled foreign travel assignments to over 30 countries for the The Cincinnati Post, starting with his 1922 and 1926 trips to Europe. In 1929, he was among the first American newsmen to travel in and report from Russia. His series “Rosie sketches Russia” boosted readership and was highly promoted as the most popular daily series that summer.
=== Personal life ===
Rosenberg met Lydie Joyce Bloch (August 2, 1908 – November 24, 2002) when she was an assistant at his publication Markets of America. She was an astute businesswoman and talented photographer. In 1940, the Jewish Parisian escaped the Nazi invasion by hiding in the trunk of a car with diamonds sewn into her coat. On September 16, 1945 in San Francisco, they married at Temple Emanuel. She was 37 and he was 48. They had no children. They lived in New York City at 1056 Fifth Ave. across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lydie became the editor of Markets of America. Over their 22-year marriage, they traveled extensively in the US and abroad in search of stories for their magazine. 
Manuel Rosenberg died April 38, 1967 at 70 after a long battle with cancer. He was buried in Hawthorne, New York. Lydie remarried in 1970 to their mutual friend James Gordon Strobridge (1894-1985) -- heir to the Strobridge Lithographing Company. In 1973, Lydie donated 300 of Manuel Rosenberg’s sketches and caricatures of leading personalities in public life and the arts as well as travel drawings made from the 1920s to the 1950s to the Rare Library Archives of Columbia University. Lydie died at 94.
=== Celebrity beat ===
Rosenberg collected over 20,000 autographed drawings of notable people. Some famous people took his pen and paper and drew themselves or even their impressions of him. Although he covered thousands of events from political conventions to high-profile court cases like the 1927 George Remus bootlegging trial, Howard Carter in 1924 when he discovered Tomb of Tutankhamun, and Charles Lindbergh after his non-stop flight from New York to Paris – he found theatrical assignment especially interesting. It enabled him to see the shows and to meet the actors behind the scenes. As a popular speaker his favorite topics were: “Intimate Interviews with Famous People.” 
== Books ==
Rosenberg was the author of four books on art and art instructions, used for reference in many art schools and libraries throughout the world. 
* Course in Newspaper Art (1922)
* Practical Art by Manuel Rosenberg - A Complete Illustrated Manual for Art Students, Cartoonists Commercial Artists Fashion Artists & Illustrators (1924)
* Manuel Rosenberg Course in Cartooning and Drawing (1927)
* The Art of Advertising (1930) co-written by E. Walker Hartley and published by Harper and Brothers
Category:1897 births
Category:1967 deaths
Category:Illustrators
Category:Cartoonists
Category:Writers