FDR and the New Deal Era
Jerry Doyle, an Irish-Catholic and working-class native of Philadelphia, identified with the “little man,” and aligned politically, with the Democratic Party. A progressive, he supported President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and programs to ameliorate the economic dislocation arising from the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the liberal-leaning Philadelphia Record was one of the few Philadelphia dailies rooted firmly in the Roosevelt camp. Its publisher, J. David Stern, gave Doyle wide latitude in his editorial cartoons to promote Roosevelt’s relief and job programs, pro-labor agenda, corporate regulatory policies, and the Social Security Act of 1935. Doyle lionized Roosevelt and vilified the opposing forces arrayed against the New Deal—Republicans, southern Democratic Party conservatives, corporate interests, populist demagogues, and isolationists. He placed Roosevelt in the pantheon of great American presidents who rose to meet the challenge of momentous issues and crises to preserve freedom and democracy.
“The Trend of Civilization . . . is Forever Upward.”
F.D.R. and John Q. Public (circa late 1930s)
Two American Immortals –We Are Back of You, F.D.R.! (1937)
Get Him in the Corral by Oct 1st or Else!
F.D.R. and Congress at Odds Over Wartime Inflation and the High Cost of Living (circa 1942-43).
Jerry Doyle Banner Cartoon, “Carry On- F.D.R.” (1936)
In 1936, Philadelphia hosted the Democratic Party national convention. In honor of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s visit to the city to accept his party’s re-nomination, the Philadelphia Record mounted an oversized Jerry Doyle cartoon on the front of its office building. Roosevelt so admired the cartoon that he wrote Doyle to request the original smaller cartoon drawing as a keepsake.
Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows
American political and social worlds collided on November 14, 1936 with the engagement announcement of Ethel du Pont (daughter of wealthy industrialist, Eugene du Pont Jr.) to Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., (son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sr.). Her father, an arch-conservative, despised the New Deal and Roosevelt’s overreach in siding with labor, regulating corporate America, and constructing the social welfare state. Like other prominent wealthy members of the Republican Party, he viewed Roosevelt as a traitor to his own class. The spectacle and irony of marriage uniting the du Pont and Roosevelt families were not lost on Doyle. Accordingly, he marked the engagement announcement with a special cartoon that cast Ethel and Franklin Jr. as Romeo and Juliet, in the famous balcony scene. As always, Doyle could not resist temptation to interject himself into the scene. In the cartoon panel below, Doyle is the man-in-the-moon, rather confused and trying to make sense of it all. After the cartoon appeared in the Philadelphia Record, Eugene du Pont Jr., wrote to Doyle to request the original cartoon as a wedding gift for his daughter.
Jerry Doyle in his Philadelphia Record Office, working on the Ethel du Pont—Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. engagement cartoon (1936)
Jerry Doyle Cartoon on the engagement of Ethel du Pont and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. (1936)
Juliet: “Tis but thy name that is my enemy . . . What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Letter from Eugene du Pont Jr. to Jerry Doyle thanking him for sending the engagement cartoon as a wedding gift for his daughter, Ethel du Pont. (November 24, 1936)
