The jokes you hate to love
By Dian Hanson. Excerpt from the introduction of 'Sex to Sexty'
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John Newbern Sr. was a classic entrepreneur. Born in Oklahoma in 1910, he first worked as a newspaperman and hoped to be a writer.When the Depression hit, he wandered to Tyler, Texas, where he went door to door pitching a service to print photos on dinner plates. Around 1934 he got the idea to imprint advertising slogans on pencils and built that idea into a prosperous company in two years. He moved his business to Arlington, Texas in 1952 and, three years later, into the building it still occupies today. The Newbern building is a monument to the powerfully charismatic personality of John Sr. Nothing, from the carpets to the furniture to the art and knickknacks, has been changed since the day he died. Dark laminate paneling covers the walls. The acoustic ceilings are low and water-stained. Up front are glass display cases filled with imprinted coffee mugs, shot glasses, pencils, pens, key fobs, picture frames and ashtrays, most dating from the 1960s and '70s. And lining the hallways and covering the walls of every room are the 198 original painted covers for Sex to Sexty and Super Sex to Sexty. "My dad kept them all," says John Jr."They were his prized possessions and they're mine too. I wouldn't part with them for anything in the world." They are big heavily textured oils done in vibrant primary colors, all signed Pierre Davis. John Jr. says Pierre, real name Lowell, was originally employed by his father to help out with his advertising business.
"It turned out Lowell had a bit of a perverted streak in him," says John Jr."He didn't even know it himself at the time, but if you go back to the original issue of Sex to Sexty the only artist in there is Pierre Davis." Pierre's perverted streak was a great pleasure to John Sr. because if there was one thing he loved it was risqué humor. He bought men's magazines just for the cartoons, but in his opinion there were darn few good ones to choose from. Back in his youth there'd been dozens of magazines with names like Fun Riot, Hooey, Joker, Screwball and the granddaddy of them all, Capt. Billy's Whiz Bang, all filled with nothing but jokes, limericks and cartoons aimed at a real man's funny bone.What he saw in the early '60s was a big increase in magazines with nude photos, and a corresponding decline in magazines a man could laugh at. It occurred to him that if men's humor magazines disappeared the American dirty joke itself was in danger of extinction. According to his son, creating a sanctuary for America's sexual humor was on his mind for several years before he acquired Pierre Davis and 10 file cabinets of meticulously organized dirty jokes.
"Somebody in Arkansas had been clippin' out cartoons from every magazine on the market every month for years and years," says Pierre."He had rows and rows of file cabinets with all these cartoons in 'em and one would say 'Desert Islands' and one would say 'Cheating Wife' and somehow he found John and wanted $10,000 to sell his collection. John told me, 'I could have bought two Cadillacs for what I paid for these cartoons,' but he put 'em to good use.We would take those cartoons and change 'em around, then bring 'em to the art department, draw 'em and put 'em in the book."
It was those 10 cabinets full of clippings carefully divided into hundreds of categories representing every known variation on the dirty joke that seeded Sex to Sexty. John Sr.'s genius was keeping the magazine folksy and lowbrow. Despite his beret and flowing hair Lowell Davis was a diehard country boy born on a farm in the tiny town of Carthage, Missouri, and raised in even smaller Red Oak. He adopted the beret in grade school after deciding to become a great artist.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
John Newbern Sr. was a classic entrepreneur. Born in Oklahoma in 1910, he first worked as a newspaperman and hoped to be a writer.When the Depression hit, he wandered to Tyler, Texas, where he went door to door pitching a service to print photos on dinner plates. Around 1934 he got the idea to imprint advertising slogans on pencils and built that idea into a prosperous company in two years. He moved his business to Arlington, Texas in 1952 and, three years later, into the building it still occupies today. The Newbern building is a monument to the powerfully charismatic personality of John Sr. Nothing, from the carpets to the furniture to the art and knickknacks, has been changed since the day he died. Dark laminate paneling covers the walls. The acoustic ceilings are low and water-stained. Up front are glass display cases filled with imprinted coffee mugs, shot glasses, pencils, pens, key fobs, picture frames and ashtrays, most dating from the 1960s and '70s. And lining the hallways and covering the walls of every room are the 198 original painted covers for Sex to Sexty and Super Sex to Sexty. "My dad kept them all," says John Jr."They were his prized possessions and they're mine too. I wouldn't part with them for anything in the world." They are big heavily textured oils done in vibrant primary colors, all signed Pierre Davis. John Jr. says Pierre, real name Lowell, was originally employed by his father to help out with his advertising business.
"It turned out Lowell had a bit of a perverted streak in him," says John Jr."He didn't even know it himself at the time, but if you go back to the original issue of Sex to Sexty the only artist in there is Pierre Davis." Pierre's perverted streak was a great pleasure to John Sr. because if there was one thing he loved it was risqué humor. He bought men's magazines just for the cartoons, but in his opinion there were darn few good ones to choose from. Back in his youth there'd been dozens of magazines with names like Fun Riot, Hooey, Joker, Screwball and the granddaddy of them all, Capt. Billy's Whiz Bang, all filled with nothing but jokes, limericks and cartoons aimed at a real man's funny bone.What he saw in the early '60s was a big increase in magazines with nude photos, and a corresponding decline in magazines a man could laugh at. It occurred to him that if men's humor magazines disappeared the American dirty joke itself was in danger of extinction. According to his son, creating a sanctuary for America's sexual humor was on his mind for several years before he acquired Pierre Davis and 10 file cabinets of meticulously organized dirty jokes.
"Somebody in Arkansas had been clippin' out cartoons from every magazine on the market every month for years and years," says Pierre."He had rows and rows of file cabinets with all these cartoons in 'em and one would say 'Desert Islands' and one would say 'Cheating Wife' and somehow he found John and wanted $10,000 to sell his collection. John told me, 'I could have bought two Cadillacs for what I paid for these cartoons,' but he put 'em to good use.We would take those cartoons and change 'em around, then bring 'em to the art department, draw 'em and put 'em in the book."
It was those 10 cabinets full of clippings carefully divided into hundreds of categories representing every known variation on the dirty joke that seeded Sex to Sexty. John Sr.'s genius was keeping the magazine folksy and lowbrow. Despite his beret and flowing hair Lowell Davis was a diehard country boy born on a farm in the tiny town of Carthage, Missouri, and raised in even smaller Red Oak. He adopted the beret in grade school after deciding to become a great artist.
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Sex to Sexty
Hardcover, 20.5 x 27.8 cm (8.1 x 10.9 in.), 420 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
The ultimate collection of America's most salacious humor launched by the former cult magazine Sex to Sexty
