“Track and Field Competition” (July 20, 1936)
by Phil Berube (1913-1989)
7.5 x 8.5 in., ink on heavy board
Coppola Collection

Berube was a sports cartoonist for the AP. During his career he also took over the art chores on a youth-oriented AP comic strip called “Oh, Diana!” He is also listed as a comic book artist, and writer, for Superman, during the mid-1940s.

The 1936 Summer Olympics were infamously hosting in Berlin, August 1-16, and opened by Chancellor Adolf Hitler. To outdo the 1932 LA Games, Hitler had a new 100,000-seat track and field stadium built. The games were the first to be televised, and radio broadcasts reached 41 countries.

Hitler saw the Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy and antisemitism, and the official Nazi party paper wrote in the strongest terms that Jews should not be allowed to participate in the Games.

The US came in second (to the Germans) in the 1936 medal count.

This cartoon, coming from just before the opening ceremonies, features the Track and Field Team. Team member Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin. Owens’s success at the games represented an unpleasant consternation for Hitler, who was using them to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany.