1936.04.15 “Olympic Fish!” (April 15, 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, as a lead-up to the Olympics, features Adolph Kiefer (who won gold on the 100-m backstroke, held that world record for 20 years; he was named the “father of American swimming in 2013, and he was the last surviving gold medalist from the 1936 Olympics when he died, at 98, in 2017), Johnny Macionis (a silver medalist), Ralph Flanagan (a silver medalist), and Jack Medica (the only other US gold medalist in swimming in 1936 for the 400-m freestyle, who also picked up 2 silvers).