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Lot Essay
The present work was published as the cover illustration of the November 9th, 1957 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
John Falter was one of America’s top illustrators of the twentieth century, completing 185 cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, as well as over 300 recruiting posters for the U.S. Navy. The Post editors glowingly described this cover, writing, “Young Sammy Sixgun, using the classic hat-over-the-rock routine, will now restore law and order to the old TV-West. First the electronic badman will shoot a hole through Sammy's sombrero; then, believing he has dispatched its occupant, he will relax his guard and our hero will give him the works. To be sure, this is all good clean imagination. Manhood will find our once-warlike Sammy perched peacefully behind a desk, no heroics for him, no interest in gunplay--yet bearing in him that old spirit which has always turned war-hating Americans into heroes when badmen threaten and the chips are down. By the way, that's John Falter's own dog in the chair, name of Ralph. If Ralph should wag his tail and knock off the hat, wouldn't Sammy be surprised?” (The Saturday Evening Post, November 9, 1957, p. 3)
John Falter was one of America’s top illustrators of the twentieth century, completing 185 cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, as well as over 300 recruiting posters for the U.S. Navy. The Post editors glowingly described this cover, writing, “Young Sammy Sixgun, using the classic hat-over-the-rock routine, will now restore law and order to the old TV-West. First the electronic badman will shoot a hole through Sammy's sombrero; then, believing he has dispatched its occupant, he will relax his guard and our hero will give him the works. To be sure, this is all good clean imagination. Manhood will find our once-warlike Sammy perched peacefully behind a desk, no heroics for him, no interest in gunplay--yet bearing in him that old spirit which has always turned war-hating Americans into heroes when badmen threaten and the chips are down. By the way, that's John Falter's own dog in the chair, name of Ralph. If Ralph should wag his tail and knock off the hat, wouldn't Sammy be surprised?” (The Saturday Evening Post, November 9, 1957, p. 3)