If you believe Wikipedia, Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb (1876-1944) was an actor, newspaper columnist, humorist and the author of more than 60 books. He became the youngest newspaper editor in America when he managed the Paducah Daily News in Kentucky at 19.
The New York Evening Sun hired Cobb in 1904. He got his big break the following year when the newspaper sent him to Portsmouth, NH, to cover the Russo-Japanese Treaty conference. Thanks to high-speed communications, Cobb’s peppy and personal reports entitled “Making Peace at Portsmouth” were widely read. He was among over 100 journalists hosted by Portsmouth’s mayor and journalist FW. Hartford. As a direct result, Joseph Pulitzer lured him over to the New York World where Cobb was the highest-paid staff reporter in the nation.
Irvin S. Cobb later covered World War I for the Saturday Evening Post and a number of his humorous books were made into films. In his later years, Cobb even acted in films, always with a cigar in his mouth. Like comedians Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, Cobb hosted the Academy Awards ceremony, but back before TV in 1935. His glorious, if now forgotten, career also landed him on the label of this box of Yorkana Cigars. This was a rare image of CObb when he was NOT smoking a stogie. (Author’s Collection)
(c) J. Dennis Robinson
Sketches from the Early Big Top