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culture. He was the creator of Esquire’s mustached, bug-eyed mascot Esky and of the Cuties comic
strip series, which went into national distribution and as well as book form. Crossing color lines,
Campbell became the first African-American illustrator to be syndicated and whose work was featured
regularly in national periodicals.
The “Night-Club Map” is both a guide and a who’s who of the old Prohibition speakeasies and night-
clubs that dotted the Harlem landscape in the 1920’s and 1930’s, many of them surviving well after
Prohibition was repealed. The Savoy Ballroom, the Cotton Club, Gladys’s Clam Bar and many others are
shown, with little vignettes throughout of Harlem “characters,” such as Jeff Blount of the Radium Club, or
“Snake-hips” Earl Tucker, the “Reefer Man,” the “Crab Man,” and musicians like Cab Callaway, Don
Redman, Gladys Bentley, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. A copy of the original Manhattan Magazine
centerfold sold for $16,800 (with premium) at Swann Galleries on 10 March 2011, lot 407.