Poker is ‘‘Going to the Dogs^
105
St. Paul, Minnesota, hired him to create a series of dog paintings for a calendar
(Ferrara, 2006). It was during this period of working for Brown & Bigelow that
Coolidge produced 16 variations on the “Dogs Playing Poker” theme. Nine of
the paintings were about card-playing, and the others portrayed dogs dancing,
playing baseball, and testifying in court (Ferrara, 2006). Coolidge died in 1934
at the age of 89. Fie had married late in life and had one daughter (“Artist
Biography, from Michaels” in http://gaming.unlv.edu/gallery/a_friend_in
_need.htm).
Over the years, Coolidge’s dog paintings were periodically revived as
promotional items for liquor and tobacco companies. Yet by the early 1970s he
and his dogs were still effectively unknown. In the April 1973 issue of Antiques
magazine, an advertisement for an estate sale showed one of Coolidge’s
paintings with the note “Reproduced ‘American Fleritage,’ February 1973.”
From this simple reference in Antiques, the craze of displaying Coolidge’s dogs
diffused to dog lovers, then to the general public and to cultural ironists, and the
rest is pop culture history (Ferrara, 2006).
A view of some of the paintings is essential for completing our story of
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. His most famous painting is called A Friend in
Need. Seven dogs surround the table. Two Great Danes, a collie, a shepherd,
another dog of perhaps mixed breeds, and two bulldogs. Two dogs are smoking
pipes, and the bulldogs are smoking cigars. All are quite serious, and have
drinks in front of them. The bulldogs have amassed the most chips, and a look at
their feet tells why. One is passing an ace c ard to the other who is already
holding three aces. The theme of cheating is replete with the warning—also
carried in the film Rounders—be wary of playing in a poker game against others
who may be close friends of each other. Told in another way: “when you sit in a
poker game for an hour wondering just who the ‘patsy’ at the table is, it is you.”
Professor David Schwartz with the Gaming Studies Research Center at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas offers another interesting observation on
this painting. While the artist had died in 1934 and the painting was still quite
unknown, it nonetheless became an inspiration for Dutch citizens during the
second World War. Schwartz relates that he had been told that the dogs were
assigned the identities of national leaders. The bulldog on the right—with the
cigar pointed leftward—represented Winston Churchill. With his paw he was
offering aid (an ace) to the American bulldog on his left—Franklin Roosevelt.
Further to the left was the collie, Joseph Stalin of Russia, himself trying to
attract aid from the bulldogs. With pointed ears and smoking a pipe was
Germany’s Adolf Hitler under the clock anxiously waiting for a fate unknown.
Schwartz adds that “this is obviously one of the most important pieces of
American art to ever be produced.” (Http://gaming.unlv.edu/gallery/a_friend_in
_need.htm.)