It was evidently just as effective the second time around. With America again at war in 1941, the “I Want YOU” poster was suddenly back in demand. His likeness of Mark Twain appeared on a 1940 postage stamp.īut the story didn’t end there for Flagg’s Uncle Sam. During the interwar period, he composed art for a number of advertising and publishing clients and even sketched celebrities of the day like prizefighter Jack Dempsey and actress Ethel Barrymore.

The Sam image quickly vanished from public following the 1918 Armistice and Flagg carried on with his successful career as a magazine illustrator. (Image source: WikiCommons) The Return of Uncle Sam (SEE BELOW) Fraught by 21st Century standards, this summer of 1945 poster by Flagg urges Americans to focus on the Pacific War following the surrender of Nazi.

A host of other nations, including the Russia and even Germany, pinched the concept for their own wartime recruiting drives. With no time to commission a model to pose as Uncle Sam, Flagg used his own likeness for the face - he composed the drawing while sitting in front a mirror and later added wrinkles, a hat and a goatee.īoth the Kitchener and Uncle Sam posters became instant classics. In fact, by all accounts it was a rush job. This drawing, by Alfred Leete, would itself be adapted into a famous recruiting poster in the United Kingdom.įlagg had little idea that his Americanized version of the Kitchener illustration would be such a hit stateside. It featured a grim looking Lord Kitchener urging Britons to enlist in the army. The original appeared in a 1914 edition of the British magazine London Opinion. Interestingly enough, Flagg’s quintessentially American image was a crib of a British drawing from three years earlier. (Image source: WikiCommons) Kitchener Wants You Too

The original illustration that inspired James Montgomery Flagg. Yet, none of his other works became as widely seen or celebrated as his Uncle Sam poster. His posters urged Americans to plant victory gardens, save money, join the military or simply work harder for victory. Flagg.īefore the end of 1918, Flagg illustrated nearly 50 drawings, advertisements and posters for Washington’s wartime propaganda department known as the Committee on Public Information (or simply the Creel Commission). James Montgomery Flagg.įlagg, who had been working as a commercial artist since the age of 12 and was a regular contributor to Life and the satirical Judge magazine, was only too happy to lend his considerable talents to the national war effort. Within weeks, just about every American citizen had seen it. (Image source: WikiCommons) Iconic Imageįour million copies of the poster were quickly printed and plastered onto walls and signposts from Maine to California. Army” announced a caption below in bold red and blue capital letters. It featured a stern-faced Uncle Sam pointing outward with his right index finger, his eyes glaring directly at the viewer. Shortly after America’s declaration of war against Germany in 1917, the 40-year-old veteran magazine illustrator from Pelham Manor, New York composed a drawing for the United States Army‘s recruitment campaign. YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER heard the name James Montgomery Flagg, but it’s a safe bet that you know his most famous artistic creation rather well. Within weeks, just about every American citizen had seen it.” (Image source: WikiCommons) “Four million copies of the poster were quickly printed and plastered onto walls and signposts from Maine to California. Flagg’s iconic Uncle Sam “I Want YOU” poster. More than two million Americans signed up to fight in France during the First World War.

I need you america