The Accidental Icons

Hang In There, Baby
It seems there will always be a market for cute animal photos. And in the 1970s, the cutest animal photo of them all was a ubiquitous poster, depicting a wideeyed kitten hanging from a branch, with the slogan "Hang in there, baby" A favorite in offices, it became a classic of '70s kitsch. It also spawned countless imitators, putting an endless number of kittens in precarious poses.

But the photographer with the claim to the original copyright was actually Victor Baldwin, a Los Angeles photographer who specialized in animal photography in the '40s and '50s. He'd taken a picture of one of his own pets, patiently getting the kitty to hang just so. "He was an animal lover, particularly of cats -- and cats, of course, do funny, crazy things," says his nephew Roger Garrett. "I know it took him a long time to get the photograph -- it took him 40, 50 shots to get it right."

According to Garrett, his uncle, who died in the mid-1990s, came up with the poster's legend himself and then was careful to copyright the design. For years afterwards, he would legally chase down the many pretenders to the "hang in there" throne. "Nobody had done anything like that at the time -- posters that had animals on them and posters that had a caption like that," says Garrett.

The cat's name, alas, has been lost to history.