English: Promotional caricatures of Smilin' Ed McConnell and cast for Smilin' Ed's Buster Brown Gang, as part of the NBC Parade of Stars promotion.

Copyright details

• This drawing is part of the 1947 NBC Parade of Stars network promotion. There were 56 drawings in the entire package, one representing each of the NBC Radio Network shows on the air at the time. The collection was made available in a portfolio.

• The artwork was used by NBC for promotion of both its radio network and the personalities who were part of the radio shows on it in 1947. The drawings were made available to the media and were used in print ads, as "car cards" (ads in buses and transit cars) and billboards, as well as point of purchase displays where sales of physical products were involved. They were also prominently displayed in the RCA Building and NBC Radio.

Come See Your Fave NBC Star In Caricature Billboard 13 September 1947

NBC To Use Disk Series For Annual Promotion Billboard 19 April 1947

When NBC filed for copyright on these drawings, they did not copyright all of them as a folio but as individual works of art. Some of them were renewed in 1975, while others were not, leaving some of the folio as still under copyright and other caricatures from this portfolio as not renewed (now free use).

Further complicating this is that there appears to be more than one work of art for some personalities. It is not known whether the second work was ever seen by the public. NBC appears to have filed for copyright and apparently asked Sam Berman to execute another caricature, which was also then copyrighted.

List of Parade of Stars copyright renewals by title:

pages 9-10

This image is not on the list of those renewed.