Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Writer

As a book reviewer for the New Yorker, Dorothy Parker could eviscerate any writer with the tip of her pen, and often did so.

Nov. 30, 1929 cover by **Adolph K. Kronengold.**

One writer, however, who received consistent praise from Parker was Ernest Hemingway, whom she first met in 1926. In the pages of the 1920s New Yorker, Parker particularly lauded Hemingway’s short story collections, In Our Time (1925) and Men Without Women (1927), which bookended his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises (which Parker thought OK but overly hyped). When the New Yorker profiled Hemingway in the Nov. 30, 1929 issue, it naturally turned to Parker to do the honors (although Robert Benchley, a good friend of Hemingway’s, could have offered his own take on the author) :

SHE’S A FAN…**Dorothy Parker** was a long-time admirer of the work of **Ernest Hemingway.** His last work of the 1920s, *A Farewell to Arms*, was serialized in *Scribner’s Magazine* and published in September 1929. The success of that book made Hemingway financially independent. (Mugar Library/Wikipedia)

During Hemingway’s Paris years Parker actually took a boat with him to France (in 1926, along with mutual friend Robert Benchley) and so got a firsthand taste of his bohemian adventures. By the time the New Yorker profiled Hemingway, the Jazz Age was dead and Paris’s so-called “Lost Generation” was a thing of the past. Indeed, Hemingway had already been in the States for more than a year, returning in 1928 with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer (their son, Patrick Miller Hemingway, was born in June 1928 in Kansas City. Patrick still lives in Kansas City, and is now 90 years old).

Biographer Jeffrey Meyers notes in his book Hemingway: A Biography, that Hemingway of the early Paris years was a “tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man,” features that were not lost on Parker:

I’M TAKING NOTES…Ernest **Hemingway** (left), with **Harold Loeb, Lady Duff Twysden (in hat),** Hemingway’s first wife Hadley Richardson, Donald Ogden Stewart (obscured), and Pat Guthrie (far right) at a café in Pamplona, Spain, July 1925. The group formed the basis for the characters in *The Sun Also Rises*: Twysden as Brett Ashley, Loeb as Robert Cohn, Stewart as Bill Gorton, and Guthrie as Mike Campbell. (Wikipedia)

…more from Parker on Hemingway’s magnetic appeal…

MAN ABOUT TOWN…**Ernest Hemingway** (far right) in 1926 in Paris, outside the city’s famous *Shakespeare and Company* bookshop. He is pictured here with **Sylvia Beach** (on his right), the shop’s founder. (Collection Lausat/Keyston-France/parisinsidersguide.com)

Although Hemingway remains widely read and revered, such a hagiography — especially from someone as reliably critical as Parker — would be unlikely today. From his safari massacres of countless animals (in pursuit of his manhood) to his mistreatment of four wives and general misogyny, he is a far more complex and controversial figure today. One thing Parker got right: his short stories have held up much better than his novels. As for the profile, Parker concluded:

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Meet the Fokkers

In previous blogs we have established that E.B. White was an aviation enthusiast. He seems never to have missed an opportunity to catch a ride into the skies, so when pilots were conducting test flights of a prototype Fokker F-32 at New Jersey’s Teterboro field, he was there to file this brief for “The Talk of the Town”…

SKYTRAIN…Title card from a silent Paramount newsreel reporting on a November 1929 flight of the Fokker F-32 at Teterboro. Note how the title card uses a railroad reference (“Pullman”) as a descriptive for the passenger cabin. Indeed, early airplane passenger cabins were very much designed along the lines of Pullman cars. At right, a circa 1930 photo, possibly of a celebration of the plane’s arrival in Los Angeles. I imagine the FAA would not look kindly on this behavior today. (YouTube/petersonfield.org)

White’s enthusiasm for the aviation age is palpable in his description of the Fokker as it took off and climbed to a thousand feet:

ROUGHING IT…Passengers in Washington D.C. prepare to board what was perhaps the same plane White flew on at Teterboro. Note how they were required to walk across a muddy field to reach the plane’s entrance. The Fokker was the first four-engine commercial aircraft built in America and the largest land plane in the world at the time (there was a much larger amphibious German plane). At right, the plane’s four engines were configured back-to-back. (Wikipedia/petersonfield.org) *click to enlarge*

I suppose it was in line with the New Yorker’s stance of keeping things light, but White’s dispassionate account of a plane crash earlier that day seemed a bit cold. From the air he described a scene just north of midtown, where a crowd had gathered near the site the crash. The pilot was killed, but a passenger managed to parachute to safety.

DOWN TO EARTH…Pilot **Charles Reid** died instantly when his plane slammed into a YMCA on 64th Street on Nov. 20, 1929. His passenger parachuted to safety. **E.B. White** referred to the crash in his “Talk” article. (digital-hagley-org)

Excerpt from a Nov. 21, 1929 *New York Times* account of the crash. (NYTimes archives)

Speaking of crashes, the Fokker on which E.B. White was a passenger crashed a week later (Nov. 27, 1929) during a certification flight from Roosevelt Field to Teterboro Airport. No one was killed, but the aircraft was destroyed. The design itself didn’t last much longer — considered underpowered for its size, and too expensive at the dawn of the Depression, it was phased out by the end of 1930.

Perhaps after all of that flying, White needed something to calm the nerves, a subject he addressed in his “Notes and Comment” column:

THE WOMAN’S HOUR, according to **E.B. White** in his “Notes and Comment” column. (vinepair.com)

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The Little Gallery That Could

“Talk,” via art critic Murdock Pemberton, had more to say about the new Museum of Modern Art, that is, not taking it very seriously…

UPSTART…Although the *New Yorker’s* art critic **Murdock Pemberton** seemed dismissive of the new Museum of Modern Art, its first month’s attendance was more than 47,000 visitors. Image above from the MoMA exhibition *Painting in Paris*, Jan. 19-March 2, 1930. (MoMA)

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Welcome to Thurber World

In 1931 James Thurber published his second book, The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, which consisted of pieces he had done for the New Yorker, including eight stories (from Dec. 29, 1928 to Aug. 9, 1930) that featured the marital escapades of a couple in their middle thirties, the Monroes, modeled on Thurber’s real-life marriage to his wife, Althea.

The Nov. 30, 1929 issue included Thurber’s fifth installment of the Monroe saga, “Mr. Monroe Holds the Fort,” in which a fearful Mr. Monroe, left home alone (his wife was visiting her mother), imagines there are burglars in the house:

…like his famous character Walter Mitty, which Thurber would introduce in 1939, Mr. Monroe had an equally lively imagination…

The character of Mr. Monroe would see new life in the fall of 1969 when NBC debuted My World… and Welcome to It, a half-hour sitcom based on James Thurber’s stories and cartoons. The actor William Windom portrayed John Monroe, a writer and cartoonist who worked for a magazine called The Manhattanite. In the show, Monroe’s daydreams and fantasies were usually based, if sometimes loosely, on Thurber’s writings.

THURBER AS A SITCOM…The actor **William Windom** portrayed John Monroe, a writer and cartoonist who worked for a magazine called *The Manhattanite,* on the 1969-70 NBC sitcom *My World… and Welcome to It.* **Joan Hotchkis** played his wife Ellen, and **Lisa Gerritsen** portrayed his inquisitive daughter Lydia. (tvguidemagazine.com/sitcomsonline.com)

HOME SWEET HOME…Left, the opening credits for *My World… and Welcome to It* featured actor **William Windom** (as John Monroe) entering a animated house based on James Thurber’s famous “House and Woman” cartoon, which was originally featured in the March 23, 1935 issue of the *New Yorker.* (mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com)

My World… and Welcome to It was cancelled after one season. Nevertheless, it would win two Emmies: one for Windom and another for Best Comedy Series.

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Thank Heaven for Maurice

Things were looking up a bit in the talking movie department thanks to the Ernst Lubitsch-directed The Love Parade, featuring recent French import Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald. Film critic John Mosher observed:

MUCH-NEEDED LAUGHS…**Jeannette MacDonald** and **Maurice Chevalier** in *The Love Parade* (1929), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. (MoMA)

Mosher was much less impressed by another musical, Show of Shows, featuring an all-star cast and Technicolor that added up to little more than a “stunt”…

IS THAT ALL?…Warner Brothers *Show of Shows* offered “77 Hollywood Stars” and “1000 Hollywood Beauties” — 80 percent of it in Technicolor, but that wasn’t enough to impress the *New Yorker’s* film critic **John Mosher**. At right, **Arte Frank Fay** (l) and comic **Sid Silvers** in a color scene from the film. (IMDB)

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A Guide to Christmas Shopping, 1929

Lois Long’s fashion column, “On and Off the Avenue,” predictably grew in length as the Christmas holiday approached, and in the Nov. 30 issue she offered advice on how to go about one’s shopping duties. Some brief excerpts:

TRAILBLAZER…**Lois Long** guided *New Yorke*r readers through a list of “big, bewildering stores” in her “On and Off the Avenue” column. At left, the B. Altman department store, circa 1920s. (thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/PBS)

…Long’s column was peppered with holiday-themed spots, including this one by Julian DeMiskey…

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…we start with a couple of back page ads, including one from the National Winter Garden’s burlesque show and an ad announcing the imminent arrival of Peter Arno’s Parade (just $3.50, or signed by Arno himself for $25)…