The Curtain Falls

Peter Arno’s cover illustration for the New Yorker’s final issue of 1929 aptly captured the mood of that decade’s last days.

As we’ve seen in the pages of the magazine in 1928 and 1929, people were growing weary of Jazz Age frivolity even before the great crash. For example, Lois Long’s weekly “Tables for Two” column, which deftly captured the nightlife scene of speakeasies and flappers, appeared infrequently in the decade’s last years, and would disappear altogether in 1930. Once herself the epitome of the carefree flapper, Long was now a mother with a one-year-old toddler.

In his “Notes and Comment” column, E.B. White ended the decade on a humorous, if somewhat doleful note:

In “The Talk of the Town,” White also looked to the new year, which would see Al Smith’s Empire State Building rise into the air and forevermore define the city’s skyline, even if his dirigible mooring mast proved to be more of a marketing stunt than a working feature of the new skyscraper:

“Talk” (via E.B. White) took another shot at illustrator Willy Pogany, who had recently updated the drawings in Alice in Wonderland, transforming little Alice into a tween flapper. This time Pogany was “taking liberties” with dear old Mother Goose:

 * * *

Historian Frederick Lewis Allen, who would go on to write the definitive history of the 1920s in his bestselling Only Yesterday (1931), offered some tongue-in-cheek advice on how the average American could contribute to renewed economic prosperity. An excerpt:

Howard Brubaker also finished the decade on a wry note, his “Of All Things” column ending thusly:

The Dec. 28 profile (titled “The Wizard”) featured Thomas Edison, the first in a three-part series written by Alva Johnston (with illustration by Hugo Gellert):

* * *

The New Hollywood

The decade would begin with a new crop of “talkie” stars that would signal a new era for Hollywood. Among the emerging stars was the young Gary Cooper…

From Our Advertisers

The Dec. 28 issue was filled with ads that enticed readers to escape the cold of winter and head south…

…and given the new economic climate, grasping social climbers could travel to nearby Havana and still claim to have visited a foreign land…

…and Pan American Airlines offered this unique take on the market crash to entice readers to sunny Havana…

…despite the crash, the folks at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company still clung to the fantasy of the posh set…you might be flat broke, but you could keep a stiff upper lip while you sucked on a Camel, old sport…

…on to our illustrators, Miguel Covarrubias contributed this drawing for the theater review section…

…and our cartoons are by Peter Arno…

…John Reynolds…

…and I. Klein, who gave us an appropriate image for the turn of a decade…

Next Time: Brave New Year…