Happy Holidays 1930

Happy Holidays to readers of A New Yorker State of Mind! We open with an image of Christmas shoppers at 34th and Broadway, circa 1930, and peruse the Dec. 20, 1930 issue of the world’s greatest magazine.

Dec. 20, 1930 cover by Constantin Alajalov.

“Notes and Comment” began with a Christmas message of sorts from E.B. White, his holiday cheer tempered by the Great Depression and the lingering effects of Prohibition…

…Howard Brubaker seconded White’s mood in his “Of All Things” column…

…keeping things on the lighter side was Margaret Fishback, who turned her talents as a poet into a successful career as an ad writer for Macy’s. By the 1930s she was one of the world’s highest-paid female advertising copywriters. For the Dec. 20 issue she offered this holiday ditty:

THANKS MARG...Margaret Fishback, circa 1930s. (Wikipedia)

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More Marlene

Last week we looked at Marlene Dietrich’s breakout performance in The Blue Angel (reviewed by John Mosher in the Dec. 13, 1930 issue) that launched her into international stardom. Although Mosher had some gripes about the film’s dialogue, Dietrich’s performance nevertheless created enough of an impression to warrant a lengthy note on the German star in the Dec. 20 “Talk of the Town”…

I’LL BE BACK…Marlene Dietrich in a still from Shanghai Express, 1932. (Wikipedia)

Even though John Mosher gave a rather tepid review of The Blue Angel in the Dec. 13 issue, he obviously couldn’t shake it (or Dietrich) from his head, returning to the film and its star in the opening paragraphs of his Dec. 20 cinema column.:

Mosher also observed that new Hollywood version of Dietrich (in 1930’s Morocco) was “far prettier” than the German version. You decide:

The German Marlene Dietrich in Ufa’s The Blue Angel…

…and the Hollywood Dietrich in Paramount’s Morocco (with Gary Cooper)…

(both images IMDB)

…on to our advertising…Dietrich pops up again in this ad for Publix Theatres (which were owned by Paramount)…

…the same ad block also featured light fare, such as 1930’s Tom Sawyer…

AIN’T THEY CUTE?...Mitzi Green as Becky Thatcher and Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer in 1930’s Tom Sawyer. Jackie was a famous star by 1930, thanks to his co-starring performance with Charlie Chaplin in 1921’s The Kid. In adult life Coogan would play Uncle Fester in TV’s The Addams Family. Green would have less success, and retire from films in the 1950s. (IMDB)

…not all advertisers were thinking about Christmas, but rather were turning their sights to the southern climes and the fashions they would require…here’s an appeal from Burdine’s of Miami…

…and Fifth Avenue’s Bonwit Teller…

…travel agencies created enticing scenes such as this to lure snowbirds to places like Bermuda…

…of course in those depressed times you had to be a person of means to spend your winters in the Caribbean, or to surprise your family with a new Buick for the holidays…

…and for those stuck at home, they had to console themselves with bootleg liquor, perhaps jazzed up with one of these “flavors”…

…but if you were in the holiday spirit, you might head to the Roosevelt for New Years Eve with Guy Lombardo…

…once again, the issue was sprinkled with spot drawings on the holiday theme…

…and our cartoonists, Garrett Price at the doctor…

…E. McNerney in Atlantic City during off-season…

…Al Frueh, and the clash of modern aesthetics with Christmas traditions…

…and for those in that last, desperate holiday crush, we close with Alan Foster…

Next Time: The Road to 1931…

Published by

David O

I read and write about history from the perspective that history is not some artifact from the past but a living, breathing condition we inhabit every moment of our lives, or as William Faulkner once observed, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." I read original source materials, such as every issue of The New Yorker, not only as a way to understand a time from a particular perspective, but to also use the source as an aggregator of various historic events. I welcome comments, criticisms, corrections and insights as I stumble along through the century.

2 thoughts on “Happy Holidays 1930”

  1. I’ve been waiting for your reading to reach Christmas 1930 since I found your blog a couple of years ago. The Dec. 20 cover was the model for a parody issue that friends of my grandparents in the Village made for them when they visited for the holidays. My grandparents had lived in New York for a couple of years but moved away in 1929. They and this group of friends lived in the same building on Morton St., and were fervent New Yorker readers. The parody is interesting, I think, for giving a glimpse of what New Yorker fans below the top-hat-wearing class enjoyed about it at the time. https://www.wallandbinkley.com/fwb/newyorker/

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    1. Hi Peter, the parody issue is terrific. What a priceless treasure. If you don’t mind I will link to it in my next post. Thanks so much for writing, and for reading the blog!

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