One of Hollywood’s most famous motion pictures was a story about a giant ape that (literally) falls for a beautiful woman.
New Yorker film critic John Mosher found the premise of King Kong ridiculous, but he also found many of its scenes diverting, especially those featuring Kong and a number of prehistoric creatures (created by Marcel Delgado), miniature models brought to life through stop-motion animation techniques pioneered by Willis O’Brien and his assistant, Buzz Gibson. Mosher’s review:
By today’s standards the film’s special effects are quite dated, but they astonished audiences in 1933 and again in a 1952 re-release.
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Oh Baby
Before child labor laws were finally enforced in the late 1930s, children were routinely exploited for profit, most famously the Dionne quintuplets by Dr. Allan Roy Defoe, not to mention the many child stars fed into the Hollywood meat grinder. For a public seeking novelty as a distraction from the Depression, there were also numerous “baby orchestras” organized by one Karl Moldrem. “The Talk of the Town” commented:
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Edible Art
“The Talk of the Town” has always been a source for light anecdotes, including this brief account of a hungry Vanity Fair photographer:
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Lend Me An Ear
Alexander Woollcott led his “Shouts and Murmurs” column with an account from a recent benefit performance, during which his friend Noël Coward decided to strike up a conversation regarding the survival of the stage in an era of talking films:
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From Our Advertisers
Ah, we begin with signs of spring, glimpsed beyond the gleaming cowl of a 12-cylinder Lincoln…
…and catch a whiff of that springtime breeze, savored between puffs of your Chesterfield…
…this guy has some spring in his step thanks to the sparkling water he just splashed into his bootleg gin…
…the folks at Dorothy Gray presented a nameless woman (“slim and straight as a gallant boy, yet feminine to her finger tips”) who was ready to greet spring until she saw those “little lines under her eyes”…the horror indeed…
…Coty again presented an attenuated trio in a sexless courtship dance, oozing with anglophilic longing…
…I include this ad solely for the terrific illustration by Mac Harshberger, famed for his elegant, simplified line…
…and a couple of back pagers…thanks to Sonotone, the deafened shall not only hear but will also be stricken by a sudden voiding of the bowels…and below, a surprising ad from the Plaza, one place I never thought would need to advertise…but those were tough times…
…and on to our cartoons, and this spot drawing from Peggy Bacon, whom we haven’t seen in awhile…
…Gilbert Bundy took us to a sanctuary of song…
…another day with our fellow citizens, and Gluyas Williams…
…one from E. Simms Campbell…
…who was the first Black cartoonist published in nationally distributed, “slick” magazines…
…and also the creator of Esky, the pop-eyed mascot of Esquire magazine…
…Carl Rose gave us a night at the opera in this two-page cartoon with the Depression-inspired caption: The artists will now pass among you. Anything you can give will be greatly appreciated….
…and James Thurber returned to the nudist colony for another look at the age-old struggle between the sexes…
Next Time: Not Even Funny…
A New Yorker State of Mind 