Diary of a Lady

It was no surprise Dorothy Parker did not think much of society types, especially those characterized by extreme solipsism.

March 25, 1933 cover by **Harry Brown.**

Parker’s “The Diary of a Lady,” briefly excerpted here, featured entries from a diary of a fictional socialite who constantly bemoaned the minor inconveniences of her shallow existence, oblivious to the world around her.

YOU POOR THING…**Dorothy Parker** (left) took a dim view of the lives of “poor little rich girls” like socialite **Brenda Frazier** (who had a tempestuous relationship with *New Yorker* cartoonist **Peter Arno**); **Robert Benchley**, on the other hand, took a more jolly view of human absurdity. (britannica.com/Wikipedia/theattic.space)

In contrast to Parker, Robert Benchley’s satire was usually more on the silly side, with a lot less bite. Here is an excerpt from “Home for the Holidays” (which immediately followed Parker’s piece in the magazine), in which Benchley describes the festive mood of one family during FDR’s “bank holiday”…

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On the Lighter Side

E.B. White was the unofficial aviation correspondent for The New Yorker, ever eager to go aloft in the latest contraption. In this excerpted “Talk of the Town” entry White described his adventures aboard the Goodyear blimp Resolute:

WHAT A GAS…Top photo, the Resolute at its home base, Holmes Airport (in Jackson Heights, L.I.), where E.B. White boarded his flight. As White noted, *Resolute* was a sister ship to kathrynsreport.com/New York Times)

And we turn again to White, this time an excerpt from his “Notes and Comment” celebrating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s planned amendment to the Volstead Act that would allow people to have a legal beer while they waited for the

BEER THIRTY…**E.B. White** believed the front of the internationally famous Brevoort Hotel (next to the Mark Twain House at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 9th Street) would be an ideal spot to quaff some suds. Alas, the hotel (and the Twain house) fell to the wrecking ball in 1952, replaced by the Brevoort apartments (right). (MCNY/streetwise.com)

Although the Brevoort idea didn’t pan out, White did get his wish, more or less, for a Bryant Park location, the Bryant Park Grill…

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Mayor McCarthy

The profile featured Stitch McCarthy, considered one the most flamboyant “street mayors” of the Lower East Side. Writing in Lapham’s Quarterly (Aug. 1, 2018), Laurie Gwen Shapiro describes McCarthy as “a five-foot-tall, cross-eyed Romanian Jew born Samuel Rothberg, always seen with a cigar in his mouth.” What Stitch lacked in height he made up for in toughness, and by his teens was as tough as nails. Shapiro writes: “At night he managed a small-time boxer who once was scheduled to fight a bantamweight named Stitch McCartney in Jersey City. As he later told the story (no doubt over and over), his client fled in fear at the sight of McCartney and the crowd booed. He went in the ring himself, flattened McCartney, and took a version of his opponent’s name for his own.”

The New Yorker profile was written by Meyer Berger, known as a master of the human interest story. Berger did a short stint at The New Yorker but for most of his career he worked for The New York Times, where he wrote a long-running column, “About New York.” Here is a very brief excerpt of the profile, with a caricature by Al Frueh.

TOUGH AS NAILS was what you became if you wanted to be one of the unofficial mayors of the Lower East Side like **Stitch McCarthy**, seen here in 1931. According to **Laurie Gwen Shapiro,** street mayors “were likable fixers who cut through red tape and might settle between fifteen and twenty neighborhood disputes a day.” Photo at left (by **Berenice Abbott**) is a scene from McCathy’s world—Hester Street, between Allen and Orchard Streets. (New York Public Library/*Lapham’s Quarterly*)

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From Our Advertisers

I would guess Dorothy Parker would have some problems with this ad, featuring society women shilling for nail polish…

…the folks at Packard went with an ad that showed the ideal customer (seated in a library, clad in smoking jacket), contemplating one of their recent ads (the same one that was featured in the Feb. 18, 1933 issue of The New Yorker…

…Camel ads took on a new look thanks to the artistry of Ray Prohaska (1901–1981)…in the early 1930’s you see more use of watercolors in ads for fashion, or in this case, cigarettes…