Part love story and part wildlife protection fable, the pre-Code romance and melodrama Zoo in Budapest was that rare film that pleased critics and audiences alike.
May 6, 1933 cover by Richard Decker. This is one of four covers Decker (1907–1988) contributed to The New Yorker; he also contributed more than 900 cartoons in his nearly 40-year run with the magazine.
Jesse L. Lasky’s first production for Fox (Lasky was the founder of Paramount Pictures), Zoo in Budapest starred relative newcomer Gene Raymond as a young man (Zani) keenly attuned to nature and particularly to the animals he cares for in the Budapest Zoo. In the course of the film he becomes an anti-fur industry activist and rescues a beautiful orphan girl, Eve (Loretta Young) from a life of servitude. Although the film is little known today, in 1933 it had quite a winning effect on critic John Mosher, who usually found little to like from Hollywood’s output:
HE TALKS TO THE ANIMALS…Top, zoo worker Zani (Gene Raymond) rescues a beautiful orphan girl, Eve (Loretta Young) from a life of servitude, and both come to the aid of a little boy named Paul, played by Wally Albright, who escapes the clutches of his harsh governess. Below, hidden in the bushes, Eve changes her clothes after escaping from a group of orphans visiting the zoo. (IMDB)
The film made such an impression that even E.B. White had to mention it in the opening lines of his “Notes and Comment”…
ANIMAL CRACKERS…Filmmakers went all out in creating elaborate sets for Zoo in Budapest. The film was likened to Grand Hotel because the drama took place in less than 24 hours, almost entirely in one location. Below, Loretta Young converses with director Rowland Lee on the set. (IMDB)(IMDB)
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High Anxiety
The Depression was hard on the Empire State Building, which opened its doors during some of the darkest days of the economic crisis. Visitation was down, and a lot of the office space in the world’s tallest building remained vacant. It would remain in the red into the 1940s.
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT…To this day the 86th floor observation deck has been a popular destination for tourists. In the 1930s a photographer stationed on the deck captured the moment for tourists on a souvenir postcard. The image at top is from 1934, the one below circa 1930s. Fencing to deter suicide attempts (or people chucking things over the side) wouldn’t be erected until 1947. (nyccirca.blogspot.com)
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As the World Churns
Howard Brubaker continued to comment on the deteriorating conditions of the German people in his column “Of All Things”…
…and speaking of the Third Reich, Alexander Woollcott profiled (in his column “Shouts and Murmurs”) an enterprising young journalist Hubert R. Knickerbocker (1898–1949), who reported from Berlin from 1923 to 1933 and wrote about the threat of Nazism. In April 1933, after fleeing Germany, he reported in the New York Evening Post that “an indeterminate number of Jews [had] been killed.” A brief excerpt (with illustration by Cyrus Baldridge):
MYSTERY WRITER…In December 1930, H.R. Knickerbocker interviewed Josef Stalin’s mother, Keke Geladze, for the New York Evening Post. The resulting article was titled, “Stalin Mystery Man Even to His Mother.” (The New Yorker)
A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas and a 1931 Pulitzer Prize winner, Knickerbocker kept his word with Woollcott and entered Columbia University to study psychiatry.
TALES TO TELL…H.L. Knickerbocker (at the microphone) with Alexander Woollcott circa 1940. (Kansas City Public Library)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with an ad from the makers of the first commercially successful wheat flake breakfast cereal…before there were Wheaties (created in 1921) there was Force, invented in 1901…almost from the beginning the Force brand was wildly successful thanks to a series of jingles featuring a morose character, Jimmy Dumps, who was transformed into Sunny Jim by consuming Force flakes…in 1933 the makers of Force were still big on jingles, sponsoring contests such as the one below…
…here is a box from that period, promoting cash prizes for winning jingles…
(worthpoint)
…the folks at Chesterfield began targeting the working man in their advertising…
…while Canada Dry was anticipating the end of Prohibition…
…but until that day, you could mix some Green Ribbon with your bootleg alcohol, according to Sonia Strega, who was likely an invention by the advertisers rather than an actual living endorser…
…Lux, on the other hand, had piles of money to spend on real life endorsers including Jimmy Durante, Hope Williams and Lupe Velez…
…Otto Soglow drew up this strip for the makers of Nettleton shoes, creating a character similar to his famed “Little King” to promote the company’s sports and golf shoes…
…James Thurber continued his work for the French Line, replete with his familiar dogs…
First performed in Berlin in 1928, The Threepenny Opera was Bertolt Brecht’s socialist critique of capitalist society and was a favorite (somewhat ironically) of that city’s bourgeois “smart set.” However when it landed on the Broadway stage in 1933, it famously flopped, and closed after just twelve performances.
April 22, 1933 cover by Helen Hokinson.
The first American production, adapted by Jerrold Krimsky and Gifford Cochran, opened April 13, 1933, at the Empire Theatre, featuring Robert Chisholm as Macheath (“Mack the Knife”) and Steffi Duna as his lover, Polly. Critic Robert Benchley found value in the play’s “modernistic” music, but seemed puzzled by its enigmatic production, an opinion shared by other contemporary critics.
HANGING IN THERE…Scenes from the 1928 Berlin premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s musical, The Threepenny Opera. At left, Macheath (tenor/baritone Harald Paulsen) is spared the noose during the closing act, much to the relief of his lover, Polly (soprano Roma Bahn); at right, in a deus ex machina moment, a messenger arrives at the hanging and announces that Macheath has been pardoned by the queen. (British Library)
Some critics today defend the 1933 American production, noting that the Krimsky–Cochran adaptation was quite faithful to the Brecht original. Perhaps something was lost in translation, or maybe the world in which the play was conceived no longer held much relevance to Depression-era Americans.
THE FINAL CURTAIN fell after just twelve performances of the first American production of The Threepenny Opera at Broadway’s Empire Theatre. The production featured Robert Chisholm as Macheath and Steffi Duna as Polly. (discogs.com/bizzarela.com)
Benchley half-heartedly concluded that the play was probably worth seeing, for no other reason than to experience something different for a change.
By 1933 the world that had conceived The Threepenny Opera was long gone—Brecht fled Nazi Germany two months before his play opened in New York, fearing persecution for his socialist leanings. Things were quickly going “from bad to worse” under Adolf Hitler’s new regime, as Howard Brubaker observed in his “Of All Things” column:
* * *
Look Ma, No Net!
Karl Wallenda (referred to as “Carl” here) was born to an old circus family in Germany in 1905, and by 1922 he would put together a family-style high-wire act (with brother Herman) that would come to be known as “The Flying Wallendas.” They debuted at Madison Square Garden in 1928, notably without their safety net, which had been lost in transit. So they performed without it, much to the acclaim of the adoring crowd. They soon became known for their daring high-wire acts, often performed without safety nets. E.B. White filed this (excerpted) report for “The Talk of the Town.”
In the years that followed Karl developed some of troops’ most startling acts, including the famed seven-person chair pyramid. They performed this incredibly dangerous stunt until their appearance at the Detroit Shrine Circus in January 1962; the wire’s front man, Dieter Schepp, faltered, causing the pyramid to collapse. Schepp, who was Karl’s nephew, was killed, as was Richard Faughnan, Karl’s son-in-law. Karl injured his pelvis, and his adopted son, Mario, was paralyzed from the waist down.
DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME…The Wallenda family practices the seven-person pyramid just prior to the Shrine Circus in Detroit, where the group fell, killing Dieter Schepp (far right, bottom row) and Dick Faughnan (second from left, on bottom). (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)
Karl’s own luck finally ran out on March 22, 1978, on a tightrope between the towers of Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. High winds, and an improperly secured wire, caused the 73-year-old Wallenda to wobble, and then fall, one hundred feet to the ground. He was dead on arrival at a local hospital.
THE SHOW ENDED for Karl Wallenda on March 22, 1978, on a tightrope between the towers of Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The 73-year-old high-wire legend fell one hundred feet to his death. (esquire.com)
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Safer Entertainments
Lois Long continued to file nightlife reports in her “Tables for Two” column, reveling in the sights and sounds (and rhythms) of the Cotton Club’s orchestra, led by Duke Ellington…but the real attraction was Ellington’s unnamed drummer, whom I assume was the great Sonny Greer…
JAZZ GREAT Sonny Greer wowed Lois Long and the rest of the crowd at Harlem’s Cotton Club in April 1933. (jazz.fm)
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From Our Advertisers
Given the news Howard Brubaker shared earlier in this post, I wouldn’t use the word Gemütlichkeit (basically, warmth and friendliness) to describe the state of things in Nazi Germany…
…a better option would be a trip to the British Isles or France on the White Star lines, nicht wahr?…
…RCA’s mascot, Nipper, appeared to contemplating fatherhood in this two-page ad for the company’s new “baby sets”…
…Camel took a break from its magician-themed “It’s Fun to be Fooled” ads to run another elegant Ray Prohaska-illustrated spot…
…on to our cartoons, Carl Rose demonstrated the economic benefits of legal beer…
…E. Simms Campbell showed us a woman seeking a bit of motherly wisdom…
…Whitney Darrow Jr (1909–1999), who began his 50-year career at The New Yorker on March 18, 1933, offered this look at childhood’s hard knocks…
…James Thurber drew up an odd encounter at a cocktail party…
…Peter Arno served up a proud patriarch…
…and William Steig explored the perils of somnambulism…
…on to our April 29, 1933 issue with a cover by Garrett Price…although we’ve already seen many cartoons by Price, we haven’t seen many covers (he did two covers in the magazine’s first year, 1925). Price would ultimately produce 100 covers for The New Yorker, in addition to his hundreds of cartoons…
April 29, 1933 cover by Garrett Price. Note the little train illustration along the spine (or strap, as it is called).
…for the record, here is Price’s first New Yorker cover from Aug. 1, 1925…
…there was more troubling news from Nazi Germany, this time from Paris correspondent Janet Flanner in her “Letter from Paris” column…Flanner would later gain wider fame as a war correspondent…
THUGS…SA members stick a poster to the window of a Jewish store in Berlin on April 1, 1933. The poster is inscribed, “Germans, Defend yourselves, Do not buy from Jews”. (Bundesarchiv, Berlin)
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From Our Advertisers
Camel followed up its elegant ad from the previous issue with another “Fun to be Fooled” spot, this time presented as a multi-panel comic strip…
…Powers Reproduction was a frequent advertiser in the early New Yorker, touting the “realism” of their color photography, but in this case the model looked more like a department store mannequin…
…Otto Soglow continued to ply a lucrative sideline illustrating ads for Sanka decaf…
…as we segue to our cartoonists, the opening section featuring work by both James Thurber and George Price…
…Gardner Rea’s snake charmer expressed her belief that all men are created equal…
…here is a cartoon by a new artist, Howard Baer, who contributed to The New Yorker between 1933 and 1937…
…and another by newcomers Whitney Darrow Jr. …
…and E. Simms Campbell…
…Barbara Shermund continued to rollick with her modern women…
…and we end with the ever-reliable Peter Arno…
Before we close I want to remember Roger Angell, who died last week at age 101. A literary legend and a great baseball writer to be sure, but also one of the last living links to the first days of The New Yorker. Rest in Peace.
There’s a good reason why Americans celebrate National Beer Day on April 7.
April 15, 1933 cover by William Steig.
It was on that day in 1933 that the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect; after nearly 13 years of Prohibition, folks were allowed to buy and drink low-alcohol content beer. The act not only promised to wet their whistles on the hot summer days ahead, but it also signaled the eventual doom of 18th Amendment. E.B. White opened his column with musings on the Easter holiday, but soon turned his attention to the big news of the day.
THINK THIS WILL BE ENOUGH?…Workers at a New York brewery unload thousands of crates of beer, getting ready for the return of legal beer in April 1933. (allthatsinteresting.com)FRONT PAGE NEWS…The New York Times proclaimed the return of legal beer in this April 7, 1933 edition.BLONDE’S BOMBSHELL…While on the other side of the Lower 48, actress Jean Harlow christened the first legal bottle of beer at midnight in Los Angeles, April 6, 1933. (Los Angeles Public Library)
In his “A Reporter at Large column,” Morris Markey looked in on a former speakeasy owner who was more than happy to go legit, and who also predicted the demise of his fellows who still lingered in the underground liquor trade. An excerpt from “Now That There’s Beer”…
CHEERS!…The first truckload of beer to leave New York exits the Jacob Ruppert Brewery in New York in 1933. (allthatsinteresting.com)
The subject of Markey’s column explained why speakeasies would soon be a thing of the past. Markey also observed that theatre owners would soon feel the pinch as folks would forgo movies for summer evenings at a beer garden.
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No Laughing Matter
Writers and editors at The New Yorker did their best to keep things as light and witty as possible, but sometimes the headlines could not be ignored, and tragedy was acknowledged, albeit briefly. “The Talk of the Town” had this to say about history’s deadliest airship disaster:
NATURE’S FURY…The U.S. Navy’s 785-foot dirigible, the USS Akron, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a violent storm shortly after midnight on April 4, 1933, claiming the lives of 73 crewmen. Clockwise, from top left, the Akron on a routine flight; men in a rear control car; servicemen in the dirigible’s engine room; April 23, 1933 photo of wreckage recovered off the coast of New Jersey. Because the ship had no life vests and one rubber raft, only three crew members survived the disaster, which heralded the end the Navy’s dirigible fleet. (howstuffworks.com/AP/Daily Mail)
In his “Of All Things” column, Howard Brubaker had this to add:
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Alex at the Movies
It wasn’t every day you got to read a movie review by Alexander Woollcott, but he did just that in the opening lines of his “Shouts and Murmurs” column, calling Cecil B. DeMille’sThe Sign of the Cross an “unpleasing mess drooled on to the brobdingnagian bib” of the director.
Woollcott, who doubtless related to Nero’s bacchanalian ways, singled out Charles Laughton’s campy performance as the Roman emperor.
ANIMAL HOUSE…Charles Laughton camped it up as the Emperor Nero in Cecil B. DeMille’sThe Sign of the Cross. (IMD
Besides Laughton’s performance, the pre-Code film is perhaps best known for Claudette Colbert’s revealing milk bath scene, which took several days to shoot—the powdered cow’s milk eventually turned sour, making it a very unpleasant experience for all involved.
IT STINKS…that was Alexander Woollcott’s assessment of The Sign of the Cross. Clockwise, from top left, studio poster for the film; Claudette Colbert’s famous bath scene; an actress portraying a Christian being thrown to the lions (as well as crocodiles and gorillas) was the famed burlesque dancer Sally Rand, who left little to the imagination in her uncredited appearance; an orgy scene. Although Paramount marketed the film to churches, it was attacked by the Catholic Legion of Decency: a re-release of the film was censored after the Hays Code went into effect in 1934—a “lesbian dance,” violent gladiator scenes and sequences with naked women being attacked by crocodiles were cut and wouldn’t be restored until a 1993 video release. (Wikipedia/IMDB)
As for film critic John Mosher, the remaining Hollywood fare was even worse—like The Sign of the Cross, these pictures used faith-based themes, a seemingly new trend in Hollywood scenarios, to poor effect.
Gabriel Over the White House starred Walter Huston as a politically corrupt president who, after a near-fatal car accident, comes under the divine power of the Archangel Gabriel and the spirit of Abraham Lincoln…
I SEE DEAD PEOPLE…Walter Huston and Karen Morley in Gabriel Over the White House. (TCM)
…the pre-Code drama Destination Unknown also summoned supernatural forces to tell the tale of a stranded ship saved by a stowaway who turns wine into water and heals a crippled man.
NEEDING A MIRACLE…Pat O’Brien and Betty Compson in Destination Unknown. (IMDB)
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From Our Advertisers
Considering that Adolf Hitler gave Nazi paramilitary units control of German streets in January 1933, the words “Appeasing refuge” don’t readily come to mind…
…if you liked all things German but wanted to avoid getting a jackboot to the groin, you could remain stateside, drink some 3.2 beer, and chew on some Liederkranz…
…actually this looks more preferable, especially as rendered by fashion illustrator Leslie Saalburg…
…before Zillow or Craigslist you could look for some digs in the New York American, which merged with the New York Journal in 1937…
…the makers of leaded gasoline urged on a stereotypical country doctor, even though the stork seemed to have things under control…
…on to our cartoonists, Garrett Price illustrated the limits of legal beer…
…while Chon Day explored the same problem at this tea room…
…here’s a trio of The New Yorker’s early women cartoonists…Barbara Shermund…
…Mary Petty…
…and Alice Harvey…
…and we close with Al Frueh, and some brave firefighters…
A New Yorker State of Mind 