Vast Horizons

Above: Pierre Lelong painting (circa 1950s) of the outdoor café at New York's Hotel St. Moritz (left); view of the St. Moritz and Café de la Paix, 1944.

After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, nightlife in Manhattan slowly picked up steam. By 1936 things were swinging, and although the club scene wasn’t as heady as the Roaring Twenties, there was still plenty to entice New Yorkers into the night air.

May 23, 1936 cover by Perry Barlow. The Texas-born Barlow (1892–1977) published 135 covers and 1,574 drawings in The New Yorker from 1926 to 1974. According to the late Lee Lorenz, Barlow’s drawings were elegant and deceptively casual, “delineating the absurdities and frustrations of the suburban middle class.” Barlow’s wife, Dorothy Hope Smith (also a successful artist) collaborated with her husband on many of his covers. Lorenz noted that “being partly color-blind, [Barlow] depended on his wife to provide the color for his drawings.”
Before we get to our top story, here is a self portrait of Barlow featured in the April 26, 1941 issue of Colliers (via Mike Lynch Cartoons):

Lee Lorenz described Perry Barlow as a modest man: “Tall, lean, and soft-spoken, he seemed to many of his friends the image of the laconic Texan…(his) drawings remain fresh, and the generous and civilized sensibility behind them is a reminder of a quieter, kinder world.”

Now let’s enjoy a relaxing evening with the world’s greatest nightlife correspondent, Lois Long, who checked out the latest outdoor drinking and dining options in Manhattan. Excerpts:

AL FRESCO…Clockwise from top left: Whimsical illustration of the outdoor cafe at the Hotel St. Moritz by French Post-Impressionist painter Pierre Lelong, circa 1950s; view of St. Moritz Hotel and Cafe’ de la Paix, 1944 (in 1997 Donald Trump planned to gut the St. Moritz and cover it in glass; fortunately it was sold before that could happen); circa 1940s postcard depicting outdoor dining/dancing area at Tavern on the Green; dancing and drinks at Tavern on the Green, 1963. (scan by author/mcny.org/ephemeralnewyork.com/nytimes.com)
DANCING WITH THE STARS…Clockwise, from top left: The Waldorf’s Starlight Rooftop in the 1930s; Lois Long referred to the Waldorf’s multi-talented bandleader Orville Knapp as a “handsome dog”; actress Mary Taylor makes an entrance at the El Morocco in the 1930s; color image of the El Morocco’s Champagne Room, 1960. (notjustalabel.com/findagrave.com/facebook.com/life.com)

 * * *

Keeping the Flame

E.B. White began his column with a hopeful message regarding the power of truth in the face of Nazism:

OH SHUT UP…Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels giving a speech in Lustgarten, Berlin, August 1934. (Wikipedia)

…White also commented on some “unnerving” moments while encountering quadruplets and a Nazi dirigible…

SISTER ACT…At left, the Keys Sisters circa 1936—Leota, Mary, Mona, and Roberta—were a national sensation and America’s most famous set of quadruplets. They were the first quadruplets in history to graduate from college (Baylor 1937), and they traveled thousands of miles on “goodwill tours” to promote Baylor University and the Texas Centennial Exposition of 1936; at right, the Hindenburg looms in the night sky just minutes before it was destroyed while attempting to dock in Lakehurst, N.J.
(baylor.edu/British Pathé)

…and one more from White, here musing about Lucky Luciano’s residence at the Waldorf (Penthouse 39C, where Luciano was registered as “Charles Ross”)…

WALDORF ROUND TABLE…Lucky Luciano (back, center) with associates at the Waldorf-Astoria, circa 1936. Luciano regularly entertained prominent mobsters like Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello at the hotel. (dc.lib.jjay.cuny.edu)

 * * *

Headline Acts

From 1935 to 1939, the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project gave work to more than 12,000 unemployed actors, directors, writers, designers, stagehands, and seamstresses while staging more than 1,200 productions across twenty-nine states. Although Wolcott Gibbs wasn’t too impressed with the project’s “Living Newspaper” performance, he deemed it worth seeing as the best thing on stage in the waning days of the theater season.

TOO SUCCESSFUL…As the director of the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project from 1935 to 1939, Hallie Flanagan (left) oversaw the hiring of thousands of unemployed theater workers and the production of nearly 64,000 theatrical performances. At right, a scene from a “Living Newspaper” performance in the 1930s. Despite its enormous success, the project was abruptly shut down by Congress on June 30, 1939, due to its progressive social commentary. (nara.gov/loc.gov)

 * * *

At the Movies

The romantic musical Showboat was a big hit with Broadway audiences after it premiered in 1927, but the play’s first film adaptation in 1929 fell flat; it was shot as a silent and then partially re-shot to incorporate sound dialogue and singing. Film critic John Mosher referred to that version as something “made awful on the screen,” and wanted his readers to know that the new 1936 adaptation had been “magnificently handled” by director James Whale (perhaps best remembered for 1931’s Frankenstein).

THE OLD MAN…Clockwise, from top left: the show boat Cotton Palace sets out on the Mississippi River to much fanfare in 1936’s Show Boat; Jeanette Dickson and  Jimmy Jackson kick up their heels before the boat departs; Irene Dunne (right) and Helen Morgan in a dramatic scene; Paul Robeson performing his iconic rendition of “Ol’ Man River.” (collider.com/criterion.com/nystagereview.com)

Mosher also reviewed the musical It’s Love Again, finding the comedy “cumbersome,” filled with “very British stuff of the kind we don’t understand over here at all.” He also had little to say about And So They Were Married, expressing sympathy to actress Mary Astor as “the conspicuous victim of effort…”

NOT PLAYING DOCTOR…Folks of certain age will recognize Robert Young from the 1970s TV series Marcus Welby, M.D. Prior to that he appeared in more than one hundred films. Top photo, Athene Seyler, Robert Young, and Jessie Matthews in It’s Love Again; Below, Mary Astor and Melvyn Douglas with child actors Edith Fellows and Jackie Moran in And So They Were Married. (imdb.com)

And then there was Speed, Jimmy Stewart’s first leading role. Mosher couldn’t make sense of it, but the film did launch Stewart into bigger roles.

OUT OF GAS…Jimmy Stewart as race car driver Terry Martin in Speed. Wendy Barrie played the love interest Jane Mitchell, who was secretly the heiress Jane Emery. The film received tepid reviews, but it helped launch Stewart to stardom. (collider.com)

* * *

From Our Advertisers

The folks at Hormel were back on the inside front cover with another tale from the annals of onion soup…

…and summer fashions once again dominated the opening pages of the magazine…

…Packard answered Cadillac’s pastoral ads with one of its own…

…while the distillers at Seagram’s wanted to reassure thirsty Americans that there was plenty of the hard stuff to go around…

…anticipating the season of the June bride, this ad helpfully suggested the Toastmaster toaster (and accessories) as the ideal gift for the newlywed…

…this ad for Stage magazine featured actress Lynn Fontanne as the mysterious countess Iréne in Idiot’s Delight…

…Fontanne’s play, along with several other stage and screen diversions, were advertised in the back of the book…

…pin-up artist George Petty drew up another odd couple for Old Gold cigarettes…

…While the makers of Lucky Strike cigarettes gave their smokes a homey appeal…

…on to our illustrators and cartoonists, we have spot art from Susan Willard Flint…

…and Christina Malman…

…and Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein (for the “Theatre” section)…

…this next bit of spot art has me confused…the signature appears to belong to Arthur Getz, yet the image suggests an early drawing by Ludwig Bemelmans…Getz and Bemelmans were contemporaries at the New Yorker, and both were prolific spot art contributors…

…the drawing seems to anticipate Bemelmans’ 1939 children’s book Madeline…

…Richard Taylor found inspiration on the Broadway stage…

…Peter Arno showed us a sugar daddy receiving an earful (via ear trumpet)…

…Carl Rose offered some Southern-style electioneering in this lively illustration…

…by contrast, James Thurber’s spare lines told us everything we needed to know about this couple…

…Ned Hilton spotted an outlier at an outdoor café...

…Alain again, here anticipating a big surprise…

…Helen Hokinson offered a helpful fashion tip…

…and we close with Mary Petty, and a motherly retort…

Next Time: Queen of the Seas…

Published by

Unknown's avatar

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 “Vast Horizons”

    1. Frank, thanks for catching that. The Old Gold ad is by George Petty. I made a typo. Too many Georges! Thanks for reading and for keeping a keen eye on on these posts!

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment