Above: Illustration and article on "Typhoid Mary" that appeared in 1909 in The New York American. At right, Mary Mallon with other quarantined inmates on North Brother Island. (Wikipedia)
The Irish-born Mary Mallon (1869–1938) lived a simple life as a maid and a cook, and it would have been a life of anonymity save for a sad twist of fate on the day she was born.
Jan. 26, 1935 cover by Perry Barlow.
History knows Mary Mallon as Typhoid Mary. From 1901 to 1907 she would cook for seven wealthy New York families that would later contract typhoid. Mallon was born to a mother who was infected with typhoid, which offers a possible explanation as to why she became an asymptomatic carrier of the disease. Forcibly quarantined on North Brother Island (near Long Island) from 1907 to 1910, Mallon agreed upon her release to take hygienic precautions, including ending her occupation as a cook.
When other jobs failed to pan out, Mallon returned to cooking—this time in restaurants and hotels—infecting many more while evading investigators who were desperately trying to track her down (it is estimated she infected up to 122 people, resulting in as many as four-dozen deaths). When she was finally arrested in 1915, she was returned to North Brother Island, where she would live out her days. Stanley Walker (1898–1962), a native Texan, longtime editor of the New York Herald Tribune, and a New Yorker contributor from 1925 to 1956, featured Mallon in a profile for the Jan. 26, 1935 issue. Some brief excerpts:
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The Latest Sensation
Mary Mallon was the source of sensational headlines in the early 1900s, but even she couldn’t top the media frenzy prompted by the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the trial of accused murderer Bruno Hauptmann.The New Yorker’s Morris Markey went to the courthouse in Flemington, New Jersey, to file this report for “A Reporter at Large.” Excerpts:
TRIAL OF THE CENTURY…Clockwise, from top left: Bruno Hauptmann (center) at his murder trial, which ran from Jan. 2 to Feb. 13, 1935, in Flemington, New Jersey; Charles Lindbergh takes the witness stand; novelist Fanny Hurst and gossip columnist Walter Winchell at the trial on Jan. 30, 1935—the “Trial of the Century” was followed by more than 700 reporters; police ropes contained the large crowds gathered at the courthouse. (Library of Congress/umass.edu/Courier Post)
Hauptmann would be convicted of the crime and immediately sentenced to death. On April 3, 1936, he would meet his end in an electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison, maintaining his innocence to the very end.
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From Our Advertisers
On to our ads, we begin with another colorful spot from Penn Maryland, and jolly times on Miami Beach…
…here is the first in a series of ads that the makers of Old Gold cigarettes (Lorillard) began running in 1935, featuring a sugar daddy and his leggy mistress…they were drawn by George Petty (1884–1975), famed for his “pin-up girls” featured on many magazine covers as well as in ads for Old Gold, Jantzen swimsuits, and TWA, among others…
…here is Petty at work in 1939…
…Buffalo-based Pierce-Arrow was known for its expensive luxury cars, which were not exactly hot sellers during the Great Depression; moreover, Pierce was the only luxury brand that did not offer a lower-priced car to provide cash flow to the company, and contrary to the claims in this ad, Pierce-Arrow would close its doors by 1938…
…one thing alive and well in the 1930s was sexism, and here is a good example from the makers of a popular line of soups…
…The Theatre Guild called upon the talents of James Thurber to promote their latest production…
…and we continue with Thurber as move into the cartoons…
…where Robert Day found some miscasting in a Civil War epic…
…George Price’s floating man seemed to be coming back to earth…
…Day again, with a sure-fire way to defend one’s goal…
…Alan Dunn offered words of wisdom from the pulpit…
…and we close with Barbara Shermund, and a familiar face…
Above: Surgery being performed at the Hospital of Saint Raphael (Conn.) in the late 1930s. Operating rooms were often located near large windows and under skylights to offer greater illumination. (Yale New Haven Hospital)
For all the challenges of 21st century, I always remind myself that advances in medicine during the past ninety years have made our lives better, and substantially longer, even if our current health care system is far from ideal.
Feb. 3, 1934 cover by E. Simms Campbell.
People could live to a ripe old age in the 1930s, however the average life expectancy at birth in 1930 was only 58 for men and 62 for women. The Depression didn’t help matters, and neither did the Dust Bowl, unregulated urban smog, the dramatic rise in smoking, and the lingering effects of more than a decade of bootleg alcohol consumption.
Polio was a serious problem in the 1930s, as was syphilis, which affected as many as ten percent of Americans. Blood groups would not be identified until 1930 (by Nobel Prize-winner Karl Landsteiner), and human nutrition remained something of a puzzle—Vitamin C wasn’t identified until 1932. There was exciting chatter about penicillin (discovered in late 1920s) and the antibacterial effects of sulfonamides (first observed in 1932), but it would be years before antibiotics would come into common use. So yes, infection was also a big killer.
Nevertheless, progress had been made, as told by Morris Markey in the column, “A Reporter at Large.” An excerpt:
FORTRESS ON THE HEIGHTS…Top, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center loomed large when it opened in Washington Heights in 1928; below, New York Hospital, most likely the building described in Morris Markey’s column; at left, Dr. George Crile, Sr., completing his landmark 25,000th thyroid operation in 1936. (CUIMC/Wikipedia/Cleveland Clinic)
This next excerpt describes the work of the anesthetist after the patient receives a spinal injection of novocaine, which had replaced cocaine as a pain blocker. At the start of the 1930s, the most-used anesthetic was ether, used in this account to calm the patient. Ether carried its own risks—in was unstable, and sparks from X-ray machines and other equipment could cause an explosion.
NO SMOKING, PLEASE…Anesthetist in the 1920s carefully administers ether while surgeon swabs a patient with iodine (inset). Ether was unstable, and sparks from equipment could cause an explosion. (Internet Archive/Flickr)
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And Then There’s Maude
American actress and stage designer Maude Ewing Adams (1872–1953) defined the role of “the boy who wouldn’t grow up” in her Broadway adaptations of Peter Pan in the early 1900s (1905, 1906, 1912 and 1915). She would appear in 26 Broadway productions between 1888 and 1916, but after a severe bout of the Spanish flu in 1918 she retired from the stage and focused on developing better stage lights with General Electric; her electric lights ultimately set the industry standard with the advent of sound movies. As this excerpt from “The Talk of the Town” revealed, Adams was also quite shy and highly valued her privacy.
THE RETIRING SORT…Maud Adams in a Broadway publicity photo, circa 1900. (Vintage Everyday)
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In The Trenches
Just before the Nazis decided to turn their country back into a warlike state, Victor Trivas and George Shdanoff wrote and directed an allegorical anti-war film. Niemandsland (released in the U.S. as Hell on Earth) featured five soldiers, from different backgrounds, who find themselves together in a dugout in no man’s land and together come to terms with the absurdity of war. The film premiered in Berlin in December 1931 and was greeted by thunderous applause. A little over a year later it was banned by the Nazis. Critic John Mosher made these observations:
WAR, WHAT’S IT GOOD FOR?…Niemandsland (released in the U.S. as Hell on Earth) featured five soldiers from different backgrounds on a front lines during WWI: a carpenter from Berlin, a mechanic from Paris, an English officer, a Jewish tailor and a Black dancer (the only one who understands everyone’s languages). Actor and dancer Louis W. Douglas (top right) was a Philadelphia native who moved to Paris in 1925 with his dancing partner, Josephine Baker, in the popular La Revue Nègre. He went on to establish a successful musical and film career in Germany until his death in 1939. (silverinahaystack.wordpress.com/IMDB)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with this jolly color image from Lucky Strike representing the joys of cigarette smoking…
…a trio of ads culled from the back pages, everything from “Tiara Trouble” (apparently a common problem) to a smoking penguin introducing a new line of menthol cigarettes, KOOL, challenging the dominance of the Spud menthol brand (we know who won that battle)…in the final ad, Atlantic City resort hotel Haddon Hall attempted to drum up business using a slavery/emancipation theme—Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is at hand…why not slip the shackles of work and run away to sunshine and freedom?…
…These Paul Whiteman ads were ubiquitous in the 1930s…the distinctive caricature of his pudgy, mustachioed face—Whiteman’s “Potato Head” emblem—was featured in ads and on 78 rpm record labels and various promotional items…on the more classical side, violinist David Rubinoff sawed away on his famed $100,000 Stradivarius for audiences at the Roosevelt Hotel…
…automobile ads continued to grace the pages of The New Yorker, including this one suggesting that young blue bloods would look quite smart in a ’34 Chevy…
…in the 1930s Studebaker marketed car lines including the high-end President, the mid-priced Commander, and the low-priced Dictator…the Dictator was introduced in 1927, so named because it “dictated the standard” other automobile makes would be obliged to follow…the rise of Mussolini and Hitler attached unsavory connotations to the car’s moniker…it was renamed “Director” for European markets and was finally abandoned in 1937…
…Chrysler continued to push its radical new Airflow, here demonstrating how it blows the doors off of an old-timer…
…as we jump into our cartoons, Kemp Starrett referenced the Airflow in his latest contribution to The New Yorker…
…the issue included two from George Price…a playful pairing in the events section…
…and a somewhat unkind nod to new Hollywood star Katharine Hepburn…apparently David O. Selznick had misgivings about casting a “horse face” like her…well, she obviously proved him wrong…
…the magazine pulled out this old illustration by H.O. Hofman to break up the copy in Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column…
…more antics from the precocious set, courtesy Perry Barlow…
…Mary Petty offered this observation on the state of medicine in 1934…
…a sobering and topical contribution from Alan Dunn…
…Carl Rose made preparations for the annual Charity Ball…
…and James Thurber gave us Part III of his “War Between Men and Women”…
It’s hard to believe in this day and age that a theoretical physicist could enjoy rock star status, but then Albert Einstein wasn’t your everyday theoretical physicist.
Dec. 2, 1933 cover by Helen Hokinson.
A two-part profile of Einstein (1879–1955) by Alva Johnston (with terrific caricature by Al Frueh) examined the life and “idol” status of a man who would define the idea of genius in the 20th century. Although Einstein desired to live an almost reclusive existence at Princeton University, Johnston noted that he had become “fairly reconciled to the occupation of popular idol.”
Einstein was at Princeton thanks to the rise of Adolf Hitler, who came to power in Germany in early 1933 while Einstein was visiting the United States. Returning to Europe that March, Einstein knew he could not return to his home country (indeed, the Gestapo had raided his Berlin apartment and eventually seized all of his property), so when Einstein landed in Antwerp, Belgium on March 28, 1933, he immediately went to the German consulate and surrendered his passport, formally renouncing his German citizenship.
I’M OUTTA HERE…Albert Einstein with a Zionist delegation from France, Belgium, and England upon leaving the SS Belgenland in Antwerp, Belgium, 1933. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
After some time in Europe and Great Britain, in October 1933 Einstein accepted an offer made earlier by from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey to serve as a resident scholar. When he arrived with his wife, Elsa, he said he would seclude himself at the Institute and focus on his teaching and research.
(NY Times, Oct. 18, 1933)EINSTEIN WASN’T FIDDLIN’ AROUND when he played his cherished violin—he once said that if he hadn’t been a scientist, he would have been a musician. This photo was taken at Einstein’s Princeton home in November 1933—he and fellow members of a string quartet were practicing for a December concert at the Waldorf-Astoria to raise money for German-Jewish refugees. From left to right, sitting: Arthur (Ossip) Giskin, Toscha Seidel, Albert Einstein, and Bernard Ocko; standing: Estelle Manheim (Seidel’s wife), Elsa Einstein and unidentified man. (Leo Baeck Institute)
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Stop and Go
E.B. White devoted his “Notes and Comment” to Manhattan’s traffic situation, which he found manageable as long as tourists stayed out of the way…
White also noted the perils of Park Avenue, especially the taxi drivers (distracted by those newfangled radios) darting between the islands…
Park Avenue in the 1930s. (geographicguide.com)
…and then there was Fifth Avenue, notorious for traffic jams, made worse on weekends by the tourist traffic…
Fifth Avenue in 1932. (New York State Archives)
…later in “The Talk of the Town” White continued his thoughts on New York taxis, namely the introduction of coin-operated radios installed for use by passengers…
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Fly Newark
Albert L. Furth took us off the mean streets and into the air when he filed this account about the Newark Metropolitan Airport for “A Reporter at Large.” Furth seemed put off by the cachet of European airports and their many amenities, given that the Newark airport—although admittedly utilitarian—was the busiest in the world. An excerpt:
FREQUENT FLIER…Albert Furth noted that Newark Municipal Airport logged a landing or departure every thirteen-and-a-half minutes. Above, passengers boarding a Boston-bound American Airlines Condor at Newark Airport in 1930. In those simpler times, passengers just walked to the runway and climbed on board. The airport had opened two years earlier on 68 acres of reclaimed swampland along the Passaic River. It was the first major commercial airport in the New York metro area and the first anywhere with a paved runway. (njmonthly.com)
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Goodnight, Speakeasy
Lois Long was an 17-year-old Vassar student when Prohibition went into effect in 1919, so when she started her career in New York in 1922 the only nightlife she knew revolved around speakeasies. Although she held Prohibition officers in disdain, she also believed that the repeal of the 18th Amendment would lower the quality of New York nightlife—the food, the “adroit service,” and the “genial din” of the speakeasy. Excerpts:
FROM LOUCHE TO LEGAL…Lois Long was saying a sad goodbye to her beloved speakeasies; perhaps the Algonquin Hotel (here, circa 1930) would offer some cheer. (Pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
Abercrombie & Fitch (then an outfitter for the elite outdoorsman) was offering holiday shoppers everything from multi-tool knives to cocktail shakers…
…while the folks at Clerevu telescopes found a growing market for folks who used their product for anything but stargazing…
…with Repeal just days away, the Pleasant Valley Wine Company of New York hoped folks would pop a few of their corks before the good stuff arrived from France…
…the British were coming to the rescue via the Berry Brothers, who were overseeing the importation of liquor from their offices at Rockefeller Center’s British Empire Building…
…let’s look at an assortment of one-column ads…the center strip features an ad promoting Angna Enters’ appearance for “one evening only” at The Town Hall (123 West 43rd Street)…Enters (1897–1989) was an American dancer, mime, painter and writer who likely performed her piece Moyen Age…
FEEL THAT STRETCH…Angna Enters performing Moyen Age, circa early 1930s. (NYPL)
…we begin our cartoons with Gardner Rea, and a dedicated bell ringer…
…Otto Soglow showed us a softer side of The Little King…
…Peter Arno revealed the human side of the posh set…
…and we close the Dec. 2 issue with this classic from James Thurber…
…on to Dec. 9, 1933, and a cover by an artist we haven’t seen in awhile, Ilonka Karasz…
Dec. 9, 1933 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
…and we open with this comment by E.B. White, who along with critic Lewis Mumford had once voiced displeasure over the massive Rockefeller Center project. However, while viewing the floodlit tower by night, he decided that he would have to eat his words, observing how “the whole thing swims up tremendously into the blue roxyspheres of the sky”…
MEA CULPA…E.B. White gained a new perspective on Rockefeller Center, pictured here in December 1933. (Wikipedia)
…we continue with White, who also offered his thoughts on something heretofore unthinkable—a proposal to start putting beer in cans…
…it would happen about a year later…on Jan. 24, 1935, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company, in partnership with the American Can Company, delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale to drinkers in Richmond, Virginia…
(seletyn.com)
…and despite White’s doubts, apparently ninety-one percent of the first drinkers of the product approved of the canned beer, although when Krueger’s launched their ad blitz they had to include instructions (and a new tool) to open the darn things…
(seletyn.com)
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Dreamscapes
Critic Lewis Mumford offered his thoughts on a recent exhibit by a young surrealist named Salvador Dali…
MIDDLEBROW SURREALIST…The Triangular Hour by Salvador Dali, 1933. (wikiart.org)
…and we move along to moving pictures, where John Mosher was showing some appreciation for Joan Crawford (1906–1977) in the pre-Code film Dancing Lady…
SHE HAD IT ALL…Audiences and critics alike were wowed by Joan Crawford’s performance in Dancing Lady, which featured a star-studded and eclectic cast. Clockwise from top left, Clark Gable plays a Broadway director who becomes Crawford’s love interest; Crawford displays her dancing talent in a Broadway rehearsal; Dancing Lady featured an early film appearance by The Three Stooges, pictured here with Gable and the Stooges’ leader at the time, Ted Healy; Crawford with Stooge Larry Fine—in the original film, Fine completes his jigsaw puzzle only to discover (to his disgust) that it’s a picture of Adolf Hitler. The Hitler scene was removed by the Production Code; its enforcers claimed it insulted a foreign head of state. (IMDB)
In addition to Crawford, the star-studded cast included Clark Gable, Fred Astaire (in his film debut), Franchot Tone (who was married to Crawford from 1935-39 and made seven movies with her), The Three Stooges, Nelson Eddy, and Robert Benchley, who played a reporter in the film.
Dancing Lady was the film debut of Astaire, making Crawford the first on-screen dance partner of the famed hoofer…
(IMDB)
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More From Our Advertisers
We begin with this full-page advertisement from Heinz, which went to great lengths and expense to make their ad appear to part of The New Yorker’s editorial content, even featuring a Perry Barlow cartoon of a boy making a mess with their product…
…another New Yorker contributor who occasionally went over to the advertising side was Alexander Woollcott, here shilling for Chrysler…
…Kayser, purveyor of women’s hosiery and underthings, was going for some humorous holiday cheer, but the effect is a bit unsettling…
…liquor-related ads began to proliferate with the end of the Prohibition…this one from Martini & Rossi…
…Continental Distilling was hoping to grab its share of gin sales with its Dixie Belle American gin…
…from the same folks who brought us Fleishmann’s yeast (and kept The New Yorker afloat in its early lean years) came this American dry gin…
…Ruppert’s Beer was back with another full-page color ad by Hans Flato…
…on to our cartoons, and Santa again, this time besieged by an aggressive tot as rendered by Helen Hokinson…
…Carl Rose found an unlikely customer at a newsstand…
…here is the last of four cartoons Walter Schmidt published in the New Yorker between 1931 and 1933…
…Peter Arno left his glamorous world of nightclubs and high society parties to look in on life at a boarding house…
…and we close with the delightful Barbara Shermund…
A New Yorker State of Mind 