PeterArno’s cover illustration for the NewYorker’s final issue of 1929 aptly captured the mood of that decade’s last days.
Dec. 28, 1929 cover by Peter Arno.
As we’ve seen in the pages of the magazine in 1928 and 1929, people were growing weary of Jazz Age frivolity even before the great crash. For example, LoisLong’s weekly “Tables for Two” column, which deftly captured the nightlife scene of speakeasies and flappers, appeared infrequently in the decade’s last years, and would disappear altogether in 1930. Once herself the epitome of the carefree flapper, Long was now a mother with a one-year-old toddler.
In his “Notes and Comment” column, E.B. White ended the decade on a humorous, if somewhat doleful note:
In “The Talk of the Town,” White also looked to the new year, which would see AlSmith’s Empire State Building rise into the air and forevermore define the city’s skyline, even if his dirigible mooring mast proved to be more of a marketing stunt than a working feature of the new skyscraper:
A LOT OF HOT AIR…Image from the August 1930 issue of ModernMechanix. The idea of transatlantic dirigibles ferrying passengers to skyscrapers seemed plausible in 1930, but in reality giant bags of flammable hydrogen, attached to wind-whipped masts above densely populated areas, proved impractical, if not downright insane. (Modern Mechanix)
“Talk” (via E.B. White) took another shot at illustrator WillyPogany, who had recently updated the drawings in AliceinWonderland, transforming little Alice into a tween flapper. This time Pogany was “taking liberties” with dear old Mother Goose:
BIG DADDY…WillyPogany’s rendering of Old King Cole left something to be desired, according to E.B. White, who found the resemblance to investment banker OttoKahn (below) rather unsettling.(comic art fans.com/thoughtco.com)
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Historian FrederickLewisAllen, who would go on to write the definitive history of the 1920s in his bestselling Only Yesterday (1931), offered some tongue-in-cheek advice on how the average American could contribute to renewed economic prosperity. An excerpt:
HowardBrubaker also finished the decade on a wry note, his “Of All Things” column ending thusly:
The Dec. 28 profile (titled “The Wizard”) featured ThomasEdison, the first in a three-part series written by AlvaJohnston (with illustration by HugoGellert):
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The New Hollywood
The decade would begin with a new crop of “talkie” stars that would signal a new era for Hollywood. Among the emerging stars was the young GaryCooper…
SHE LIKES THE SILENT TYPE…MaryBrian as Molly Wood and GaryCooper as the Virginian in the Victor Fleming-directed film TheVirginian. (1929) (onceuponatimeinawestern.com)
FromOurAdvertisers
The Dec. 28 issue was filled with ads that enticed readers to escape the cold of winter and head south…
…and given the new economic climate, grasping social climbers could travel to nearby Havana and still claim to have visited a foreign land…
…and Pan American Airlines offered this unique take on the market crash to entice readers to sunny Havana…
…despite the crash, the folks at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company still clung to the fantasy of the posh set…you might be flat broke, but you could keep a stiff upper lip while you sucked on a Camel, old sport…
…on to our illustrators, MiguelCovarrubias contributed this drawing for the theater review section…
…and our cartoons are by PeterArno…
…JohnReynolds…
…and I. Klein, who gave us an appropriate image for the turn of a decade…
As a book reviewer for the New Yorker, Dorothy Parker could eviscerate any writer with the tip of her pen, and often did so.
Nov. 30, 1929 cover by Adolph K. Kronengold.
One writer, however, who received consistent praise from Parker was Ernest Hemingway, whom she first met in 1926. In the pages of the 1920s New Yorker, Parker particularly lauded Hemingway’s short story collections, In Our Time (1925) and Men Without Women (1927), which bookended his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises (which Parker thought OK but overly hyped). When the New Yorker profiled Hemingway in the Nov. 30, 1929 issue, it naturally turned to Parker to do the honors (although Robert Benchley, a good friend of Hemingway’s, could have offered his own take on the author) :
SHE’S A FAN…Dorothy Parker was a long-time admirer of the work of Ernest Hemingway. His last work of the 1920s, A Farewell to Arms, was serialized in Scribner’s Magazine and published in September 1929. The success of that book made Hemingway financially independent. (Mugar Library/Wikipedia)
During Hemingway’s Paris years Parker actually took a boat with him to France (in 1926, along with mutual friend Robert Benchley) and so got a firsthand taste of his bohemian adventures. By the time the New Yorker profiled Hemingway, the Jazz Age was dead and Paris’s so-called “Lost Generation” was a thing of the past. Indeed, Hemingway had already been in the States for more than a year, returning in 1928 with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer (their son, Patrick Miller Hemingway, was born in June 1928 in Kansas City. Patrick still lives in Kansas City, and is now 90 years old).
Biographer Jeffrey Meyers notes in his book Hemingway: A Biography, that Hemingway of the early Paris years was a “tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man,” features that were not lost on Parker:
I’M TAKING NOTES…Ernest Hemingway (left), with Harold Loeb, Lady Duff Twysden (in hat), Hemingway’s first wife Hadley Richardson, Donald Ogden Stewart (obscured), and Pat Guthrie (far right) at a café in Pamplona, Spain, July 1925. The group formed the basis for the characters in The Sun Also Rises: Twysden as Brett Ashley, Loeb as Robert Cohn, Stewart as Bill Gorton, and Guthrie as Mike Campbell. (Wikipedia)
…more from Parker on Hemingway’s magnetic appeal…
MAN ABOUT TOWN…Ernest Hemingway (far right) in 1926 in Paris, outside the city’s famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop. He is pictured here with Sylvia Beach (on his right), the shop’s founder. (Collection Lausat/Keyston-France/parisinsidersguide.com)
Although Hemingway remains widely read and revered, such a hagiography — especially from someone as reliably critical as Parker — would be unlikely today. From his safari massacres of countless animals (in pursuit of his manhood) to his mistreatment of four wives and general misogyny, he is a far more complex and controversial figure today. One thing Parker got right: his short stories have held up much better than his novels. As for the profile, Parker concluded:
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Meet the Fokkers
In previous blogs we have established that E.B. White was an aviation enthusiast. He seems never to have missed an opportunity to catch a ride into the skies, so when pilots were conducting test flights of a prototype Fokker F-32 at New Jersey’s Teterboro field, he was there to file this brief for “The Talk of the Town”…
SKYTRAIN…Title card from a silent Paramount newsreel reporting on a November 1929 flight of the Fokker F-32 at Teterboro. Note how the title card uses a railroad reference (“Pullman”) as a descriptive for the passenger cabin. Indeed, early airplane passenger cabins were very much designed along the lines of Pullman cars. At right, a circa 1930 photo, possibly of a celebration of the plane’s arrival in Los Angeles. I imagine the FAA would not look kindly on this behavior today. (YouTube/petersonfield.org)
White’s enthusiasm for the aviation age is palpable in his description of the Fokker as it took off and climbed to a thousand feet:
ROUGHING IT…Passengers in Washington D.C. prepare to board what was perhaps the same plane White flew on at Teterboro. Note how they were required to walk across a muddy field to reach the plane’s entrance. The Fokker was the first four-engine commercial aircraft built in America and the largest land plane in the world at the time (there was a much larger amphibious German plane). At right, the plane’s four engines were configured back-to-back. (Wikipedia/petersonfield.org) click to enlarge
I suppose it was in line with the New Yorker’s stance of keeping things light, but White’s dispassionate account of a plane crash earlier that day seemed a bit cold. From the air he described a scene just north of midtown, where a crowd had gathered near the site the crash. The pilot was killed, but a passenger managed to parachute to safety.
DOWN TO EARTH…Pilot Charles Reid died instantly when his plane slammed into a YMCA on 64th Street on Nov. 20, 1929. His passenger parachuted to safety. E.B. White referred to the crash in his “Talk” article. (digital-hagley-org)Excerpt from a Nov. 21, 1929 New York Times account of the crash. (NYTimes archives)
Speaking of crashes, the Fokker on which E.B. White was a passenger crashed a week later (Nov. 27, 1929) during a certification flight from Roosevelt Field to Teterboro Airport. No one was killed, but the aircraft was destroyed. The design itself didn’t last much longer — considered underpowered for its size, and too expensive at the dawn of the Depression, it was phased out by the end of 1930.
Perhaps after all of that flying, White needed something to calm the nerves, a subject he addressed in his “Notes and Comment” column:
THE WOMAN’S HOUR, according to E.B. White in his “Notes and Comment” column. (vinepair.com)
* * *
The Little Gallery That Could
“Talk,” via art critic Murdock Pemberton, had more to say about the new Museum of Modern Art, that is, not taking it very seriously…
UPSTART…Although the New Yorker’s art critic Murdock Pemberton seemed dismissive of the new Museum of Modern Art, its first month’s attendance was more than 47,000 visitors. Image above from the MoMA exhibition Painting in Paris, Jan. 19-March 2, 1930. (MoMA)
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Welcome to Thurber World
In 1931 James Thurber published his second book, The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, which consisted of pieces he had done for the New Yorker, including eight stories (from Dec. 29, 1928 to Aug. 9, 1930) that featured the marital escapades of a couple in their middle thirties, the Monroes, modeled on Thurber’s real-life marriage to his wife, Althea.
The Nov. 30, 1929 issue included Thurber’s fifth installment of the Monroe saga, “Mr. Monroe Holds the Fort,” in which a fearful Mr. Monroe, left home alone (his wife was visiting her mother), imagines there are burglars in the house:
…like his famous character Walter Mitty, which Thurber would introduce in 1939, Mr. Monroe had an equally lively imagination…
The character of Mr. Monroe would see new life in the fall of 1969 when NBC debuted My World… and Welcome to It, a half-hour sitcom based on James Thurber’s stories and cartoons. The actor William Windom portrayed John Monroe, a writer and cartoonist who worked for a magazine called The Manhattanite. In the show, Monroe’s daydreams and fantasies were usually based, if sometimes loosely, on Thurber’s writings.
THURBER AS A SITCOM…The actor William Windom portrayed John Monroe, a writer and cartoonist who worked for a magazine called The Manhattanite, on the 1969-70 NBC sitcom My World… and Welcome to It. Joan Hotchkis played his wife Ellen, and Lisa Gerritsen portrayed his inquisitive daughter Lydia. (tvguidemagazine.com/sitcomsonline.com)HOME SWEET HOME…Left, the opening credits for My World… and Welcome to It featured actor William Windom (as John Monroe) entering a animated house based on James Thurber’s famous “House and Woman” cartoon, which was originally featured in the March 23, 1935 issue of the New Yorker. (mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com)
My World… and Welcome to It was cancelled after one season. Nevertheless, it would win two Emmies: one for Windom and another for Best Comedy Series.
* * *
Thank Heaven for Maurice
Things were looking up a bit in the talking movie department thanks to the Ernst Lubitsch-directed The Love Parade, featuring recent French import Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald. Film critic John Mosher observed:
MUCH-NEEDED LAUGHS…Jeannette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade (1929), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. (MoMA)
Mosher was much less impressed by another musical, Show of Shows, featuring an all-star cast and Technicolor that added up to little more than a “stunt”…
IS THAT ALL?…Warner Brothers Show of Shows offered “77 Hollywood Stars” and “1000 Hollywood Beauties” — 80 percent of it in Technicolor, but that wasn’t enough to impress the New Yorker’s film critic John Mosher. At right, Arte Frank Fay (l) and comic Sid Silvers in a color scene from the film. (IMDB)
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A Guide to Christmas Shopping, 1929
Lois Long’s fashion column, “On and Off the Avenue,” predictably grew in length as the Christmas holiday approached, and in the Nov. 30 issue she offered advice on how to go about one’s shopping duties. Some brief excerpts:
TRAILBLAZER…Lois Long guided New Yorker readers through a list of “big, bewildering stores” in her “On and Off the Avenue” column. At left, the B. Altman department store, circa 1920s. (thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/PBS)
…Long’s column was peppered with holiday-themed spots, including this one by Julian DeMiskey…
From Our Advertisers
…we start with a couple of back page ads, including one from the National Winter Garden’s burlesque show and an ad announcing the imminent arrival of Peter Arno’sParade (just $3.50, or signed by Arno himself for $25)…
Cover and inside pages from Peter Arno’sParade. (Amazon)
…another ad hailed the arrival of the New Yorker’s second album (read more about it here at Michael Maslin’s excellent Ink Spill)…
The first and second New Yorker albums. (pbase.com/michaelmaslin.com)
…other ads, in full color, featured cultural appropriation by the Santa Fe railroad…
…bright silks available at the Belding Hemingway Company…
…silk stockings from Blue Moon…
…for our cartoons, Helen Hokinson on the challenges of holiday shopping…
…Hokinson again, at tea with her ladies…
…Barbara Shermund, and the miracle of broadcast radio crossed with the nuances of a dinner party…
…and Shermund again, with a hapless friend of a clueless family…
Two weeks had passed since the “Black Tuesday” collapse of share prices on the New York Stock Exchange, but the New Yorker went about business as usual, E.B. White opening his “Notes and Comment” with a complaint — not about the economy — but about a marketing ploy that had New York University shilling magazines on behalf of Funk & Wagnalls.
Nov. 16, 1929 cover by Peter Arno. No doubt Arno drew inspiration from his own domestic situation (with wife and New Yorker columnist Lois Long and their infant daughter Patricia Arno).
White mocked the contents of a letter from NYU that promised a “free” education to subscribers of Funk & Wagnalls’ middlebrow Literary Digest.
EASY-CHAIR EDUCATION…Founded in 1890 by Isaac Funk (of Funk & Wagnalls fame), the Literary Digest offered readers condensed articles from various American and European publications. The weekly magazine surpassed the one million circulation mark in 1927, but declined precipitously in 1936 after its famed (and usually reliable) presidential poll picked Alf Landon over FDR. It folded in 1938. (Pinterest)
White detailed how NYU’s director of public information promised untold riches to potential Literary Digest subscribers…
YOU CAN BE FAMOUS, FOR JUST PENNIES A DAY…E.B. White mocked an NYU letter that promoted its “hook-up” with the Literary Digest, wryly suggesting that recognition in NYU’s Hall of Fame for Great Americans was within reach of magazine subscribers. The photo above (circa 1935) shows the Hall of Fame’s colonnade, which half-encircled the university library (both designed by Stanford White) and housed 98 bronze busts. A financially strapped NYU sold its University Heights Campus, along with the Hall of Fame and library, to the City University of New York in 1973. (WPA photo via boweryboyshistory.com)
…and the not so subtle revelation that the “free” education came with a price:
Here’s Julian De Miskey’s illustration that accompanied White’s “Notes”…
* * *
The Lighter Side of Bankruptcy
Evidence of the recent stock market crash was scant in the Nov. 16 issue, save for this blurb from Howard Brubaker…
…and this short piece by Margaret Fishback, who took a characteristically lighthearted approach to the devastating news:
Fishback (1900-1985), a widely published poet and prose author from the late 1920s to the 1960s, was also a successful advertising copywriter for Macy’s and a number of other companies.
A WAY WITH WORDS…Margaret Fishback wrote a number of poetry and prose books, including Safe Conduct: When to Behave–and Why, a book of etiquette illustrated by the New Yorker’sHelen Hokinson. During the 1930s Fishback was reputed to be the world’s highest-paid female advertising copywriter. (necessaryfiction.com/Wikipedia)
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We Stand Corrected
A correction of sorts was offered by Robert Benchley (aka “Guy Fawkes”) regarding one of his recent “Wayward Press” columns, in which the fatal crash of famed aviator Wilmer Stultz’s stunt plane was misattributed to drunkenness:
Following the above intro, Benchley included this letter from a representative of the Roosevelt Flying Corporation, John McK. Stuart, in which Stuart explained the real reason for the pilot’s fatal crash, and the source of a vicious rumor:
The cause of the crash, as reported in the New York Times, was attributed to two young men who begged for a ride on Stultz’s stunt plane, a Waco Taperwing, in the early afternoon of July 1, 1929. An investigation of the wreckage found shoes from both passengers jammed under a bar connected to the rudder, rendering it inoperable. In his letter, Stuart explained:
Apparently Stultz’s passengers had braced themselves during stunt maneuvers by jamming their feet under the rudder bar. According to the Times, after a couple of rolling stunts the plane began to climb again from about 200 feet when it rotated nose down and plunged into the ground. Both passengers were killed instantly. Stultz died shortly thereafter at a Long Island hospital.
BRIEF FLIGHT THROUGH LIFE…Clockwise, from top left, Wilmer Stultz (1900-1929) in undated photo; coverage of the fatal crash in the July 2, 1929 New York Times; Stultz, Amelia Earhart, and Lou Gordon feted in front of City Hall, New York City, following their successful flight across the Atlantic in June 1928. Stultz was the pilot of the Fokker Trimotor “Friendship,” aboard which Earhart became the first woman passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane. Gordon served as the flight’s on-board mechanic. (Boston Public Library/New York Times/Amazon)
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Cowardly Attack
The acclaimed English playwright and composer Noël Coward was much beloved by the New Yorker, so it pained Robert Benchley to write an unflattering review of Coward’s operetta, Bitter Sweet:
IN THE SOPRANO KEY…British musical star Evelyn Laye (1900-1996) played the leading role of Sari in Noël Coward’s Broadway production of Bitter Sweet. (From The Bygone)
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Hat Shop Heroine
Another operetta — Mlle. Modiste — was getting a Broadway revival at Jolson’s 59th Street Theatre. Its star, Fritzi Scheff (1879-1954), was the subject of a short profile penned by Alison Smith. The operetta, written expressly for Scheff, premiered on Broadway in 1905 at the Knickerbocker Theatre, and enjoyed many revivals. Smith found that after nearly 25 years, Scheff still embodied the role of the hat shop girl who dreamed of being an opera singer. An excerpt:
From left, Fritzi Scheff in Mlle. Modiste (1905); Al Frueh’s caricature of Scheff for the profile; Scheff circa 1910. (Wikipedia/IMDB)
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Best of Both Worlds
Although the Gothic style was quickly falling out of fashion in the age of Art Deco, architecture critic George S. Chappell found much to admire in Schultze & Weaver’s new Hotel Lexington, part of the hotel construction boom in New York’s Midtown:
STILL ATTACHED TO THE EARTH…The Lexington today, now a Marriott property, at 511 Lexington Avenue and 48th Street. (ohrllc.com)
Chappell also admired the “smart” new Stewart Building, calling it the perfect setting for “feminine luxuries”…
Sadly, the Stewart Company folded just months after the opening of its new building, an early victim of the Depression. Bonwit Teller took over the building in 1930 and stayed until 1979. It was demolished in 1980 to make way for Trump Tower.
BYGONE ELEGANCE…Stewart and Company’s metal and ceramic 5th Avenue entrance, detail, 1929; Stewart Millinery Shop, 1929 (image from Vogue); detail from ornamental frieze above the 8th story, 1929. The building was demolished in 1980 to make way for Trump Tower. Neither the frieze nor the ornate ironwork were saved. (Museum of the City of New York/Vogue via drivingfordeco.com)
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A Survivor’s Tale
The New Yorker hailed Soviet writer Valentine Kataev’s debut novel, The Embezzlers, as “the first hearty and sane laugh that has been heard over the noise of Russian propaganda.” Published in 1926 and translated into English in 1929, the novel was a satire of bureaucracy in the new Soviet state. Remarkably, Kataev (1897-1986) was able to write challenging, satirical works throughout his long life and career without running afoul of Soviet authorities, or falling victim to Stalin’s terror campaigns:
SATIRICAL SOVIET…Valentine Kataev circa 1930. His 1926 debut novel, The Embezzlers, was a satire of Soviet bureaucracy. (russkiymir.ru)
Another title receiving a favorable review, Is Sex Necessary? — a spoof of popular sex manuals and how-to books — was co-written by the New Yorker’sJames Thurber and E.B. White, with illustrations provided by Thurber.
HE CAN DRAW, TOO…Although James Thurber had yet to publish one of his drawings in the New Yorker, the book Is Sex Necessary? featured 42 of them, including the illustration at right that demonstrated the male greeting posture, and below, the posture of a man who could not discern the difference between love and passion. (brainpickings.org)
* * *
Old News
Writer (and later screenwriter) David Boehm temporarily took over the history column “That Was New York” from playwright Russell Crouse and contributed the first in a series of articles featuring clippings from 18th century newspapers (with illustration by Julian De Miskey):
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From Our Advertisers
The Depression was coming, but you wouldn’t know it by the ads that appeared in the Nov. 16 issue, which featured the latest in resort wear, and holiday fashions for the maid…
…the Jay Thorpe store assumed some readers had $1,250 to spare for this coat and muff (equivalent to about $18,000 today), while Udall and Ballou jewelers offered a brooch for $9,000 (or nearly $130,000 today)…
…Saks offered a “simple little tailored bag” for $5, although the one pictured in the ad would set you back $500 ($7,200 today)…
…in this clever ad for Kayser silk hosiery, illustrator Ian Oliver drew a shelf from negative space to allow the model some room to lean…
…makers of the Ronson cigarette lighter found a new use for their product, adapting it to serve as a perfume atomizer…I wonder how many women accidentally lit their hair on fire, or took a shot of perfume to the eyes when they wished to have a smoke…
…while you had the lighter handy, you could light up an Old Gold, and thanks to the lack of truth-in-advertising standards, you could do it believing that you were also warding off a winter cold…
…from the back pages we have these gems from Brunswick records, and Reuben’s restaurant, which featured written testimonials from famous clientele including the “It Girl” actress Clara Bow, cartoonist Harry Hershfield, and playwright Noël Coward …
…Dr. Seuss offered his latest take on the uses of Flit insecticide, here sprayed directly into a user’s face for maximum benefit…
…our cartoons come courtesy of Gardner Rea, who looked in on an act of charity…
…Reginald Marsh illustrated a new use for broadcast radio…
…Barbara Shermund put the “idle” in “idle rich”…
…Garrett Price gave us this lovely illustration of a casual reader…
…and Helen Hokinson went shopping with one of her society women…
Avery Hopwood’s 1919 Broadway hit, The Gold Diggers, was among cultural events of the late teens that signaled the dawn of new age; namely, the Jazz Age.
Sept. 7, 1929 cover by Sue Williams.
So it seems appropriate that the play, when adapted to the screen in 1929 as a Technicolor talkie, would also signal the end of that age. As the New Yorker’s film critic John Mosher observed in his review of The Gold Diggers of Broadway, the themes that seemed new and daring a decade earlier had been played out, the “general humors” of the picture having “become very familiar”…
The film featured Nancy Welford, Winnie Lightner and Ann Pennington as three chorus girls who try to entice a wealthy backer to invest money in their struggling Broadway show. The film was a big hit, and it made a star of Winnie Lightner (1899-1971), who played the boldest “Gold Digger” of the trio.
PROSPECTORS…Clockwise from top left, Ina Claire as the original “Gold Digger” with Bruce McRae in the 1919 Broadway play The Gold Diggers; lobby card for the 1929 film Gold Diggers of Broadway; image from the film’s “Tiptoe Thru the Tulips” song-and-dance number; Winnie Lightner works her charms on Albert Gran in a scene from the film. (Wikipedia/IMDB/TCM-YouTube)IT’S FUN MAKING PICTURES…Helen Foster, Ann Pennington, Nancy Welford and William Bakewell in a publicity photo from 1929’s Gold Diggers of Broadway. (IMDB)
Lightner wasn’t the only actor to steal the show. The film also proved a winner for crooner Nick Lucas (1897-1982), who performed two hit songs written for the movie — “Painting the Clouds with Sunshine” and “Tiptoe through the Tulips.” Yes, that second song was the very same tune Tiny Tim rode to fame nearly 40 years later.
TIPTOE THROUGH HISTORY…At left, Nick Lucas sings what would be become his signature song “Tiptoe through the Tulips” to Lilyan Tashman in the Gold Diggers of Broadway. At right, forty years later, Lucas sang the song on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson (apparently using the same guitar) on the occasion of singer Tiny Tim’s televised wedding to Victoria Mae Budinger (“Miss Vicky”). Tiny Tim (inset) also made “Tiptoe through the Tulips” his signature song, although his was a campier version, sung in a falsetto, vibrato voice accompanied by his trademark ukulele. (YouTube)
Here’s a clip from the film, featuring Nick Lucas,Lilyan Tashman, and a cast of singers and dancers performing “Tiptoe through the Tulips”…
The Gold Diggers of Broadway was a “pre-code” film, that is, a film made during a brief period of the early sound era (roughly 1929 through mid-1934) when censorship codes were not enforced and many films openly depicted themes ranging from promiscuity and prostitution to amoral acts of violence.
A LEG UP ON THE CENSORS…Warner Brothers publicity photo of Dorothy Mackaill, who played a secretary-turned-prostitute in 1931’s Safe in Hell. (Wikipedia)
Those unenforced codes had their origins in the early 1920s. In response to outcries from preachers and politicians alike over the immortality of Hollywood (both on- and off-screen), the president of Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor — fearing that cries for censorship would cut into his profits — called a February 1921 meeting of his studio rivals at Delmonico’s restaurant on 5th Avenue. At the meeting Zukor (1873-1976) distributed a set of 14 rules that would guide every Paramount production (Zukor’s studio at that time was actually known as Famous Players-Lasky). The rules covered everything from “improper sex attraction” to “unnecessary depictions of bloodshed.”
It was also Zukor’s idea to appoint the former U.S. Postmaster General, Will Hays, as President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. It would be Hays’ job to enforce the code and generally “clean up” Hollywood. However, until mid-1934 both Hays and the code served mostly as publicity ploys to keep the preachers and politicians off the backs of studio execs.
Zukor was profiled by Niven Busch, Jr. in the Sept. 7 issue (with portrait by George Shellhase). In his opening paragraph, Busch commented on “Pop” Zukor’s efforts to stave off the censors:
* * *
Delmonico’s Redux
The famed Delmonico’s restaurant that provided the setting for Adolph Zukor’s “14 rules” meeting in 1921 closed its doors in 1923, a victim of Prohibition (more people dined at home, where they could still drink). Writing in the Sept. 7 “Talk of the Town,” Bernard A. Bergman described plans for the long-awaited opening of a new Delmonico’s in a skyscraper bearing the same name…
RICH DESSERTS…Dinner in honor of French Navy Admiral Paul Campion at the old Delmonico’s in 1906. (Wikipedia/Library of Congress)AND SALAD DAYS…Delmonico’s wait staff pose for a photograph in 1902. (Museum of the City of New York)
A former Delmonico’s chef, Nicholas Sabatini, hoped to bring back some of old waiters and cooks from the restaurant’s glory days, but it seemed most were far too long in the tooth. It is unclear if he ever got his dream off the ground, or if the grill room was able to crank out fare comparable to that of the old Delmonico’s. Probably not…
THE KITCHEN IS CLOSED…The 1928 Hotel Delmonico, as shown in a 1937 photograph. It was purchased by Donald Trump in 2002 and converted into luxury condominiums. It would not host a great restaurant, but the Beatles would stay there in 1964. (New York Public Library)
* * *
Relax. You’re in Omaha
This “Notes and Comment” entry in the Sept. 7 “Talk of the Town” described travel on the Union Pacific’s Overland Limited, and the “mystic dividing line” that separated laid-back Westerners from buttoned-up Easterners:
MIND YOUR MANNERS, AT LEAST UNTIL YOU LEAVE CHICAGO…Tinted photo postcard depicting the dining car on a Union Pacific train that traveled the Chicago to Denver route in the 1920s. (myutahparks.com)
* * *
Write What You Know
The Wisconsin-born Marion Clinch Calkins (1895 – 1968) often wrote humorous rhymes for the New Yorker under the pen name Majollica Wattles. While many writers reveled in the party atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties, Calkins worked as a vocational counselor and social worker at New York’s Lillian Walds Henry Street Settlement. This experience doubtless led her to more serious writing after the 1929 market crash — her critically acclaimed book, Some Folks Wont Work (1930), is considered a seminal document on the Great Depression.
But in September 1929, Calkins was still in a humorous vein, and published this satirical piece on the role of an ideal housewife in the Sept. 7 issue. Excerpts:
CALL ME CLINCH…Marion Clinch Calkins circa 1905 and 1945. She wrote under the name of Clinch Calkins because she wanted her authorship to be gender-neutral. (evansvillehistory.net/NEH)
* * *
Information Please
The New Yorker’s art critic Murdock Pemberton did not suffer fools gladly, and whenever the local museums seemed less than up to snuff, he was there to provide some correctional advice…
NEED AN AUDIO GUIDE? STILL WORKING ON THAT…The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s H.O. Havemeyer Collection, 1930. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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From Our Advertisers
Despite the advances made by women in the 1920s, they still lived under a patriarchy, especially when it came to the patrician classes. And so the young bride of Gifford Pinchot II was identified only as a “Mrs.” in the headline for this Pond’s cold cream ad…
…Mrs. Gifford Pinchot II was actually Janine Voisin (1910-2010). She must have had more than a healthy complexion, as she lived 100 years…
Janine Voisin Pinchot in 1933. (history.blogberth.com)
Another woman known for her beauty in the 1920s was the model Marion Morehouse (who was married to poet E.E. Cummings from 1934 until his death in 1962). Considered by some to be the first “supermodel,” I include an image of Morehouse below (right) to demonstrate how artists exaggerated the female form in fashion ads of the day…
…the body wasn’t the only thing subject to exaggeration, or hyperbole, as this ad from Harper’s Bazar attested in defining the exclusivity of its readership…
…the New York Sun also appealed to social mores in an attempt to sell more newspapers…
…the Curtiss Robin Flying Service touted their latest achievement — the St. Louis Robin being refueled during its flight to a new world’s endurance record of 420 hours — greatly surpassing the record of 150 hours set by the Army’s “Question Mark” airplane at the beginning of 1929…
…our cartoonists from the Sept. 7 issue include Gluyas Williams, who had some fun at the expense of Alice Foote MacDougall, who was the “Starbucks” of her day, at least in New York…
…MacDougall turned her coffee business into a restaurant empire in the 1920s. She opened several restaurants in Manhattan, all decorated in a signature style meant to evoke European cafés…
EURO AMBIENCE…Interior of Alice Foote MacDougall’sFirenze, 6 West 46th Street, New York City, 1925. (New York Historical Society)
…other cartoons included this commentary on public advertising by Leonard Dove…
…Peter Arno’s unique take on the seafaring life…
…Helen Hokinson eavesdropped on some tween talk…
…and Alan Dunn gave us some perspective on the fast pace of city life…
When Charles Lindbergh gunned his Wright Whirlwind engine on Roosevelt Field and took to the skies on his historic flight, he sparked such an interest in flying that just two years later that very same field was hosting huge weekend crowds that came to marvel at the airborne wonders of a new age.
August 31, 1929 cover by Theodore Haupt.
Writing for “The Talk of the Town,” James Thurber was on hand to take in the spectacle, noting how the announcer sold air-mindedness to the mob “in great clamorous phrases and resonant assurances.” Among those taking their first flight was a “Mr. Galleger, aged 101.” Thurber also observed:
AIRBORNE SPECTACLES…Clockwise, from top, a 1931 aerial view looking southeast at a group of Army twin-engine biplane bombers overflying Roosevelt Field; parachute records were broken when 14 men and 2 women leaped from a Sikorsky bombing plane at Roosevelt Field in November 1929 (in the photo they seem to be standing precariously close to the plane’s whirling blades); Jack Cope waved to onlookers in Chicago before he performed a 15,000 foot jump in 1929. (tripod.com/Worthpoint/Chicago Tribune)
Although there were thrills galore up in the sky, Thurber seemed equally impressed by the spectacle on the ground…
THE SUN GOD…Clockwise, from top, a 1928 photo of biplanes lined up by a row of hangars at Roosevelt Field; the spectacle of mid-air refueling was demonstrated above Roosevelt Field by Texaco Oil’s Spokane Sun God. (Tom Heitzman/barnstmr.blogspot.com/Wikipedia)
One of the big attractions was Texaco Oil’s Spokane Sun God, which traveled around the country to demonstrate the art of mid-air refueling. Note in the excerpt below (second paragraph) how the Sun God’s pilot communicated with his ground crew: He tossed some notes—tied to a heavy piece of lead(!)—out of the airplane’s window. It nearly landed in a crowd of onlookers…
AND HOW WAS YOUR DAY?…For some perspective, the first attempt at refueling in mid-air was made in 1921. In the photo above, Wesley May climbs from the lower biplane to the upper while carrying a 5-gallon can of fuel strapped to his back. After lifting himself onto the wing, he worked his way between the wings and into the cockpit. He then poured the fuel into the engine. (Seattle Museum of Flight)
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Falling Short
As I noted in a previous post (The Last Summer), the race to build the tallest building was erroneously reported by the New Yorker as a man against himself (namely, architect William Van Allen). In the Aug. 31 issue, the magazine’s “Talk of the Town” corrected the error, and added another curious note about another plan to build an “airplane lighthouse” taller than the Eiffel Tower…
As noted above, Col. Edward Howland Robinson Green (son of the notorious miser Hetty Green) wanted to build a thousand-foot tower on his estate in Massachusetts. Here is what he settled for instead:
WORK-LIFE BALANCE…Edward Green, radio enthusiast and son of the miserly Hetty Green, erected huge radio towers at his Massachusetts estate in the 1920s to operate an early broadcast station, WMAF. (Wikipedia)
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When Trains Fly
Cashing in on the enthusiasm over aviation, the City of New York promoted its elevated train system as an “Air Line.” According to “Talk”…
Click on the video below to take a ride on the “L”. Most of the 1929 footage begins at 4:47…
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Haw Haw
One more “Talk” item: a self-referential piece in which the New Yorker pondered its “mission” as a humor magazine…
* * *
Audax Minor
For more than five decades, George Francis Trafford Ryall (1887-1979) wrote the horse racing column for the New Yorker under the pseudonym Audax Minor. He published his first column on July 10, 1926, and his last on Dec. 18, 1978. He was the writer of longest record at the magazine when he died at age 92 in 1979 (52 years, a record that has been shattered by the nearly 98-year-old Roger Angell, who has published in the New Yorker from 1944 to 2018).
According to Ryall’s obituary in the New York Times, he adopted the nom de plume Audax Minor in a nod to Arthur F. B. Portman, who wrote about racing in England under the name of Audax Major. Ryall’s writing was so entertaining that many of his readers had never even been to a racetrack. According to Brendan Gill in his book, Here at the New Yorker, “(Ryall’s) world is a romantic fiction and they (the readers) are grateful when they learn that, with his green tweeds, his binoculars hung smartly athwart his chest, and his jaunty stride, Ryall resembles a character out of some sunny Edwardian novel.” An excerpt of his column from the Aug. 31 issue, with illustrations by Johan Bull:
A DAY AT THE RACES…At left, a crowded second floor dining area in the clubhouse at Saratoga, 1929; a postcard image of the track, with expanded clubhouse at left, circa 1929. (Saratoga Springs Historical Museum/Boston Public Library)
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Shut Out
As I’ve noted before, the New Yorker covered nearly every imaginable sport except baseball. Here is a rare mention of the game in Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column:
The Cubs would win the NL pennant, but they would fall to the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1929 World Series.
Rough and Ready
When Fiorello La Guardia challenged incumbent Jimmy Walker for New York City mayor in 1929, the city’s voters were presented with two colorful candidates who could not have been more different in their styles. Walker, a product of Tammany Hall, was a svelte dandy with a taste for the refined, whereas the reform-minded La Guardia was often coarse and unkempt. If they had anything in common, it was their dislike of Prohibition. La Guardia was featured in the Aug. 31 profile, written by Henry F. Pringle. Some excerpts:
JUST TRY TO STOP ME…Congressman Fiorello La Guardia pouring beer in his office during Prohibition, when he served New York’s 20th district in U.S. House of Representatives. (La Guardia Wagner Archives)
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Praise for the King
The New Yorker’s film critic John Mosher found most of Hollywood’s output to be pedestrian, but occasionally he saw a bright spot, including King Vidor’s latest production, Hallelujah:
William E. Fountaine, Nina Mae McKinney and Daniel Haynes in Hallelujah. The 17-year-old McKinney was the first African-American actress to hold a principal role in a mainstream film, and the first African-American actor to sign a long-term contract with a major studio—MGM. (IMDB)
As for another film, Paramount’s The Sophomore, Mosher probably felt a bit obligated to say something nice, since it was a derived from a story by humorist Corey Ford, an early contributor to the New Yorker and part of the Algonquin Round Table orbit:
BOY MEETS GIRL…Lobby card for The Sophomore. (IMDB)
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A Bright Interval for Nancy
The New Yorker gave a brief but approving mention of Nancy Hoyt’s latest book, Bright Intervals, in its book review section…
Hoyt was a member of a socially prominent but deeply troubled family that included her recently deceased sister, the poet and writer Elinor Wylie (I wrote about the Hoyt family in my post Generation of Vipers). Characters in Hoyt’s novels often resembled the women in her family.
Nancy Hoyt in an undated photo by Sherril Schell. (Conde Nast/Amazon)
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From Our Advertisers
It was back to college time, and Macy’s had a thrifty new fall lineup ready for the “Junior Deb”…
…and on the less thrifty side, Best & Company offered these new looks for fall…
…note in the above ad that the first model is Virginia Maurice, the very same model we encountered in a recent post (The Last Summer) posing for Chesterfield cigarettes…
Model Virginia Maurice posed for this 1929 Chesterfield ad, illustrated by artist Charles Edward Chambers.
…the other model in the Best & Company ad, Babs Shanton, also wasn’t averse to taking money from the tobacco companies…
Undated newspaper ad for Lucky Strikes featuring Babs Shanton, a sometime performer with the Ziegfeld Follies and a singer with the Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra. (Stanford University)
…the makers of Studebakers tried to add sex appeal in this ad for their President Roadster. The artist was obviously challenged to work all of the necessary elements into the picture—car, swimming pool, diving board—not to mention the block of superfluous text where the steps to this impossibly long diving board should have been located…
…and sex not only sold cars…its also sold printing services…
…instead of sex, the promoters of Tudor City chose strangulation to get their pitch across, equating a man’s daily train commute to death at the gallows (Danny Deevers refers to a character in a Rudyard Kipling poem who is hanged for murder)…
…the gawkers at Roosevelt Field weren’t the only folks with their heads in the clouds…an ad for Flit insecticide by Dr. Seuss…
…this ad for Raleigh cigarettes, which appeared on the back cover of the Aug. 31 issue, assumed that folks were so familiar with their mascot that no further explanation was needed…
…here is a 1929 ad from House Beautiful that featured the same mascot with the Van Dyke beard…both ads were rendered by French illustrator Guy Arnoux…
…on to our cartoonists…Helen Hokinson contributed this two-page spread on the challenges of visiting an old friend (click to enlarge)…
…Peter Arno looked in on a cheapskate at a posh restaurant…
…Bruce Bairnsfather visited the talkies…
…Justin Herman examined the literary life of the street…
…Kindl explored an awkward moment from the annals of technological advancements…
…and I. Klein illustrated the hazards of the tonsorial trade…
MGM piled so many stars and gimmicks into the premiere of The Hollywood Revue of 1929 that even the New Yorker’s jaded film critic John Mosher had to admit he was entertained.
Aug. 24, 1929 cover by Helen Hokinson.
Although today’s audiences would find the film quaint and corny (not to mention its tinny sound and crude editing), it was a big hit in 1929. A plotless revue featuring nearly all of MGM’s stars (Greta Garbo said no — she had a clause in her contract exempting her from such silly things; Lon Chaney, on the other hand, was in failing health), the film followed a variety format similar to such vaudeville productions as the Ziegfeld Follies. The Arthur Freed/Herb Nacio Brown song “Singin’ In the Rain” was introduced in this film, and would inspire the Gene Kelley musical by the same name 23 years later. A rarity for the time, the Hollywood Revue included four skits in an early version of Technicolor, including an all-cast performance of “Singing’ In the Rain.” Mosher observed:
One of the film’s color skits featured John Gilbert and Norma Shearer in a Romeo and Juliet parody filled with Jazz Age slang. It would mark the beginning of the end of Gilbert’s career and, sadly, his life. He was one of the silent era’s most popular leading men, but it was purported that his voice was not suited to the talkies. What really ended Gilbert’s career, however, was studio head Louis B. Mayer, who clashed with the actor both personally and professionally…click any image below to enlarge…
FAREWELL ROMEO…A lobby card promoting The Hollywood Revue of 1929 featured John Gilbert and Norma Shearer in one the film’s color sequences, a parody of Romeo and Juliet filled with Jazz Age slang. At right, a scene from the skit in which the director (played by Lionel Barrymore, far right) tells Shearer and Gilbert to put more pizzazz into the act. (IMDB/YouTube)STAR-STUDDED…Left to right, early silent film comedian Marie Dressler hammed it up in a royal court skit; co-emcee Jack Benny, with his trademark violin, and Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, and his trademark uke. (vickielester.com/doctormacro.com/thejumpingfrog.com)DANCING IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH…Chorus girl Carla Laemmle in the film’s “Tableau of Jewels,” in which she emerged from a seashell to perform a seductive (and weird) dance number while other showgirls posed on a revolving crown — all set to a tune sung offstage by James Burroughs. The niece of Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle, Carla Laemmle was one of the longest surviving actors of the silent era. She died in 2014 at age 104. (songbook1.wordpress.com)GALAXY OF STARS…Clockwise, from top left, lobby card for The Hollywood Revue of 1929; Charles King, Joan Crawford, Conrad Nagel (a co-emcee along with Jack Benny) and Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards show off their dancing skills; lobby card featuring actress Marion Davies; a popular act in vaudeville and on Broadway, the Brox Sisters—Lorayne, Patricia and Bobbe (along with Cliff Edwards) introduced the song “Singin’ in the Rain,” also sung by the entire cast near the finale of the movie. (joancrawfordbest.com/mubi.com)
…MGM deployed a number of stunts to generate publicity at the film’s New York premiere at the Astor Theatre, including a “human billboard” that featured scantily clad chorus girls precariously perched on a huge letters high above the theatre’s entrance. In a rather less dangerous stunt—during the movie’s “Orange Blossom Time” skit—a faint scent of orange blossoms wafted into the theatre. “The Talk of the Town” observed…
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?…Showgirls arranged along narrow catwalks atop the glowing HOLLYWOOD REVUE sign would pose for hours above crowds of gawkers; top, an advertisement promoting “The Stunt of the Century”; bottom, chorus girls lined up on somewhat safer ground in a skit from the movie titled “Lon Chaney’s Gonna Get You If You Don’t Watch Out.” Chaney himself was near death and did not appear in the film. (oldphotoarchive.com/anndvorak.com)Another angle shows just how precarious this stunt proved to be for these brave chorus girls, who held their poses for hours on end. (legendaryjoancrawford.com)
…here’s a clip from the film featuring MGM stars “Singin’ in the Rain”…see how many stars you can recognize…
…in the first row the camera pans by George Arthur, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Buster Keaton…second row, Bobbe Brox, Cliff Edwards, Patricia Brox, Gus Edwards, Lorayne Brox, Conrad Nagel, Anita Page, Charles King, Marie Dressler…not sure about the last two…
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Technological Adjustments
If you listened to the above clip, then you will understand what James Thurber was getting at when he observed that actors in talking pictures all sound as if they are speaking into cracker boxes. In this hilarious piece (titled “The Roaring Talkies”), he proposed a solution. An excerpt:
* * *
A Happy Diversion
“The Talk of the Town” (via Theodore Pratt) looked in on the hobbyists who raced model boats at Central Park’s Conservatory Lake, a happy tradition that began in the late 19th century and continues to this day:
A DAY AT THE RACES….Model sailboats (left) prepare to face off in 1910 at Conservatory Lake (also called Conservatory Water); at right, model sailors at the same lake around 1920. (Library of Congress)
Pratt also described the old wooden boathouse, which was replaced in 1954 with a somewhat grander structure, Kerbs Boathouse, where model boats are still stored…
STILL SAILING…The copper-roofed Kerbs Boathouse replaced a wooden structure in 1954. Conservatory Lake served as the setting for a model boat race in E.B. White’s Stuart Little. (centralparknyc.org)
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On the Other Hand…
Leaving the cool and quiet of the park brought one quickly back into the dust and clamor of the metropolis. Pratt observed that the summer season lasted two weeks longer in the city than in the country, thanks to the city’s heat island effect— perhaps an unwelcome observation given the usually hot summer of 1929. Not only did the city’s heat extend the season, but it also kept the city enveloped in “an enormous cloud of dust”…
HAZY DAYS OF SUMMER…A dusty haze hangs over Lower Manhattan as the Third Avenue elevated train rumbles by in this circa 1950 photo. (AP)
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Already Feeling Old?
I found this “Talk” item curious for exploring the sentimental attachment some folks had developed for old cars from the 1910s, given those cars were barely 20 years old and cars in general hadn’t been in common use much longer…
…as for another “Talk” item, I doubt modern New Yorker readers would find any humor in this observation:
* * *
On to sillier things, Robert Benchley turned in a casual titled “Boost New York!” Benchley ridiculed a promotional brochure from the New York Merchants Association that touted various statistics in a manner reminiscent of the fictional George Babbitt. Benchley imagined how an Iowa couple might respond to such dazzling numbers:
* * *
A Drinking Life
Occasionally I like to feature infrequent or one-time New Yorker contributors who are nearly lost to history. Frank Ward O’Malley (1875-1932), a reporter for the New York Sun from 1906-19, was known for his humorous stories. In 1928 he published a book titled The Swiss Family O’Malley. In this casual (titled “The Fatty Degeneration of Broadway”) from the Aug. 24 issue, O’Malley described an alcohol intervention of sorts and then his fall off the wagon. Here are the opening and closing paragraphs, along with his photo circa 1910s.
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From Our Advertisers
This week we have an advertisement for the Drake Apartment Hotel, claiming to be the “smartest” in New York. Note how they employed what seems to be the same pointy-nosed, haughty couple that we saw last week (below) who endorsed the Park Lane (I want to believe there is a subtle joke here)…
…just 25 years removed from the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, advertisers were treating flying as though it were routine…
A better photo of the Ireland Neptune Amphipian (aerofiles.com)
…and this young woman seemed to think flying was nothing more than “playing ring around the rosy with the clouds”…
…I like the reviews included in this bookseller’s ad, especially the first one for the book Ex-Wife by Anonymous (it was written by Ursula Parrott, a writer of romantic fiction)…
…our illustrations include Abe Birnbaum’s contribution to the casuals section (breaking up the copy of one of Josie Turner’s Elsie Dinsmore parodies)…
…Reginald Marsh illustrated the late summer beach scene at Coney Island…
…and for kicks this nice little filler by Constantin Alajalov…
…thanks to the skills of the New Yorker’s first layout artist, Popsy Whitaker, we have this whimsical pairing of Otto Soglow and Dorothy Parker…
…Mary Petty contributed a cartoon that looks contemporary…
…Peter Arno paid a visit to the doctor’s office…
…and commented on his life as a new father…the woman holding the baby was doubtless inspired by his wife, New Yorker columnist Lois Long…
…for reference, Peter Arno and Lois Long are pictured here with baby daughter Patricia Arno in 1928…Lois clearly had a better grasp on the situation than Arno had imagined…
Arno and Long with their baby daughter, Patricia, in 1928. (Vanity Fair)
…Alice Harvey eavesdropped on a conversation between teenagers…
…and like Peter Arno, Leonard Dove had two cartoons in this issue…here an editor finds the former Prohibition enforcer no longer newsworthy…
…and over on the East Side, rumors of gentrification…
Train travel in the U.S. was at the height of its glory in the late 1920s—you could hop on train in New York City and travel to virtually anywhere in the country, even to some of the remotest towns in America’s vast hinterlands.
July 27, 1929 cover by Theodore G. Haupt.
The New Yorker’s managing editor, Ralph Ingersoll (1900-1985) writing in “The Talk of Town,” climbed aboard the locomotives of outbound 20th Century and an inbound Empire State trains to survey the latest technology in rail travel. What one gleans from reading this account is how much this mode of travel has declined (in the U.S.) over the past 90 years:
ROMANCE OF THE RAILS…Clockwise, from top left: Hudson locomotives served the Century and Empire State express trains; silent film star Gloria Swanson waves farewell from the observation platform as the Century pulls out of Grand Central during the 1920s; lounge car on the 20th Century Limited during the 1920s; the 20th Century ready to depart Grand Central, circa 1930. (steamlocomotive.com/newyorksocialdiary.com/cruiselinehistory.com)
In terms of speed and safety, it seems little has changed since 1929, and perhaps things have actually gotten worse…
CELEBRATED LINE…The 20th Century was widely celebrated in popular culture through the 1950s. Five years after Ingersoll’s article, Howard Hawks directed the screwball comedy, 20th Century. Clockwise, from top left, the film’s stars, Carole Lombard and John Barrymore in a scene from the film; the stars pose for a publicity shot; with director Hawks along with some of the cast and crew. (austinfilm.org/greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com)
* * *
From 1928 until his death in 1950, the journalist Alva Johnston (1888-1950) wrote on a diverse range of topics for the New Yorker, including this “Reporter at Large” piece on the proliferation of barrooms in private residences, hidden from the prying eyes of Prohibition agents and sometimes furnished with the bits and pieces that once graced some of New York’s finest watering holes, including the famed Hoffman House:
POPULAR WATERING HOLE…Clockwise, from top left: The Hoffman House Hotel at Madison Square in 1885; the Hoffman House bar, which prominently displayed William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s painting Nymphs and Satyr. According to Alva Johnston’s article, the painting was the second-most popular decorative motif in New York’s finer drinking establishments; artist’s rendering of the barroom; and Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr. (Museum of the City of New York/Wikipedia)
Johnston noted the clever tricks homeowners used to conceal their secret bars:
DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER…Alva Johnston described how one library’s walls “had literature on one side, gin and rye on the other.” (Huffington Post)
Johnston concluded his piece on an ironic note, pointing out that the finest cocktail sets could be obtained at Kresge department stores, which were owned by one of the biggest supporters of Prohibition, S.S. Kresge:
* * *
The Sound of Peggy Wood
The Brooklyn-born Peggy Wood (1892-1978) made her stage debut in 1910 and was an established Broadway star before she made her first talking picture, Wonder of Women (a film believed to be lost). A member of the Algonquin Round Table, she was well acquainted with the New Yorker crowd. And the magazine in turn was very impressed with her acting talents, even if the picture she was in proved a bit of a downer:
RECOGNIZE HER NOW?…Clockwise, from top left: theatre card for the 1929 film, Wonder of Women;Leila Hyams and Lewis Stone in a tender moment from the film (for some reason Stone was romantically paired with much younger women in several films around that time); Peggy Wood in the 1920s; Wood as Mother Abbess in 1965’s The Sound of Music; Stone and Wood in a scene from Wonder of Women, with child actor Wally Albright, who was four years old at the time. With his waifish demeanor and curly hair, Albright was highly sought after in films needing a cute kid. He appeared in seven films in 1929 alone. In the 1930s he would appear in several Our Gang/Little Rascal shorts, and would pop up in bit roles through the 1940s and early 50s. Unlike so many other child stars, he seems to have led a normal adult life. He won the Men’s National Track and Ski Championship in 1957, and later started a successful trucking firm. (IMDB/Pinterest)
…the review continued, suggesting that Wood’s acting alone carried the picture…
…if you weren’t into weepers like Wonder of Women, you could have instead checked out The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu at the Rialto Theatre…
LIKE A SIDESHOW ACT…New York’s Rialto Theatre donned a masked front and door entry wrappers for the premiere of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu; promotional poster; Jean Arthur and Warner Oland in the film. Oland was not the least bit Asian. A Swedish-American actor, his work in the hit film led to three more Fu Manchu movies. Oland would then go on to play another Asian character, Charlie Chan, in a string of popular movies in the 1930s until his death in 1938. (cinematreasures.org)
* * *
Just Sad
Yet another note in “Talk of the Town” describing the plight of African Americans in segregated America, without a hint of empathy:
Potters Field on Hart Island, New York, circa 1890. (Wikipedia)
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From Our Advertisers
Last week B. Altman offered rugged coats for those brave souls riding in rumble seats. This week Altman rolled out some stylish wear for the enterprising pilot of 1929…
…and while you were up there, you could calm those nerves with a Chesterfield (a two-page ad that appeared regularly in the New Yorker)…
,,,back on the ground, the makers of Most toothpaste reminded readers to brush those tobacco stains off their teeth, apparently even while they’re smoking…
…here is another sampling of drawings by Garrett Price, rendered after a recent trip to Paris…
…our cartoons come from Leonard Dove (note the backward signature)…
…here we have A. Edwin Macon’s take on modern furniture…
…Helen Hokinson looked in on a visit to an eye doctor…
…Perry Barlow’s take on the wonders of radio…
…Rea Irvin depicted how timing is everything in an ice delivery…
…and Peter Arno peeked in on habits of the idle rich…
In 1929, some of New York’s Finest also enjoyed working at one of the finest police headquarters to be found anywhere.
July 20, 1929 cover by Leonard Dove.Note the construction worker’s whoopee cap—a popular hat among laborers, especially auto mechanics, in the 1920s and 30s. Hardhats did not come into general use until the late 1930s and 1940s. In popular culture, the whoopee cap was worn by the gas station attendant “Goober” on the Andy Griffith Show. The character “Jughead” also sported one in the Archie comic book series.
NYPD’s elegant headquarters at 240 Centre Street, designed by architects Hoppin & Koen, were built in 1909 to serve a newly consolidated police department charged with overseeing the city’s five boroughs (which had been united a decade earlier). Made of Indiana limestone, the building included 75 basement cells, a drill room, and a gymnasium.
VROOM VROOM…New York City motorcycle police, circa 1929. (Pinterest)
Writing for the July 20, 1929 “Reporter at Large” column, Niven Busch, Jr. looked in on a day in the life of the 20-year-old headquarters:
WHERE THE ACTION IS…Clockwise, from top left: Postcard depicting the new police headquarters at 240 Centre Street, built in 1909 to serve the newly consolidated five-borough police department; a woman in a cell at the Tenderloin station, probably similar to the cells described in Busch’s article; prisoner posing for a mug shot; the building’s Rogues Gallery. All images from 1909. (Ephemeral New York/Library of Congress (3)) click to enlarge images
Busch described the morning routine of lining up prisoners in the gymnasium for their mug shots…
…and how confiscated weapons were stored, and periodically dumped into the Narrows…
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA…Weapons seized in Chinatown by the NYPD in 1922. The police periodically dumped their inventory of seized weapons into the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island. (NYPD Public Records)
Busch also described the methods used by “drug peddlers,” and the prevalence of drug use among perps:
Where detectives gathered and where prisoners were once processed is now home to luxury condos in a posh district called “Nolita” (although some folks still call the area “Little Italy”)…
CRIME DOES NOT PAY?…The 1909 Police Headquarters Building at 240 Centre Street was remodeled into luxury co-op apartments in 1988. A contemporary photo of the lobby gives some idea of the elegance of the old HQ. Adding to that elegance, the area surrounding the building is no longer “Little Italy.” Rather, it is surrounded by posh shops in an area now known as “Nolita.” (street easy.com)Another view of the sumptuous lobby at 240 Centre Street. (realtor.com)
…and in the gymnasium where hardened criminals once lined up for mugshots we now find a four-bedroom condo that has been priced as high as $31 million (but now valued at about half that amount)…
Architect Charles Gwathmey designed this 6,600-square-foot condo in what was once the police gymnasium—which also functioned as the room where mugshots were taken. On and off the market since 2008, at one point the asking price was $31 million. (6sqft.com)
…and at the top of the building, a 5,500-square-foot penthouse can be found in the central clock tower. Spanning four stories and including two kitchens, a media room, a library, an elevator, the space was once owned by Calvin Klein…
The penthouse at the top of the old police headquarters spans four stories. It has been priced as high as $40 million. (Architectural Digest)
* * *
Before Bow Bowed Out
One of the biggest stars of the silent film era, Clara Bow (1905-1965) made a successful transition to the “talkies,” thanks in part to her huge and loyal following. But as the Roaring Twenties slowly lost its fizz, one of its biggest icons also seemed a bit flat in the new age of sound motion pictures. And indeed, Bow herself would walk away from it all two years later, retiring to her Nevada ranch at the age of 25. In the July 20 issue, the New Yorker reviewed Bow’s first talking picture, Dangerous Curves:
Clockwise, from top left, Kay Francis and Clara Bow as circus performers in 1929’s Dangerous Curves; Bow with clown in publicity shot for the movie; promotional poster; with co-star Richard Arlen, who also appeared with Bow in the 1927 romantic war picture, Wings. (Pinterest)
And while we are on the topic of celebrity actors, “The Talk of the Town” looked in on Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959),a prominent member of the famed, multigenerational Barrymore acting family…
“Talk” mentioned Barrymore’s children, including an “oldest son, Russell,” but there is no mention of such a child in any records. My best guess is that her oldest son, Samuel, went by his father’s name—Russell Griswold Colt. Barrymore and Colt divorced in 1923, and she never remarried…
Clockwise, from top left, Ethel Barrymore circa 1930; Siblings John Barrymore (standing) Lionel Barrymore, and Ethel with John’s son, John Barrymore Jr, who was the father of Drew Barrymore (inset); cover of program for Scarlet Sister Mary; Ethel with her children Samuel Peabody Colt, Ethel Barrymore Colt and John Drew Colt in the 1930s. (crystalkalyana.wordpress.com/Playbill/Pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with an “open seat poncho” offered by B. Altman to those unfortunate souls who were relegated to the rumble seat. I am perplexed by this feature in some early autos—it looks kind of fun if you’re a kid, but I can’t imagine a worse place to sit in a car. Not only are you open to the elements, but you’re also subject to peltings by dust, gravel, rocks and other road debris, not the mention the exhaust your sucking into your lungs sitting near the tailpipe. And then you are positioned over the car’s rear axle—must have been a chiropractor’s dream…
…and that exhaust you were breathing likely contained tetraethyl lead, which helped to eliminate the “knock” in your engine…
…perhaps a better way to travel—if you could afford it—was a combination of rail and air, a service supervised by a “staff of experts” headed by none other than Charles Lindbergh…
…when we think of the cigarette ads of yore, the “Marlboro Man” typically comes to mind. But Marlboro wasn’t the first to trade on the macho image of the working cowboy. That honor goes to the makers of menthol-cooled Spud cigarettes…
…and how was Marlboro being marketed at this time? Well, they were still exploiting young women who had been conned into participating in a “handwriting contest”…
…as for the makers of Lucky, they continued to get endorsements from some of the biggest celebrities of the day. In this ad we have English actress, singer and dancer Gertrude Lawrence (1898 – 1952). I have to say the drawing does not resemble her much at all…
SHE REALLY DID REACH FOR A LUCKY…Gertrude Lawrence enjoying a smoke with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr in 1939 (photo by Dorothy Wilding); a 1932 portrait of Lawrence by Paul Tanqueray; Lawrence and Noël Coward in Private Lives, 1931 (pinterest.co.uk/Wikipedia)
For more than a century, a political organization known as the Tammany Society ruled New York City politics with an iron fist. Founded in 1786 (and named for Tamanend, a chief in the Lenni-Lenape nation), by the mid 19th century it rapidly expanded its political control by earning the loyalty of the city’s fast-growing immigrant population, particularly the Irish.
July 13, 1929 cover by Rea Irvin.
The Tammany Society proved an efficient machine for controlling state Democratic politics as well as New York City elections. Through its use of patronage to reward loyal precinct leaders, it also became a center for big-time graft. Most of us know a bit about Tammany thanks to school history books that focused on the deep corruption of William “Boss” Tweed, who was brought down by the press and by Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1870s. Tammany Hall would survive the scandal, and in the 1920s would still pull the strings of politicians including Gov. Al Smith and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker.
Tammany had several homes, but during its most notorious years it was located in a circa 1812 hall (then called a “wigwam”) and later in an 1868 building on 14th Street, between Third and Fourth avenues. The July 13, 1929 “Talk of the Town” noted the recent demolition of that old hall and the opening of a new headquarters on 17th Street:
POLITICAL BAGGAGE…Top, a stereoscope card featuring the 1868 Tammany Hall; below, Thomas Nast cartoons depicting the corruption of Tammany Hall and the downfall of Boss Tweed. (Wikimedia Commons/Smithsonian)
“Talk” found the new building unimpressive; it seemed to signal that the old political machine was losing some of its luster:
EVOLUTION OF THE WIGWAM, as depicted on a poster circa 1920. (nypdhistory.com)Top left: The old Tammany Hall, decorated for the 1868 Democratic National Convention. Bottom left, the old hall was located at 141 E 14th Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues. It was demolished in 1927 to make way for expansion of the Consolidated Edison building (right). (NYPL Digital Gallery/mediahistoryny.files.wordpress.com/Wikipedia)
Indeed, “Talk” found the building to be a somewhat austere, hosed-down affair, far removed from its grander past:
I LIKE YOUR NEW HAT…The 1929 Tammany Hall (top left) is currently undergoing a major renovation. Although the interior is being dramatically altered, including the addition of a glass dome, the landmarked exterior will mostly be preserved. When completed, the building—a mix of office and retail—will be known as 44 Union Square. (bkskarch.com)
For further evidence that the more austere Tammany Hall was nevertheless alive and well in 1929, another “Talk” item noted the organization’s continued influence behind the scenes in local politics:
The 1930s marked the beginning of the end for Tammany Hall, when reform-minded Democrats such as President Franklin Roosevelt and New York’s Republican Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (supported by Roosevelt on a “Fusion” ticket) dismantled Tammany’s system of patronage. The Tammany Society abandoned its headquarters in 1943 when it found it no longer had the funds to maintain the hall. Bought by a local affiliate of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, it later housed the New York Film Academy and the Union Square Theatre until 2016, when it underwent extensive remodeling to make way for new office and retail space.
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Your Two Cents Worth
“Talk” also commented on the introduction of a new two-cent stamp that featured an image of Thomas Edison’s Mazda lamp, marking the celebration of 50 years of electric light. The magazine cheekily suggested that in the world of technological progress, there was nothing new under the sun:
(eBay)
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Americans in Paris
The New Yorker featured this humorous bit by a writer identified as “Guido” (I assume it is one of E.B. White’s many pseudonyms), who looked in on the chatter of various Parisian cafés and bars:
VOLSTEAD CAN’T GET US HERE…Enjoying the good life at a Parisian brasserie, circa 1920s. (National Geographic)
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Hit and Miss
The New Yorker generally reveled in the good times Florenz Ziegfeld brought to the stage, but his latest effort, Show Girl, proved a bit of a disappointment (more evidence, in my view, that folks were tiring of the decade-long party known as the Roaring Twenties):
TAP-DANCING ON THE GRAVE OF THE ROARING TWENTIES…Although the New Yorker seemed less than enthused by Flo Ziegfeld’s latest effort, Show Girl, Ruby Keeler (top left) brought her tap shoes and her ‘A’ game to the performance. Clockwise, from top right, Keeler has some fun with the comedy trio Clayton, Jackson and Durante; program cover for Show Girl; the popular Albertina Rasch Girls with Harriet Hoctor in the “An American in Paris” scene of Show Girl, 1929. (Pinterest/jacksonupperco.com/eBay/songbook1.wordpress.com)
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One of a Kind
New Yorker sportswriter Niven Busch, Jr. provided a nice write-up on golfer Bobby Jones, the most successful amateur ever to compete in the sport. An attorney by trade, the unassuming Jones had just won his third U.S. Open (he would win again in 1930). In all he would play in 31 majors, winning 13 of them and finishing in the top 10 an incredible 27 times. After retiring at age 28 in 1930 he helped design the Augusta National Golf Club and co-founded the Masters Tournament. An excerpt:
AND HE DID IT WEARING A NECKTIE…Although a lawyer by trade, the amateur golfer Bobby Jones was one of golf’s greatest champions. He pictured here after winning the 1929 U.S.Open in Mamaroneck, New York. (golf digest.com)
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An Odd Bit
Looking around the July 13 issue, let’s see what nighttime diversions were being touted by the New Yorker in their “Going on About Town” section (note the warning on the last item):
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From Our Advertisers
The makers of Pond’s cold cream continued to roll out endorsements from high society with this testimonial from Jane Kendall Mason (1909-1980), the newlywed wife of George Grant Mason, an executive with Pan American Airways in Cuba.
In 1925, the 17-year-old Jane made her formal debut in Washington society. After a visit with Grace Goodhue Coolidge, the first lady famously declared that Jane was “the most beautiful girl ever to enter the White House.”
After their marriage, the Masons became friends with Ernest and Pauline Hemingway, and introduced the Hemingways into Cuban society. Jane could hunt, fish, and hold her liquor, and, according to Ernest Hemingway, she was the most uninhibited person he’d ever met. So naturally they had a torrid, tempestuous, two-month affair that ended with Jane’s attempted suicide (she leapt from a balcony that was not high enough to do the job).
Hemingway supposedly used Jane as a model for the cruel-hearted Margot Macomber in The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber, in which the title character—trapped in a sad marriage to a wealthy but spineless American (George?)—accidently shoots her husband in the head while on safari. She is also considered to be the model for the sex-obsessed Helene Bradley in Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not— a character also married to a rich but spineless husband.
Carlos Gutierrez (who served as a boat guide for Ernest Hemingway) and Jane Mason aboard “Sloppy” Joe Russell’s boat Anita in 1933. (Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, JFK Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)
Mark Walston, writing for the July-August issue of Bethesda Magazine, notes that the mean-spirited Hemingway “sent Jane drafts of his work, taunting and tormenting her with his venomous and thinly veiled portraits.” According to Walston, Jane divorced Mason in 1940, and one month later married John Hamilton, former executive director of the Republican National Committee. After that brief marriage she wed George Abell, columnist for The Baltimore Sun and Washington Times-Herald. Her fourth and final husband was Arnold Gingrich, founder of Esquire and editor of Coronet magazines. Jane died in 1980. On her tombstone is her self-penned epitaph: “Talents too many, not enough of any.”
On to our next ad, which featured an interesting exchange between two men who discuss the fortunes of a guy named Cecil Barnes, retired at age 33 and owner of a new personal airplane…
…and we segue into our cartoons, featuring a mother and child (drawn by Kindl) probably flying on one of those Sikorskys…
…Rollin Kirby looked in on a tailor’s shop (this is one of only two drawings published by Kirby in the New Yorker)…
…a note on Kirby, a three-time Pulitzer winner: outraged by the passage of Prohibition laws, Kirby created one of his most famous characters, “Mr. Dry,” which he introduced to readers of the New York World in January 1920…
Rollin Kirby’s miserly, foreboding “Mr. Dry” made his first appearance in the pages of the New York World on Jan. 17, 1920, shortly after Prohibition laws went into effect in the United States. Mr. Dry also made an appearance at the end of 1920, to throw some water on America’s Christmas cheer. (bottlesboozeandbackstories.blogspot.com)
You can read more about Rollin Kirby and Mr. Dry here.
…Roland Baum peeked in on a reluctant stargazer…
…and to close, this little filler drawing of a hot dog vendor by Constantin Alajalov…
I’ve always been fascinated by past visions of the future, especially those of the early and mid-20th century—despite the horrors of world war and economic depression, we were still able to envision endless possibilities for human progress.
June 29, 1929 cover by Ray Euffa (1904-1977), who contributed just one cover for the New Yorker. A resident of the East Village, she had a successful career as both a New York artist and teacher (see end of post for another example of her work).
In this spirit, the landmark 1929 Regional Plan of New York and its Environs was created. Rather than planning for individual towns and cities, it viewed them as a single, interdependent and interconnected built environment. Authored by a Regional Plan Association formed in 1922, the plan encompassed 31 counties in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. The goal of the plan was to transcend the region’s political divisions and view it more in terms of its economic, socio-cultural, transportation, and environmental needs. The New Yorker made note of the new plan, but decided to take a humorous approach by putting Robert Benchley on the assignment:
Had he actually read the plan, Benchley would have found an ambitious vision for the city in the year 1965, including the remaking of Battery Park that would have included a massive obelisk to greet seafaring visitors to the city (click all images below to enlarge)…
THINKING BIG…Images from the 1929 Regional Plan of New York and its Environs included, clockwise, from top left, a proposed art center for Manhattan, as envisioned by Hugh Ferriss; a proposal for a terminal and office building in Sunnyside Yards, Queens; a proposed monument for Battery Park, from a bird’s eye perspective; and as the monument would appear at street level. (Regional Planning Association–RPA)HOW-TO GUIDE FOR THE FUTURE…Zoning principles, including setback guidelines for tall buildings (left) were included in the regional plan. At right, a suggestion for setbacks on an apartment group, as rendered by architect George B. Ford. (RPA)
Benchley noted that the plan “looks ahead to a New York of 1965,” and hoped that he would not live to see a city of 20 million people (New York City had a metro population of 20.3 million in 2017; and Benchley got his wish—he died in 1945. He was not, however, stuffed and put on display)…
A BIT MUCH?…Clockwise, from top left, a “monumental building” was proposed in the regional plan as a dominant feature of the civic center, dwarfing the historic city hall; the old city hall today, fortunately backed by a blue sky and not by a “death-star” building; a proposal for the Chrystie-Forsyth Parkway; a “future tower city,” as envisioned by E. Maxwell Fry. (RPA)THE STUFF OF DREAMS…Clockwise, from top left: The regional plan proposed separation of pedestrians and motor vehicles by assigning them to different levels along the street; ten years later, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors would build a full-scale model of this concept as part of their Futurama exhibit; the city of 1960, as envisioned by designer Norman Bel Geddes for the Futurama exhibit; Futurama visitors view the world of tomorrow—a vast scale model of the American countryside—from chairs moving along a conveyer. (RPA/The Atlantic/Wikipedia/General Motors)
Benchley concluded his article with less ambitious hopes for the future…
THE REALITY…A view of New York City’s East 42nd Street, looking to the west, in 1965. (AP)
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Another vision of the future could be found in the growing air transport options available to those who could afford it. “The Talk of the Town” reported:
ROOM WITH A VIEW…Interior and exterior views of the Sikorsky S-38 flying boat. (Frankin Institute, Philadelphia/Calisto Publishers)NO FRILLS…Seaplane ramp at Flushing Bay’s North Beach Airport in 1929. (Courtesy of Alan Reddig)
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With the 1929 stock market crash on the horizon, it is instructive to read these little “Talk” items and understand that, then as now, we have no clue when the big one is coming…
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Over at the Polo Grounds
As I’ve previously noted, the New Yorker in the 1920s covered every conceivable sport, but paid little attention to Major League Baseball (except for the occasional amusing anecdote about a player, usually Babe Ruth). But even the New Yorker couldn’t ignore the city’s latest sensation, the Giants’ Mel Ott (1909-1958), who despite his slight stature (for a power hitter, that is), he became the first National League player to surpass 500 career home runs.
READY FOR SOME HEAT…Mel Ott in 1933. He batted left-handed but threw right-handed. (Baseball Hall of Fame)
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David McCord (1897-1997) contributed nearly 80 poems to the New Yorker between in 1926 and 1956, but earned his greatest renown in his long life as an author of children’s poetry. Here is his contribution to the June 29 issue:
PICKETY POET…David McCord and one of his poems for children. (nowaterriver.com)
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From Our Advertisers
We find more color in the pages of the New Yorker thanks to advertisers like C & C Ginger Ale, who for all the world tried to make their product appear as exciting and appealing as Champagne, or some other banned substance…
…or for quieter times, Atwater Kent encouraged folks to gather ’round the radio on a lazy afternoon and look positively bored to death…
…while Dodge Boats encouraged readers to join the more exhilarating world of life on the water…
Our final color ad comes from the makers of Jantzen swimwear—this striking example is by Frank Clark, who collaborated with his wife Florenz in creating a distinct look and style for Jantzen…
…indeed it was Florenz Clark who came up with Jantzen’s signature red diving girl. In 1919, while doing sketches at a swim club for divers practicing for the 1920 Olympics, she came up with the iconic red diving girl logo. This is the version of the logo from the late 1920s:
(jantzen.com)
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Our illustrations and comics come courtesy of Reginald Marsh, who sketched scenes along the shores of Battery Park…
…Peter Arno plumbed the depths of a posh swimming club…
…R. Van Buren explored a clash of the castes…
…I. Klein sent up some class pretensions…
…and John Reehill looked in on a couple who seemed more suited to land-based diversions…
…and finally, we close with a 1946 work by our cover artist, Ray Euffa, titled, City Roofs:
A New Yorker State of Mind 