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: The Dec. 2, 1934 opening of the reconstructed Central Park Menagerie drew such luminaries as Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, pictured at left with his family, and, at right, former New York Governor Al Smith, who was designated honorary zookeeper. Smith, who, lived across from the zoo at 820 Fifth Avenue, poses with two donkeys at the Menagerie in 1940. (New York Parks Archive)
The Central Park Zoo was not part of the original Olmstead-Vaux plan for the park, but beginning in 1859 it evolved spontaneously as a menagerie located near the Arsenal; its odd collection of animals included exotic pets donated as gifts, and other random creatures including a bear, a monkey, a peacock and some goldfish.
Dec. 1, 1934 cover by Leonard Dove.
The menagerie accepted animals of all kinds, even sick ones, and by the 1920s the quality of the animals as well as the hodgepodge of buildings had degraded significantly (the lion house had to be guarded to prevent the animals from escaping their rotting quarters). In early 1934 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses addressed the adverse conditions in the menagerie, putting a redesign on a fast track and insisting that only healthy animals, in more humane settings, would be displayed.
DUMBOS…According to a 1911 Department of Parks Annual Report, the menagerie at Central Park submitted animals to questionable treatment, as suggested by this photo of a trainer and a dog perched on top of an elephant. (nycgovparks.org)
Built of brick and limestone, the new zoo was designed in just sixteen days by an in-house team led by architect Aymar Embury II. Construction on the roughly six-acre zoo took just eight months, employing federally financed Works Progress Administration (WPA) labor.
MOSES PARTS THE RED TAPE…Robert Moses wasted no time after his appointment as parks commissioner (in January 1934) to get rolling on the menagerie makeover—it took just eight months to complete the new zoo. Clockwise, from top left, invitation to the opening celebration of the Central Park Menagerie—12,000 invited guests attended the opening, while another 25,000 lined Fifth Avenue hoping to be admitted; the popular sea lion pool was a central attraction on opening day (it is one of several elements from the 1934 zoo that still exists); conditions had improved for elephants and other animals, but they were still far from ideal; aerial view of the zoo as it neared completion on Oct. 9, 1934. (nycma.lunaimaging.com/digitalcollections.nypl.org)
Much ado was made of Al Smith’s appointment as “Honorary Night Superintendent”—in these clips from the Dec. 3 New York Times, Smith gave a brief “lecture” about the zoo’s bison, to which he offered a slice of bread…
(Excerpts from The New York Times via the TimesMachine)
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From Our Advertisers
R.J. Reynolds continued to roll out its list of distinguished women who preferred their Camel cigarettes: “Mrs. Allston Boyer” nee Charlotte Young was a model with the John Robert Powers agency who was married to resorts planner Allston Boyer from 1934 to 1939. Young (1914–2012) would later marry New York Times Moscow correspondent Harrison Salisbury, and the two would embark on lengthy journeys throughout Asia, including a grueling 7,000-mile journey retracing the route of The Long March that Charlotte recounted in one of her seven travel books. Whether she continued her Camel habit is unknown, but she did live 98 years…
…a house ad from The New Yorker celebrated the holiday season with special Christmas rates (and Julian de Miskey embellishments)…
…Rea Irvin continued to have fun with the federal government’s new food and drug labeling standards…
…while Richard Decker had these two castaways contemplating a simpler form of government…
…and James Thurber continued to stir up trouble among the sexes…
…on to Dec. 8, 1934…
Dec. 8, 1934 cover by Richard Decker.
…which featured (on page 135) a handwritten letter from Kewpie Doll inventor Rose O’Neill, who commented on her recent New Yorker profile…
…here is an excerpt from the Nov. 24 profile referenced by O’Neill:
…and on to our advertisements from the Dec. 8 issue, including another Julian de Miskey-illustrated house ad…
…the clever folks at Heinz enlisted the talents of Carl Rose for a play on his famous Dec. 8, 1928 New Yorker cartoon…
…a closer look at the illustration (note the mother’s softer, more conservative appearance, five years removed from her flapper days; the child hasn’t changed a bit, except now we can see her face)…
…and the 1928 original, with caption by E.B. White…
…Peter Arno also popped up in the advertising section on behalf of Libby’s…
…the magazine grew thicker with many Christmas-themed ads, including this one from Johnnie Walker…
…Marlboro continued to take out these modest, back-page ads aimed at tobacco’s growth market—women smokers…
…the makers of Spud menthol cigarettes continued their campaign to encourage chain-smoking with this rather depressing image…
…while Spud’s new competitor in menthol cigs, KOOL, kept things simple with their smoking penguin mascot and valuable coupons for keen merchandise…
…the Citizens Family Welfare Committee offered this reminder that the Depression was still very much a challenge for 20,000 New York families…
…on to our cartoonists, beginning with Alan Dunn’s rather dim view of Robert Moses’s generously funded parks department…
…George Price gave us the latest update on his floating man, who had been up in the air since the Sept. 22 issue…
…Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein marked the season with dueling Santas from Macy’s and Gimbel’s…
…and we end with James Thurber, and some reverse psychology…
Otto Klemperer rehearsing at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1937. (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
The 20th century was an age of big personalities in classical music, among them Otto Klemperer (1885-1973), a German-born protégé of the composer and conductor Gustav Mahler. Klemperer was already an established conductor in opera houses around Germany when the rise of the Nazis prompted the maestro to emigrate with his family in 1933. He was soon appointed chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Oct. 13, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
Klemperer also guest conducted a number of orchestras in the U.S., including the New York Philharmonic, where his larger than life presence caught the attention of “The Talk of the Town.” Excerpts:
MAESTRO…Top left, Otto Klemperer with Czech composer Leoš Janáček in 1927; at right, with Austrian-American classical pianist and composer Artur Schnabel in 1933; bottom photo, with wife Johanna Geisler, son Werner and daughter Lotte in Los Angeles, 1936. (operaplus.cz/Otto Klemperer Film Foundation/ottoklemperer.nl)
Lauded internationally as a great orchestral commander, in 1939 Klemperer would begin experiencing balance issues. After a tumor the size of a small orange was removed from his brain, he would be left partially paralyzed on his right side; bouts of depression and a manic phase would later land him in a mental hospital. However, by 1946 he would recover his health enough to return to conducting in a career that would last until 1971.
The conductor’s daughter, Lotte Klemperer (1923–2003), would serve as her father’s secretary, negotiator and administrator until his death in 1973. Otto’s son, Werner Klemperer (1920–2000), would become a stage, screen and television actor, most notably portraying Colonel Klink in the 1960s comedy Hogan’s Heroes. Although the role would garner Werner two Emmys, his father never fully understood the series or even the concept of a sitcom. Reluctant to pursue a musical career while his father was alive, Werner would later join the Metropolitan Opera Company in the 1970s, appear in Broadway musicals, and serve as a narrator with a number of American symphony orchestras.
TO THEM HE WAS DAD…At left, daughter Lotte Klemperer with her famous father in 1954. She would serve as his caretaker and business partner after her mother’s death in 1956. At right, son Werner Klemperer acted on Broadway and in films before taking on the role of the bumbling Colonel Klink in the 1960s comedy Hogan’s Heroes, which garnered the actor two Emmys. Although Werner Klemperer was musically inclined, he avoided work in music until the death of his father in 1973. (Otto Klemperer Film Foundation/CBS)
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Vanished in the Haze
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White lamented what appeared to be the transformation of the familiar night club; high above Manhattan in the Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, the comforting haze of “cigarette smoke, talc, waiter’s venom” had been displaced by air conditioning, and to add to the horror, an organ had been installed that tinged the fox trot “with an odd piety.”
NOWHERE TO HIDE…E.B. White found the lack of haze in the new Rainbow Room disconcerting, not to mention the addition of a Wurlitzer organ, its wonders demonstrated here by organist Ray Bohr in 1934. (Library of Congress/nycago.org)
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There Oughta Be a Law
While E.B. White was mourning the demise of the smoky nightclub, art and design critic Lewis Mumford continued his tirade against the pretentious and mediocre buildings that were popping up all over the city, including the new Federal Court Building on Centre Street that was, in Mumford’s words, a supreme example of bad design and fake grandeur.
A CRIMINAL CASE…Cass Gilbert’s Federal Courthouse building (United States courthouse) was completed in 1936, two years after Gilbert’s death. In 2001 it was designated as the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse. Critic Lewis Mumford called the design, which combined “two unlovely and unrelated forms”…”nothing short of a major crime.” (Wurts Brothers Photography Collection, National Building Museum)
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Crime of the Century
That is what the press called the kidnap and murder of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow. In September 1934 a German immigrant carpenter named Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the crime, and a trial date was set for the following January. In his “A Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey examined the ransom money trail that led to Hauptmann’s ultimate arrest. Excerpts:
DON’T SAY “CHEESE”…Bruno Hauptmann sits for a mug shot following his arrest for the abduction and murder of the 20-month-old son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. (Leslie Jones, Boston Public Library)
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Should Have Stayed Lost
A film version of Willa Cather’s 1923 novel A Lost Lady was first made as a silent by Warner Brothers in 1924 (the film itself is lost) but in 1934 Warner had another go at the novel with a sound version starring starring Barbara Stanwyck, who was emerging as a major star. But Stanwyck’s talents could not overcome a script that critic John Mosher described as bleak, blank nonsense. Cather was so dismayed by the film that she refused to permit another adaptation of any of her novels during her lifetime.
LOST IN TRANSLATION…Barbara Stanwyck and Ricardo Cortez in A Lost Lady (1934). (IMDB)
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From Our Advertisers
We kick off our sponsors with this two-page center spread from Hiram Walker & Sons, who introduced their new line of playing card-inspired whiskies…
…the New Yorker’s Janet Flanner wrote in 1938 that Elsie de Wolfe invented interior design as a profession, so who was to argue with de Wolfe’s suggestion that the leisure class should linger in bed with the aid of a Wamsutta bed-rest…the small print beneath the logo indicated that the bed-rest was “hair-filled,” which I assume was horse hair, still used today in some luxury brands…
…if de Wolfe was queen of interior designers, then Hattie Carnegie was the “First Lady of Fashion,” or so this ad claimed…
…here are images of the two titans of fashion and good taste…
TASTEMAKERS…At left, Hattie Carnegie aka Henrietta Kanengeiser (1880-1956), and Elsie de Wolfe, aka Lady Mendl (1859–1950). (americacomesalive.com/bureauofinteriors.com)
…and speaking of fashion, here is a llama cloth coat from B. Altman, trimmed in silver raccoon, suitable for Yale football games…based on inflation, that coat today would set you back at least $2,000…
…this condescending ad offered merchants a way to reach the “hitherto strange and aloof women of New York” through daytime advertising…
…Plymouth enlisted the talents of Alan Dunn to tout their car’s ride and durability…
…and on to our cartoonists, another from Dunn, a bit of spot art featuring a not so subtle commentary on Lawrence Lee Bazley Angas’s book The Coming American Boom…
…and some spot art from Isadore Klein…
…Miguel Covarrubias contributed to the theater review section…
…James Thurber entertained a house guest…
…George Price was still up in the air…
…Helen Hokinson took a spin with a celebrity look-alike…
…and Barbara Shermund offered another glimpse into the life of a modern woman…
…on to Oct. 20, 1934…
Oct. 20, 1934 cover by Helen Hokinson.
…in which E.B. White offered up a new lament, namely the pervasiveness of nostalgia and sentiment in contemporary literature…
HARKING BACK TO THOSE DAYS OF YORE…E.B. White simply had no stomach for the nostalgic stylings of Mary Ellen Chase (left) or Henry Seidel Canby, seen here on the cover of the May 19, 1924 issue of Time. (U of Maine/Time Inc)
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Fifty Years Young
“The Talk of the Town” marked the Dakota’s 50th year at Central Park West, and made note of its loyal and prominent clientele…back in the day it served as a residence for actors such as Lillian Gish, Boris Karloff, and Teresa Wright, and in later years such luminaries as Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Rudolf Nureyev, and, of course, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
THE STORIES IT COULD TELL…At left, the facade and main entrance of the Dakota in the 1960s; at right, inside the main entrance. (Pinterest/Wikipedia)
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More From Our Advertisers
The Matson-Oceanic Line offered a “millionaire’s idea of a vacation” at an affordable price, and offered this sumptuous image as proof…
…E.B. White wasn’t crazy about the smokeless dazzle of the Rainbow Room, but it proved to be popular among the city’s elite…
…in case one was concerned about the provenance of one’s mink coat, Saks posted this helpful ad. Their high-end, natural-skin minks were priced at $8,000 (roughly $180,000 today); there was, however, a caveat regarding the cheaper models…
…Bergdorf Goodman offered up another ad featuring an impossibly attenuated model posed with a cigarette, her defiant gaze suggesting her modernity and individualism…
…Plymouth went back to the stable of New Yorker cartoonists, this time featuring the adventures of Helen Hokinson’s “girls”…
…and we segue to the rest of our cartoonists, including this spot by Constantin Alajalov…
…and this by George Price…
…who also gave us another update on the trials and tribulations of his floating man…
… James Thurber occasionally ignored scale in rendering his characters, which didn’t really matter in his strange world…
…Jack Markow had some bad news for two sign painters (the caption size is increased for readability)…
…and we close with Peter Arno, and the winner of most original Halloween costume…
…and before I go…this is being posted on Halloween, 2023, so here are a few images from 1934 to get you in the spirit, including a Saturday Evening Post cover, a 1934 party ideas magazine, and a page from Popular Mechanics featuring a smoking robot costume you could make yourself…in the 1930s, Popular Mechanics often featured Halloween party ideas that were downright lethal, usually involving electric shocks, pistols loaded with blanks, that sort of thing.
Above: Newsreel cameramen perch on boards resting on a windowsill to get a birds-eye view of a passing parade, circa 1930. (Public Domain Image)
We marvel at, and sometimes decry, today’s instantaneous news coverage of wars, disasters and the like, but ninety years ago newsreel crews did a remarkable job of filming and delivering the latest news to thousands of theaters across the U.S. and around the world.
Sept. 22, 1934 cover by Harry Brown.
In his “A Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey penned a lengthy account of Fox Movietone’s coverage of the SS Morro Castle disaster. En route from Havana to New York City on Sept. 8, 1934, the luxury liner caught fire near the New Jersey coast. Due to the ship’s design and the ineptitude of the crew, the blaze claimed 137 lives. Markey described how newsreel crews—with their bulky cameras and sound equipment—went into action, including a cameraman who “goaded” a pilot into taking him aloft through vicious weather conditions.
GUTS AND INGENUITY took newsreel reporters to places high and low. Clockwise, from top left, title card from a 1935 Fox Movietone newsreel; Jack Lieb goes aloft to get capture newsreel footage in an undated photo—Lieb was a cameraman for Hearst’s News of the Day; a 1930s Fox Movietone camera; the SS Morro Castle ablaze off the New Jersey Coast on Sept. 8, 1934. (Wikipedia/Lieb photo Courtesy of Bette Marshall via unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov)
Somehow the cameraman aboard the airplane (which was forced down by weather three times) was able to get his footage to the Movietone office by noon, less than seven hours after the office first received word of the disaster. By three o’clock, five thousand feet of film from all sources was being developed.
UP NORTH AND DOWN UNDER…Movietone news had crews stationed around the world, including field staff in Sydney (top, from 1938), and in Toronto, circa 1930. (Nat’l Library of Australia/City of Toronto Archives)
Markey concluded with this observation about the “rugged” and persistent newsreel cameramen:
In the aftermath of the Morro Castle disaster, a scene of enormous tragedy was turned into a tourist attraction…
GAWKERS AND HAWKERS…The charred hulk of the SS Morro Castle came to rest on the shore near the Asbury Park boardwalk, which became a popular spot for souvenir salesmen and photo-ops. Tourists flocked to the site from September 1934 to March 1935, when the ship was finally towed away. Note the postcard (bottom) advertising homemade candy over an image of the charred ship. (ripleys.com/side-o-lamb.com)
Fox Movietone News produced sound newsreels from 1928 to 1963, and in the UK as British Movietone News…here is Movietone footage of the Morro Castle disaster, as presented by British Movietone in 1934:
* * *
Up In The Old Hotels
Last week “The Talk of the Town” looked in on one of Manhattan’s oldest saloons, McSorley’s. For the Sept. 22 “Talk” the subject was “Oldest Hotels,” two of which, The Cosmopolitan and The Grand, remarkably survive to this day.
HANGING IN THERE…The 1845 Brevoort House hotel at 15 Fifth Avenue (top left) was torn down in 1952, however the 1868 Grand Hotel (right) at 1232–1238 Broadway and the 1845 Cosmopolitan Hotel (below, left) at Chambers Street and West Broadway still stand today. (Museum of the City of New York / Chester Higgins Jr. for The New York Times)
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The Six-Million Dollar Road
The first roadway designed exclusively for automobile use was likely the Long Island Motor Parkway, privately built by William Kissam Vanderbilt II because he wanted a road suitable for auto racing. He established the Vanderbilt Cup races on local roads in 1904, but after two spectators were killed and many others injured, in 1908 he began building what would become a 45-mile (72 km) toll road from Queens to Lake Ronkonkoma. After two mechanics were killed in a 1910 race, the New York Legislature banned racing on the road, which the state took over in 1938.
ROAD WARRIOR…William Kissam Vanderbilt II (top right) staged his Vanderbilt Cup Races on his private road until a fatal accident put a stop to the fun in 1910; At bottom right, a surviving section of the road today. Most of the road in Queens is a bicycle trail, and other segments still serve as parts of a county road. (nyheritage.org/Wikipedia-Steve Nowotarski/ny1.com)
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From Our Advertisers
I have nothing against accordion music, despite years of exposure to Lawrence Welk during my youth, but I find it hard to believe that a Park Avenue socialite (identified here as Mrs. René Du Champ Bellinger) would contemplate tormenting her posh friends with a Hohner squeezebox…
…Esquire magazine was barely a year old when it posted this ad in The New Yorker…its appeal to men (and their anxieties) keeps it going today…
…it’s interesting how companies in the 19th century and on through the 1950s featured idealized, bird’s eye images of their factories in advertising, doubtless believing that consumers associated size (and smokestacks) with prosperity, and therefore a quality product…
…White Rock, however, has used the image of the Greek goddess Psyche for more than a century to promote the purity of its spring water…
…purity was also the main point of this ad from Daggett & Ramsdell, who hawked their wares to the Park Avenue set…after more than 130 years D&G is still in the beauty business…
…this next ad is almost unbelievable…single rooms starting at $5, double rooms $7, and a whole suite for $10…at the Plaza…okay, $10 is roughly equivalent to $225 today, but half of that could get you a single…
…and yet another unlikely claim from R.J. Reynolds regarding the energizing qualities of their Camel cigarettes…it seems the last thing you would need while climbing a mountain is smoke in your already over-taxed lungs…
…however, let’s give proper due to Georgia Engelhard (1906–1986), who scandalized the mountaineering world by ditching the Victorian climbing skirt in favor of a pair of climbing pants. Engelhard was the first female climber to ascend many of the peaks in the Rockies…
Georgia Engelhard in a 1922 photo attributed to her friend Alfred Stieglitz. (nga.gov)
…it seemed like nearly everyone smoked in the 1930s, even in ads that had nothing to do with tobacco companies (detail)…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with Richard Decker and some retail competition…
…George Price drew up a curiosity even Robert Ripley couldn’t believe…
…Robert Day examined advances in evolutionary science…
…E. Simms Campbell offered up this abbreviated love story…
…Peter Arno gave us a director with a god complex…
…and one from Ned Hilton, and a new perspective on flying…
…on to Sept. 29, 1934, with a cover by Arnold Hall, who produced at least twelve covers for The New Yorker between 1933 and 1939…
Sept. 29, 1934 cover by Arnold Hall.
…and we go straight to ads, beginning with this alarming image that greeted readers on the inside cover…why would this prompt anyone to purchase a can of onion soup?…
…the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center opened in 1934, and it quickly became a focal point for the city’s elite…
Above, the dining room at the Rainbow Room, 1934, and below, in 2004. (Library of Congress/Wikipedia)
…Lucky Strike continued its series of ads featuring fashionable women looking smart with their product…
…our cartoons include this spot illustration by Otto Soglow, who did spots for The New Yorker for many years…although Soglow’s Little King moved to the Hearst newspapers, he continued to contribute cartoons to The New Yorker until 1974…
…George Price continued to explore life as a levitating man…
…the enforcement of the Hays Code had this teen in a “fix,” per James Thurber…
…Gluyas Williams continued his exploration of various crises, this time in the music world…
…Alan Dunn gave us a glimpse of civilization via the pharaonic sculptures that were emerging on the face of Mt. Rushmore…
…and we close with the wonderful wit of Barbara Shermund…
Sigmund Gottfried Spaeth (1885–1965) sought to popularize classical music and improve the musical tastes of the masses by meeting the public wherever he could find them, from vaudeville halls to national radio broadcasts.
September 1, 1934 cover by William Steig.
Born in a line of three generations of Lutheran clergymen, Spaeth chose a different path and became a musicologist who sought to de-mystify classical music, often demonstrating how popular melodies had origins in earlier music. He also had strong opinions about lyrics in popular music, demonstrating his distaste for “the lyric school of self-pity” in this “Onward and Upward” column. Excerpts:
BRINGING MUSIC AND LIGHT…Sigmund Spaeth found much to dislike in the world of popular music, but he was never stuffy in his approach to music appreciation. At right, Spaeth appeared in vaudeville-style shows (and for many years on the radio) as “The Tune Detective,” wearing a deerstalker cap, cape, and checked tweeds in imitation of Sherlock Holmes. He hoped to demonstrate to a wide audience that all music was essentially based on a set of simple principles. (sinfonia.org/wnyc.org)HAVE NO FEAR…Spaeth wrote a popular syndicated newspaper column, “Music for Everybody,” and contributed articles to many periodicals during his career. With his first book in 1925, The Common Sense of Music, and others that followed, Spaeth sought to de-mystify music for a general audience. (Wikimedia Commons)OH LIGHTEN UP…Spaeth detected a cynical note in Bing Crosby’s (left) sob song, “I Cried for You,” and noted Irving Berlin’s latest contribution to the “sob symposium,” “I Never Had a Chance.” (Wikipedia/digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/britannica.com)
Spaeth noted that not all sad songs were dripping in artificial self-pity, citing Helen Morgan’s “Why Was I Born?” as an example of a song modeled on “the legitimate blues,” marked by “a sincerity of expression in everyday language”…
RIGHT AND WRONG…Spaeth acknowledged the “sincerity of expression” in Helen Morgan’s (left) torch songs, while at the other extreme he suggested that the authors of “Was That the Human Thing to Do?” (Sammy Fain and Joe Young) be boiled alive in their own tears. The song was popularized by The Boswell Sisters, a beloved New Orleans trio in the early 1930s. (findagrave.com/amazon.com/genius.com)
* * *
Off to the Races
In his column, “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker commented on the apparent competition and contrast between Alexander Woollcott’s book, While Rome Burns, and another with a rosier title, The Coming of the American Boom. It appears Woollcott’s book won out, at least in the long run, as I can find no trace of the Boom book, or its author.*
* One of our kind readers has identified the author: “The Coming American Boom” was written by Lawrence Lee Bazley Angas and published by Simon and Schuster in 1934. In 1939, Time noted that “Major Lawrence Lee Bazley (‘Boom’) Angas is a pink & white Britisher with a reputation for making daring predictions which have sometimes come true…. He won his nickname with a much-publicized booklet, The Coming American Boom, which heralded his arrival in the U.S. in 1934.”
Speaking of rosy outlooks, E.B. White offered some parting thoughts on Chicago’s World’s Fair, called “A Century of Progress.” Rather than focus on the grandiose exhibits, White wryly noted other signs of progress at the fair, as recounted from a letter he received from his nephew.
The Chicago World’s Fair featured all sorts of modern wonders “dedicated to the ideal of scientific advance”…
…but as with any World’s Fair, it also catered to the baser interests of the masses, with attractions such as Robert Ripley’sBelieve It Or Not “Odditorium,” which was essentially a P.T. Barnum-style freak show…
…Ripley’s syndicated newspaper feature included these Odditorium attractions…
…White made light of exhibitions displaying such signs of progress as how to brush your teeth, and more examples of human freakdom…
…White’s nephew wrote of a man who could pull a wagon (containing his wife) with his eyelids, an apparently arthritic fellow who was “turning to stone,” and a man who could support heavy weights with his pierced breasts…
(all images courtesy postcardy.blogspot.com)
* * *
Letter From Paris
Paris correspondent Janet Flanner wrote that August 1934 was a “month of memories” as it marked the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War, which we now call World War I. Flanner wrote about a new attitude that had arisen in those two decades, “a new attitude not only toward the last war but toward the next (which, ironically enough, seems increasingly inevitable to France since the death of the enemy warrior, von Hindenburg).” She continued with these observations made by French journalist and historian Emmanuel Berl (1892–1976), who wrote that as a result of the Great War, the youth in both France and Germany held few heroic illusions about war, seeing it not as a sacrifice but rather “as a means of being annihilated.”
SO MUCH FOR THE HEROICS…A refugee family returning to Amiens, France, looking at the ruins of a house on Sept. 17, 1918. Top right, Janet Flanner in 1940; below, Emmanuel Berl. (iwm.org.uk/Flanner photo copyright Estate of George Platt Lynes/Berl photo courtesy Joël Chirol)
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From Our Advertisers
Clothing company Rogers Peet used the threat of humiliation to encourage young men to stock up on “authentic university fashions” before returning to campus…
…the Wanamaker department store took a different approach, offering up new styles with a heavy English accent (I say, didn’t we play tennis once at the Hon. Toppy Crew’s?)…
…the makers of Goodyear tires offered up this disturbing image to boost sales…
…this ad told us that “Mrs. Henry Field” collected fine art, loved to go to parties, and “always smoked Camel cigarettes”…I am unaware of the fate of Mrs. Henry Field, married to the grandnephew of Marshall Field, but this unseemly image suggests she was replaced by a wax figure before the photo was taken…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with spot illustrations from (clockwise, from top) Victor De Pauw, Abe Birnbaum, and an unidentified illustrator who offered this suggestion for beating the late summer heat…
…we move along to Alan Dunn and a record-seeking pooch…
…Peter Arno with a very Arno-esque take on the stranded island trope…
…James Thurber gave us a man who was done making decisions…
…Richard Decker offered up this living history demonstration…
…George Price gave us two tropes for the price of one…
…Barbara Shermund gave us another glimpse into the lives of modern women…
…Rea Irvin continued his exploration of Manhattan’s fauna…
…our next cartoon is by Henry Steig, who used the pseudonym Henry Anton to avoid being confused with his brother, William Steig (featured on this issue’s cover)…unlike his brother, Henry was also a jazz musician, a sculptor and painter, a photographer, and a novelist…that is before he became a noted jeweler…
…Henry Steig’s jewelry shop at 590 Lexington Avenue can be glimpsed in the background of the famous subway vent scene from 1955’s The Seven Year Itch featuring Marilyn Monroe…
…and we close with Otto Soglow, and the last appearance his “Little King” in The New Yorker...William Randolph Hearst had lured Soglow away for his King Features Syndicate, debuting The Little King in his newspapers on September 9, 1934, where it would run until Soglow’s death in 1975…Soglow, however, would continue contributing cartoons of other themes to The New Yorker until 1974…
Claudette Colbert and Henry Wilcoxon in 1934's "Cleopatra." (cecilbdemille.com)
New Yorker film critic John Mosher was in the mood for one of Cecil B. DeMille’s big, splashy epic movies, but was disappointed to find a relatively restrained effort in DeMille’s latest flick, Cleopatra.
August 25, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
Perhaps Mosher would have preferred a silent version of the film, finding the dialogue “the worst I have ever heard in the talkies.” Among examples cited by Mosher was Warren William’s Caesar, who utters the word “Nope” to one of his senators.
CLEO BRIO…Clockwise, from top left, Paramount’s trailer for Cleopatra made a bold claim; Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) hails Caesar after emerging from a rolled up rug that had been presented to the Roman court; Julius Caesar (Warren William) acts unimpressed, but eventually falls for the Egyptian queen before meeting his demise; Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) is the next to fall for Cleopatra’s seductions. It ends badly for both of them. (pre-code.com/obscurehollywood.net)
Despite Mosher’s grumbles, Cleopatra would receive five Academy Award nominations (winning for Best Cinematography) and would become the highest-grossing film released in North America in 1934. That year Claudette Colbert (1903-1996) would appear in three films that were all nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture—she is the only actress ever to do so.
On the lighter side, Mosher took a liking to Harold Lloyd’s latest picture, The Cat’s Paw, which marked a sharp departure from Lloyd’s trademark slapstick. Lloyd adopted to a calmer pace, “touched with the delicate bloom of satire.”
Moviegoers who associated Lloyd with such pictures as 1923’s Safety Last…
(britannica.com)
…would have to settle for this new version of Lloyd, which was even touted on the movie’s promotional poster…
STAYING ON HIS FEET…Fox Pictures touted a “new” Harold Lloyd (except for his trademark glasses) in The Cat’s Paw. At right, Lloyd with co-star Una Merkel. (IMDB/criterionchannel.com)
* * *
Fun With Philately
After reading a column in The Herald Tribune that concerned interesting stamps and envelopes…
…James Thurber found himself inspired to make a brief examination of the “Thurber envelope”…
…which proved to be neither interesting nor unusual (excerpts):
* * *
From Our Advertisers
A couple of colorful advertisements, the first from the folks at Heinz, who invited New Yorker readers to become “Salad Wizards”…
…if being a salad wizard wasn’t good enough, you could pop open a bottle of Cora vermouth and feel downright aristocratic…
…and if you wanted to maintain that aristocratic pose, you’d better know how to serve your tomato juice, and make sure it is prepared by a “famous French Chef”…
…more libations in the back pages…here’s a sampling of three…there must have been a reason why all of the one-column ads featured mixers and spirits on the top and ads for hotels and apartments on the bottom…
…and before we jump into the cartoons, a brief look at illustrator Mildred Oppenheim, who worked under the pseudonym “Melisse.” Her work was seen in the early New Yorker mostly in ads for Lord & Taylor, however she also did work for others including the makers of Cannon towels (seen below). In 1931 The New York Times described her as “a wicked and telling satirist—almost a feminine counterpart of Peter Arno”…
…Melisse ran a cartoon strip, “Real News of New York…A Preview of What’s New,” in the New York Sun from 1933 to 1935. Melisse seemed to be flying high, but in 1940 she declared bankruptcy. However she quickly rebounded in 1941 with an advertising panel for Orbachs—“Around Town…with Melisse”—which became a nationally syndicated feature:
(strippersguide.blogspot.com)
…in the 1940s Melisse also produced a variety of drawings and paintings, designed mannequins for window and counter displays, and even produced designs for handkerchiefs and other clothing items. But for all her fame as a commercial illustrator, very little is known about her personal life, or what became of her after 1950. According to Alan Jay of the Stripper’s Guide, Melisse was born in Newark in 1905 and died in Miami in 1993, and was briefly married to another commercial artist in the early 1930s. A December 14, 1934 ad for her “Real News” strip in the Pelham Sun featured her photo:
(strippersguide.blogspot.com)
…on to our well-known New Yorker cartoonists, we begin with the stalwart Rea Irvin…
…accompanying part two of a three-part profile of New Deal Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson was this terrific caricature by Miguel Covarrubias…
…never too early to get ready for winter…spot drawing in the opening pages by Alan Dunn…
…but there was enough summer left for William Steig’s “Small Fry” to enjoy some leisurely pursuits…
…William Crawford Galbraith continued to ply his familiar waters…
…while Al Frueh turned in this gem…
…Helen Hokinson found some lively anticipation at the train station…
…Garrett Price took us to the seashore…
…while Barbara Shermund kept us abreast of current events…
During the roughly thirteen years of Prohibition, many Americans had forgotten how to mix a decent cocktail; the concoctions they devised during those dry years were often created to mask the taste of bootleg liquor—sales of Coca-Cola steadily increased throughout the 1920s in part because it made ardent spirits such as rum and whisky a bit more palatable.
August 18, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Donald Barr Chidsey examined the phenomenon in “The Talk of the Town,” visiting with traumatized bartenders around Manhattan:
LOST ART…Donald Barr Chidsey relayed the horror of a customer at Sherry’s (top left, photo of the 300 Park Avenue entrance, c. 1925) who asked for ice cream in his rum punch; directly across the street from Sherry’s was the Waldorf Astoria (top right), where a customer asked for a drink of half ice cream, half Coca-Cola; bottom images are from Albert Crockett’sThe Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book—as to what one gathers from Chidsey’s account, more than a few people needed to check the “Glossarial” to get reacquainted with the spirit world. (Museum of the City of New York/kitchenartsandletters.com)CUBA LIBRE…According to Chidsey, the go-to for women patrons at the Hotel Weylin was a Barcardi and Coke; at left, Hotel Weylin in 1935; at right, lobby card featuring entertainment at the Weylin Bar, circa 1930s. (Museum of the City of New York/ebay)THE LAST STRAW…Chidsey wrote of an alarming trend among patrons at Schrafft’s who demanded straws in their Tom Collinses. The sleek, art moderne Schrafft’s at 61 Fifth Avenue was among more than two-dozen Schrafft’s locations in New York City in the 1930s. Known for cleanliness and home-style cooking, target clientele were middle-class women. (Architectural Record photos via daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Speaking of Schrafft’s, here is their advertisement from the Aug. 18 issue, offering breakfasts ranging from 35 to 75 cents that apparently were the stuff of O. Henry’s dreams…
…what is a woman to do with a restless husband?…drawing on the wisdom of the ages, she hands him a beer and coaxes him into his easy chair…this ad encouraged women to “always keep a few bottles in your refrigerator”…in other words, keep ’em coming until he settles into a manageable stupor…
…and see just how easily he slips away, leaving you with a few moments to yourself…
…if highballs were more to your taste, the folks at Poland Water stood ready to help…
…R.J. Reynolds claimed their Camels could solve all sorts of life challenges…we’ve seen ads claiming that Camels soothed “jangled nerves” and helped one relax, but apparently they also could give you energy and pep, at least that is what tennis star Ellsworth Vines, Jr claimed…
…lots of color in the ads for the Aug. 18 issue…here the folks at Buick featured a woman in a red dress serving as an exclamation point to their automobile, which was no ordinary motorcar, but rather a “congenial companion, alive with good-natured personality”…
…the folks at General Tire went one better, making their tires the star attraction…those tires look so attractive it seems almost a shame to dirty them on the road…
…on to our cartoons, we cool off with this spot in the opening pages by Alan Dunn…
…William Cotton contributed this caricature of New Deal Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson that accompanied a three-part profile…
…Rea Irvin offered up a bird of a different feather…
…Robert Day gave us this master of understatement…
…Alan Dunn again, examining the trials and tribulations of the leisure classes…
…Peter Arno offered this take on the Hays Code (after politician Will Hays), which was going into effect after the brief “Pre-Code” period (roughly 1930 to 1934) during which filmmakers felt freer to explore themes featuring sex and violence…
…George Price gave us a man have trouble hitting his mark…
…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) contributed a cartoon with a talking animal, common today but rare in the early New Yorker…
…Raeburn Van Buren was also down on the farm…I think we know the answer to this woman’s query…
…and we close with James Thurber, where mixed doubles were naturally fraught with peril…
Above: Illustration of the Dorchester Hotel’s ballroom in the 1930s. (dorchestercollection.com)
Lois Long took her nightlife column, “Tables for Two,” to London and its famed nightclub scene, where everyone from British royalty to gangsters reveled in a boozy, bohemian scene.
July 7, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Prince Edward, a well-known party animal (who would serve as king for less than a year and abdicate in 1936) was known to get up on the stage of the Embassy Club and perform drum solos, while at the Savoy his fellow toffs would sip Champagne and glide in elegant dress across the dance floor. London nightlife included a lively jazz scene in edgy Soho basement clubs, featuring such greats as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie.
Long hoped that the visit to London, her first in eight years, would give her some much-needed rest and a change of scene. What she found instead was a red-hot, all-night party, where the smart set took dinner near midnight and danced until dawn.
SAVVY SAVOY….Clockwise from top left, the famed Savoy bartender Harry Craddock, credited with inventing the White Lady and the Corpse Reviver, at the Savoy’s American Bar in the 1930s; a Savoy elevator operator in 1926; diners at the Savoy circa 1930s; Savoy entrance. (madamgenevaandgent.co.uk/The Savoy/YouTube)LONDON SWINGS…More Lois Long haunts in London included, clockwise from top left, the Dorchester Hotel; the crowded dance floor at the Monseigneur with Roy Fox and his Orchestra (photo from 1932); patrons kicking up their heels at the Embassy Club on Old Bond Street; the Café de Paris, where American actress Louise Brooks demonstrated a new dance craze, The Charleston, in 1924. (dorchestercollection.com/albowlly.club/lucyjanesantos.com/Wikipedia)
* * *
Misery Loves Company
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White observed that almost everyone was “made miserable” by the Depression, but if one looked around there were signs that things weren’t so bad after all.
REASON FOR CHEER…For those still feeling blue about the Depression, E.B. White suggested watching kids cool off at a pier, such as these lads seen diving into the East River on the Lower East Side on July 3, 1935. (Jack Gordon/New York Daily News)
* * *
He Came Up a Bit Short
Howard Brubaker, in his column “Of All Things,” made this observation about Adolf Hitler’s prediction that Nazism would endure a thousand years.
And now a retreat into the cool darkness of the cinema, where John Mosher singled out Bette Davis’s performance in Of Human Bondage…Mosher’s instincts were correct—the film proved to be Davis’s breakout role on her road to major stardom.
ROAD TO RUIN…Bette Davis wowed the critics with her portrayal of a tearoom waitress who seduces a young medical student (Leslie Howard) and leads him down a path of self-destruction. The film was based on the 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. (IMDB)
Mosher also took in the “bright” performances of William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man, a pre-Code comedy-mystery based on the Dashiell Hammett novel by the same name. Powell and Loy portrayed Nick and Nora Charles, who added spice to their leisurely lives through numerous cocktails, flirtatious banter, and crime-solving. Critics loved the film, as did audiences, spawning five sequels from 1936 to 1947.
CHEERS…Top photo: Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) enjoy a drink with their client’s fiancee (Henry Wadsworth) in The Thin Man (1934); Bottom photo: Charles takes aim at a Christmas ornament (with a BB gun) while Nora enjoys the comforts of her new fur coat in a scene from The Thin Man. (Daily Beast/Austin Chronicle)
Another star of the show was Asta, the Charles’s wire fox terrier. Asta was portrayed by Skippy, a dog actor who not only appeared in The Thin Man films but also acted alongside Cary Grant in 1937’s The Awful Truth and in 1938’s Bringing Up Baby. Skippy appeared in three Thin Man movies and in more than twenty films altogether between 1932 and 1941. Being an actor in the film must have been good for one’s health: Powell lived 91 years, Loy 88 years, and Skippy, 20 years—a good long life for any pooch.
ROUGH NIGHT…Nick (William Powell) and Asta (Skippy) tend to Nora (Myrna Loy), who nurses a hangover in The Thin Man. (Wikipedia)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
While Chrysler’s styling of their streamlined Airflow proved to be too far advanced for the buying public (the Depression didn’t help), Studebaker’s own foray into the streamlined future caused a sensation…
…thanks to Studebaker’s brief merger with Pierce-Arrow (1928–33), Studebaker’s designers took cues from Pierce’s streamlined 1933 Silver Arrow and created more than 800 cars with “Year-Ahead” design features—the positive reception convinced the company to continue the style in 1935…here is a top-of-the-line 1934 President Land Cruiser…
1934 Studebaker President Land Cruiser with “Year-Ahead” design features, yet not as radical as Chrysler’s Airflow. (hemmings.com)
…we continue with those round rubber things that held the cars up…a lot of tire ads in the 1930s emphasized safety—blowouts were common back then…funny how it took nearly four decades to add seat belts to cars…those tires wouldn’t help much in a head-on collision, especially with your kid standing on the from seat…
…now let’s cool off with crisp Canadian Ale, thanks to Carling’s entry into the American market…
…Carling’s Black Label beer was popular in the states…my parents had a set of these coasters with the Black Label tagline…
…Budweiser continued its artful series of ads featuring the well-heeled enjoying its product…here it appears old dad (wearing some kind of medal) is getting to know his daughter-in-law over some cold chicken…”hey boy, she’s one of us!”…
…and we move on to three very different approaches to selling cigarettes, beginning with Spud, continuing its message that menthol cigarettes are as refreshing as a shower on a July afternoon…
…a close up of the message…
…Camel, on the other hand, continued its campaign against irritability…it apparently did wonders for this woman, who seems to be on something more than nicotine…
…and from the people who brought us the tagline “blow some my way” in 1928 (as a way to encourage women to take up the habit), by 1934 she is owning that cigarette, and apparently setting some ground rules with the gentleman…
…contrast with the more submissive pose in the Chesterfield ad from the late 1920s…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with spot art by Alan Dunn, which appears to have originated as a captioned cartoon…
…William Steig offered up this bit of art for a profile of an “insurance man” by St. Clair McKelway…
…Helen Hokinson drew up a full page of cartoons along the theme of outdoor dining…
…we continue Rea Irvin’s series on native birds…
…George Price found a way to save on the cost of light bulbs…
…and we close with James Thurber, and a welcome to the family…
Above, Stewart's Cafeteria in Greenwich Village, May 1933. (New York Public Library)
Although Sherwood Anderson is mostly known for his short story collections and novels, in the 1930s he also worked as a journalist, and for the June 9, 1934 issue of the New Yorker he explored the “centre of proletarian high life,” Stewart’s Cafeteria in Greenwich Village.
June 9, 1934 cover by Helen Hokinson.
What is particularly interesting about Anderson’s page 77 article for the “A Reporter at Large” column is what it doesn’t report, namely, that Stewart’s Cafeteria (later the Life Cafeteria) was known as a popular gay and lesbian hangout in addition to being a place for gawkers, assorted bohemians, and bohemian wannabes.
Anderson was a man of the world, so he knew exactly what Stewart’s was all about. But even the New Yorker wasn’t in the business of outing anyone, and editor Harold Ross, whose eccentricities included a puritanical strain, would not have allowed anything associated with “sexual deviance” to be printed in his magazine. Here is an excerpt from Anderson’s article, “Stewart’s, On the Square,” in which he subtly hints at the cafeteria’s “third life.”
NIGHT LIFE…Paul Cadmus depicted Stewart’s in this sexually charged painting, Greenwich Village Cafeteria, 1934, oil on canvas,Museum of Modern Art. (All archival images for this entry were obtained via nyclgbtsites.org/site/stewarts-cafeteria)
While Anderson tiptoed around the topic of homosexuality, gossip rags such as Stephen Clow’sBroadway Brevities put it front and center. Described as one of the most vicious show business gossip magazines ever published, Brevities also provided Clow with some side income: Clow and his collaborators often threatened to blackmail wealthy businesspeople and show business figures who frequented places like Stewart’s—outing them in his tabloid unless payment was made.
(McGill Institute via HuffPost.com)
Naturally such reporting helped attract gawkers to Stewart’s and its successor, Life Cafeteria. According to the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, “Stewart’s closed in the mid-1930s and was subsequently reopened as the equally popular Life Cafeteria. Regulars included a young Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando (though they didn’t meet each other until years later on a beach in Provincetown). Of the space, Brando later recalled, ‘The rednecks [on the street] were pointing at the diners like animals in a zoo. I was immediately intrigued and ventured in. Before I left that afternoon, I discovered that many of the homosexual men were actually putting on a show for the jam .'”
ON DISPLAY...According to the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, the large plate glass windows at Stewart's (later renamed Life Cafeteria) put gay life on full display to the late-night crowds who frequented the busy intersection. Artist Vincent La Gambina depicted one scene that gawkers might have taken in: Life Cafeteria, Greenwich Village, 1936. (Museum of the City of New York)TODAY, the building still stands, although it is a bit less lively as a home for a CVS store and a Bank of America branch. Just around the corner is the famed Stonewall Inn. (Google Maps Image)
According to the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project:
...in 1935 the manager of Stewart’s was convicted of operating a “public nuisance” and “disorderly house” and “openly outraging public decency” by allowing objectionable behavior in the interior and large crowds to gather outside. Specifically, the district attorney’s complaint cited “certain persons of the homosexual type and certain persons of the Lesbian type, to remain therein and engage in acts of sapphism and divers [sic] other lewd, obscene, indecent and disgusting acts” and that the cafeteria was “used as a rendezvous for perverts, degenerates, homosexuals and other evil-disposed persons.” Much of the testimony centered on the gender non-conforming dress and behavior of the patrons.
Here is another excerpt from Anderson's article, where he delves into the nighttime scene at Stewart's:
* * *
Nightlife, Part II
In my previous post E.B. White pondered the fate of the Central Park Casino, a favorite haunt of deposed Mayor Jimmy Walker and other members of the smart set who openly flouted Prohibition laws. In "Tables for Two," Lois Long made this observation (below) at the conclusion of her nightlife column, believing that Parks Commissioner Robert Moses would give the management a chance to lower food prices and allow common folks to enjoy its sumptuous atmosphere. Little did she know that Moses was feasting on a diet of revenge rather than food, and had plans to tear the place down, regardless of its lower prices.
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We kick off the ads with another Ponds celebrity endorsement from dancer and actress Francesca Braggiotti (1902-1998), who was married to actor, politician, and diplomat John Davis Lodge...
POWER COUPLE...John Davis Lodge and Francesca Braggiotti in 1932. They were married for 56 years. (Pinterest)
...Dr. Seuss was back with more ads for Flit insecticide...he was still two years away from his first children's book: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street...
...and with a splash of color, Bermuda beckoned New Yorkers to a "Real Vacation"...
...however, before you headed to Bermuda, you'd needed to do something with the kids...
...on to our cartoonists, we start with spot art from Abe Birnbaum...
...Birnbaum again with an illustration of boxer Max Baer for the profile section...
...more spot art from James Thurber in the "Goings On About Town" section...
...and Thurber again with some alarming news for a potential suitor...
...Rea Irvin kicked off his series, "Our Native Birds"...
...a famed advertising agency launched a new door-to-door survey, per Perry Barlow...
...Helen Hokinson gave us a hopeful gardener...
...Barbara Shermund looked in on the "modern girl" scene...
...and Peter Arno examined a sad medical case...
...and we close the June 9 issue with this item from E.B. White, who commented on a recent rally of American Nazis and some fighting Irish...
...the Nazi rally was also alluded to in the June 2 issue (I have the issues reversed this time to support the narrative)...
June 2, 1934 cover by Harry Brown.
...where Howard Brubaker was keeping things light in his column "Of All Things." I was surprised how little was mentioned in either issue about the meeting of 20,000 Nazi sympathizers on May 17, 1934, at Madison Square Garden.
Let's explore further: According to the Jewish Virtual Library, America's first established anti-Nazi boycott group was the Jewish War Veterans (March 19, 1933), followed by the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights (ALDJR), which was founded by the Yiddish journalist Abraham Coralnik in May 1933. By 1934 the ALDJR was led by Samuel Untermyer, who changed the organization's name to the "Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights." Nazi sympathizers targeted Untermyer as the face of boycott efforts, and at the May 17 rally the mere mention of his name prompted shouts of "Hang him!"
AMERIKA...The site for hockey games and dog shows became a site for ugliness on May 17, 1934, when 20,000 Nazi sympathizers gathered in Madison Square Garden to denounce boycotts against Adolf Hitler's regime. (The Archive Project)
This excerpt from the May 18, 1934 edition of The New York Times gives some idea of what transpired at the rally:
REALLY? Americans gathered at Madison Square Garden on May 17, 1934 to show their support for Nazi Germany and denounce American boycotts. (The Archive Project)
* * *
Dueling Muses
Film critic John Mosher always seemed upbeat about anything involving Disney, but given that animation was still in its infancy (its plastic trickery still rather novel), it didn't take much to outshine the otherwise drab fare (the "Grim") being coughed up by Tinseltown.
MAN OR MOUSE? The star-studded cast of Hollywood Party included Jimmy Durante, seen here duking it out with Mickey Mouse. (IMDB)
The grim included the Pre-Code drama, Upper World, about a rich, married man who falls to his ruin via a romance with a stripper (don't they always?), and Now I'll Tell, another Pre-Code drama, this one loosely based on the doings of racketeer and crime boss Arnold Rothstein.
SHAKE IT WHILE YOU CAN...Ginger Rogers performs “Shake Your Powder Puff” in a burlesque show in the film Upper World, one of the last of the Pre-Code dramas. It featured Warren William as a wealthy married railroad tycoon whose friendship with a showgirl (Rogers) leads to blackmail and murder; at right, five-year-old future child star Shirley Temple with Spencer Tracy in Now I'll Tell, which was loosely based on the autobiography of Carolyn Green Rothstein, wife of New York gambler Arnold Rothstein. Temple's role was a minor one, however her appearance in the musical Stand Up and Cheer!, which was released a month earlier, would make her a star. (IMDB)
* * *
More From Our Advertisers
We cool off by a taking a dip in the pool...er, rather by enjoying the "No Draft Ventilation" of a car body by Fisher...the model might want to stay in the pool, since air-conditioning in cars was still a good twenty years away...
...and yes, this is also a car-related ad, if you can believe it, the bride looking forward not to years of wedded bliss but rather her new La Salle (a Cadillac product)...
...another bride, and a car...is that a car body by Fisher? Who cares, the wedding is over and its time to fire one up...
...this woman seems to have it all thanks to Daggett & Ramsdell of Park Avenue, who are prepared to coat her in a "complete range of all the essential creams, lotions, face powder...cold cream soap, dusting powder" etc. etc....
...Dr. Seuss again for Flit, with baby in tow...
...on to our cartoons, we have Robert Day checking on the progress at Mt. Rushmore...
...Alan Dunn reveals pandemic worries of a different nature...
...and we close with Helen Hokinson, and a sudden change of mood...
Above, from left: When Teddy Roosevelt announced in 1912 that he would run for president against his former VP, William Howard Taft, Brown Brothers sent photographer Charles Duprez to Oyster Bay to take this famous photo; President Taft and his wife, Helen “Nellie” Taft, in 1909; famed New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson warms up before a game, circa 1912. (liveauctioneers.com/cabinetcardgallery.com/psacard.com)
Before there were photo agencies like Magnum or archives such as Getty Images there was a company named Brown Brothers, the world’s first stock photo agency founded by Arthur and Charles Brown in New York City in 1904.
March 24, 1934 cover by Garrett Price.
“The Talk of the Town” looked in on Brown Brothers, “the largest collection of photographs in the world—more than a million,” including a famous image of Teddy Roosevelt and the first photographic portrait of a woman’s face.
Brown Brothers photos could be seen everywhere in the early 20th century—their staff of twelve photographers provided images to New York newspapers at a time when the technology for publishing photos in the dailies was in its infancy and most papers didn’t employ staff photographers. Even the venerable New York Times hired the Browns to cover news events until they established their own team of photographers.
LITTLE DID DOROTHY DRAPER KNOW that she would become world famous when she sat for this photo (left) taken by her brother Dr. John W. Draper in his Washington Square studio at NYU in 1839 or 1840. Dorothy had to sit unblinking for the 65-second exposure—apparently her brother dusted her face with white flour to enhance the contrast. The Drapers still go down in history as creators of the oldest photo of a woman; at right, Dorothy Draper in the 1890s, in a photograph taken by her nephew. (boweryboyshistory.com/MCNY)ONE IN A MILLION…The early 20th century image at left is just one of as many as three million images amassed in the Brown Brothers archive; at right, a Brown Brothers archivist at work. (Pinterest/sportscollectorsdigest.com)
Note: The Brown Brothers’ archive of photos and negatives went up for sale in 2014, and was ultimately acquired by Leland’s in 2020.
* * *
De Terraplane!
E.B. White (in “Notes and Comment”) was also looking at a photo, or rather scrutinizing one that was featured in a Saturday Evening Post advertisement for Hudson’s Terraplane:
…here is the ad from the Post…
…and a closer look at the image, which had White seeing double.
(Both images courtesy The Saturday Evening Post)
* * *
Escape Artist
In his “Of All Things” column, Howard Brubaker included the following item about a new telescope, ostensibly to set up a quip about John Dillinger’s recent prison break (his second):
YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED…The FBI issued this “Wanted” poster of gangster John Dillinger— “Public Enemy No. 1″—in June 1934. The Feds gunned him down a month later. (AP Photo)
* * *
Playing Nice
The New Yorker commented on the trend toward fewer fights in the world of hockey, and although fighting in general ebbed a bit through mid-century, it nevertheless remained a staple of the game. Indeed the New York Rangers founder, Tex Rickard, who also promoted boxing at Madison Square Garden, knew quite well that hockey fights were one reason folks attended the games.
FACE OFF?…At left, goaltender Andy Aitkenhead of the New York Rangers padded his legs and arms but put his clean-shaven mug on the line in December 1934— it wasn’t until 1959, 42 years into the NHL’s existence, that a league goalie wore a mask on the ice. At right, New York Rangers captain Bill Cook (right) flanks coach and manager Lester Patrick alongside Frank Boucher on the ice at the Chicago Stadium in November of 1934. (Pinterest)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We begin with this sumptuous ad from Packard, appealing to those who could afford to own this luxury brand…
…if you couldn’t afford a Packard, you could rest assured that even a well-heeled deb could be happy with a Chevy…
…the folks at Powers Reproduction continued to tout the wonders of their color photography, even if their cake looked less than appetizing…
…Fanny Brice was appearing with the 1934 Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, so the folks at Spud jumped on her celebrity bandwagon…
…while R.J. Reynolds was suggesting we replace our chewed up pencils with a nice Camel cigarette…now, don’t you feel better?…
…the Canadian distillery giant Gooderham & Worts offered all sorts of options to calm our jangled nerves in this two-page spread…
…while the Germans continued to entice us onto their cruise ships perfected by science and featuring “the strapping sons of sailor families”…hmmm…
…in 1934 the New Yorker began featuring mostly wordless cartoons on the opening page of “The Talk of the Town,” including this one by Robert Day featuring Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia checking up on city employees…
…Richard Decker gave us an Irish Sweepstakes winner from Brooklyn who displayed some modesty and media savvy…
…Decker again, with the latest in perambulators…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King put his back into a ceremonial groundbreaking…
…Peter Arno’s sugar daddy received some not-so-happy returns…
…one of William Steig’s “Small Fry” was doing some serious reading…
…and James Thurber’s war continued from the rooftops…
…on to March 31, 1934…
March 31, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
…where we find Alice Frankforter covering an exhibition dubbed “A Mile of Art.” I’m guessing critic Lewis Mumford passed on this opportunity to offer some blistering commentary. As for Frankforter, she found the spectacle puzzling, if not irritating. An excerpt:
Constantin Alajalov offered his perspective on the art world stunt with this bit of spot art…
…and more from Frankforter, now reaching a state of exhaustion and near-delirium as she approached the end of the exhibit:
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Biblical Babbitts
Frank Buchman’s First Century Christian Fellowship (aka the Oxford Group) meeting in New York featured a lot of people chuckling and bubbling, but all that forced conviviality left critic Edmund Wilson feeling “quite morose.” Writing for the “A Reporter at Large” column, Wilson looked in on the group as they awaited Buchman’s arrival at a preliminary rally. The column was subtitled, “Saving the Better Classes and Their Butlers.” An excerpt:
Like other critics at the time, Wilson saw “Buchmanism” as bourgeois optimism and boosterism, interested more in converting the souls of the wealthy and celebrated rather than serving the needs of poor.
ODD COUPLE…Frank Buchman liked to be seen with the rich and famous. In 1939 he asked for a half hour of Mae West’s time, ostensibly to get this photo of him sharing some wisdom from his “Moral Re-assessment” booklet. West seems less than enamored by the encounter, regarding Buchman as some sort of alien creature; right, Buchman on the cover of April 20, 1936 edition of Time, which identified him as “Cultist Buchman.” (maewest.blogspot.com/Time)
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Carnegie’s Couture
Vogue magazine fashion editor Nancy Hardin and the New Yorker’s fashion editor Lois Long teamed up on a profile about Hattie Carnegie (1889 -1956) titled “Luxury, Inc.” Born Henrietta Kanengeiser in Vienna, Carnegie immigrated with her family to New York in 1900; nine years later she adopted the name “Carnegie” after Andrew Carnegie, the richest person in America. Through hard work and an inherent instinct for what American women desired, she built a fashion design business that thrived in Depression and catered to stars and celebrities including Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Fontaine, Lucille Ball, and Joan Crawford. An excerpt, with illustration by Hugo Gellert:
FUR SURE…Hattie Carnegie posing for a 1951 Vogue magazine photo. (Vogue)
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Steampunk Dream
In my previous entry I featured Robert Coates’s observations on the new Machine Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. For the March 31 issue critic Lewis Mumford, celebrant of the simple and unpretentious, waxed nostalgic over the novel exhibit:
I’M A LITTLE TEAPOT that made a big advance in the design world, according to critic Lewis Mumford. (MoMA)
Alan Dunn was also inspired by the exhibit, as evidenced in this cartoon from the April 7 issue…
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More From Our Advertisers
Founded in October 1933, the men’s magazine Esquire took off with a bang, and the publishers were not shy about boasting of its early success…
…cover of the April 1934 issue, featuring the mustachioed mascot Esky…based on a drawing by cartoonist E. Simms Campbell, Esky was featured on the cover in various situations until 1961…
…Peter Arno’s “Whoops Sisters” appeared sixty-three times in the New Yorker between 1926 and 1927 before Arno retired them (they occasionally popped up in other publications, and in a 1931 Cunard ad)…it seems odd that they would make an appearance in a cheap thermometer ad in 1934…at any rate, it is difficult to tell if this is by Arno or by a clever forger…
…there’s no mistaking the cartoonist behind this ad…
…and this one by Otto Soglow…
…and we close our advertising section by raising a glass to Frankfort Distilleries…
…on to our March 31 cartoons, and a lineup of New Yorker regulars Abe Birnbaum…
A New Yorker State of Mind 