Above: W.C. Fields was a well-known juggler and vaudeville performer decades before he became even more famous in the movies of the 1930s.
William Claude Dukenfield was a vaudeville juggler who distinguished himself from other “tramp acts” by adding sarcastic asides to his routines. Internationally known for his juggling skills, by the turn of the century the man who billed himself as “The Eccentric Juggler” would become much better known by another name: W.C. Fields.
In the first of a three-part profile, Alva Johnston pondered the secret behind Fields’ genius, an “inborn nonchalance” that he considered “the rarest of gifts.” Johnston surmised that some of that genius derived from the volatile relationship Fields had with his father, and the street-smarts he gained as a runaway at age eleven. It is no surprise, however, that these childhood stories of hardship were significantly embellished by the great wit himself.
Johnston also described Fields’ acting style and demeanor, noting that the actor’s asides were likely inspired by his mother, Kate Spangler Felton, who was known for her doorstep witticisms.
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Macabre Diversions
In the days before television and the internet, folks got their dose of the sensational and macabre from the tabloids, or, on occasion, in real life. Before crime or accident scene investigations became more sophisticated, it was not uncommon for crowds to mob grisly death scenes, including the car containing the bullet-riddled bodies of notorious bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Their Ford automobile, pocked with 112 bullet holes, became a popular traveling attraction at fairs, amusement parks, and, in February 1935, at a car dealer’s showroom in Missouri. E.B. White explained:
* * *
Saar Kraut
Janet Flanner mused on the recent plebiscite in the Saarland, which following World War I was seized from Germany and placed under the governance of a League of Nations commission. Much to the dismay of the French, the majority German population voted to return the Saar region to Germany, and its Nazi leadership.
* * *
Over the Rainbow
In a previous column, Lois Long took aim at the Rockefeller Center’s new Rainbow Room, dismissing it as a tourist trap filled with interminable strains of organ music. In her latest column, Long retracted some of that vitriol, finding the entertainment (and, one supposes, the food) more to her liking.
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From Our Advertisers
As Lois Long mentioned in “Tables for Two,” British actress and singer Beatrice Lillie was appearing at in the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center; according to the ad below, also featured were ballroom dancers Lydia and Joresco and bandleader Jolly Corburn…
…at first I though this was Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne shilling for Luckies, but the resemblance isn’t quite there, plus I’m not aware of the Broadway legends ever endorsing any product, let alone cigarettes…
…the folks at Hormel continued to feature notable Frenchmen who were known to enjoy French onion soup, although this particular image doesn’t do much for one’s appetite…
…the Bermuda Trade Development Board continued to feature colorful ads that enticed New Yorkers away from the late winter blahs…
…this ad for Schaefer is a bit odd…I guess the artist wanted to suggest a handbill, and therefore tilted the image it at an angle, unsuccessfully, one might add…
…The Theatre Guild once again called upon the talents of James Thurber to advertise their latest production…
…which segues into our cartoons, with Thurber once more…
…Al Frueh did his part to promote the stage with this illustration for the theatre section…
…Otto Soglow offered his spin on pairs figure skating…
…Gardner Rea explored the world of art appreciation…
…Helen Hokinson aptly supplied this cartoon for Lois Long’s fashion column…
…Whitney Darrow Jr. showed us the consequences of classified advertising…
…Barbara Shermund clued us in on the latest gossip…
…and we close with Peter Arno, and one butcher’s cold greeting…
Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–1979) was an unlikely Hollywood mogul. Born in a small Nebraska town with an unusual name (both his and the town), Zanuck dropped out of school in the eighth grade, apparently bitten by the acting bug during a brief childhood sojourn in Los Angeles.
In the first part of a two-part profile, Alva Johnston began to probe the mystery of the boy from Wahoo who would rise to become one of Hollywood’s most powerful studio executives.
Johnston took a quick look at Zanuck’s humble origins, including his first encounter with the film industry at age eight. There must have been something in the water at Wahoo, a town of just 2,100 residents when Zanuck was born. Other Wahoo notables contemporary to Zanuck included Nobel Prize laureate and geneticist George Beadle, Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Howard Hanson, and Hall of Fame baseball player Sam Crawford, among others.
After writing dozens of scripts for Warner Brothers (including many for their popular canine star, Rin Tin Tin), in 1933 Zanuck would leave Warner and form 20th Century Pictures with Joseph Schenck. By the time Johnston penned the New Yorker profile, 20th Century had risen to be the most successful independent movie studio of its time.
* * *
One-Way Street
It goes without saying that the interwar years of the 20th century were a time of extreme foment; Bolsheviks, communists, anarchists, fascists and other political agitators seemed to be constantly at each other’s throats as Europe prepared for its second act of self-annihilation. In the middle of it all was the Balkans, its many feuds always simmering near the boiling point.
After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 (which, along with other factors, triggered World War I), you would have thought Europeans would have abandoned the practice of parading dignitaries through crowded streets. In 1934 they were reminded of its risks.
That year was King Alexander I of Yugoslavia’s thirteenth on the throne, but his time was running short in a country constantly beset by civil war. Fearing that the German Nazis and Italian Fascists would take advantage of the instability, on Oct. 9, 1934 French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou invited Alexander I to Marseille to sign a Franco-Yugoslav solidarity agreement. While Alexander and Barthou were being slowly driven in an open car through the city’s streets, a Bulgarian gunman, Vlado Chernozemski, stepped from the crowd, hopped onto the car’s running board, and shot Alexander along with his chauffeur. Barthou also died in the melee, killed by a stray bullet fired by French police (three women and a boy in the crowd were also fatally wounded by stray police bullets). Struck down by a policeman’s sword, Chernozemski was subsequently beaten to death by the enraged crowd. It was one of the first assassinations to be captured on film.
Paris correspondent Janet Flanner offered some thoughts about the incident in her “Paris Letter.” Excerpt:
* * *
The Traffic Machine
In his “A Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey sang praises for the Triborough Bridge project, which was making visible progress on the massive public work that commenced in 1930. City officials had dreamed for years about a project that would at once connect Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, but it wasn’t until the power broker Robert Moses got involved as the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority chairman that things really started to move. Moses biographer Robert Caro wrote that “Triborough was not a bridge so much as a traffic machine, the largest ever built.” A brief excerpt:
As noted by Markey, the “people in charge” were forthright about the bridge’s completion date of July 1, 1936. And they kept their word. The bridge was substantially complete by June 1936, and would be dedicated on July 11, with Moses serving as master of ceremonies.
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From Our Advertisers
The common zipper was a relatively new invention in 1934. It had been more or less perfected by 1920, and in 1923 the B. F. Goodrich Company would coin the onomatopoetic word to describe the newfangled fastener on its galoshes, but it would take a while for the fashion industry to adopt the zipper as a replacement for buttons on garments, including men’s trousers. And so we get this staid-looking ad from Wetzel that signaled its entry into the brave new world of zippers (Talon was the dominant U.S. producer of zippers for many years)…
…this next ad is kind of amazing, a 1935 Auburn for only $695, which roughly translates to $15,000 or so today—still a bargain…known for cars that were fast, good-looking and expensive (and favored by Hollywood elite), Auburn struggled mightily during the Depression…along with its sister marques Duesenberg and Cord, the company would fold in 1937…
…during Prohibition distillers were allowed to keep stocks of whiskies produced before the 18th Amendment went into force…some of these were distributed through pharmacies during Prohibition for “medicinal purposes”…what was left over was sold after repeal, a stock of “pre-prohibition casks” that would be exhausted before Christmas, or so the ad rather alarmingly suggested…
…we first met tennis star Ellsworth Vines Jr a few issues ago when he was touting the health and energy benefits of Camel cigarettes…here he promotes an unlikely “stimulant”—Pabst Blue Ribbon ale…Vines testified that “the demand for more and more speed in sports calls for a finer and finer ‘edge’ of physical condition” and observed that PBR was “a great preventive of overtraining and staleness”…yep, after a few brewskies who feels like doing anything, let alone play tennis?…
…on to our cartoonists we open with a couple of spots by George Shellhase…
…and Gregory d’Alessio…
…William Crawford Galbraith gave us a fish out of water (the caption reads: You New Yorkers didn’t know we were so sophisticated in Detroit, did you?)…
…George Price still hadn’t come back to earth in his latest installment…
…Gardner Rea illustrated the results of charitable acts by the Junior League…
…and we close with James Thurber, and kindness from a stranger…
Above: Al Smith waving to crowds on arrival at Chattanooga, Tennessee during his presidential campaign in 1928. (Museum of the City of New York)
It’s hard to not like Al Smith, the governor of New York from 1923 to 1928, a man who avoided the temptations of political power and stayed true to his working class roots of the Lower East Side.
The son of Irish, Italian and German immigrants, Alfred Emanuel Smith (1873–1944) was raised in the Tammany Hall-dominated Fourth Ward, and although he was indebted to Tammany’s political machine throughout much of his professional life (including stints in the New York State Assembly and as York County Sheriff, President of the Board of Alderman, and finally Governor) he remained untarnished by corruption. Smith’s unsuccessful bid for the U.S. presidency in 1928 put an end to his political life, but there was still much to do, as “The Talk of the Town” explained:
Smith first sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924. According to historian Robert Slayton, Smith advanced the cause of civil liberty by decrying lynching and racial violence at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, where Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the nominating speech for Smith and saluted him as “the Happy Warrior of the political battlefield.”
Following his 1928 presidential election loss to Herbert Hoover, Smith became president of Empire State, Inc., the corporation that built and also operated the Empire State Building, which was then the tallest building in the world. Smith was also known for his fondness of animals, and in 1934 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses made Smith “Honorary Night Zookeeper” of the renovated Central Park Zoo. Smith was given keys to the zoo and often took guests to see the animals after hours. According to Rebekah Burgess of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, “As a resident of 820 Fifth Avenue, directly across the street from the entrance of the Central Park Zoo, Smith was known to appear with snacks for the animals or to launch into impromptu lectures for visitors. Al Smith took his honorary title to heart. Throughout the rest of his life, Smith could often be found attending to the animals at the zookeepers’ sides during open hours. At night, Smith visited with guests, or more often, one-on-one with the animals.”
Smith was also a humanitarian, and in addition to advocating for the working class, he was an early critic of the Nazi regime in Germany, vigorously supporting the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933. Here is another excerpt from the “Talk” piece:
* * *
Culture Club
In the Nov. 9, 1929 issue of The New YorkerMurdock Pemberton hailed the opening of the Roerich Museum. For the July 14, 1934 issue, “The Talk of the Town” took another look. A brief excerpt:
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Itinerant Showman
Alva Johnston filed the first installment of a three-part profile of famed sports promoter Jack Curley (1876–1937). A brief excerpt:
* * *
Over There
In his column “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker made this brief mention of the “Night of the Long Knives;” on June 30, 1934 Adolf Hitler ordered SS guards to murder the leaders of the paramilitary SA along with hundreds of other perceived or imagined opponents.
Here is a clip from the front page of The New York Times, July 3, 1934:
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Pimm’s and Soda
July in England meant Wimbledon, and The New Yorker was there to observe the “snobbish and sacred” rite…
* * *
Midsummer Dreams
In the summertime (and before widespread use of air conditioning) stage entertainments such as theater and musical performances took to the outdoors during their off-season, seeking the evening cool of intimate rooftops or large, open venues such as Lewisohn Stadium, A brief excerpt describing a performance of Samson et Dalila:
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From Our Advertisers
The folks at struggling carmaker Hupmobile took out this bold, full-page ad to tout their flashy “Aero-Dynamic” by noted designer Raymond Loewy…
…this ad from Harriet Hubbard Ayer was bold in a very different way, essentially calling some women ugly unless they used the company’s “beauty preparations”…
…consommé, a clear soup that was particularly popular among the upper classes, offered up some keen competition between two food giants…here Heinz enlisted the help of William Steig to move their product…
…while the folks at Campbell’s offered up this lovely patio setting for their “invigorating” consommé…
…meanwhile, White Rock mineral water could be found on patios all over Manhattan, as this ad attested…
…this is a reminder that most city folks had their milk and other dairy products delivered in the early part of the 20th century…by the early 1960s about 30 percent of consumers still had their milk delivered, dropping to 7 percent by 1975 and .4 percent by 2005…
…affordable home air-conditioning wouldn’t be available to the masses until after World War II…this unit (designed for a single room) from Frigidaire retailed for $340 (a little less than $8,000 today)…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with Robert Day in the “Goings On’ section…
…Day again, exploring the baffling, glassy interiors of modern restaurants…
…the birdwatching continued with Rea Irvin…
…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) gave us a swimming somnambulist…
…Helen Hokinson explored the paranormal, via domestic plumbing…
…and we close with James Thurber, and the missing Dr. Millmoss…
In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs published the short story Tarzan of the Apes. Since then at least ninety books, 350 radio serials, three TV series and forty-five full-length films have told the story of the Lord of the Apes.
Tarzan was the first pop culture icon to attain worldwide fame, paving the way for a host of comic-book superheroes that would follow. Recalling his youth in post-war Leningrad in the early 1950s, Joseph Brodsky wrote of the bootleg Tarzan movies he devoured at the local cinema, and the effect a “long-haired naked loner” had on the regimented, inhibited lives of Soviet youth: “The Tarzan (film) series alone, I daresay, did more for de-Stalinization than all of Khrushchev’s speeches.”
Starting with Elmo Lincoln in 1918, four different silent film actors portrayed Tarzan before Johnny Weissmuller (1904–1984) swung onto the screen with co-star Maureen O’Sullivan. Other Tarzan portrayers would follow, but it was Weissmuller—winner of five gold medals as an Olympic swimmer—who defined the role over two decades, starring in twelve Tarzan films from 1932 to 1948, O’Sullivan playing Jane in the first six of those films. Critic John Mosher sensed that Weissmuller was in for the long haul in just his second outing:
In 2003, the Library of Congress deemed Tarzan and His Mate “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
A note of trivia: Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan (1911–1998) was the mother of actress Mia Farrow and grandmother of journalist Ronan Farrow. She’s also the grandmother of Soon-Yi Previn, Mia’s adopted daughter and current wife of Mia’s ex-partner, Woody Allen.
* * *
Spring Has Sprung
E.B. White began his weekly column with some thematic suggestions for the Maypole’s ceremonial ribbons. Excerpt:
A few of White’s references explained:
White also referenced the “Neo-Angle” bathtub, shown here in an ad from the same issue:
…James Thurber added this embellishment along the bottom of White’s column…
* * *
Freaked Out
Alva Johnston contributed his third and final installment on the world of circus freaks, using descriptive language that would not pass muster today:
* * *
Biding Its Time
“The Talk of the Town” took notice of a lighthouse that was mounted atop the Seamen’s Church Institute, which overlooked New York Harbor from Battery Park. A time ball above the lighthouse would drop down a pole to signal twelve noon to ships in the harbor. Installed on April 15, 1913—to mark one year after the sinking of the RMS Titanic—the lighthouse and time ball were relocated to the South Street Seaport Museum in 1968.
* * *
Gall of a Gaul
French writer Céline, aka Dr Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (1894–1961), is considered by some to be one of France’s greatest 20th century writers, influencing the likes of Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and Charles Bukowski. However Céline is also widely reviled as a Nazi sympathizer and anti-semite, but whatever one thinks of the writer, most agree that he hated pretty much everyone. Clifton Fadiman tried to make sense of the bilious Céline and his most celebrated novel, Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit). An excerpt:
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From Our Advertisers
There’s nothing hateful about these brightly colored blankets and throws if you were looking for something for Mother’s Day…
…it’s interesting how Fifth Avenue department stores such as Bonwit Teller embraced new-fangled synthetics made by Dupont—not exactly material favored by those to the manor born…
…however Lyda Roberti, the “Bright Particular Star” of the Broadway musical Roberta, seemed pleased to be sporting a gown spun from “Lastex,” formed from a combination of silk and rubber…
…more fashionable women, this time paired with Buick’s latest model displaying a bit of streamlined flair…
…the folks at General Tire touted the safety of their blowout-proof tires, but as with most things in the 1930s, the scene suggests little regard for safety in general…the boy driving the soapbox racer perilously close to the limo is not a supporter of the National Rifle Association—in the 1930s NRA stood for the New Deal’s National Recovery Act…
…recalling a style perfected by fashion illustrator Carl “Eric” Erickson, this lovely ad beckoned us to an outdoor cocktail party courtesy of Martini & Rossi…
…working the growing market of female smokers, the folks at Lucky Strike gave us this sophisticate caught in a pensive mood…
…of course advertisers also appealed to another female market, the majority of women stuck at home doing the cooking and cleaning…and so we have pandering ads like this one from Heinz (did people really read these things?)…
…another approach was to cast women as a nagging emasculators, here illustrated by James Thurber…
…however, in Thurber’s cartoon world, it was the men who got the upper hand in the final installment of his “war” series…
…Thurber was busy in this issue, also supplying this spot illustration…
…we switch to a more leisurely pace with Syd Hoff…
…and check in with Clarence Day, who in addition to his continuing “Life With Father” series occasionally contributed these illustrated poems…
…and we close with Otto Soglow, and an early bird who should have stayed in bed…
Above: Modeling agency founder John Robert Powers poses with participants of a fashion queen contest at the 1939 New York World's Fair. (NYPL)
John Robert Powers was a household name in the 1930s, founder of one of the world’s first modeling agencies—he supplied countless advertisers with mostly female models, some moving on to Hollywood careers.
Writing for “A Reporter at Large” under the title “Perfect 36,” frequent New Yorker short story contributor Nancy Hale (1908 –1988) looked into the mysteries behind the fabled “John Powers Book” and its collection of sophisticated models.
Hale was given a tour by a company representative who described the types of women the Powers company represented, noting the successes of women who landed in major cigarette ads or went on to become Hollywood stars:
A number of Hollywood stars got their start or were discovered through their work with Powers, who himself was a sometime actor and the subject of a 1943 musical comedy, The Powers Girl.
A note about the author, Nancy Hale: A brilliant short story writer, Hale published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1929 (when she was just 21) and would publish more than eighty stories in the magazine through 1969—she holds the record for the most stories in the magazine in a single year, publishing twelve between July 1954 and July 1955. New Yorker editor William Maxwell regarded Hale’s writing technique as “flawless.”
* * *
Tat For Tat
Alva Johnston explored the world of “tattooed people” in his second installment of a three-part profile series titled “Sideshow People”…
* * *
Bloody Satisfying
Film critic John Mosher declared David O. Selznick’s production Viva Villa! to be “thoroughly satisfying”—with a screenplay by Ben Hecht and starring actor Wallace Beery as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, the film was considered violent and bloody by 1934 standards.
Mosher found some of the film’s violence to be startling. Being one the last Pre-Code films, censors would start clamping down on such scenes in the coming years.
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From Our Advertisers
MGM took out a full-page ad to tout the success of Viva Villa and other MGM “hits”…
…note the bottom left hand corner of the MGM ad—a cartoon by Otto Soglow promoting the upcoming film Hollywood Party, a star-studded comedy musical featuring Laurel & Hardy, Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez and Mickey Mouse…
…those looking for a different kind of entertainment could have been enticed by this lavish center-page spread from German ocean liner companies…they were inviting Americans to Oberammergau, Germany to witness the “only performances of the Passion Play until 1940″…the play was usually performed every ten years (years ending in the digit zero) but in 1934 a special performance was supported by the Nazi Party…incidentally, the 1940 play was cancelled due to World War II…
…the same German-American shipping companies also advertised an African cruise…with some racist imagery…
…perhaps you wanted to go to Europe on a ship with fewer Nazis on board…in that case you could grab a berth on a ship with the United States Lines, and hang out with these stiffs…
…the makers of Old Gold referenced a previous ad featuring Jimmy Durante with a new spot starring actor/comedian Eddie Cantor…both ads depicted impressionable young women admiring the smoking wisdom of older men…
…for reference, the creepy Durante ad…
…the famous “Call for Philip Morris” advertising campaign began during World War I, but in 1933 Johnny Roventini, a bellhop at the Hotel New Yorker, would become the living symbol of the cigarette brand…
…by contrast, Frankfort Distilleries showed us an image of man who would not represent them, namely Jed Clampett…
…Chevrolet continued its rebranding campaign, positioning itself as an affordable choice that was nevertheless favored by the posh set…
…who would rather be driving a Packard, here appealing to the nostalgic sensibilities of old-timers who had the means to afford one…
…on to our cartoons, and some “Small Fry” baseball from William Steig…
…an unusual captioned cartoon (from George Price) featured in the opening “Goings On About Town” section…
…Syd Hoff gave us an alarmed matron confronting the unthinkable…a doorman as a son-in-law…
…we haven’t seen Isadore Klein’s work in awhile—understandable, as he was busy in his career as an animator––in 1934 he worked on films for Van Beuren Studios (Rainbow Parade Cartoons) and in 1936 he would move to Disney’s Silly Symphonies…
…Paul Manship’sPrometheus at Rockefeller Center is iconic today, but when it was installed in 1934 it puzzled more than a few onlookers, including Robert Day…
…and we close with James Thurber, and a turn of events in his “war”…
It’s hard to believe in this day and age that a theoretical physicist could enjoy rock star status, but then Albert Einstein wasn’t your everyday theoretical physicist.
A two-part profile of Einstein (1879–1955) by Alva Johnston (with terrific caricature by Al Frueh) examined the life and “idol” status of a man who would define the idea of genius in the 20th century. Although Einstein desired to live an almost reclusive existence at Princeton University, Johnston noted that he had become “fairly reconciled to the occupation of popular idol.”
Einstein was at Princeton thanks to the rise of Adolf Hitler, who came to power in Germany in early 1933 while Einstein was visiting the United States. Returning to Europe that March, Einstein knew he could not return to his home country (indeed, the Gestapo had raided his Berlin apartment and eventually seized all of his property), so when Einstein landed in Antwerp, Belgium on March 28, 1933, he immediately went to the German consulate and surrendered his passport, formally renouncing his German citizenship.
After some time in Europe and Great Britain, in October 1933 Einstein accepted an offer made earlier by from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey to serve as a resident scholar. When he arrived with his wife, Elsa, he said he would seclude himself at the Institute and focus on his teaching and research.
* * *
Stop and Go
E.B. White devoted his “Notes and Comment” to Manhattan’s traffic situation, which he found manageable as long as tourists stayed out of the way…
White also noted the perils of Park Avenue, especially the taxi drivers (distracted by those newfangled radios) darting between the islands…
…and then there was Fifth Avenue, notorious for traffic jams, made worse on weekends by the tourist traffic…
…later in “The Talk of the Town” White continued his thoughts on New York taxis, namely the introduction of coin-operated radios installed for use by passengers…
* * *
Fly Newark
Albert L. Furth took us off the mean streets and into the air when he filed this account about the Newark Metropolitan Airport for “A Reporter at Large.” Furth seemed put off by the cachet of European airports and their many amenities, given that the Newark airport—although admittedly utilitarian—was the busiest in the world. An excerpt:
* * *
Goodnight, Speakeasy
Lois Long was an 17-year-old Vassar student when Prohibition went into effect in 1919, so when she started her career in New York in 1922 the only nightlife she knew revolved around speakeasies. Although she held Prohibition officers in disdain, she also believed that the repeal of the 18th Amendment would lower the quality of New York nightlife—the food, the “adroit service,” and the “genial din” of the speakeasy. Excerpts:
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From Our Advertisers
Abercrombie & Fitch (then an outfitter for the elite outdoorsman) was offering holiday shoppers everything from multi-tool knives to cocktail shakers…
…while the folks at Clerevu telescopes found a growing market for folks who used their product for anything but stargazing…
…with Repeal just days away, the Pleasant Valley Wine Company of New York hoped folks would pop a few of their corks before the good stuff arrived from France…
…the British were coming to the rescue via the Berry Brothers, who were overseeing the importation of liquor from their offices at Rockefeller Center’s British Empire Building…
…let’s look at an assortment of one-column ads…the center strip features an ad promoting Angna Enters’ appearance for “one evening only” at The Town Hall (123 West 43rd Street)…Enters (1897–1989) was an American dancer, mime, painter and writer who likely performed her piece Moyen Age…
…we begin our cartoons with Gardner Rea, and a dedicated bell ringer…
…Otto Soglow showed us a softer side of The Little King…
…Peter Arno revealed the human side of the posh set…
…and we close the Dec. 2 issue with this classic from James Thurber…
…on to Dec. 9, 1933, and a cover by an artist we haven’t seen in awhile, Ilonka Karasz…
…and we open with this comment by E.B. White, who along with critic Lewis Mumford had once voiced displeasure over the massive Rockefeller Center project. However, while viewing the floodlit tower by night, he decided that he would have to eat his words, observing how “the whole thing swims up tremendously into the blue roxyspheres of the sky”…
…we continue with White, who also offered his thoughts on something heretofore unthinkable—a proposal to start putting beer in cans…
…it would happen about a year later…on Jan. 24, 1935, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company, in partnership with the American Can Company, delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale to drinkers in Richmond, Virginia…
…and despite White’s doubts, apparently ninety-one percent of the first drinkers of the product approved of the canned beer, although when Krueger’s launched their ad blitz they had to include instructions (and a new tool) to open the darn things…
* * *
Dreamscapes
Critic Lewis Mumford offered his thoughts on a recent exhibit by a young surrealist named Salvador Dali…
…and we move along to moving pictures, where John Mosher was showing some appreciation for Joan Crawford (1906–1977) in the pre-Code film Dancing Lady…
In addition to Crawford, the star-studded cast included Clark Gable, Fred Astaire (in his film debut), Franchot Tone (who was married to Crawford from 1935-39 and made seven movies with her), The Three Stooges, Nelson Eddy, and Robert Benchley, who played a reporter in the film.
Dancing Lady was the film debut of Astaire, making Crawford the first on-screen dance partner of the famed hoofer…
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More From Our Advertisers
We begin with this full-page advertisement from Heinz, which went to great lengths and expense to make their ad appear to part of The New Yorker’s editorial content, even featuring a Perry Barlow cartoon of a boy making a mess with their product…
…another New Yorker contributor who occasionally went over to the advertising side was Alexander Woollcott, here shilling for Chrysler…
…Kayser, purveyor of women’s hosiery and underthings, was going for some humorous holiday cheer, but the effect is a bit unsettling…
…liquor-related ads began to proliferate with the end of the Prohibition…this one from Martini & Rossi…
…Continental Distilling was hoping to grab its share of gin sales with its Dixie Belle American gin…
…from the same folks who brought us Fleishmann’s yeast (and kept The New Yorker afloat in its early lean years) came this American dry gin…
…Ruppert’s Beer was back with another full-page color ad by Hans Flato…
…on to our cartoons, and Santa again, this time besieged by an aggressive tot as rendered by Helen Hokinson…
…Carl Rose found an unlikely customer at a newsstand…
…here is the last of four cartoons Walter Schmidt published in the New Yorker between 1931 and 1933…
…Peter Arno left his glamorous world of nightclubs and high society parties to look in on life at a boarding house…
…and we close with the delightful Barbara Shermund…
The name Will Hays will always be linked to the Motion Picture Production Code, a set of guidelines for self-censorship that studios adopted to avoid government intervention.
Hays, however, played both sides in the culture wars. A Republican politician, Hays (1879–1954) managed the 1920 election of Warren G. Harding before moving on to Postmaster General and then chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. During the so-called pre-Code era, roughly 1930 to 1934, the Production Code was barely enforced, giving filmmakers the freedom to explore themes ranging from prostitution to gangster violence. When Alva Johnston wrote a two-part profile on Hays for The New Yorker, pressure from Catholic Church and other morality groups was building for Hays to strictly enforce the Code, or else. An excerpt:
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The Trouble With Money
In their investigation of the probable causes of the 1929 market crash, the Senate Banking and Currency Committee summoned J.P. Morgan Jr (1867–1943) on June 1, 1933, to testify on questionable banking practices. Committee counsel Ferdinand Pecora (1882–1971) set out to prove, among other things, that Morgan sold stock below market price to some of his cronies. Pecora also learned that Morgan and many of his partners paid no income tax in 1931 and 1932, big news to Americans still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression. E.B. White made these observations:
Although not mentioned by White, the hearing began with an odd little sideshow. Writing for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society blog, Joanna Hallac notes that because the hearings were slow to get started, newspaper reporters grew desperate to get something for the evening papers. Then one enterprising reporter, Ray Tucker, spotted circus dwarf Lya Graf with her agent, Charles Leef, outside of the hearing room (the Barnum & Bailey Circus was in town) and suggested Graf meet the famed banker. Hallac writes: “Although he was initially startled, Morgan was genial and rose and shook her hand. Naturally, the photographers were stepping all over each other to get a picture of the exchange. Leef, seeing a perfect press opportunity for himself and the circus, waited for Morgan to sit down and then scooped up Graf and placed her in J.P. Morgan’s lap. Morgan apparently laughed and had a brief exchange with the demure lady, in which he told her he had a grandchild bigger than her.”
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Single Member Plurality
Among other attributes, E.B. White was known for his use of the first person plural, the editorial or clinical “we.” White himself offered this insight:
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Uncle Tom, Revived
Plays based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin were wildly popular throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but by the 1930s the story seemed antiquated and no longer relevant. That didn’t stop the Players (a Gramercy park actors club) from mounting a 1933 Broadway revival that proved popular with audiences and a New Yorker stage critic, namely E.B. White, sitting in for Robert Benchley…an excerpt…
…on the other hand, White found the Frank Faye/Barbara Stanwyck play Tattle Tales tedious, a thin veneer over the stars’ crumbling marriage off-stage…
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Frothy Air
E.B. White (via “The Talk of the Town”) took a stroll through Coney Island and found the place somewhat revived, perhaps thanks to the return of legal beer and Bavarian-style beer gardens…
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Peace, He Said
Adolf Hitler was talking peace, but the French weren’t buying it according to The New Yorker’s Paris correspondent Janet Flanner—in just seven years her beloved City of Light would fall to the Nazis…
…speaking of Janet Flanner, apparently her “Paris Letter” implied that the author Edna Ferber had married. Ferber offered this correction, in good humor:
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Class anxieties were (and still are) gold to Madison Avenue—look at this poor woman, pondering her very existence, lacking as she did the horsepower to lay some rubber at a green light…
…or this woman, who thought ahead and made sure she had some hair lotion to ward off cackles from the beach harpies…
…on the other hand, this cyclist seems to care less about appearances as she races toward us with a crazed smile, half-human, half-illustration…
…and then there’s this fellow, playing it cool in a white linen suit, which for a sawbuck seems like a bargain, even in 1933…
…the last two pages of the magazine featured friends racing to some swell destination…the lads at left are being propelled to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair thanks to the wonders of leaded gasoline, while the women at right seem to be doing at least eighty…note neither car has a windshield, so you wonder how many bugs they will pick out of their teeth…
…an apt segue to our cartoons, where Peter Arno showed us a couple going nowhere fast…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King had his own marital situation to ponder after a visit from a sultan…
…a very unusual cartoon from Helen Hokinson, who rarely delved into serious socio-political issues (although her captions were often provided by others at The New Yorker)…this cartoon referred to a cause célèbre of the 1930s, the case of the prejudicial sentences of the Scottsboro boys that recalled the Tom Mooney frame-up two decades earlier…
…on to lighter topics, Robert Day checked in on the progress at Mt. Rushmore…
…George Price also went aloft for a challenge…
…and Carl Rose found this dichotomy in the conquest of nature…
…on to June 17, 1933…
…where Frank Curtis reported on the military-style schedule that put young men to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps…excerpts:
…just one ad from this issue, another Flit entry from Dr. Seuss, who wouldn’t publish his first book until 1937…
…our cartoons are courtesy Otto Soglow, with some bedside manner…
…Kemp Starrett set up what should prove to be an interesting evening…
…Gluyas Williams considered the woes of J.P. Morgan Jr…
…and we close with another from George Price, doing some tidying up…
Good cheer was in short supply during the worst year of the Depression, but as 1933 approached many New Yorkers could at least look forward to legal beer in the New Year.
But as with all things political, new rules and regulations would need to be hashed out before the taps could flow, and both brewers and beer drinkers would have to recalibrate a relationship that had been suspended for nearly 13 years. Alva Johnston gave this (excerpted) report in “A Reporter at Large”…
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National Treasure
Chester Dale (1883–1962) began his career in finance at age fifteen, working as a runner for the New York Stock Exchange. Just twelve years later he would marry painter and art critic Maud Murray Dale, and together they would amass an art collection that would include significant works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. In 1932 the Dales were well on their way to building a collection that would eventually end up in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “The Talk of the Town” featured the Dales in this except:
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Smoke Screen
E.B. White noted the historic meeting of outgoing U.S. President Herbert Hoover and his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. White speculated on at least one topic of discussion:
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No Longer “It”
Here is how IMDB describes the 1932 pre-Code drama Call Her Savage: “Sexy Texas gal storms her way through life, brawling and boozing until her luck runs out, forcing her to learn the errors of her ways.” The actress who portrayed that “Texas Gal,” Clara Bow, was getting sick of Hollywood and would make just one more film before retiring at age 28. Although in some circles the silent era’s “It Girl” sex symbol was finally beginning to earn some credit as an “artiste,” critic John Mosher was reserving judgment:
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Is this really how the smart set lived in 1932 Manhattan? Here we have an old toff dressed like Santa (in a top hat) sneaking presents onto the Christmas tree…and caught in the act by, I presume, his wife and a chambermaid?…
…in sharp contrast, here is an ad from the Golden Rule Foundation, which annually designated the second week in December as “Golden Rule Week”…the foundation raised funds to help needy children throughout the world…
…and here’s a bright, back cover ad from Caron Paris…apparently the face powder industry had been good to them in 1932…
…on to our cartoons, we start with a smoking tutorial from William Steig…
…some sunny optimism from one of Helen Hokinson’s “girls”…
…in this two-pager by Garrett Price, an artist asks his patron: All right then, what was your conception of the Awakening of Intelligence through Literature and Music?…
…Isadore Klein dedicated this cartoon to the much-anticipated launch of a new literary magazine, The American Spectator (not to be confused with today’s conservative political publication by the same name) and its illustrious line-up of joint editors…
…Crawford Young’s caption recalled the precocious child in Carl Rose’s 1928 cartoon caption, a collaboration with E.B. White — “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it”…
…and speaking of Carl Rose, this next cartoon by James Thurber has an interesting history…New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin explains in this Carl Rose Inkspill bio: In 1932, Rose submitted a drawing captioned, “Touche!” of two fencers, one of whom has just cut off the head of the other. Harold Ross (according to Thurber in The Years With Ross) thinking the Rose version “too bloody” suggested Thurber do the drawing because “Thurber’s people have no blood. You can put their heads back on and they’re as good as new”…
…as we close out December 2021 (which I am dutifully trying to do the same in 1932), we move on to the Dec. 10 issue…
…and Samuel N. Behrman’s profile (titled “Chutspo”) of comedian Eddie Cantor, who made his way from vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies to fame on the radio, in film and on early television. Theater great Katherine Cornell certainly appreciated Cantor’s gift for making his routine look easy: Here’s an excerpt:
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Christmess
Lois Long’s “On and Off the Avenue” column was thus titled to reflect the annual challenge of buying that special something for that special someone. Here is the opening paragraph:
One of the items suggested in Long’s column was a game named for our friend Eddie Cantor called “Tell it to the Judge”…
…or you could select one of these gifts from A.G. Spaulding…my grandfather had one of those perpetual desk calendars…I would stave off boredom by endlessly flipping those numbers while the adults conversed in German…
…on to our cartoonists, James Thurber provided this nice bit of art for a two-page spread…
…Kemp Starrett gave us some biscuit (cookie) execs contemplating a new, streamlined design for their product…
…Norman Bel Geddes is perhaps best known for designing the “Futurama” display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair…here is Bel Geddes’ “Cobra Lamp”…
…George Price gave us a fellow peddling more than a simple top…
…and with Peter Arno, the party never ends…
…on to Dec. 17, 1932…
…and Arno’s ex Lois Long was back with another “Tables for Two,” still feigning the old spinster (see “shawl and slippers” reference in first graf) when in fact she was an attractive, 31-year-old divorcee who apparently still had plenty of fire for late night revelry…
According to the Jeremiah Moss blog Vanishing New York, Long was likely describing 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues that “began as a row of speakeasies, which turned into jazz clubs that then evolved into burlesque houses.” The speakeasies got their start when the city lifted residential restrictions on the brownstones and businesses moved in, including Tony’s, the Trocadero and later Place Pigalle…
…it was at the new Place Pigalle that Long enjoyed the “knockout” after-midnight show featuring ballroom dancers Frank Veloz and Yolanda Casazza and the diminutive singer Reva Reyes…
…and there was more entertainment to be had in Midtown with the upcoming opening (Dec. 27, 1932) of Radio City Music Hall, a dream project of Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel. Hugh Blake had the scoop for the New Yorker in the “A Reporter at Large” column…an excerpt:
…Radio City Music Hall was built to host stage shows only, but within a year of its opening it was converted into a movie venue…and speaking of movies, we have film critic John Mosher finally finding a movie to his liking, and a novel-to-film adaptation to boot…
…and back to the stage, Al Frueh lent his artistry to the play Dinner At Eight, which opened October 22, 1932, at the Music Box Theatre, and would close May 6, 1933, after 232 performances. The popular play had revivals in 1933, 1966 and 2002 as well as a George Cukor film adaptation in 1933 with an all-star cast.
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We begin with this helpful advice from the folks at the Lombardy…
…while we have a much less stuffy invitation from the French Line…
…the usually staid Brooks Brothers sprung for an all-color Christmas ad, featuring items that would suit any aspiring Bertie Wooster…
…and what would be the holidays without canned meat…
…and we end with James Thurber, who gets us into the proper mood for the New Year…
He was variously a restaurateur, con man and actor, but one thing Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitry Obolensky Romanoff was not was a prince.
But apparently to many movers and shakers he was a lot of fun, and so much of a character that Alva Johnston penned a five-part profile of Romanoff. A brief excerpt of Part One:
Born Hershel Geguzin in Lithuania, Romanoff (1890–1971) immigrated to New York City in 1900 and changed his name to Harry F. Gerguson. An odd-jobber and sometime crook (passing bad checks, etc.), at some point Romanoff raised the ante to become a professional imposter, and among other guises began passing himself off as a member of Russia’s royal House of Romanov. Few believed him, but it didn’t matter because his antics (aided by an eager press) got him invited to all sorts of soirees. And what better place than America to re-invent yourself, and especially Hollywood, where in 1941 Romanoff cashed in on his fame to establish a popular Rodeo Drive restaurant.
Here’s the terrific cover of the Romanoff’s menu:
Romanoff appeared in various films — both credited and uncredited — from 1937 to 1967…
…and apparently he didn’t ignore all celebrities…
…and if you are hungry for more, there is a recipe named for Romanoff, still available from the folks at Betty Crocker:
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Return to Sender
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White exposed the corrupt ways of the Tammany-dominated Department of Taxes and Assessments thanks to The New Yorker’s fictional figurehead Eustace Tilley:
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Chinese Checkered
White actors portraying Asian characters was all too common in the 20th century, but Alla Nazimova’s portrayal of O-Lan in the Guild Theatre’s stage adaptation of Pearl Buck’sThe Good Earth was just too much for critic Robert Benchley:
In all fairness to Rains and Nazimova, many of their white Hollywood compatriots portrayed Asian characters, including Katherine Hepburn in another adaptation of a Pearl Buck novel:
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We begin with some good old-fashioned sexism from the makers of Packard automobiles…if this woman had a job outside of the home (uncommon before the war) she could have just gone and bought the damn car…right?…
…and don’t forget the ANTI-FREEZE, as this two-page ad from Union Carbide helpfully suggested (Prestone anti-freeze, that is, not the other crap on the market)…
…some back-page ads…the one on right featured a rather somber-looking Jack Denny, appearing at the Waldorf’s famed Empire Room…and then there is the Schick Dry Shaver…I owned a Schick in the 1980s and had a permanent 5 o’clock shadow until I switched to blades; I can’t imagine how these things would have performed 89 years ago…
…cartoonist Otto Soglow continued to extoll the virtues of decaf coffee…
…and on to our cartoons, William Crawford Galbraith eavesdropped on a backstage political discussion…
…Peter Arno found a lovelorn soul in a furniture department…
…Soglow again, this time hinting at the Little King’s naughty side…
…as a former newspaper editor, this entry from Garrett Price really hit home…I used to get calls about all sorts of interesting critters and misshapen vegetables…
…Rea Irvin gave us a former bank teller all washed up by the Depression…
…and James Thurber continued to explore the growing war between the sexes…
…we continue on to Nov. 5, 1932…
…and this observation by E.B. White on the state of cigarette ads, namely the latest from Lucky Strike…
…one of the ads that caught White’s eye…
…the Nov. 5 issue featured another edition of the parody newspaper “The Blotz,” but what caught my eye was the upper right-hand corner…
…intended as a joke, of course, referring to political changes in Germany…but to our eyes quite ominous…
…and here we have a Lord & Taylor ad that begs the question, “What’s wrong with this picture?” Aside from the weirdly attenuated figures (admittedly standard in fashion illustration), the fellow in the lounger appears to be sitting at floor level, contemplating a photograph that seems to be of some interest to his companions, none of whom appear to be all that cheerful…
…the Nov. 5 issue also offered readers several options for stockings…
…on to our cartoonists, James Thurber provided these sketches for the magazine’s football column (except the one at bottom left, which appeared in the events section in the Oct. 29 issue)…
…Americans were turning out for the 1932 presidential elections, some in their own way per Helen Hokinson…
…twenty-year old Syd Hoff gave us some late night hijinks…
…William Crawford Galbraith continued to probe the entertainment world…
…and we close with Alan Dunn, who takes us out with a bang…
James Thurber made a rare appearance in the “Reporter at Large” column—usually the purview of the departing Morris Markey—to offer a glimpse into the life of Albert Davis and his extensive collection of theatrical and sports photographs.
A publicist by trade, Davis (1865-1942) collected thousands of photographs, clippings, programs, scripts and playbills from hundreds of productions mainly from the 1890s to the 1920s. In this excerpt, Thurber took a look into Davis’s rarefied world:
Thurber pointed out that the collection was quite valuable, and its sale could reap a considerable sum for Davis. It seems Davis intended to present the collection to his university’s library, a wish more or less fulfilled.
Davis’s collection also contained hundreds of sports figures, mostly from the world of boxing.
Endnote: Davis wanted his collection to go to a university library, and so it finally did: it resides at the University of Texas at Austin; the theatrical photos and memorabilia are at the Harry Ransom Center, and the sports-related items are housed at the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports.
* * *
Is It Beer-Thirty Yet?
Brewer, politician and owner of the New York Yankees baseball franchise Jacob Ruppert Jr. (1867–1939) inherited the Jacob Ruppert Brewing Company and the Yankees upon his father’s death in 1915. It was Ruppert who purchased the contract of Babe Ruth (from the Red Sox in 1919) and built famed Yankee Stadium (1923), moves that helped propel a middling franchise to the top of the major leagues. Alva Johnston profiled Ruppert in the Sept. 24 issue; here is the opening paragraph:
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Pol Mole
With the 1932 presidential election just weeks away, E.B. White’s focus was on an apparently elusive mole that decorated the left side of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s face, or possibly the right, or perhaps not at all…
This wouldn’t be the last time someone discussed FDR’s dermatology. Health experts today still debate whether a pigmented lesion above FDR’s left eyebrow was a melanoma—some even speculate that it led to his death at age 63, although the official cause of FDR’s death on April 12, 1945 was cerebral hemorrhage associated with high blood pressure. Incidentally, most photographs show the cheek mole on the right side.
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Words Were Their Bond
What a treat it must have been for a New Yorker reader to turn to pages 15-16 and find Dorothy Parker’s “A Young Woman in Green Lace,” followed by Parker’s dear friend and confidant Robert Benchley’s “Filling That Hiatus” on pages 17-18.
Benchley and Parker’s friendship began when he was hired as Vanity Fair’s managing editor in the winter of 1919 (and would become Parker’s office mate the following May). That same year they were among the founders of the famed Algonquin Round Table.
“A Young Woman in Green Lace” reveals how Parker regarded some of the modern women of those times, this next-generation flapper, a bit childish and snobbish, wishing she were back in “Paree.” In the story a man presses his charms as the woman descends into drunkenness and drops her Continental facade:
Where disillusion creates a darkly comic mood in Parker’s piece, in Benchley’s world disillusion provided a nice opening for some silliness. In ”Filling That Hiatus” Benchley addressed a seldom-discussed dinner-party etiquette situation in which both your right- and left-hand partners become engaged in conversation with someone else. He concluded:
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His Country, Too
It is always with a tinge of sadness that I write about Morris Markey, who from the start wrote for virtually every department at The New Yorker and was best known for his “A Reporter at Large” feature. According to his obituary in The New York Times, Markey won his greatest recognition for the book This Country of Yours, published after he left The New Yorker. That magazine’s review was brief, and read thusly:
The book is mostly forgotten today, as is Markey, who was found shot to death on July 12, 1950 at his home in Halifax, Virginia. He was just 51 years old. There was insufficient evidence as to whether the wound behind his right ear was the result of accident, homicide, or suicide.
Here is what the Times (Sept. 10, 1932) had to say about Markey’s book:
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With cold weather arriving during the Depression’s worst year, fashions continued to borrow from the past for a more conservative look (these are two ads from Jay-Thorpe and B. Altman)…
…as for the gentleman, fashion continued to emphasize a genteel look (although there is a bit of the Little Tramp about this fellow)…
…then as now, folks turned toward the rustic to find a bit of comfort in uncertain times…
…and if they could afford it, the comforts of the stolid, solid Lincoln motorcar…
…the folks at Lucky Strike continued to ask this question…
…and with the help of Syd Hoff, the makers of Log Cabin syrup ran this parody ad (in the Oct. 1 issue) of the Lucky Strike campaign…Hoff was among the newest members of The New Yorker cartooning cast…
…as was William Steig, who featured one of his “Small Fry” to tout the benefits of decaf coffee…
…our cartoon from the Sept. 24 issue is by Richard Decker…
…on to Oct. 1, 1932…
…where film critic John Mosher took in the latest from Marlene Dietrich and came away less than dazzled by Blonde Venus…
Now something of a cult film, reviews were mixed when Blonde Venus was released in 1932. The New York Times’ critic Mordaunt Hall went even further than Mosher, calling the film a “muddled, unimaginative and generally hapless piece of work, relieved somewhat by the talent and charm of the German actress…”
* * *
Unlucky in Luck
In its early years The New Yorker paid little attention to baseball, but “The Talk of the Town” did appreciate a human interest story from the field every now and then, and Yankee batboy Eddie Bennett filled that bill—this was the second time Bennett was featured in the column…
Throughout the 1920s Bennett was a famed good luck charm for the Yankees, but when a taxicab struck him in 1932 his batboy career ended. According to The New York Times (April 2, 2021) “Three years later, Mr. Bennett was found dead in a furnished room on West 84th Street. Autographed photos from Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt, both pitchers for the Yankees, hung on the walls…Balls and bats signed by Ruth and Lou Gehrig decorated the room. An autopsy found that Mr. Bennett had died of alcoholism. He was 31.”
For 85 years, Bennett rested in an unmarked grave at St. John’s Cemetery in Queens, but last November he was remembered with a new marker and a simple ceremony. You can read more about it in this Times article.
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Original Verse
Ogden Nash was working as an editor at Doubleday when he submitted some rhymes to The New Yorker. Harold Ross (New Yorker founder/editor) saw the submissions and asked for more, apparently stating “they are about the most original stuff we have had lately.” Here is one of the later submissions:
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If you were of the male persuasion and a member of the smart set you probably dressed down in something like this for a day with your dressage buddies…
…the modern woman of the 1930s could also be a successful business woman in this “successful” frock (how that translated into reality was another thing)…what is also interesting about this ad is how it features both an illustration and a photograph of the same outfit—it’s as though they’ve acknowledged that the attenuated figure in the illustration, although eye-catching, does not resemble an actual body type…
…here was see an early use of the word balloon in an advertisement featuring real people—I wonder if this was inspired by the comics, or by Bernarr Mcfadden’s“composographs” featured in his New York Evening Graphic?…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with a strange bit of bedside manner courtesy Gardner Rea…
…Robert Day introduced us to a modest suspect…
…Barbara Shermund continued to explore the travails of modern women…
…while this woman (via Perry Barlow) seems quite content with her lot…
…Mayor Jimmy Walker was out, but not down, like these fellows presented by Alan Dunn…
…and we close with Peter Arno, announcing some upcoming nuptials…