Arthur Guiterman – A New Yorker State of Mind

Comrade Alex

If folks thought things were bad in Depression-era America, they could ponder the famine-ravaged masses in the Soviet Union…

…not that Alexander Woollcott seemed to notice or care all that much. In the autumn of 1932 he traveled to Moscow to check out some Russian theater and enjoy the fine food and drink provided by his friend Walter Duranty, Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. In his “Shouts and Murmurs” column…

…Woollcott reflected on his Moscow visit, his humor at odds with the stark reality all around him…

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM…**Alexander Woollcott** (left) was amused by the stares of starving Russians he encountered with his substantial bulk on the streets on Moscow; **Walter Duranty** (1884–1957), Moscow bureau chief for *The New York Times,* played host to his old friend Woollcott.(Pinterest/Daily Mail)

Woollcott wrote of “spindle-shanked kids” singing cheerless songs about tractor production, recounted a conversation with a hungry moppet at a boot factory, and noted the “appreciative grin” he received from a teenager who both envied and admired his girth:

PERHAPS A SIDE TRIP TO UKRAINE?…Starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, 1933. Millions of Ukrainians died during Stalin’s enforced famine. (Wikipedia)

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Happier Thoughts

The Dec. 24 issue marked the beginning of a New Yorker tradition: Frank Sullivan’s annual holiday poem, “Greetings, Friends!” Writing for the Dec. 17, 2009 issue of the New Yorker (“Behind the Writing: “Greetings, Friends!”) Jenna Krajeski observes that “as far as holiday poems go, ‘Greetings, Friends!’…is as much an acknowledgment of the season as a noting of the times.” Frank Sullivan faithfully continued the tradition until 1974; after his death in 1976, New Yorker editor William Shawn asked Roger Angell to take over the writing of the poem. In 2012 Angell passed the duty along to Ian Frazier, the magazine’s current Yuletide bard.

CHEERFUL BUNCH…The holiday poem “Greetings, Friends!” has been a *New Yorker* tradition since 1932. It was originated by **Frank Sullivan** (left) and carried on by **Roger Angell** (center) and **Ian Frazier.** (hillcountryobserver.com/latimes.com/gf.org)

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Waxing Poetic, Part II

In the Dec. 17, 1932 issue humorist and poet Arthur Guiterman penned this petition to Acting Mayor Joseph McKee on behalf of the city’s statues…

…to which Mayor McKee replied in the Dec. 24 issue:

DUELING POETS…Acting New York Mayor **Joseph McKee** (left) rarely smiled in photographs, but he seems to have been a person of good humor in his poetic reply to **Arthur Guiterman.** Both photos are from 1932. (Wikipedia/credo.library.umass.edu)

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From Our Advertisers

New York’s fashion merchandisers continued to tout their latest copies of Paris styles such as this “Poppy Dress” from Lord & Taylor…

…Radio City Music Hall and the RKO Roxy Theatre announced their grand openings…

…Radio City featuring a cavalcade of stars along with the “Roxyettes” (soon to be renamed “Rockettes”) while the RKO Roxy presented the pre-Code romantic comedy The Animal Kingdom…

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS…It was winter, and the Depression was still on, but there were bright spots to be found on the stage at the opening of Radio City Music Hall and on the screen at the RKO Roxy; at right, **Ann Harding, Leslie Howard** and **Myrna Loy** in The Animal Kingdom. (Pinterest/IMDB)

…the folks at R.J. Reynolds challenged smokers to “leave” their product, if they cared to, knowing full well they were hooking new smokers by the thousands every day…

…we ring in the New Year with some hijinks from James Thurber…

…and this unlikely dispatch from a New York police officer via Peter Arno…

…ringing in the year with Harry Brown’s Dec. 31 cover…

…and Alexander Woollcott’s continuing account of his visit to Moscow, where he was shown the town by his friend Walter Duranty. In this excerpt, Woollcott makes a rare political observation regarding his friend: “Except for a few such men from Mars as Walter Duranty, all visitors might be roughly divided into two classes: those who come here hoping to see the Communist scheme succeed, and those who come here hoping to see it fail.”

For the record, Duranty has been widely criticized, especially since the 1950s, for his failure to report on the 1932-33 famine (which claimed as many as 7 million lives) and for covering up other atrocities of the Stalin regime. In the 1990s there were even calls to revoke Duranty’s 1932 Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded for his reporting on the Soviet Union.

GOOD & PLENTY…**Walter Duranty** (center, seated) at a dinner party in his Moscow apartment.

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Rocky Theme

As Rockefeller Center prepared to open its doors to its first buildings (there would be 14 in all) American playwright and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood penned this hymn to the “Citadel of Static”…

STANDING TALL…American playwright and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood, one of the original members of the Algonquin Round Table, was moved to verse by the opening of Rockefeller Center’s first buildings. At left, Rockefeller Center in 1933. (Wikipedia)

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Oh Chute

In 1929 Geoffrey Hellman secured a position with the New Yorker as a writer for “The Talk of Town” and also contributed a number of profiles, including this one about a parachute stunt-jumper named Joe Crane. Here is the opening paragraph and an illustation by Abe Birnbaum:

On Feb. 18, 1932, **Joe Crane** amazed crowds at Roosevelt Field with double parachute descent, in which he opened a second parachute through the first. If you are wondering, Crane died in 1968…of natural causes.

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Illustrator Howard Chandler Christy (1872-1952) is best remembered for his patriotic poster designs of World War I, which might explain why this fellow looks a bit outdated…

…Christy also originated the popular “Christy Girl,” the embodiment of the ideal American woman in the early 1900s (note the Christy Girl’s resemblance to the woman in the ad above)…

…speaking of ideal, imagine a movie featuring this trinity of actors: John, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore…John Mosher will give us his review in Jan. 7 issue…

…the Lyric Theatre saw its glory years during the 1920s when it hosted stage shows featuring such talents as The Marx Brothers, Fred and Adele Astaire and a young Cole Porter, who hit it big in 1929 with Fifty Million Frenchmen…the 1930s, however, saw the Lyric’s fortunes diminish and in another year it would be converted into a movie house…also note the influence of Italian Futurists in this ad for an Italian theater troupe…

…and there’s also a futuristic bent to this Garrett Price cartoon, which steers more in a Kandinsky direction…

…cartoonists were also finding inspiration in the magazine’s advertising, Pond’s cold cream providing the spark for Alain (aka Daniel Brustlein)…

…for reference, a Pond’s ad from 1933 comparing Lady Diana Manners complexion to her former visage, circa 1924…

…Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D. H. Lawrence, was banned for obscenity in the United States in 1929, but Helen Hokinson’s enterprising librarian was still able to deliver the goods…

…on the other hand, it is doubtful George Price’s sales clerk will also deliver…

…a great one by James Thurber, with more detail than his usual spare line…

…and we say goodbye to 1932 with Alain, and a New Year’s Eve party with some familiar faces…

Next Time: Modernism Lite…

From Bad to Awful

In the previous issue, New Yorker film critic John Mosher examined the morals of pre-code, “underworld films” such as Edward G. Robinson’s Little Caesar. Mosher didn’t seem all that impressed with these new gangster films, that is, until James Cagney lent his talents to The Public Enemy.

May 2, 1930 cover by **Theodore Haupt.**

Despite its violence (by yesterday’s standards), Mosher believed that even the preachers and various women’s committees who decried the sex and violence in pre-code movies would have little to gripe about with The Public Enemy, since it clearly depicted the wages of the sins of Tom Powers, a bootlegger on the rise portrayed by Cagney.

YOU AGAIN?…*New Yorker* film critic **John Mosher** thought very little of **Jean Harlow’s** acting, but Warner Brothers heavily promoted their new sex symbol, giving her equal billing even though she contributed little to the film. In the previous issue, Mosher had reviewed the film *Iron Man,* which also featured Harlow. He found it distressing that it was her “platinum blonde” status, rather than her acting, that landed her in that picture. (IMDB)

WOMEN IN HIS LIFE…**James Cagney** played a small-time bootlegger, Tom Powers, who rose in the criminal underworld in *Public Enemy.* *Top left:* Powers with Gwen Allen (**Jean Harlow**), a woman with a weakness for bad men. *Top right:* **Joan Blondell** portrayed Mamie, the girlfriend of Powers’ friend, Matt Doyle (**Edward Woods**). Blondell, one of the biggest stars of the 1930s, worked often with Cagney. In 1930 they were in *Penny Arcade* on Broadway and co-starred in the film *Sinner’s Holiday*. They would make several more films together after *Public Enemy*. Bottom photo: Tom smashes a grapefruit into the face of his first girlfriend, Kitty (**Mae Clarke**). Although this is one of *Public Enemy’s* most iconic scenes, Clarke was uncredited in the film. (IMDB)

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE NAUGHTY…*Top,* Tom Powers (Cagney) and his buddy, Matt Doyle (Woods) shoot it out in an alleyway. *Bottom,* the film ends with one of cinema’s greatest death scenes — awaiting the return of his brother to the family home, Mike Powers (**Donald Cook**) opens the door to be greeted by Tom’s corpse, which falls over the threshold. Just in case the audience didn’t get the message, Warner Brothers included this epilogue after the death scene. (IMDB/YouTube)

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Flag of a Father

Speaking of morality, no voice was louder, or carried farther, than that of Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-1979), known familiarly as “Father Coughlin,” an enormously popular radio priest who had an estimated following of 30 million listeners in the 1930s. E.B White took notice of this phenomenon, and also the Father’s stand against “internationalism,” which in a few years would morph into a virulent nationalism and anti-semitism that would find the Father finding common cause with Hitler and Mussolini. Yes, those guys. But for now, we are still in 1931…

SAVING SOULS?…**Fr. Charles Coughlin** preached nationalism and anti-semitism in his widely broadcast radio show in the 1930s. He was one of the first demagogues to effectively use the mass media to his advantage.

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Paradise Lost

Far up the Henry Hudson Parkway, just before you cross Spuyten Duyvil Creek (Harlem River) into Younkers, is a park with a history that goes back to a Lenape tribe that occupied the site prior to European settlement. Inwood Hill Park is where, legend has it, Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from the Lenape on behalf of the Dutch West India Company.

ORIGIN STORY…It was purportedly under this tulip tree that the **Lenape** tribe sold Manhattan to **Peter Minuit** in 1626. The tree was felled by a storm in 1933. A large stone (inset) marks the spot today.

Inwood served as a location for a fort during the Revolutionary War, and was dotted with working farms including one owned by the Jan Dyckman family, established in 1661. In the 19th century a number of wealthy New Yorkers built country retreats around Inwood, which became a park in 1926. Squatters continued to live in abandoned estates around the edge of the park until Robert Moses came along in the 1930s and cleared them out. E.B. White, in “The Talk of the Town,” takes it from there.

WE CALL IT HOME…In 1931, **Marie Naomie Boulerease Constantine Kennedy,** an American Indian known as Princess Naomie (left) was a caretaker of the old Dyckman farm (below), which had fallen into disrepair by the late 1800s and was restored in 1916. At right, **LePrince Voorhees** and her husband, **Harry Voorhees,** at the door of their ramshackle Inwood Hill Pottery. (myinwood.net/MCNY)

The Dyckman farmhouse fell into disrepair by the late 1800s, seen here in 1892…

…but it was restored in 1916, and still stands today at Broadway and 204th Street…

White wondered how Inwood would appear in ten years, now that parks workers were paving over the old Indian trails and landmarks like the Libby Castle were being torn down to make way for John D. Rockefeller’s Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park.

Built around 1855, Libby Castle was home to several New York bigwigs including William “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall fame. It was bulldozed in 1930-31 to make way for John D. Rockefeller’s Cloisters.

Inwood contained the last remaining farms in Manhattan — below are cows grazing in 1900 at site today now occupied by Isham Park, located on the southeast edge of Inwood Park. The next photo, from 1895, identifies “the last field of grain on Manhattan Island.” In the background is the Seaman Mansion at Broadway and 216th Street…

Below is a closer view of Seaman Mansion, a white marble, 30-room pile built around 1852. When this photo was taken in 1895, it had just become the new home of a riding club. Entry to the mansion was through a gatehouse, pictured below at right. The mansion was demolished in 1938 as the area around it filled up with cheap commercial buildings. Only the gatehouse remains, crumbling behind an auto body shop as seen in this 2015 image (bottom left):

(daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/Google Maps)

And here’s the latest view from Google maps. Note how the business is now renamed (ironically, yes) after the crumbling arch behind it…

But let’s be fair; there is still much beauty to be had at Inwood. Check out this lovely fall panorama…

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Rub-a-Dub-Dub

One of the great British modernists of the 20th century — perhaps best known for his 1915 novel, The Good Soldier — Ford Madox Ford (1873 – 1939) led a complicated personal life filled with indecision and anxiety. It makes sense that a man, in search of some order in his life, imposed a strict routine on bath time (and also found time for a bit of humor). Here is an excerpt from Ford’s submission to the May 2, 1931 New Yorker:

LITERARY LIONS…**Ford Madox Ford** (left) poses with other literary greats of the 20th century in a photo taken in Paris, November 1923. Next to Ford are James Joyce, Ezra Pound and **John Quinn.** (justewords.com)

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Tete-a-tete

Humorist and poet Arthur Guiterman was a regular contributor of comic verse to the New Yorker from its first days in 1925 until his death in 1943. In the April 18, 1931 issue, he dashed off this poem to Ralph Pulitzer, imploring him to give his family’s namesake Plaza fountain, and its “goddess of abundance,” a much-needed scrubbing…

KEEP IT CLEAN, RALPH…**Arthur Guiterman**, shown here seated with his Scottish terrier in August 1931, asked **Ralph Pulitzer** to do a bit of scrubbing on the family’s namesake Grand Plaza fountain. (UMassAmherst)

No doubt to Guiterman’s delight, he received a reply in the May 3 issue, also in verse, from Ralph Pulitzer himself…

Well, Pulitizer was good for his word, and the fountain was cleaned and restored in 1933. There have been other restorations in 1971, 1985-90. Here is how it looks today:

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From Our Advertisers

The Empire State Building officially opened its doors for business, and to mark the occasion the building’s promoters ran this full page ad that said it all: we are the biggest. Period.

In the back pages another ad touted the amazing views one could afford from the highest spot in the city…note the couple in formal wear having a leisurely smoke as they gaze over the metropolis, their view unobstructed by fencing later added in 1947 to prevent suicidal leaps…

…speaking of large things, folks in the 19th and 20th centuries marveled at the gigantic scale of the man-made world — the Empire State Building, the Hindenburg, Hoover Dam, and ships with names like Titanic and Leviathan, the latter seen below in this ad from the United States Line…

…one of the largest and most popular ocean liners of the 1920s, the U.S.S. Leviathan was actually built in 1914 for Germany’s Hamburg-American Line and christened the Vaterland. During World War I the American government seized the ship while it was docked in Hoboken, New Jersey and used it to transport troops. After the war, it was refurbished and re-christened Leviathan. It was scrapped in 1938…

The U.S.S. Leviathan at dry dock in Boston, 1930. (digitalcommonwealth.org)

…if you took the boat to Paris, you probably had enough money to make an overseas call back home…it would set you back almost $34 for three minutes of static-filled chat, about $550 in today’s dollars…

…and despite the Depression, the thrills of the modern world still abounded, such as GE’s “all-steel” electric refrigerator so artfully depicted in this ad…