TheNew Yorker stepped out of its Manhattan offices at 25 West 45th Street and headed north to see what lay beyond 96th Street and Park Avenue, to “a land on to which realtors may not push.”
July 21, 1928 cover by Julian de Miskey; July 28, 1928 cover by Helen Hokinson.
In the early to mid 20th century, 96th street represented a real dividing line across Park Avenue, separating Manhattan from the “frontier” to the north. Although developers have since breached this line (particularly beginning in the 1980s), back in 1928 it truly marked an end of sorts to Park Avenue—even the paving ran out by 102nd Street. The July 28, 1928 “Talk of the Town” observed:
FRONTIER NO MORE…Aerial view of Park Avenue from 96th Street (the X at bottom left) all the way past 132nd Street, where Park Avenue joins Harlem River Drive. The ‘X’ at the upper right hand corner marks the former location of Gus Hill’s Minstrels (mentioned in the article) at 129th and Park Avenue. (Google Maps) Click on image to enlarge
Beyond 96th a vast pushcart market was discovered to be operating under the elevated railroad tracks, while further on toward the Harlem River there were factories, coal yards, and a shuttered theatre:
NEAR THE END OF THE LINE…The Gus Hill’s Minstrels building at the corner at East 129th and Park Avenue, facing the elevated train tracks. There was an auto garage at the lower floor. The “Minstrels” were long gone by the time the photo was taken, in 1935, by Berenice Abbott. (Museum of the City of New York)ONLY A GHOST…The former site of Gus Hill’s Minstrels, at the corner at East 129th and Park Avenue, now occupied by a filling station. (Google Maps)SOARING…The Park Avenue elevated railroad tracks in Harlem east of 96th Street created vast covered spaces frequented by pushcart vendors. (nyc-architecture)UP THE RIVER…A houseboat colony near a coal yard at 208th Street by the Harlem River, 1933. (myinwood.net)
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Sport of Lords and Ladies
TheNew Yorker’s sportswriter John Tunis paid a visit to the 1928 Wimbledon tennis tournament, where he took in a scene that included several celebrities:
FACES IN THE CROWD at the 1928 Wimbledon included clockwise, from top left, the tournament’s singles champions Helen Wills Moody and René LaCoste; and spectators such as actress Tallulah Bankhead and Lady Diana Duff Cooper. (Wills Moody image from 1928 courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London; circa 1930 Bankhead image, Alchetron; Lady Diana image dated 1931, (UK National Portrait Gallery); and LaCoste photo taken after he won the men’s singles title at the 1928 Wimbledon, bltimes.com)
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From Our Advertisers
The July 28 issue included yet another Dr. Seuss-illustrated ad for Flit insecticide. No doubt Seuss would later regret such an illustration, as later in life he strongly opposed racism and supported environmental causes.
Also from the July 28 issue, a detail from a two-page illustration of baseball fans at the Polo Grounds by Constantin Alajalov, which appeared in “The Talk of the Town” section:
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From Our Advertisers, Part II:
Jumping back an issue, to July 21, 1928, we find tennis great (and sometime film actor) Big Bill Tilden hawking the toasted pleasures of Lucky Strike cigarettes on the magazine’s back cover:
As I’ve noted before, many New Yorker ads appealed to the Anglophilic pretensions of its striving readershship. This one below from Saks is a particularly egregious example…
…other social strivers could look to the example of these society matrons who picked up some spare cash shilling for Old Gold cigarettes…
I close with a couple of cartoons from the July 21 issue by Barbara Shermund and Peter Arno:
When Jimmy Walker was elected mayor of New York City in 1926, the city finally had a leader that matched the mood of the times. A dapper lover of music and nightlife, he openly took a Ziegfield dancer as his mistress, often fled the city for European vacations, and was known to begin meetings with the pop of a Champagne cork.
May 19, 1928 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
No doubt many New Yorker readers liked the Jazz Age spirit of their mayor, and who really cared about his “accomplishments” as long as the city continued to boom and its smart set continued to prosper? E.B. White, writing for the magazine’s “The Talk of the Town,” concluded as much:
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!…Mayor Jimmy Walker accompanies actress Colleen Moore to the October 1928 premiere of her latest film, Lilac Time. (konreioldnewyork.blogspot.com)QUEEN FOR A DAY…Mayor Walker (in top hat) welcomes Queen Marie of Romania on the steps of City Hall in October 1926. Huge and enthusiastic crowds braved the rain to welcome the queen to the city. (Acme Newspapers)GOOD SPORT…Mayor Walker presides over the first shot in the city’s annual marble tournament on June 3, 1928. (New York Times)
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Remembrance of Things Past
Although The New Yorker embraced the spirit imbued in the city’s rapidly changing skyline, there was always a tinge of regret when landmarks fell to wrecking balls and the city erased its past faster than one could comprehend. And so the magazine was a strong and early supporter of the establishment of the Museum of the City of New York, founded in 1923 and housed in Gracie Mansion (now the mayor’s official residence) until a permanent, neo-Georgian-style museum was finally erected in 1929-30 on Fifth Avenue between 103rd and 104th streets.
KEEPING TIME…Museum of the City of New York. (Wikipedia)
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No Beer Left to Cry In
As the Museum of the City of New York scrambled to preserve a past that was quickly being erased across Manhattan, another venerable institution prepared to close its doors for good—Allaire’s Scheffel Hall—which in its heyday was a favorite watering hole of artists, musicians, and writers including Stephen Crane. Allaire’s, located in a Gramercy Park neighborhood known as Kleindeutschland, or“Little Germany,” was the latest victim of Prohibition; it was, after all, hard to run a beer hall without the beer.
SIGN OF THE TIMES…Scheffel Hall at 190 Third Avenue. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1997. (Wikipedia)
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The “Talk of the Town” had its usual bits and pieces of happenings in the city, including this mild jab at the rather staid New York Times:
KEEPING IT DECENT…The actress Betty Starbuck, detail of a photo by Edward Steichen, circa 1930. (CondeNast)
* * *
Silent film star Buster Keaton’s latest picture, Steamboat Bill, Jr., won the approval of New Yorker film critic O.C., and Keaton’s co-star Marion Byron received extra props for her “gusto”…
HANGING IN THERE…Marion Byron and Buster Keaton in 1928’s Steamboat Bill Jr. (Virtual History)
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Truth in Advertising
Outside of politics this is one of the most cynical uses of the word “truth” I’ve ever seen. Since the woman isn’t smoking herself, I’m guessing she is reading a letter from someone (son, daughter, boyfriend) who has learned the truth about Camels and has decided to share it in a letter. How sweet.
In 1928 color images such as the Camel ad above brightened an increasing number of New Yorker ads. Color was artfully used in a number of spots, including the left panel of this two-page ad for a new cosmetic compact…
The issue also featured this cartoon by Rea Irvin of New Yorker critic (and hypochondriac) Alexander Woollcott…
…and keeping on the literary side, this cartoon by Isadore Klein…
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The May 26, 1928 issue the “The Talk of the Town” turned its attention to sound in motion pictures, or rather, turned its ears away from the “movie tone” sound effects becoming common in the waning days of the Silent Era.
May 26, 1928 cover by Helen Hokinson.
Everyday sounds, in particular, proved jarring to the ears of those who were accustomed to the relative quiet of silent movies:
“Talk” also looked in on the writer Thornton Wilder, who was planning to summer in Europe with his friend, the literary-minded boxer Gene Tunney.
REFLECTING GLORY…Thornton Wilder returning to the U.S. on the S.S. Britannic, 1935. (thorntonwilder.com)
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More Truth in Advertising
The manufacturers of Old Gold cigarettes were also in pursuit of the truth in this ad featured in the May 26 issue, backing up the claim with a “blindfold test” on none other than the daughter of J. P. Morgan…
Deception in advertising wasn’t limited to cigarettes, however. The makers of Lysol had their own nefarious scheme that shamed women into using their product as a form of birth control (referred to in the ad below with the euphemism “feminine hygiene”). Not only was it ineffective as a contraceptive, it was also corrosive to one’s privates.
The ad is also appalling for casting the responsibility for birth control entirely on the woman. But then again, where are we today?
On to other questionable health pursuits, this ad in the May 26 issue touted the “radio-active waters” ofGlen Springs, a hotel and sanatorium located above Seneca Lake in New York. Searching for oil on the site in late 19th century, the owners struck not black gold but rather a black, briny water that they claimed had greater curative powers than those found in Germany’s famed Nauheim Springs.
Why they called the waters “radio-active” escapes me. There were a lot of quack medical cures floating around in the 1920s—some of them quite dangerous—so I’m guessing that the proprietors of Glen Springs were adding radium to the water in some of their treatments, or maybe just claiming that radium was present in the water. Although Marie Curie (a pioneering researcher on radioactivity) and others protested against radiation therapies, a number of corporations and physicians marketed radioactive substances as miracle cure-alls, including radium enema treatments and radium-containing water tonics.
The Glen Springs Hotel at Watkins Glen, NY. It remained a noted landmark of the area until it was demolished in 1996. (nyfalls.com)
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And finally, our cartoons for the May 26 issue, in which Barbara Shermund and Peter Arno explore the ups and downs of courtship…
The early New Yorker was known for its fashionably blasé tone, but its writers were often giddy when it came to reporting on technological advances.
April 14, 1928 cover by Sue Williams.
Such was the case with transatlantic telephone service, which before 1927 was the stuff of fantasy. By 1928, The New Yorker marveled at this service by suggesting in “The Talk of the Town” that the invention had become matter-of-fact:
TheNew Yorker correctly prophesied that the telephone’s primary use would be for mundane communications—not much different from how we use smartphones today for selfies, texting and chitchat.
WHAT HO! New York Mayor Jimmy Walker visits with London’s Lord Mayor in a 1927 transatlantic telephone call. The calls were made possible through radio transmission from station to station across the ocean. (The New York Times)
Even the first “unofficial” transatlantic conversation, between two unknown American and British engineers, was a fairly routine conversation about the weather and distances between various cities. At one point, however, the American makes this prophetic remark: “Distance doesn’t mean anything anymore. We are on the verge of a very high- speed world….people will use up their lives in a much shorter time, they won’t have to live so long.”
In the same issue, writer Morris Markey gushed about his tour of a radio broadcast facility…
ON THE AIR WITH MR. NEW YORK…A photo of WNYC’s transmitter room on the 25th floor of New York City’s Municipal Building. At left is the founder of the station, Grover A. Whalen, on the phone prior to the station’s opening night ceremonies on July 8, 1924. Whalen described himself as “Mr. New York,” often serving as the city’s official and unofficial greeter of politicians, royalty and celebrities. He served as police commissioner in the 1920s, and later as president of the 1939 World’s Fair. (WNYC)IN REAL TIME…A live radio play being broadcast at NBC studios in New York. (Wikiwand)
Awed by this technical marvel, Markey described how the station could broadcast its show across the country…
More Evidence Lindy Was Made of Wood
TheNew Yorker’s reporting on Charles Lindbergh continued with this item in “The Talk of the Town” that described a young woman’s dream to fly with the famous pilot. And fly was all she did…
SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP…Charles Lindbergh at home in his cockpit, circa late 1920s. (Wikimedia Commons)
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From the World of Advertising…
Lux Soap continued its string of advertisements in The New Yorker featuring Broadway stars of the day. Among them was actress Mary Ellis…
Ellis was an American star of stage, radio, television, film and opera, best known for her roles in musical theatre. She appeared at the Metropolitan Opera beginning in 1918, later appearing opposite famed tenor Enrico Caruso. On Broadway she was known for creating the title role in Rose-Marie.
Born in 1897, she died in 2003 at the age of 105. She had the distinction of being the last surviving star to perform in a Puccini opera (while Puccini was still alive) and the last star to perform opposite Caruso.
SEASONED PERFORMER…1930s photograph of actress Mary Ellis. (National Portrait Gallery-npg.org.uk)
Lux soap wasn’t the only company exploiting celebrities for sales. Cigarette companies also sought endorsements from prominent women to exploit the new and rapidly growing market of female smokers. This ad below from the April 14 issue featured Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, a Swiss-born American socialite best known as the mother of fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt and grandmother of CNN journalist Anderson Cooper:
SHE ALSO SHILLED FOR COLD CREAM…Edward Steichen photograph of Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt for a Pond’s Cold Cream testimonial campaign, 1925. (library.duke.edu)
In a famous custody battle in 1934, Vanderbilt lost custody of her daughter to her sister-in-law Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and the court also removed Vanderbilt as administrator of her daughter’s trust fund, her only means of support. From the 1940s until her death at age 60 in 1965 she lived with her identical twin sister, Thelma, also known as the Viscountess Furness.
In another portrait of the upper classes, Barbara Shermund took a peek into the drawing room of a less than cerebral hostess…
American inventor Thomas Edison was a hero to the young Henry Ford, who grew up to become something of a tinkerer himself with his pioneering development of the assembly line and mass production techniques. Over a matter of decades in the late 19th and early 20th century these two men would play outsized roles in transforming the American landscape and our way of life.
January 21, 1928 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
Ford would first meet Edison in August 1896, at a convention of the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies held at the Oriental Hotel in Brooklyn—it was just two months after the 33-year-old Ford had finished work on his first car—a “quadricycle”—consisting of a simple frame, an ethanol-powered engine and four bicycle wheels. In contrast, by 1896 the 49-year-old Edison was a worldwide celebrity, having already invented the phonograph (1877), the incandescent lamp (1879), public electricity (1883) and motion pictures (1888).
WHAT NEXT, A CAR STEREO?…Thomas Edison (left) with his second phonograph, photographed by Mathew Brady in Washington, D.C., April 1878. At right, Henry Ford sits in his first automobile, the Ford Quadricycle, in 1896. (Wikimedia Commons)
By 1907 the two had forged a close friendship that would endure the rest of their lives. So it was no surprise that these two giants of the machine age would show up together at the New York Auto Show at Madison Square Garden and take a gander at the latest technical marvels, including Ford’s new “Model A.” The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” was on hand as witness:
NEAT-O…Thomas Edison and Henry Ford at the 1928 New York Auto Show. (Associated Press)IT SOLD LIKE HOTCAKES…Henry Ford and son Edsel introducing the 1928 Ford Model A at the Ford Industrial Exposition in New York City, January 1928. (thehenryford.org)
* * *
E.B. Drives the ‘A’
In the same issue (Jan. 21, 1928) E.B. White told readers how to drive the new Model A—in his roundabout way. Some excerpts:
No doubt White was feeling a bit wistful with the arrival of the Model A, which supplanted its predecessor, the ubiquitous Model T. White even penned a farewell to the old automobile under a pseudonym that conflated White’s name with Richard Lee Strout’s, whose original submission to The New Yorker inspired White’s book (illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein).
FAREWELL TIN LIZZIE…E.B. and Katharine White driving his beloved Model T.
In Farewell to Model T White recalled his days after graduating from college, when in 1922 he set off across America with his typewriter and his Model T. White wrote that “(his) own vision of the land—my own discovery of it—was shaped, more than by any other instrument, by a Model T Ford…a slow-motion roadster of miraculous design—strong, tremulous, and tireless, from sea to shining sea.”
The Eternal Debate
In his “Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey commented on the execution of former lovers and convicted murderers Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, noting that once again the debate over the death penalty had been stirred, but as usual there was no resolution in sight. Little could Markey know that we would still be holding the debate 89 years later, with no resolution in sight.
END OF THE LINE…Mugshots of Ruth Snyder and Henry Judd Gray taken at Sing Sing Prison following their conviction for the murder of Snyder’s husband. They were executed Jan. 12, 1928. (Lloyd Sealy Library, CUNY)
* * *
Ahoy there
The New York Boat Show was back in town at the Grand Central Palace, enticing both the rich and the not-so-rich to answer the call of the sea. Correspondent Nicholas Trott observed:
An advertisement in the same issue touted Elco’s “floating home”…
But if you aspired to something larger than a modest cruiser, the Boat Show also featured an 85-foot yacht…
But for the rest of the grasping orders, Chris-Craft offered the Cadet, an affordable 22′ runabout sold on an installment plan. Another ad from the issue asking those of modest means to answer “the call of freedom!”
For an affordable boat, the Chris-Craft was really quite beautiful—its mahogany construction puts today’s fiberglass tubs to shame…
PRETTY SWEET…A 1928 Chris-Craft Cadet. (Click to enlarge)
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Odds & Ends
The boat show was one indication that spring was already in the air. The various ads for clothing in the Jan. 21 issue had also thrown off the woolens, such as this one from Dobbs on Fifth Avenue, which featured a woman with all the lines of a skyscraper.
And to achieve those lines, another advertisement advised young women to visit Marjorie Dork…
…who seemed to do quite well for herself in the early days of fitness training…
THOROUGHLY MODERN MARJORIE…New York beauty specialist Marjorie Dork, with her Packard, in New York’s Central Park, 1927. Original photo by John Adams Davis, New York. (Detroit Public Library)
And then there was a back page ad that said to hell with healthy living…
The actress featured in the advertisement, Lenore Ulric, was considered one of the American theater’s top stars. Born in 1892 as Lenore Ulrich in New Ulm, Minnesota, she got her start on stage when she was still a teen, a protégé of the famed David Belasco. Though she primarily became a stage actress, she also made the occasional film appearance, portraying fiery, hot-blooded women of the femme fatale variety.
Portrait of Lenore Ulric by New York’s Vandamm Studio. (broadway.cas.sc.edu)
* * *
And we close with this post with a peek into the into upper class social scene, courtesy of Barbara Shermund…
Above: Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in a 1930 performance of Coward's Private Lives. Encyclopedia Britannica.
Those of us who still remember cigarette ads on television will recognize the tagline that heads this blog–“You’ve come a long way, baby,” was the jingle for Virginia Slims–which in 1968 was a new, thin cigarette from Phillip Morris marketed specifically to women.
October 29, 1927 cover by Julian de Miskey.
The campaign launched by the Leo Burnett Agency sought to make Virginia Slims an “aspirational” brand for the liberated woman of the Swinging 60s…
These ads from 1968 announced a new cigarette for the liberated woman. (flashbak.com)
Forty years earlier, the folks at Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company also thought they could trade on the image of the Jazz Age’s liberated woman with this famous ad from 1926:
(History News Network)
Although the woman in the ad was not smoking, a taboo had been broken by merely suggesting she might be a smoker. The New Yorker first explored this topic in their July 24, 1926 issue, with this item in “The Talk of the Town”…
In the Oct. 29, 1927 issue they returned to the topic in the “Talk” column, now that advertisers had gone a step further and actually depicted women with lighted cigarettes between their fingers:
BRAZEN…Ads from 1927 depicting women smoking Old Gold and Marlboro cigarettes.
The Oct. 29, 1927, The New Yorker itself featured ads with women smokers, including this installment in a series for Old Gold by cartoonist Clare Briggs…
…and this ad for the tipless Smokador ashtray, which was featured in many issues of The New Yorker…
What Flattery Will Get You
In addition to women smokers, The New Yorker was also agog about a visit to the city by the great French fashion designer Paul Poiret (1879–1944), who upon his arrival proclaimed American women to be the best-dressed in the world:
THE LIBERATOR…Paul Poiret on a stroll with models, circa 1930. Poiret led a fashion renaissance that introduced free-flowing dresses and “harem pants.” He is often credited with liberating women from the corset. (trendmano.blog.hu)
Perhaps Poiret’s flattery of American women could be attributed to the fact that his designs had lost popularity in France after World War I, and his fashion empire was on the brink of collapse. (Indeed, his fashion house would close in 1929). However today he is recognized as the first great modernist in fashion design, often compared to Pablo Picasso in terms of the contributions he made to his field.
The New Yorker took advantage of his visit to the city by featuring him in a lengthy profile in the Oct. 29 issue, written by Paris correspondent Janet Flanner under the pseudonym “Hippolyta.” Despite Poiret’s diminished presence in France, Flanner nevertheless understood his enormous contribution to modern fashion design. She concluded her profile with this observation:
Something Fishy
The New Yorker appealed to young, upscale urban dwellers, so it was no wonder that Harper’s Bazar advertised in the magazine, including this ad in the Oct. 29, 1927 issue that announced the debut in its pages of the English artist known as “Fish”…
Anne Harriet Fish (1890-1964) was famed for her witty depictions of high society in Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair and The Tatler, where she began work in 1914. A rival “smart set” magazine, Harper’s Bazar, was eager to boast that it had finally “landed” the Fish.
A February 1916 Vanity Fair cover by A. H. Fish. (Condé Nast)
* * *
Broadway Ballet
The Oct. 29 “Talk of the Town” noted that Albertina Rasch and her ballet dancers were making quite a splash on Broadway. Her success in staging dances for Flo Ziegfeld’s “Follies” and George White’s “Scandals” would lead to a career in Hollywood, where she would be instrumental in elevating the role of dance director to what we now call a choreographer. Among her many firsts, she is credited with helping to establish Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” as a popular standard by incorporating it into a dance in the 1935 film Jubilee.
The Albertina Rasch Dancers in costume for Rio Rita (1927). (songbook1.wordpress.com)
* * *
Where Were You Last Year?
Writing under the pseudonym “Constant Reader,” Dorothy Parker penned a vigorous defense of Ernest Hemingway’s short fiction in the “Books” section of the Oct. 29 issue. Specifically she took issue with critics who continued to rave about Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, but mostly ignored a collection of short stories he had previously published under the title In Our Time.
HE’S PRETTY GOOD…Ernest Hemingway in 1927, shortly after publication of his novel The Sun Also Rises. At right, Dorothy Parker in the 1920s. (AP/Bookriot)
And finally, Barbara Shermund explored the intersection of high culture and flapper culture in this cartoon…
While Europeans in the 1920s dealt with frayed economies and political strife in the wake of World War I , Americans enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity along with an array of new electrical gadgets people didn’t even know they needed.
October 22, 1927 cover by Julian de Miskey.
In the column “About The House,” The New Yorker wryly warned “timid souls” about the new push-button world they would encounter at the Electrical and Industrial Exposition at Grand Central Palace…
Poster advertising the Electrical and Industrial Exposition. (public domain image)
WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE?…The New Yorker marveled over the latest electrical appliances on display at the Electrical and Industrial Exposition at Grand Central Palace including, clockwise from top left, the Toastmaster automatic toaster (which the magazine noted resembled an armored car), an electric washing machine, and the mighty Kitchen Aid mixer, which is still going strong in American kitchens today.
THE ICEMAN COMETH NOT…A saleswoman shows off the features of a GE Monitor Top Refrigerator on display at a product exhibition in the late 1920s. (Public Domain Image)
Nan’s No No
The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” featured one of the Roaring Twenties big scandals–Nan Britton’s affair with U.S. President Warren G. Harding (who died at age 57 in 1923) and the debate over the paternity of their love child, Elizabeth Ann. Britton had just published a “tell all” book, The President’s Daughter, which was bringing out the worst in a lot of people…
LIFE WITHOUT FATHER…Nan Britton with her 8-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Ann, in 1927. (New York Times/James Blaesing)
Although at the time Britton was denounced by many (including the Harding family) as a liar who was only out to get money from the President’s estate, genetic tests conducted in 2015 have confirmed that Elizabeth Ann was indeed Harding’s daughter. Britton died in 1991 at the age of 94. Elizabeth Ann would follow in 2005, at age 86.
Porgy Hits the Stage
Porgy: A Play in Four Acts opened at the Guild Theatre, and New Yorker reviewer Charles Brackett was there to witness perhaps the first attempt at an authentic presentation of black culture on a Broadway stage. Based on a play by Dorothy and DuBose Hayward, the production was unusual for its time in featuring a cast of African American actors. The play would provide the basis of the libretto for the 1935 folk opera Porgy and Bess, which would feature George Gershwin’s famous score including the popular song “Summertime.” An excerpt from Brackett’s review, which included some unfortunate stereotypes…
SOMETHING NEW ON BROADWAY…Percy Verwayne (Sporting Life), Frank Wilson (Porgy) and Evelyn Ellis (Bess) in Porgy: A Play in Four Acts. October 1929. (Wikipedia)
* * *
Same to You, Fella
In his “Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey sounded off on the rude behavior he had observed of late among his fellow New Yorkers. In relating a story about the crude behavior of a building’s security guard, Markey pondered the old nature vs. nurture question…
Aw, Shucks…
Not all New Yorkers were acting rudely. Some were even treating visiting rodeo cowboys with the utmost courtesy, as noted in the “The Talk of the Town,” although others found the sport to be brutal and unnecessary…
GIDDYAP…Program from the World Series Rodeo at Madison Square Garden, 1927. (Rare Americana)
1927 World Series Rodeo was produced by famed sports promoter, Tex Rickard, in Madison Square Garden as a benefit for the Broad Street Hospital.
The other World Series, the one concerning baseball, was still absent from the pages of The New Yorker, even though the 1927 Yankees would win a record 110 games and sweep the Pittsburgh Pirates in four games to win the World Series title…and Babe Ruth would hit a record 60 home runs.
As I’ve noted before, there was a lot of sports coverage in the early issues of The New Yorker, everything from polo to college football. As for the omission of the Yankees and baseball in general from the pages of the magazine, perhaps the editors felt the game was still tainted by the Black Sox scandal of 1919 and was not worthy of coverage.
How’s the Weather Up There?
The city’s “heat affect” was another “Talk” topic, with editors noting that the city’s buildings and streets not only affected temperatures in the city, but also its air quality…
IN HIS ELEMENT…Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky amid the dusty haze of New York City in 1925. (thecharnelhouse.org)
* * *
In “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker chimed in on The New Yorker’s continuing criticism of Hollywood films, especially in the age of Will Hays and his continued attempts at film censorship…
Finally, a couple of cartoons from the Oct. 22 issue, including this one by Barbara Shermund that explores one of the magazine’s continuing themes regarding life among the portly, middle-aged sugar daddies and their ditzy young mistresses…
…and this jab at the dim-witted, idle rich by illustrator Ed Graham…
The First Academy Award for Best Picture went to Wings, a romantic action-war picture directed by William Wellman and featuring Paramount’s biggest star at the time, the “It Girl” Clara Bow and a young Gary Cooper in a role that would launch his Hollywood career.
August 20, 1927 cover by Helen Hokinson.
The film was shot on location at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, on a budget of $2 million (about $27 million today). About 300 pilots were involved in filming realistic (and dangerous) air-combat sequences using both mounted and hand-held cameras.
LOFTY AMBITIONS…Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Clara Bow in Wings, 1927. (BBC)
NO CGI HERE…Director William Wellman, during production of Wings, 1927. (Paramount Pictures via New York Times)INSURANCE RISK…Stunt pilot Dick Grace specialized in crashing planes for films, and was one of the few stunt pilots who died of old age. (ladailymirror)
* * *
We leave the skies for the trenches in another World War I film–Barbed Wire–that was entertaining New Yorkers in 1927…
LOOKS MORE INTERESTING OUT THERE…Pola Negri watches the Germans in Barbed Wire, 1927. (Wikipedia)
The Duncan Sisters were back, this time on the silver screen in an adaptation of their Broadway hit play, Topsy and Eva. One of the sisters performed in blackface, which was acceptable to white audiences of the time (including New Yorker critics). You can read more about this duo in my recent blog entry, Fifteen Minutes is Quite Enough.
Advertisement for the film, Topsy and Eva, 1927. (nilsasther.blogspot.com)
Meanwhile, Paris correspondent Janet Flanner was noting some modern influences in the city thanks to the influence of the German Bauhaus…
Rue Mallet Stevens was designed by Paris-based architect, designer and production designer Robert Mallet-Stevens, who founded the Union of Modern Artists (UAM) in 1929. (theredlist.com).
* * *
From the “they couldn’t see it coming” department, this item in “The Talk of the Town” caught my eye. We have since learned that carbon emissions are indeed taking a toll on human life…
…and a couple of cartoons from this issue, this one courtesy of Barbara Shermund…
…and this from an unidentified cartoonist (Dussey?) that gives us a glimpse of the world to come thanks to merger of technology and tedious, proud parents…
* * *
And to end on a “Wings” theme, the following week’s issue…
August 27, 1927 cover by Theodore G. Haupt.
…offered this advertisment from L. Bamberger & Co. that gave us a tongue-in-cheek glance at the future of aviation…
After months of reporting on polo, golf, tennis and yacht races, The New Yorker finally mentioned baseball–sort of–reviewing a movie featuring Babe Ruth and penning a brief piece about Lou Gehrig in “The Talk of the Town.”
August 6, 1927 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
But the magazine still made no mention of the incredible season that was shaping up for the legendary 1927 New York Yankees, or the feats of its feared “Murderer’s Row” lineup. Although widely considered to be the best baseball team in the history of major league baseball, The New Yorker up to this point had given more ink to the game of ping pong. But we’ll take what we can get, namely Babe Ruth’s acting performance in Babe Comes Home…
BETTER STICK TO BASEBALL…Lobby card for the 1927 film, Babe Comes Home, featuring Anna Q. Nilsson and The Bambino himself. (posterscancollections.com)
…and over in “The Talk of the Town” section the editors looked at another Yankee slugger, Lou Gehrig, who besides his hitting ability was Ruth’s opposite…
MOM & APPLE PIE…Lou Gehrig and his mother, Christina, in 1927. (baseballfever.com)
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With the hullabaloo over Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, more Americans were becoming interested in flying as an actual travel option, although in August 1927 New York City had only one established passenger line:
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS…On April 15, 1927, Colonial Air Transport (a predecessor of American Airlines) began passenger service between Boston and New York City. (Boston Globe)SORRY, NO WI-FI…National Air Transport, a predecessor of United Airlines and a prime mail carrier, brought the Travelair 5000 to their minimal fleet in 1927 to add passenger revenue to its Midwestern and Western hops that linked Chicago, Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Reno and San Francisco. (traveler.com)
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The August 6 issue also featured this strange little review in “Talk” about the popularity (or fad) of attending Chinese theater. Note how the writer described it as an exotic curiosity, as though the Chinese actors were as unknowable as Martians. I suppose it didn’t occur to the writer that you could actually speak to these performers, and have them explain the meanings of the various rituals.
OFF-BROADWAY…Actor Ma Shi-tsang posing with a riding crop in a 1920s publicity photo. Chinese theater actors performed in U.S. cities with large Chinese populations, including San Francisco and New York. (cdlib.org)
And to close, a couple of cartoons from the issue by Barbara Shermund that illustrated two very different aspects of New York society:
On June 22, 1927, the legendary French ocean-liner, the Île-de-France, traveled from Le Havre to New York on its maiden voyage, soon to be greeted by the American media and the thousands who would crowd the docks at New York Harbor to see the great ship.
June 25, 1927 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Among those anticipating the visit was The New Yorker, which offered this account in “The Talk of the Town” for the June 25, 1927 issue:
PRIDE OF FRANCE…Postcard image of the Île-de-France from 1935. During a post-war refurbishment, the three funnels were replaced with a pair of stockier, more stylish funnels. (Wikipedia)
The Île-de-France was unique in that it was the first ocean-liner to have an interior design that didn’t imitate “shore-style” interiors that resembled rooms in manor houses or grand hotels. The trend-setting ship sported a modern, art deco look that celebrated the present and the future.
IN WITH THE NEW…The Main Foyer & Grand Staircase of the Île-de-France,(newyorksocialdiary.com)LEAVE YOUR FLIP-FLOPS AT HOME…The first-class dining room in the Île-de-France. (newyorksocialdiary.com)
Note that these photos do not contain images of water slides or all-you-can eat buffets. An ocean voyage, if you could afford it, was an elegant affair. The Île-de-France was especially popular among wealthy Americans who liked its stylish, youthful vibe.
The Île-de-France served as a troop ship during World War II, and in 1956 played a major role in rescuing passengers from the sinking Andrea Doria off the coast of Nantucket.
Unfortunately, anything that is youthful soon grows old, and as we all know, style is an ephemeral thing. With the advent of transatlantic jet transport, ships like the Île-de-France fell out of favor, and by 1960 the grand ocean liner was reduced to serving as a floating prop for a disaster movie titled The Last Voyage. The filmmakers partially sunk the poor ship, set fires and detonated explosions in the interior, and in a final act of desecration dropped one for the ship’s smoke stacks onto its deck house.
(IMDB)NOT A BUFFET IN SIGHT…Still from the 1960 movie, The Last Voyage, shot on board the soon-to-be-scrapped Île-de-France. (Screen shot from movie trailer)FIERY END…Fires were set in the interior of the Île-de-France during the filming of The Last Voyage. (Screen shot from movie trailer)BROUGHT TO ITS KNEES…The Île-de-France (named the SS Clarion in the movie) is partially sunk with its forward funnel collapsed in a still from the film, The Last Voyage.
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The Ruth Snyder–Judd Gray murder trial and sentencing captivated Americans in 1927, but another trial and sentencing in the 1920s would bring worldwide attention and spark mass protests.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian-born Americans who were convicted of murdering a paymaster and guard during a robbery of a Boston-area shoe company in 1920. Although convicted of murder the following year, many critics of trial believed Sacco and Vanzetti, who held anarchist views, were innocent of the charges, and the case became one of largest causes célèbres in modern history with protests held on their behalf in major cities across the U.S. and around the world.
Cause Célèbre…Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti handcuffed together at the Dedham, Massachusetts Superior Court, 1923. (Boston Public Library).
Sentenced to death in April 1927, they would be executed the following August. TheNew Yorker, predisposed to look down on Boston as something of a backwater, had this to say about the trial in an article by Gerald Day for the “Reporter at Large” column:
The case also rekindled memories of other notorious trials:
The governor did appoint a commission to review the case, but the final decision was in his hands…
And so the only option left for Sacco and Vanzetti was clemency from the governor.
To close, a few illustrations from some of the magazine’s mainstay artists…this one from Johan Bull used to illustrate an article on the U.S. Open featuring amateur Bobby Jones…
…and keeping with the golf theme, this cartoon by Julian de Miskey…
…and finally, a little fun with Barbara Shermund and her comment on social mores of the day:
Ernest Hemingway wrote his lone New Yorker piece for the Feb. 5, 1927 issue. Titled “My Own Life,” it was a short parody of the 3-volume My Life and Loves by Irish writer Frank Harris.
February 12, 1927 cover by Rea Irvin.
Writing for The Hemingway Review (Fall 2001), Francis Bosha notes in “The Harold Ross Files” that Hemingway’s sole contribution to the New Yorker is striking given that the magazine was such a major influence on fiction in the 20th century.
Money, or the shortage thereof, appears to be the main reason why Hemingway was not a regular contributor. Although the young magazine was doing well, Bosha writes that it was not yet ready to compete financially with more established mass market magazines. Indeed, Hemingway’s “My Own Life” landed in the New Yorker because it had already been rejected by both Scribner’s and The New Republic.
Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in Paris, 1927. (Wikipedia)
If you read the piece you can see why it was rejected. The famed fiction writer, hot off the success of The Sun Also Rises, was not a great parodist. An excerpt:
And so on. Hemingway wisely stuck with serious fiction, which might explain his fleeting association with TheNew Yorker, which in its first years was bent toward humor in the Punch or Judge vein and not toward serious writing.
Nevertheless, the New Yorker’s founding editor, Harold Ross, maintained a friendship and a regular correspondence with Hemingway during the writer’s years in Cuba in the 1940s. On several occasions Ross invited Hemingway to submit something to the magazine, but nothing came of it. It didn’t help that Hemingway publicly stated in 1942 that he “was out of business as a writer,” and was suffering from depression, weight gain, and bouts of heavy drinking.
The Great Ziegfeld Finally Opens His New Theatre
“The Talk of the Town” reported the premiere of Florenz Ziegfeld’s new art deco theatre was “one of the big mob scenes of the season,” attracting celebrities and celebrity-gawkers alike:
Opening Night…
DECKED IN DECO…The Ziegfeld Theatre at Sixth Avenue and 54th Street, 1927. Joseph Urban’s design of the facade suggests open curtains flanking a stage. (nyc-architecture.com)HELLO DOLLY…On the Ziegfeld Theatre’s opening night Ada May played Dolly in Rio Rita (Museum of the City of New York)
The opening drew the likes of Charlie Chaplin and polar explorer Roald Amundsen, who perhaps found a line of chorus girls a welcome sight after years of trekking through frozen landscapes.
Among the attractions of the new theatre was what was claimed to be the largest oil painting in the world:
AN EYEFUL…A section of the interior wall of the Ziegfeld Theatre, decorated with “the largest oil painting in the world.” (nyc-architecture.com)
Sadly, despite public protests, the theatre was razed in 1966, bulldozed into rubble. The Burlington House stands on the site today:
Burlington House. (Wikipedia)
But we will end on a happier note, a cartoon by Barbara Shermund:
Why they called the waters “radio-active” escapes me. There were a lot of quack medical cures floating around in the 1920s—some of them quite dangerous—so I’m guessing that the proprietors of Glen Springs were adding radium to the water in some of their treatments, or maybe just claiming that radium was present in the water. Although Marie Curie (a pioneering researcher on radioactivity) and others protested against radiation therapies, a number of corporations and physicians marketed radioactive substances as miracle cure-alls, including radium enema treatments and radium-containing water tonics.
A New Yorker State of Mind 