We mark the July 4 weekend with a lighter edition of A New Yorker State of Mind…
July 6, 1935 cover by William Steig, a contributor to The New Yorker from 1930 to 2003, including more than 2,600 drawings and 117 covers.
…and see what many New Yorkers were doing on that holiday ninety years ago…
TOGETHERNESS…New Yorkers celebrate the Fourth of July on a Coney Island beach, circa 1935. (coneyislandhistory.org)
Let’s look at some of the advertisements from the July 6 issue, beginning with this alarming image that greeted readers on the inside front cover…
…Goodyear continued its series of safety-minded advertisements (this one on the inside back cover) that played on the fears of parents with driving-age children…strange how no one then considered other hazards such as the hard steel dash, or worse, the steering column that often impaled drivers…also, is that how they taught folks to hold a steering wheel in the 1930s?…
…no stylish models, debutantes or famous athletes for the makers of Chesterfields, at least not in this back page ad which equated their cigarette papers (and by association, the cigarettes themselves) with wholesome milk and pure mountain water…
…we kick off the cartoons with Robert Day, who took to the roads with a touch of modernism…
…Gardner Rea topped off the calendar section with a nod to fireworks safety…
…known more for his New Yorker covers, Constantin Alajalov reflected on a visit to the Met…
…Ned Hilton was tied up on the phone…
…Fritz Wilkinson had one musician ready to play a different tune…
…James Thurber was up in arms…
…George Price found something fishy with two fishermen…
…and Price again, with the latest advances in personal hygiene…
…Rea Irvin gave us an early taste of Halloween…
…Barbara Shermund found some frank advice at the beauty counter…
In 1933 the U.S. economy began a slow recovery from the 1929 market crash, but the recovery stalled in 1934 and 1935, and folks including E.B. White were looking for any indication of brighter days ahead.
June 29, 1935 cover by Barbara Shermund. A prolific contributor of cartoons to The New Yorker (600 in all), Shermund also illustrated eight covers, including this charmer.
White suggested that Americans look for smaller signs of normalcy, such as the new slogan, “Happy Motoring,” that was being rolled out by Standard Oil’s Esso.
IT’S A GAS…At left, Gasoline Station, Tenth Avenue, photo by Berenice Abbott, 1935; at right, newspaper ad, May 1935. (metmuseum.org/wataugademocrat.com)
Like many of us, White was a study in contradictions, enthusiastically embracing the age of air travel while rejecting the style and comforts of modern automobiles (he famously loved his Model T). It is no surprise that he also preferred Fifth Avenue’s spartan green and yellow omnibuses over the new streamlined buses that would soon be plying the streets of Manhattan.
NO THANKS…E.B. White preferred the spartan accommodations of the old Fifth Avenue buses to the comforts of their replacements. (coachbuilt.com)
White elaborated on the advantages of the older buses:
STYLE OVER COMFORT…Of the old Fifth Avenue buses, E.B. White wrote that he preferred the “hard wooden benches on the sun deck, conducive to an erect posture, sparkling clean after a rain.” (Ephemeral New York)
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Cinderella Story
Challenger James J. Braddock achieved one of boxing’s greatest upsets by defeating the heavily favored (and reigning champ) Max Baer. For this feat he was given the nickname “Cinderella Man” by journalist Damon Runyon. The writer of the “Wayward Press” (byline “S.M.”) seemed less impressed, and mocked the national media for their sudden pivot on the bout’s unlikely outcome.
BRINGING THE FIGHT…Challenger James J. Braddock lays into defending champ Max Baer during a heavyweight boxing title match on June 13, 1935, at the Madison Square Garden Bowl in Long Island City. Although the national media dismissed Braddock’s chances of winning, Braddock trained hard for the fight while Baer spent more time clowning around than training. Braddock won by unanimous decision, eight rounds to six. (thefightcity.com)
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Seemed Like a Nice Guy
Henry Pringle penned the first part of a three-part profile of Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948), who was also a former New York governor and U.S. secretary of state. William Cotton rendered a rather severe-looking Hughes in this caricature for the profile…
…although in reality he tended to look more like this…
PROGRESSIVE THINKER…Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in 1931. Known as a reformer who fought corruption, Hughes was a popular public figure in New York. (Wikipedia)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with an advertisement that goes down easy, with its minimal style…
…by contrast, a busy Camel advertisement…R.J. Reynolds alternated full-page ads featuring society women with these health-themed spots that linked smoking with athletic prowess…
…this advertisement by Fisher claimed the 1935 Pontiac was “The most beautiful thing on wheels,” however here it looks perfectly ancient…
…as does this Nash on the inside back cover…
…the back cover was claimed by Highland Queen, a blend of some very fine distilleries…
…Theodore Seuss Geisel continued his ongoing saga against the mighty mosquito…
…and we have this back of the book ad for Webster cigars, who enlisted the talents of Peter Wells…
…Wells (1912–1995) was also a children’s book writer, most famous for contributing drawings to the Katzenjammer Kids comic strip …
Peter Wells, detail from the opening page from “The Katzenjammer Kids,” #16, Spring 1951, King Features Syndicate, Inc.
…and of course we are all familiar with Otto Soglow, who sold his beloved Little King to Hearst (and made a pile) but was still able to feature his diminutive potentate in the The New Yorker in a series of ads for Bloomingdales…
…which brings us to our cartoonists, and a familiar torment for our beloved James Thurber…
…Independence Day offered a marketing challenge to these shopkeepers, per Garrett Price…
…Peter Arno was at his best, in his element…
…Charles Addams explored the unnatural, which would become his calling card…
…Robert Day offered a new twist to the tonsorial arts…
…William Steig gave examples of some budding “tough guys”…
…a rare baseball-themed cartoon from Richard Decker (editor Harold Ross was not a baseball fan)…
…from George Price, what appears to be the end of his “floating man” series, which began in September 1934…
…and we close with one my favorite cartoonists, Barbara Shermund, here at the bookstore…
Above: Coney Island "freak" show, summer of 1935. (seeoldnyc.com)
It has been about a year since we’ve visited Coney Island, and with summer upon us (and upon 1935 New York) let’s have a look at “The Talk of the Town” and see the latest attractions.
June 15, 1935 cover by Garrett Price. Price (1897–1979) illustrated 100 covers for the magazine.Garrett Price’s first New Yorker cover, “Heat Wave,” Aug. 1, 1925.
This lengthy “Talk” entry (excerpted), attributed to Clifford Orr, noted that much was unchanged, including the “mustard-laden breezes.” The place was noisier, however, with carnival barkers increasing their range through loudspeakers.
THE HIGH AND LOWS of society were on display in various attractions at Coney Island. Clockwise from top left, gawkers gather at Coney Island freak show, which included the “Armadillo Boy,” August 5, 1935; strollers near the Virginia Reel and Wonder Wheel, circa 1935; Borden’s frozen custard stand, 1930s; couple have a nap on the beach, circa 1935. (seeoldnyc.com)LINEUP…Beauty contests near the Steeplechase, like this one in 1935, were a common sight at Coney Island. (seeoldnyc.com)LIKE MOTHS TO THE FLAME, the dazzling lights drew thousands to Coney Island’s Luna Park in the 1930s. (seeoldnyc.com)THEY LOOK LIKE…ANTS…Aerial view of the beach in 1935. The Steeplechase ride is at the top left. (seeoldnyc.com)
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Ship Ahoy
E.B. White (in “Notes and Comment”) mentioned that he danced aboard the newly arrived S.S. Normandie (presumably with Katharine White) while it was docked at Pier 88.
GROOVY…E.B. White noted the “luminous grooves” of the S.S. Normandie’s theatre. (drivingfordeco.com)JUGGERNAUT…The S.S. Normandie docked at New York’s Pier 88 after completing her maiden voyage on June 3, 1935. Note the paint chipped from the hull, the result of the ship’s record-breaking speed. (yesterdaystrails.wordpress.com)
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Another Freak Show
Theatre critic Wolcott Gibbs found Earl Carroll’s latest stage production to be nothing more than a “vulgar assortment of comedians, jugglers, and performing dogs,” accompanied by “very lovely and disarming” young ladies who chanted their lines “in high childish voices.” One skit apparently featured Abe Lincoln with “fifty-six young ladies in cellophane hoopskirts.” Too bad no one filmed that performance.
HOLDING IT TOGETHER…Gibbs noted that comedian Ken Murray carried most of the show’s comedy (Murray had found success on the New York stage after appearing in Carroll’s Vanities on Broadway in 1935); Sibyl Bowen was known for her impersonations of famous women. In Sketchbook she portrayed Martha Washington, among others. (eBay/entertainment.ie)
* * *
Weathering the Field
Like the recent 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont (won by J.J. Spaun), ninety years ago Oakmont was also plagued by bad weather, and it also featured a tournament winner who outplayed the top golfers in the field. Excerpt:
WHY NOT ME?…Sam Parks Jr. (left) was considered an unlikely winner of the 1935 U.S. Open after competing with Hall of Famers at Oakmont. A 25-year-old club pro from Pittsburgh who played on the winter tour without ever winning, he bested a field that included Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Denny Shute and Horton Smith. His secret? For months leading up to the U.S. Open, Parks played nine holes at Oakmont every morning before going to work at nearby South Hills Country Club. He knew the course like the back of his hand. (progolfweekly.com)
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Straight From the Headlines
Film critic John Mosher noted how the storylines in latest “G-men” pictures seemed to be taken directly from the daily papers. Public Hero Number 1 was no exception.
THE GOOD GUYS…from left, Chester Morris, Lionel Barrymore and Jean Arthur in Public Hero Number 1. One effect of the Hays Code was to replace gangster films—which some believed glorified criminals—with films that depicted the dedication and courage of law enforcement officers. (Rotten Tomatoes)
Mosher suggested moviegoers would get more pleasure out of Public Hero Number 1 than from Our Little Girl, which seems an unfair comparison since gunplay was rare in a Shirley Temple flick.
NO GUNS, JUST SOME SCARY CLOWNS…Joel McCrea and Shirley Temple in Our Little Girl. (csfd.sk/film)
* * *
Speaking Brooklynese
The June 15 issue featured Thomas Wolfe’s classic short story, “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.” Written entirely in “Brooklynese” dialect, the simple plot features four men standing on a subway platform arguing about how to get to “Bensonhoist.” The story (seemingly told to the author himself) recalls the existential themes of Wolfe’s contemporary, the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Here is an excerpt, the second paragraph of the story:
So like I say, I’m waitin’ for my train t’ come when I sees dis big guy standin’ deh—dis is duh foist I eveh see of him. Well, he’s lookin’ wild, y’know, an’ I can see dat he’s had plenty, but still he’s holdin’ it; he talks good an’ is walkin’ straight enough. So den, dis big guy steps up to a little guy dat’s standin’ deh, an’ says, “How d’yuh get t’ Eighteent’ Avenoo an’ Sixty-sevent’ Street?” he says.
GONE TOO SOON…Portrait of Thomas Wolfe taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1937. He died the next year, eighteen days before his 38th birthday. (Library of Congress)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with this two-page spread—what readers of the June 15 issue would have seen after turning the cover page…
…the inside cover ad was part of an ongoing series of spots for Old Gold cigarettes illustrated by pin-up artist George Petty…almost all of the ads featured a fat, homely man (possibly a sugar daddy) mooning over a leggy blonde who relieves the tedium by reaching for an oversized cigarette…
…the ad on the facing page couldn’t be more different, except for the fact the woman is smoking, suggesting, of course, sophistication when paired with the latest fashions from Bergdorf Goodman…
…on the back cover we find these swells enjoying a belt at the horse races…
…while on the back cover, Camel gathered together all of its recent society endorsers for another round of shilling for R. J. Reynolds…
…swells and society women were the only persons (along with celebrities) who could afford to take this early version of a “red eye” to L.A. or San Francisco…it was not all that cushy, however…airliners were loud, cold, and not pressurized, so they flew at low altitudes and were often bounced about by the weather. The Boeing 247 also required several stops for refueling…
‘OL SPEEDY…This Boeing 247 was featured in the above ad. One of the first all-metal airliners, the 247 was considered revolutionary when introduced in 1933—United Airlines boasted that it cruised at speeds of three miles per minute and carried ten passengers across the country in twenty hours, cutting eight hours from previous travel times. Seven refueling stops included Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Cheyenne and Salt Lake City. (Wikipedia)WATCH YOUR STEP…Interior of the Boeing 247. Note that the main wing ran through the cabin, so persons moving down the aisle had to step over it. (Library of Congress)
…we learn a lot about a 1930s New Yorker reader by looking at the advertisements…it doubtful the magazine had many truly upper-class readers—the barbarians were content to flip through a copy of Town & Country or similar undemanding fare…what we do have are striving “smart set” readers, some with the means to buy a luxury automobile, fly cross-country, or cruise on the Normandie, all things one would desire as a member of upper-middle class or even the educated bourgeoisie in the middle…this Campbell’s soup ad is for the latter…the upper-middles would sniff at canned soup, while the barbarians would probably eat whatever was set in front of them, since talking about food would be considered vulgar…
…Pabst Blue Ribbon beer has been around since 1844…in the 20th century it was increasingly associated with the working class and rednecks until the brand caught on with urban hipsters in the early 2000s…
…in the May 25, 1935 issue we saw an ad promoting Walter Hagen’s “Honey Boy” golf balls, which contained real honey in their cores…the folks at MacGregor’s had a different idea—they inserted a pellet of dry ice into the center of their golf balls…what will they think of next?…
…we move on to our cartoonists, beginning with a James Thurber spot…
…and continuing with another Thurber classic…
…Robert Day took a lunch break in the opening pages…
…Alan Dunn felt charitable while relaxing in Westchester…
…Mary Petty gave us a wedding guest that would not be out of place today…the caption reads, “Home, Prince!”…
…Helen Hokinson went hog-wild in the garden…
…Barbara Shermund looked in on the idle thoughts of the idle rich…
…and we close where we began, with Daniel Brustlein aka Alain at Coney Island…
Above: H.L. Mencken at the Baltimore Sun, circa 1930. From April 1934 to September 1949, Mencken contributed more than fifty articles to The New Yorker.
The American journalist Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) was well-known as a biting satirist and cultural critic, but he was also a noted scholar of the English language and its various quirks.
May 11, 1935, Mother’s Day cover by William Cotton.
One of those quirks was explored in Mencken’s essay, “The Advance of Nomenclatural Eugenics In the Republic,” for the column “Onward & Upward With The Arts.” Broadly defined, eugenics refers to the discredited belief that selective breeding could be used to improve the human race. Mencken used the term satirically to describe the anglicization of immigrant names, either to conform to English spellings or, in many cases, to avoid racial and ethnic discrimination. An excerpt:
A PERFECT PAIRING, for H. L. Mencken, was a beer and a cigar. Here he is accepting “his first public glass of post-Prohibition beer” at the Rennert Hotel in Baltimore on April 7, 1933. In 1924 Mencken wrote: “Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists.” (digitalmaryland.org)
Many Jewish immigrants also abandoned their surnames, seeking to blend in and avoid discrimination. Historian and author Kirsten Fermaglich (A Rosenberg by Any Other Name, 2016) found that persons with Jewish-sounding last names made up 65 percent of all name change requests in New York in the first quarter of the 20th century. Mencken observed:
MEET BERNARD, BETTY, ISSUR AND MARGARITA…Some more famous examples of name changes in the first half of the 20th century. From left, actors (and New Yorkers) Tony Curtis (Bernard Schwartz), Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Perske), Kirk Douglas (Issur Danielovitch Demsky), and Rita Hayworth (Margarita Carmen Cansino). (Wikipedia)
* * *
Canada Dry
In his column, “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker noted the “well-merited spanking” FDR gave to military leaders who were talking about fortifying the border with Canada. Brubaker agreed with FDR’s action, observing how Canadians came to the aid of thirsty Americans during Prohibition.
* * *
Air France
Paris correspondent Janet Flanner considered the state of French aviation as well as signs of war preparation. She also noted the birthday of German dictator Adolf Hitler, the birth of French television, and the streamlined taxis that had suddenly appeared on the streets of Paris. Excerpts:
SOME ICE CREAM WITH YOUR SLICE OF HATE?…Clockwise, from top left, bakers carefully carry Adolf Hitler’s birthday cake in April 1935; the French, meanwhile, were ramping up war production including the manufacture of the M210 bomber; airplane factory workers fashion sheet metal in a factory in Châteauroux-Déols; streamlined Peugeot 401 taxis hit the Paris streets in 1935. (reddit.com/dassault-aviation.com/imcdc.org)
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Vamps and Vampires
John Mosher offered mixed reviews of Hollywood’s latest fare, finding Marlene Dietrich’s latest vehicle “fun,” and the singing and dancing of husband/wife Al Jolson and RubyKeeler “uninspired,” a term he also applied to Bela Lugosi’s latest vampire flick.
TAKE YOUR PICK…Critic John Mosher sampled some very different films including, left, Marlene Dietrich and Lionel Atwill in The Devil Is a Woman; top, Ruby Keeler with her then-husband Al Jolson in Go Into Your Dance; and Bela Lugosi did his vampire schtick with the help of Carroll Borland (who played Dracula’s daughter) in Mark of the Vampire. (MoMA/Pinterest/Instagram)
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From Our Advertisers
We start off with a bang from Goodyear…tire blowouts were common in the 1930s as tire technology could not keep pace with the increasing speed of automobiles, nor the poor condition of many roads…
…after many weeks, the back cover went to something other than cigarette manufacturers…
…let’s take a look at some of the one-column ads from the back pages…many of them highlighted the various nighttime entertainments, from the rooftop of Hotel Pierre to the air-conditioned lounge at the Savoy-Plaza (plus that weird ad that suggested Corn Flakes as a nightcap)…
…interior designer Elsie de Wolfe rolled out “Iron with Tape” chairs, which might be the first example of what would become the ubiquitous webbed lawn chair…also advertised were apartments in the former Pulitzer mansion…
…the Pulitzer apartments were one happy outcome of the Great Depression, which foiled the plans of investors to demolish the house in 1934 and erect an apartment building…
The Pulitzer mansion still stands today, now divided into high-class coops. (daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)
…here’s something new from the Jay Thorpe shop, “noted for unusual sportswear”…
…perhaps inspired by Hollywood…
Ruby Keeler in 1935’s Shipmates Forever. (Reddit)
…illustrator Lyse Darcy created many of these distinctive ads for Guerlain products from the 1930s through the 1950s…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with spot art from James Thurber…
…and Thurber again…
…and we have two from George Price…
…Otto Soglow continued with his multi-panel tricks…
…Howard Baer did some eavesdropping on the rails…
…while Barbara Shermund checked in on her modern women…
…Alan Dunn gave us a mother who took care of herself on Mother’s Day…
…Peter Arno found some kindly advice in the crowded city…
…Al Frueh put the “tennis” back into table tennis…
…and we close with Charles Addams, who had become a regular contributor but was still more than three years away from launching his “Addams Family” cartoons…
Above: Holiday greeting card circa 1920 (left) and framed poetry (1916) from the P.F. Volland Company, which rejected E.B. White's attempt at a get-well card. (Newberry Library/Wikipedia)
A deep reading of The New Yorker’s back issues can lead a person down some interesting rabbit holes as well as to new insights. For instance, who knew that the greeting card business could lead to murder?
April 20, 1935 cover by William Cotton.
Writing for the occasional feature “Onward And Upward With The Arts,” E.B. White examined the hardboiled world of the “sentiment biz,” a world in which each year 42,000 eager writers elbowed their way into a few hundred positions, and even a smaller number made a decent living at it. To test his own mettle at the craft, White submitted a get-well message to the P. F. Volland Company.
A JOB TO DIE FOR…Paul Frederick Volland (1875-1919) founded his greeting card company in 1908, producing sheet music, children’s books, calendars, cookbooks, and framed poetry such as the example at left, from 1916. On May 5, 1919, Volland was shot and killed in his office by an elderly contributor, Vera Trepagnier, after a dispute about compensation over her miniature of George Washington. The company continued until 1959. (Wikipedia)HACK RACKET…One of the more illustrious contributors to the Volland Company was J.P. McEvoy (1894-1958). Despite his generous salary, he hated working for Volland. His 1930 novel Denny and the Dumb Cluck satirized the greeting-card business and his experiences with Volland. In an author’s note, McEvoy wrote that “among other minor atrocities I have compiled 47,888 variations of Merry Christmas…” (Wikipedia/Pinterest)
The Volland Company employed scores of artists and writers including L. Frank Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Held Jr, Ring Lardner, Robert Louis Stevenson, and J.P. McEvoy—a writer little known today, McEvoy was influential in the 1920s and 30s, writing everything from children’s tales (he likely inspired Raggedy Ann) to short stories, novels and comic strips, including the popular Dixie Dugan. He also wrote a hit Broadway play, and several of his stories were turned into movies, including W.C. Fields’ 1934 classic It’s a Gift.
White also offered some “tips” on sentiment writing, suggesting that one avoid rhyming words such as “smother” and “mother”…
…he also cautioned about the use of certain phrases, and concluded with a cheeky Easter poem of his own…
* * *
More Thoughts From E.B.W.
White occasionally led off his column with observations on the passing scene, in this case springtime happenings in the city and beyond…
SIGNS OF SPRING…E.B. White looked around for signs of spring and found, among other things, the bicycle drills of the League of American Wheelmen (top left, professional bike racer Vincent Seifred rode for the the Empire City Wheelmen in the 1930s); top right, tiny spring peepers were for sale as pets at Macy’s; the Fifth Avenue Coach Company switched sponsors, from Marlboro to Gulden’s; White noted freshets (spring meltwater) in the hills—image is from New York’s Finger Lakes. (crca.net/paherps.com/aldenjewell-flickr.com/nygeo.org)
* * *
Star Struck
“The Talk of Town” anticipated the completion of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. When it opened in October 1935, it was only the fourth planetarium in the United States. Excerpts:
The profile by Meyer Berger looked at the life of a “chiseller,” that is, someone who lived day to day by skimming off the labors of others. Today it is mostly done digitally, but in 1935 the mechanical world could be manipulated by a handful of slugs. Excerpts:
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with an elegant evening, the men in white tie, the women in their finest gowns, all preparing to partake of some canned soup…
…there were many ads with Easter themes to move the merch…
…here’s a detail from an Easter-themed ad for neckties, a retired Colonel, presumably, proudly strutting in the Easter Parade with his crop and monocle as he elbows aside his chauffeur and granddaughter…
…the Duchess returns, and she’s still pissed about her tomato juice…I wish I could have entered this contest…
…the Dubonnet mascot, Dubo-Dubon-Dubonnet, made a startling appearance in this ad…the creation of French graphic designer Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, Paul Rand took over the drawing of Dubonnet Man when the liquor came to the United States…
…Old Gold continued its campaign (illustrated by pin-up artist George Petty) featuring a homely, clueless sugar daddy…
…while Camel turned out another group of “sports champions” who testified to the energizing effects of cigarettes…
…another grim message from General Tire…this time featuring dear old dad, contemplating a different fate for his wife and children…
…recall the General ad from March 23…
…General Motors was touting its lineup of 1935 models at the Hotel Astor…
…Chrysler was known as an innovator, introducing radical designs like the Airflow, but consumers weren’t ready for the ultra-streamlined model, even if it did ride so smoothly that one could apparently lose consciousness…
…if a car trip was not your thing, you could fly across America, with a few stops…
…and we fly into our cartoons, where we keep up to date with Otto Soglow…
…George Price was still up in the air with this fellow…
…Gluyas Williams continued to look at club life with this cartoon which originally ran sideways on page 21…
…compliments to the cook, from Syd Hoff…
…Walter Lippmann put the scare in this James Thurber subject…
…and we end with Barbara Shermund, and one young woman who won’t be visiting the new planetarium…
If you lived in Germany in 1935, or in Italy or Spain for that matter, the world would have looked very different from the one most Americans were experiencing, clawing their way out of the Great Depression and hoping to improve their domestic lives. War was not big on their worry list.
April 6, 1935 cover by Leonard Dove.
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White satirized the talk about war that was filling more column inches in the nation’s newspapers. He was particularly scornful of journalists such as Arthur Brisbane—the influential editor of William Randolph Hearst’s media empire—who was fond of giant headlines warning of impending war.
TEND YOUR OWN GARDEN...E.B. White in 1946. (Britannica)
White wasn’t naive about the possibilities of war; however, he believed obsessing about things over which we have little control did little to help the human condition. Helping one’s neighbor, on the other hand, would do the world more good. In 1939, just six months before Germany invaded Poland, White wrote a piece titled “Education” for his Harper’s Magazine column, One Man’s Meat. This excerpt helps define his worldview:
“I find that keeping abreast of my neighbors’ affairs has increased, not diminished, my human sympathies…in New York I rise and scan Europe in the Times; in the country I get up and look at the thermometer—a thoroughly set-contained point of view which, if it could infect everybody everywhere, would I am sure be the most salutary thing that could happen to the world.”
With that, here is a selection from the April 6 “Notes and Comment”…
TANKS A LOT…Clockwise, from top left, German war production in the 1930s—by increasing the size of the army by 500,000 and establishing the Luftwaffe in early 1935, Germany broke international law and the Treaty of Versailles; the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement was the first sign of British and European appeasement—photo shows the launch of the Admiral Graf Spee; a display of force at Nuremberg, mid 1930s; cartoon by Bernard Partridge from Punch (September 1932) foresaw the inevitable. (parisology.net/theholocaustexplained.org/Punch Limited)
In March 1973, a “Mr. Nadeau” wrote a letter to E. B. White expressing fears about humanity’s bleak future. Here are the first and last lines of White’s reply:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness…Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
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Another Viewpoint
Ever the observer of the passing scene, Howard Brubaker made these relevant observations in “Of All Things”…
…and back to White’s “Notes,” and the imminent passing of the beloved organ grinder…
THE OLD GRIND…Above, one of New York City’s last organ grinders in Washington Heights, ca. 1935. Organ grinders had been fixtures in Manhattan since the 1850s, and by 1880 roughly five percent of Italian men living in Five Points were organ grinders, often accompanied by monkeys who entertained and collected coins. Organ grinders were outlawed in 1936 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. It is thought the mayor disliked the Italian immigrant stereotype. (Library of Congress)
* * *
Give Him More Mickey Mouse
John Mosher expressed his displeasure with movies that failed to deliver some escape from life’s mundane realities or offered little more than tepid storylines.
IN SEARCH OF A CREDIBLE PLOT…Critic John Mosher found Claudette Colbert (top left) both unbelievable and unqualified to be a psychiatrist in Private Worlds; at top right, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell offered some mindless distractions in Traveling Saleslady (from 1933 to 1936 Blondell and Farrell appeared together in seven films); bottom, Mosher called The Woman in Red an “anemic” tale. Barbara Stanwyck seems to be wondering why she took the part. (rottentomatoes.com/TCM)
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Odds and Ends
Also in the issue, John O’Hara kicked off the short fiction with “I Could Have Had A Yacht,” Margaret Case Harriman penned a profile of Elizabeth Arden (of cosmetics empire fame), and theatre critic Wolcott Gibbs enjoyed the “bitterly effective performances” in Clifford Odets’ Waiting For Lefty, which was being produced at the Longacre Theatre.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH...Elia Kazan led the cast in the original production of Clifford Odets’ iconic 1935 play Waiting for Lefty. Centered around a taxi drivers’ strike, Lefty was produced by The Group Theatre, which sought to perform plays that functioned as social commentaries on the inequality and poverty of 1930s America. Some referred to Kazan as the “Proletarian Thunderbolt.” (Creative Commons)
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From Our Advertisers
While Hitler ramped up weapons production and prepared to enact the Nuremberg Race Laws, the German Tourist Office touted their country as “The Land of Music” in this one-column advertisement on page 66 (left)…a couple of pages later we have an old chap looking forward to a German cruise and a quiet soak at Baden-Baden in the midst of madness…
…now this is more like it, fine dining under the stars aboard the Santa Paula, far from the maddening crowds…
…there were several colorful full-page ads in the issue, including this splashy display from the very un-splashy-sounding Bermuda Trade Development Board…
…cherry blossoms lined the path of Lincoln’s Le Baron Roadster…
…Camel played to a wide demographic, from ads featuring stylish young women to ads like this that roped in everyone from an “enthusiastic horsewoman” to an engineer working on the Boulder (now Hoover) Dam…
…I’m not sure what “Life begins at sixty” is supposed to mean, unless it’s about tempting young women with your bad habit…
…the New York American was hoping that some of the “Best People” who read The New Yorker would also want to read their apartment rental want ads…
…spring was in the air at Richard Hudnut’s Fifth Avenue salon…if you had dry skin, it was recommended you try a product with the unfortunate name “Du Barry Special Skin Food”…
…Taylor Instruments hoped readers would monitor the spring weather with one of their stylish thermometers…American graphic artist and illustrator Ervine Metzl provided the artwork…he was best known for his posters and postage stamp designs…
…which brings us to our illustrators and cartoonists, beginning with this small woodcut on page 6 signed “Martin”…
…empathy gained some traction in this Robert Day cartoon…
…Alan Dunn demonstrated the effect of the Depression on the building trades…
…Leonard Dove found one enlistee not ready for basic training…
…Syd Hoff showed us all the right moves…
…Alain was up in the garret with an artist in need of some peace…
…Gluyas Williams took a glimpse backstage…
…William Crawford Galbraith was still exploring the world of sugar daddies and golddiggers…
And what can be more frivolous than a Busby Berkeley musical, with scores of leggy showgirls tap-dancing in perfect rhythm, or dressed in identical white gowns while playing flying pianos. Make sense? No, and that was the whole point.
March 23, 1935 cover by Peter Arno. The color, contrast and composition are striking; it looks more like a cover from the 50s or 60s.
“In an era of breadlines, depression and wars, I tried to help people get away from all the misery…” Berkeley once remarked. “I wanted to make people happy, if only for an hour.” Gold Diggers of 1935 was Berkeley’s second “Gold Digger” picture (he choreographed or directed four; there were six in all, including one silent), and it was the first in which he served as sole director. Critic John Mosher didn’t know what to make of the film, likening it more to an earthquake than an entertainment.
SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT…Busby Berkeley (1895-1976) works with dancers (left) during the production of 1933’s 42nd Street; right, at work on one of his lavish sets, circa 1930s. (IMDB)
The “harmless jingle” Mosher referred to, Harry Warren and Al Dubin’s “Lullaby of Broadway,” received an Oscar for Best Original Song (it also gave me an earworm for a week).
GOLDEN GIRLS…Clockwise, from top left, Alice Brady as the parsimonious Matilda Prentiss and Adolphe Menjou as the conniving Russian dance director Nicolai Nicoleff in Gold Diggers of 1935; a scene from the dancing pianos sequence; Dick Powell and Gloria Stuart as the film’s sweethearts. (Wikipedia/YouTube/IMDB)
Amid the frivolity, Mosher noted the juxtaposition of the jingly “Lullaby of Broadway” with the haunting, two-minute sequence of Wini Shaw singing “Lullaby” as her disembodied face emerges from the blackness toward the viewer.
The scene continues as the woman (Shaw) turns onto her back, her head slowly dissolving into the nighttime city…after a raucous, mass tap-dancing scene, she falls to her death, and the sequence is reversed, her face disappearing into the blackness. The blog Acidemic gives an interesting take on this part of the film, which is more reminiscent of a German avant-garde film than Berkeley’s usual fare…
(YouTube)
…Mosher found the scene “terrifying.” Perhaps Shirley Temple helped calm his nerves with her precocious antics in The Little Colonel…
NO FLOATING HEADS HERE…Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson doing the famous staircase dance in The Little Colonel (1935). (TCM)
* * *
Up In Smoke
In “Notes and Comment” E.B. White considered the possibility that cigarette smoking might be harmful to unborn babies, and wryly suggested that embryos could replace grandmothers as a new growth market for big tobacco:
…White referred to the advertisement below, which appeared in the Feb. 9, 1935 issue of The New Yorker:
…White also commented on his recent visit to Madison Square Garden’s winter skating carnival…
THE DOUBLE AXEL was still thirteen years in the future when Swedish skaters Gillis Emanuel Grafström (left) and Vivi-Anne Hultén delighted E.B. White at Madison Square Garden. Photos are from 1924 and 1932, respectively. (Wikipedia)
* * *
Prescience of Mind
We have more from E.B. White, this time in a humorous piece titled “The Dove’s Nest,” in which White took a poke at the most influential newspaper editor in the country, Arthur Brisbane. A close friend of William Randolph Hearst, Brisbane essentially ran Hearst’s newspaper empire. The New Yorker often ridiculed Hearst’s (and Brisbane’s) jingoistic approach to the news that included giant headlines warning of war. Excerpts:
William A. Swanberg, author of the 1961 biography Citizen Hearst, described Brisbane as “a one-time socialist who had drifted pleasantly into the profit system…in some respects a vest-pocket Hearst–a personal enigma, a workhorse, a madman for circulation, a liberal who had grown conservative, an investor.”
DAMN THOSE TORPEDOES…Arthur Brisbane in 1933. His grandson, Arthur S. Brisbane, now retired, served as public editor of The New York Times from 2010 to 2012. (credo.library.umass.edu)
The New Yorker continued to take jabs at Brisbane in the following issue (March 30). Brisbane owned a large estate (including a horse farm) in New Jersey that he made available to New Deal work programs during the Depression. I suppose this Al Frueh cartoon was some kind of reference to that…
…also in the March 30 issue was this ad from World Peaceways, which raised alarms about possible war and bombs raining down from the sky…
…back to the March 23 issue, where we find the calming strains of a Brahms concerto at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Arturo Toscanini with some support from his son-in-law, Vladimir Horowitz…
MAY I CALL YOU DAD?…Not likely something said by young Vladimir Horowitz, left, to father-in-law Arturo Toscanini. (WQXR/Britannica)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Beginning in 1934 the makers of Old Gold cigarettes hired pin-up artist George Petty to create a series of ads featuring a homely, clueless sugar daddy and his leggy mistress…here he turns the tables, introducing a “Pudgy Wudgy” matron putting the moves on a handsome hosiery salesman…
…this Petty ad appeared in the Feb. 9, 1935 issue of The New Yorker…
…the makers of Camels continued their campaign of “distinguished women” who enjoyed their product…here we have a former debutante, Dorothy Paine, an “alert young member of New York’s inner circle.” Not much of a record of Dorothy, who married a man named Walter H. Sterling in 1935…apparently they moved to Phoenix and bought up property in the Southwest…
…the makers of General Tire offered this grim assessment of tire safety…the lad seems to be a mere investment of time…
…although prestige brands suffered mightily during the Depression, the folks at Packard were doubling down on the elite status of their automobile…
…we’ve seen the work of fashion illustrator Ruth Sigrid Grafstrom before in ads for Spud cigarettes…here she contributes some elegant lines to a spot for Bergdorf Goodman (is the woman on the right smoking a Spud?)…
…here’s the Duchess again, still blowing her top over College Inn tomato juice…just look at her clenched fists…that fop with a monocle looks like he just took a left hook to the chops…
…on to our illustrators, William Cotton created this caricature of Rexford Guy Tugwell for Russell Lord’s two-part profile…Tugwell and President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration, which relocated rural unemployed to “Greenbelt Cities” near urban job markets. Critics called him “Rex the Red” for his social engineering experiments, and after he was forced out of federal government, Tugwell was appointed in 1938 as the first director of the NYC Planning Commission. Naturally, he would butt heads with Robert Moses…
…illustrator and painter Maurice Freed kicked off the calendar section…
…bookended on the bottom of page 4 by one of James Thurber’s most recognized drawings…
…Thurber again, and more woes between the sexes…
…we continue with our cartoonists by looking in on Barbara Shermund…
…George Price found a new wrinkle for his recurring floating man cartoon…
…Helen Hokinson graced page 19 with scenes from the opera…
…leaving an extra drawing stranded on page 18…
…Alain offered a new twist on the promotion of physical fitness…
…Gluyas Williams brought us to the stuffy confines of club life (the cartoon was originally featured vertically)…
…and we close with Richard Decker, and a lucky draw at the IRS…
ABOVE: E.B. White presented us with a mixed bag of February happenings, from the comings and goings of Neily Vanderbilt to the Macon disaster and the economic power of Mickey Mouse.
The title for this entry comes from E.B. White’s “Notes and Comment” column, which kicked off the Feb. 23, 1935, issue with a quick rundown of February events.
Feb. 23, 1935 cover by Abner Dean.
February notably marked the end of the Bruno Hauptmann trial. Convicted of the abduction and murder of the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Hauptmann would go to the electric chair on April 3, 1936. White also noted the return of Admiral Richard Byrd from his second Antarctic expedition, the demise of the U.S. Navy airship U.S.S. Macon, and the economic miracle of the Mickey Mouse watch.
FLYING AIRCRAFT CARRIER…The US Navy’s 785-foot rigid airship USS Macon could launch and retrieve up to five airplanes in mid-flight. Known as “parasitic fighters, the Sparrowhawks were hung from a rail system inside the airship. On Feb. 12, 1935 the Macon crashed in a storm off the coast Point Sur, California. Only two of the 66 crew were lost. Photos above, clockwise from top left, show the deployment of a Sparrowhawk; the USS Macon over New York City in 1933; crew pose for a photo in the dirigible’s hanger; photo from the wreckage discovered in 2006—the pre-1941 pattern U.S. roundel emblem still recognizable. Sky-hook also visible. (sanctuaries.noaa.gov/macon/Sunnyvale Historical Society)TIME WAS RUNNING OUT for the Ingersoll Waterbury Company (now known as Timex) during the Great Depression. It was saved from bankruptcy, in part, by the introduction of the Mickey Mouse watch. (connecticuthistory.org)
White also made note of the comings and goings of Cornelius “Neily” Vanderbilt III (1873–1942), who was saying farewell to Fifth Avenue (although he would return to live out his life there), while New Yorkers were apparently saying farewell to the Park Avenue Tunnel (aka Murray Hill Tunnel). After more than 190 years it is still there, now serving a single lane of northbound traffic from 33rd to 40th Street.
TUNNEL VISION…Park Avenue Tunnel in 1890 (top) and in 2013 during a Voice Tunnel art installation. The nearly two-century old tunnel was made open to pedestrians for the first time in coordination with the annual Summer Streets event which began in 2013. (viewing.nyc/Wikipedia)
* * *
Getting An Earful
Howard Brubaker, in his column “Of All Things,” made this observation of deepening repression taking place in Nazi Germany…
* * *
Try Our Knockout Cheesecake
Lois Long continued her chronicle of New York night life, in this excerpt making note of the celebrity gawkers at Jack Dempsey’s tavern/restaurant near Madison Square Garden. Apparently Dempsey’s place was renown for its cheesecake…
PLEASED AS PUNCH…Heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey opened his restaurant at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue in 1935 (bottom photo) before moving to Broadway’s Brill Building in 1937 (top). According to Ephemeral New York, “In the restaurant’s early years, Dempsey was known to hold court at a table, a legendary figure greeting customers and glad-handling guests.” (Ephemeral New York)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
The refurbished Earl Carroll Theatre (7th Ave. and 50th St.) opened as the French Casino late in 1934. The art deco theatre’s first show was the Revue Folies Bergères, promoted here in this small ad on page 54 in the Feb. 23 issue…
…the menu’s cover suggests patrons weren’t there for the cheesecake (yes, there is a pun, but I’m not touching it)…
…another ad in the back pages touted the “Post-Depression Gaities” at the New Amsterdam Theatre with an impressive roster of stars including New Yorker notables Robert Benchley and Alexander Woollcott…
…following Prohibition, Seagram introduced two blended whiskies—5 Crown and 7 Crown. Seagram 5 Crown was discontinued in 1942, while Seagram 7 would go to become the first million case brand in U.S. history…
…this one-column ad caught my eye for the rendering of the stereotypic ill-tempered matron, here having a fit over tomato juice…
…coming from an old and influential New York family, it’s hard to believe Elizabeth West Post Van Rensselaer thought about Campbell’s soup when her daughter, Elizabeth, fell seriously ill…at any rate, something must have worked because her daughter lived until 2001…
…For a time “Chief Pontiac” served as a logo for the Pontiac line of automobiles, discontinued by GM in 2010…
…many automobile advertisements of this era emphasized safety, none more prominent than the “Body by Fisher” ads that frequently featured happy little children…oddly, no one had yet considered seat belts, car seats or other safety measures we now take for granted…
…the makers of Old Gold cigarettes (Lorillard) ran a series of ads featuring a sugar daddy and his leggy mistress…they were drawn by George Petty (1884–1975), famed for his “pin-up girls”…as an added bonus below the ad, you could renew your New Yorker subscription—two years for seven bucks…
…the makers of Camels kept it classy with their continuing series of society women enjoying their unfiltered “Turkish & Domestic” blend…
…the “young matron” in the ad, the Sydney, Australia-born Joan (Deery) Wetmore (1911-1989), was indeed “much-photographed,” and was a favorite of Vogue photographer Edward Steichen:
Detail from a Steichen photo of Joan Wetmore, taken in Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, 1934. (Condé Nast)
…on to our cartoonists, Al Frueh illustrated Humphrey Bogart as the coldblooded killer Duke Mantee in the 1935 play The Petrified Forest; the 1936 film adaptation would be Bogart’s breakout role in the movies…
…Helen Hokinson went shopping for drapes…
…George Price was all tied in knots…
…and still up in the air…
…Barbara Shermund dreamed of Venice…
…James Thurber gave us the life of the party…
…and we close with Leonard Dove, and some unexpected party life…
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.
Feb. 2, 1935 cover by Roger Duvoisin.
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.
A STAR IS FORMED…Clockwise, from top left, W.C. Fields in his youth; Fields was an internationally known juggler, seen here in his vaudeville days in the early 1900s; Fields made his screen debut in 1915, seen here in his second film, Pool Sharks (1915); Fields with Carol Dempster in Sally of the Sawdust, a 1925 silent comedy film directed by D. W. Griffith. (Pinterest/YouTube)
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.
NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE WAS A GOOD YEAR for W.C. Fields, who starred in It’s a Gift (right), released the previous December, and in the 1935 screen adaptation of Charles Dickens’sDavid Copperfield, as the character Wilkins Micawber. (MGM/IMDB)
* * *
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:
BEFORE THE INTERNET, folks got their ghoulish thrills by rubbernecking at famous crime scenes. At left, a crowd gathers around the bullet-riddled car belonging to Bonnie and Clyde. According to one account, at the scene of the police ambush on Louisiana State Highway 154, nearly everyone collected souvenirs including shell casings and bloody pieces of clothing from Bonnie and Clyde. One man even tried to collect Clyde’s left ear with a pocket knife; at right, unidentified man standing next to the “death car.” (KXAN/unt.edu)
* * *
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.
THE ‘INCORRIGIBLE’ Beatrice Lillie (left) delighted Lois Long and audiences in the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center; at right, ballroom dancers Lydia and Joresco take to the floor in the then newly opened Rainbow Room, 1934. (Pinterest/#rainbowroomnyc)
* * *
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…
Above: Illustration and article on "Typhoid Mary" that appeared in 1909 in The New York American. At right, Mary Mallon with other quarantined inmates on North Brother Island. (Wikipedia)
The Irish-born Mary Mallon (1869–1938) lived a simple life as a maid and a cook, and it would have been a life of anonymity save for a sad twist of fate on the day she was born.
Jan. 26, 1935 cover by Perry Barlow.
History knows Mary Mallon as Typhoid Mary. From 1901 to 1907 she would cook for seven wealthy New York families that would later contract typhoid. Mallon was born to a mother who was infected with typhoid, which offers a possible explanation as to why she became an asymptomatic carrier of the disease. Forcibly quarantined on North Brother Island (near Long Island) from 1907 to 1910, Mallon agreed upon her release to take hygienic precautions, including ending her occupation as a cook.
When other jobs failed to pan out, Mallon returned to cooking—this time in restaurants and hotels—infecting many more while evading investigators who were desperately trying to track her down (it is estimated she infected up to 122 people, resulting in as many as four-dozen deaths). When she was finally arrested in 1915, she was returned to North Brother Island, where she would live out her days. Stanley Walker (1898–1962), a native Texan, longtime editor of the New York Herald Tribune, and a New Yorker contributor from 1925 to 1956, featured Mallon in a profile for the Jan. 26, 1935 issue. Some brief excerpts:
* * *
The Latest Sensation
Mary Mallon was the source of sensational headlines in the early 1900s, but even she couldn’t top the media frenzy prompted by the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the trial of accused murderer Bruno Hauptmann.The New Yorker’s Morris Markey went to the courthouse in Flemington, New Jersey, to file this report for “A Reporter at Large.” Excerpts:
TRIAL OF THE CENTURY…Clockwise, from top left: Bruno Hauptmann (center) at his murder trial, which ran from Jan. 2 to Feb. 13, 1935, in Flemington, New Jersey; Charles Lindbergh takes the witness stand; novelist Fanny Hurst and gossip columnist Walter Winchell at the trial on Jan. 30, 1935—the “Trial of the Century” was followed by more than 700 reporters; police ropes contained the large crowds gathered at the courthouse. (Library of Congress/umass.edu/Courier Post)
Hauptmann would be convicted of the crime and immediately sentenced to death. On April 3, 1936, he would meet his end in an electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison, maintaining his innocence to the very end.
* * *
From Our Advertisers
On to our ads, we begin with another colorful spot from Penn Maryland, and jolly times on Miami Beach…
…here is the first in a series of ads that the makers of Old Gold cigarettes (Lorillard) began running in 1935, featuring a sugar daddy and his leggy mistress…they were drawn by George Petty (1884–1975), famed for his “pin-up girls” featured on many magazine covers as well as in ads for Old Gold, Jantzen swimsuits, and TWA, among others…
…here is Petty at work in 1939…
…Buffalo-based Pierce-Arrow was known for its expensive luxury cars, which were not exactly hot sellers during the Great Depression; moreover, Pierce was the only luxury brand that did not offer a lower-priced car to provide cash flow to the company, and contrary to the claims in this ad, Pierce-Arrow would close its doors by 1938…
…one thing alive and well in the 1930s was sexism, and here is a good example from the makers of a popular line of soups…
…The Theatre Guild called upon the talents of James Thurber to promote their latest production…
…and we continue with Thurber as move into the cartoons…
…where Robert Day found some miscasting in a Civil War epic…
…George Price’s floating man seemed to be coming back to earth…
…Day again, with a sure-fire way to defend one’s goal…
…Alan Dunn offered words of wisdom from the pulpit…
…and we close with Barbara Shermund, and a familiar face…
A New Yorker State of Mind 