Calvin Coolidge – A New Yorker State of Mind

March of Time

In the span of 112 minutes, the much-anticipated Fox production Cavalcade took movie audiences through the first 30 years of the 20th century.

Anticipating Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) and the more recent Downton Abbey, Cavalcade looked at life through the eyes of upper class Londoners — Jane and Robert Marryot, their children and close friends — and the Marryot’s servants. It was a calamitous ride that included both the Boer War and World War I among other historic events. Critic John Mosher thought it a memorable picture despite its mawkishness.

IT’S A SCARY WORLD OUT THERE…This Fox theater card promised audiences epic thrills with a cast of thousands. (IMDB)

AGING GRACEFULLY…**Diana Wynyard** and Clive Brook portrayed upper class Londoners Jane and Robert Marryot through three tumultuous decades in *Cavalcade*. (IMDB)

The first decades of the 20th century would claim the lives of both Marryot sons — Joe would perish in World War I, and Edward would make the unfortunate decision to take his bride on a honeymoon cruise…

ONE-WAY TICKET…Edward Marryot (**John Warburton**) and his childhood sweetheart Edith Harris (**Margaret Lindsay**) are thrilled to be celebrating their honeymoon on a “big boat.” When the couple walk away from the railing, the opposite side of the life preserver is revealed in a dramatic camera shot.

After World War I the film hastily moved on to the Jazz Age, where the social order was going to hell…

CRY WOLF…A creepy older dude puts the moves on a young blonde (portrayed by **Betty Grable** in an uncredited role) during a Jazz Age scene of a wild party that included glimpses of flirting gay couples. *Cavalcade* was one of the first films to use the words “damn” and “hell.” (IMDB)

Cavalcade is considered by some critics to be one of the worst films to receive an Academy Award (it actually won three — Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Art Direction). If you are interested in learning more about Cavalcade or about pre-Code films in general, visit the excellent pre-code.com website.

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Sad Songs

George White was famed for his lavish Scandals revues, especially during the Roaring Twenties — leggy showgirls and wisecracking comedians shared the stage with some of the era’s top singers and dancers. White’s Music Hall Varieties seemed to have all of the same elements as his Scandals, but something seemed amiss to Robert Benchley — an unnamed sadness that he chalked up to those depressing times:

THE SHOW MUST GO ON…Even during the Depression **George White** did what he could to keep the old Roaring Twenties spark alive. Clockwise from top left: White auditioning dancers for his *Scandals;* **Bert Lahr** preparing for a stage show in the 1930s (Lahr’s son, John, would later become the *New Yorker* drama critic); the **Howard Brothers, Eugene and Willie**, in 1936; and a young **Eleanor Powell** ready to do some toe-tapping circa 1932. (PBS/NYPL/Wikipedia)

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Journey of the Mind

Louise Bogan (1897–1970) was poetry editor at the New Yorker for nearly 40 years (1931–1970) and in 1945 was the first woman to be appointed Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress. For the Jan. 14 issue she wrote “Journey Around My Room,” which begins with her recollection of a childhood train ride. Here are some excerpts:

POET LAUREATE…**Louise Bogan** in 1937. She was poetry editor at the *New Yorker* for nearly 40 years and was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 1945. (Library of Congress)

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Silent Cal Silenced

Many folks were surprised by the sudden passing of former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. He was just 60 when he succumbed to coronary thrombosis at his Northampton home, “The Beeches.” During the New Yorker’s first years Coolidge was the butt of many jokes…beginning with this Miguel Covarrubias cartoon in the magazine’s fourth issue (March 14, 1925)…

E.B. White offered this eulogy of sorts…

THRIFTY IDYLL…**Calvin and Grace Coolidge** outside their newly acquired home, “The Beeches,” Northampton, summer 1930. (Leslie Jones Collection)

…and mused about the state of politics in 1933, proving that some things never change…

Last time we learned Lewis Mumford’s views about the new artwork displayed in the RKO Roxy Theatre and in Radio City Music Hall. In the Jan. 14 issue he turned his attentions to the actual buildings, giving them an average grade and preferring the Music Hall over the Roxy (he disliked the oversized chandelier/electrolier). Mumford was decidedly not a fan of the Rockefeller Center development, evident in his closing lines:

SHOWPLACES…**Lewis Mumford** gave Radio City Music Hall (top) and the RKO Roxy some muted nods, but found the Roxy’s electrolier distracting.

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Parting Thoughts

Alexander Woollcott shared some final recollections of his visit to Moscow, in which he likens the Russians’ freedom under Josef Stalin to the freedom of a spirited schoolboy who desires to sit in the back of the classroom…

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From Our Advertisers

Bonwit Teller employed some modern typesetting, wryly using the word DULL — offset in large san-serif letters — to draw attention to their “Chardonize” fabric, which was essentially artificial silk…

…nothing subtle about this next advertisement…don one of these bathing suits and millionaires will bow before you, or rather, to borrow this ad’s odd metaphor, “fall like wheat before locusts”…

…we get a similar but far more muted pitch from Coty…so does this mean one out of every six desirable bachelors want to be seen with her? Not exactly knocking them down like locusts…

…now here’s a couple of self-assured souls who are neither troubled by hungry locusts nor face powders…they own a Cadillac, and wow, that is really quite the automobile, not like the Caddies you see today that are half-plastic and blend in with the rest of the shapeless blobs we call cars these days…

…the folks who pushed Chesterfield cigarettes were back with another ad aimed at their fastest growing demographic…note the sly reference to women’s suffrage…but that’s not why this woman smokes; she smokes because it gives her pleasure, and come to think of it, why should men have all the fun?…

…the Cunard Line suggested that you might run into some big-time celebrities on one of their ships, including actress Norma Shearer and banker/arts patron Otto Kahn (bottom of left-land page); or on the opposite page Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne among others…

…by contrast, the French Line employed the artistry of James Thurber to entice travelers onto the high seas…

…which gives us a nice segue into our cartoons, beginning with this spot by Thurber referencing the National Auto Show…

…Al Frueh offered up another of his famed sequential works…

…Gardner Rea with his usual perspective on the absurd…

…Douglas Ryan plied the familiar waters of the harem trope…

…and Robert Day showed us that even the smallest consolation can still satisfy…

Next Time: Life With Father…

The Circus Comes to Town

If you lived in small town America in the 20th century, it was a big deal when the circus came to town with its entourage of clowns, acrobats and exotic animals from distant lands.

April 19, 1930 cover by **Gardner Rea.**

Even New Yorkers, it seems — who could be quite blasé about such things — got a thrill when the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus rolled into town for its annual spectacle at Madison Square Garden. The New Yorker marked the occasion with its April 12 cover by Theodore Haupt:

For the April 19 issue, E.B. White welcomed the circus on a cautionary note, airing concerns in his “Notes and Comment” column that this old-timey entertainment might be falling under the “base influences” of broadcast radio, Broadway, and Hollywood:

SEND IN THE…YOU KNOW…THOSE GUYS…Top, clowns in town for the 1931 Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. Below, circus poster announcing the arrival of “The Greatest Show on Earth.” (potterauctions.com)

José Schorr, who wrote a number of humorous columns in the New Yorker from 1926 to 1930 on the subject of “how to the pass the time” in various situations, offered this advice on attending the spectacle at Madison Square Garden…

I’D RATHER BE FLYING…1930 poster advertising “The Human Projectile”; 1931 photo of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. (worthpoint.com/bidsquare.com)

…for example, Schorr advised circus-goers to pass the time by considering the inner lives of performers such as “The Human Projectile”…

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Funny Farm

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Joe Cook (1890-1950), but in the 1920s and 30s he was a household name and one of America’s most popular comedic performers. “Talk of the Town” looked in on his antics at his Lake Hopatcong farm, “Sleepless Hollow”…

BATTER UP…Comedian **Joe Cook’s** residence at Lake Hopatcong, NJ, was known for its celebrity-studded parties. At left, **Babe Ruth** takes a swing with a giant bat on Cook’s wacky three-hole golf course; at right, Cook relaxing on the steps of his farm. (lakehopatcongnews.com)

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Fun With Balloon Animals

One thing that distinguishes the 1930s from today is that era’s apparent lack of safety standards, or fear of liability. A case in point was Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which began a tradition in the late 1920s of releasing its giant balloons into the sky at the conclusion of the parade — a $50 reward was offered by Macy’s for their return. “The Talk of the Town” explained:

GOING, GOING, GONE…When Felix the Cat (left, in 1927) was released after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, it floated into a power line and caught fire; in 1931 the parade’s Big Blue Hippo (right) was apparently spotted floating over the ocean, never to be seen again. (Macy’s/hatchingcatnyc.com)

Perhaps the craziest anecdote attached to the parade’s annual balloon release belonged to Annette Gipson. While flying a biplane at 5,000 feet with her instructor, she spotted the parade’s 60-foot “Tom Cat” balloon rising high above Queens. Looking to have a bit of fun, the 22-year-old Gipson flew the plane directly into the cat. According to the book Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, “Upon impact, the balloon wrapped itself around the left wing. The plane went into a deep tailspin (nearly throwing Gipson from the cockpit) and sped toward the ground out of control.” Fearing the plane would catch fire when it hit the ground, the instructor killed the ignition, and somehow managed to pull the plane out of the spin and land it safely at Roosevelt Field.

KITTY LITTER…**Annette Gipson,** right, nearly killed herself and her flight instructor after she deliberately crashed her biplane into a Tom Cat balloon (left) that had been released following the 1932 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Of her near-death experience,Gipson told reporters, “It was a sensation that I never felt before—the whirling housetops, rushing up to meet me—and the thoughts of a whole lifetime flashed through my mind.” (ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com)

A footnote: Following Gipson’s brush with death, Macy’s announced it would not give prize money to those who tried to down the balloons with their airplanes. The incident also brought an end to the company’s tradition of releasing the balloons.

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Birth of the Soundtrack

Songs from popular theater productions were first made available to the masses in the mid-19th century via printed sheet music and later through early recordings. Part of this lineage is the movie soundtrack, which has its origins in the early days of sound pictures. According to the New Yorker’s “Popular Records” column, these new recordings would bring the talkies into your home, albeit without the picture…

FROM MAMMY TO MAMMA MIA…Left, a 1930 Brunswick 78 RPM recording of Al Jolson’s “To My Mammy”; at right, soundtrack from the 2008 film *Mamma Mia!* (popsike.com/amazon.com)

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Cosmo Calvin

Before Helen Gurley Brown came along in the 1960s and sexed it up, Cosmopolitan was known as a somewhat bland literary magazine, and it was certainly bland enough in 1930 to welcome the scribblings of America’s blandest president to its pages. E.B. White mused in his “Notes”…

NOTHING COMES BETWEEN ME AND MY CALVIN…At left, the May 1930 issue of *Cosmopolitan;* **Kourtney Kardashian** on the cover of the October 2016 issue. (Pinterest/Cosmopolitan)

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How Dry I Am

After a decade of living under Prohibition, John Ogden Whedon (1905-1991) put pen to paper and shared his sentiments in a poem for the New Yorker…

…Whedon would go on to a successful career as a screenwriter, especially finding acclaim for his television writing on The Donna Reed Show, Leave It to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show, among others. He was also the grandfather of screenwriter and director Joseph “Joss” Whedon and screenwriters Jed Whedon and Zack Whedon.

Another poem in the April 19 issue was contributed by John Held Jr., who was perhaps better known to New Yorker readers for his “woodcut” cartoons…

…example of Held’s work from the April 12 issue, featured in an Old Gold advertisement…

…and that provides a segue into our ads for the April 19 issue, beginning with this spot for an early electric dishwasher…

Here’s what that bad boy looks like in color. (automaticwasher.org)

…I couldn’t find a review in the New Yorker for Emily Hahn’s new book, Seductio Ad Absurdum, but her publisher did take out an ad to get the attention of readers. Many years later the New Yorker would call the journalist and author “a forgotten American literary treasure”…

**Emily Hahn** circa 1930; first edition of *Seductio Ad Absurdum.* Author of 52 books, her writings played a significant role in opening up Asia to the West.(shanghaitours.canalblog.com/swansfinebooks.com)

…and here we have another sumptuous ad from illustrator Carl “Eric” Erickson, a far cry from the “Joe Camel” ads that would come along decades later…

…on to our cartoons, Reginald Marsh offered a blue collar perspective on city fashions…

…Alice Harvey captured a moment of reflection by an overworked housewife…

…and I. Klein looked in on a couple of working stiffs in need of a dictionary…

…now over to the posh set, with Barbara Shermund…

…Leonard Dove found humor on the chorus line…

…and we end with this terrific cartoon by Peter Arno, and the perils of apartment life…

Next Time: Paramount on Parade…

American Royalty

Although the United States declared its independence from British Empire nearly 250 years ago, the royal family and all of its requisite trappings persist in the American imagination like a phantom limb.

Oct. 5, 1929 cover by **Theodore G. Haupt.**

E.B. White observed as much in the “Notes and Comment” section of the Oct. 5 issue, in which he offered his views regarding the “pother” over the wedding of Calvin Coolidge’s son, John, to Florence Trumbull, the daughter of Connecticut Governor John Harper Trumbull…

White could have looked no further than the pages of the New Yorker for further evidence to his claims. The bourgeois yearnings of its readers were reflected in countless advertisements laced with anglophilic pretensions. Here are examples from 1929 issues we have previously examined:

LIVE LIKE A BARON…Ads from the *New Yorker* of the 1920s often featured illustrations of regal, priggish types such as the couple above, deployed to sell everything from apartments and ginger ale…

…to no-frills automobiles and menthol cigarettes. No product was too pedestrian for the royal treatment.

Writing under the pseudonym “Guy Fawkes,” Robert Benchley commented further on the Coolidge-Trumbull nuptials in the “Wayward Press” column:

HEY CAL, IT’S A WEDDING, NOT A FUNERAL…The former U.S. President **Calvin Coolidge** was known as “Silent Cal” for good reason, given his reserved demeanor that rarely produced a smile (although he apparently had a dry wit). He poses here at the wedding of his son, John. Left to right are **Grace Goodhue Coolidge, President Coolidge, Florence Trumbull Coolidge, John Coolidge; Maud Pierce Usher Trumbull**, and **Gov. John Trumbull.** (patch.com)

NOT EXACTLY KING’S ROAD…Onlookers line the street near the Congregational church in Plainview, Conn., hoping for a glimpse of the bride and groom, who were united in a simple ceremony. (AP)

CUTE COUPLE…**Florence Trumbull** and **John Coolidge** during their engagement, 1928. (crackerpilgrim.com)

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Modest Mussolini

We go from famous faces to infamous ones, namely the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, aka Il Duce, who received the adoration of his public while trying to remain inconspicuous at the cinema. “Talk” recounted…

NOW PICTURE HIM UPSIDE DOWN…A 1929 postcard image of the once-revered Italian dictator **Benito Mussolini**. Sixteen years later he would be shot by his own people and strung up by his feet from the roof of a Milan gas station. (worthpoint.com)

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Going Down

“Talk” also commented on the growing trend for high-rise apartments to provide swimming pools and other amenities below street level:

TAKING THE PLUNGE DOWN UNDER…Few indoor swimming pools were available to New Yorkers during the 1920s. Two of the nicer ones were found underground at the Shelton Hotel (above) and the Park Central. Sadly, both pools no longer exist. In 2007 the Shelton’s pool was removed and the cavernous space was divided into three levels. I’m not sure when Park Central’s disappeared, but it’s fate was doubtless similar to the Shelton’s.(daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/hippostcard.com)

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How About a Catch?

As I’ve noted on previous occasions, the New Yorker of the 1920s all but ignored major league baseball. The magazine gave regular coverage to seemingly every sport, from hockey and college football to polo and yacht racing, but regular coverage of baseball was nonexistent, even when the Yankee’s Murderers’ Row (Ruth, Gehrig among others) won back-to-back World Series titles in 1927-28.

Still no coverage in the Oct. 5 issue, but the sport did get a brief mention in Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column…

…and the issue was filled with baseball imagery, including the cover…

The Oct. 5 issue was filled with baseball-related items, but no actual coverage of the games. Images from the issue included, from left, the cover by Theodore Haupt; a filler sketch by **Constantin Alajalov;** and a Johan Bull illustration of umpire Bill Klem for the issue’s “Profile” section.

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In a Sentimental Mood

Robert Benchley checked out George White’s latest version of his Scandals revue at the Apollo Theatre, and found the sometimes risqué show to be in a sentimental mood…

BETTER SENTIMENTAL THAN DEPRESSED…The chanteuse **Frances Williams** (pictured on the show’s sheet music and at right) likely provided the only spark to the 1929 edition of George White’s Scandals. (amazon/psychotronicpaul.blogspot.com)

Benchley also looked in on Elmer Rice’s latest, See Naples and Die, featuring veteran English actress Beatrice Herford and the up-and-coming Claudette Colbert…

VETERAN AND ROOKIE…Veteran English actress **Beatrice Herford** and the up-and-coming Claudette Colbert headlined **Elmer Rice’s** *See Naples and Die.* Colbert (pictured at right in a 1928 Broadway publicity photo) would go on to massive stardom in the 1930s. (Alchetron/Wikipeda)

Benchley applauded the veteran Herford’s performance, but found the otherwise reliable Colbert miscast as a wisecracking, Dorothy Parker type (Benchley, as we know, was close friends with Parker, so he knew what he was talking about)…

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An (Ugly) American in Paris

Off to Paris, we find correspondent Janet Flanner joining with Parisians in deriding the behavior of American tourists, who were on a course to drain every last drop from the Île–de–France before departing for the bone-dry USA:

DRINKING IN THE SIGHTS…American tourists at a Parisian *café*, circa 1920s. (tavbooks.com)

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Party Pooper

With her infant child (Patricia Arno) at home, it is doubtful Lois Long was seeing as much nightlife as she did during her first weeks at the New Yorker, when “nights were bold.” And indeed, her nightlife column “Tables for Two” would end for good in June 1930. Her Oct. 5 column took a cursory spin through the various nighttime offerings, ending on this note regarding a fan letter and a message from comedian Jimmy Durante:

THE GREAT SCHNOZZOLA **Jimmy Durante** brought a smile to the face of **Lois “Lipstick” Long.**

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From Our Advertisers

With the latest Paris fashions splattered across newstands all over Manhattan, retailers scrambled to get “replicas” to consumers…Macy’s had “couturier bags”…

…the Hollander Dressmaking Department was ready to make a perfect copy of Patou’s “Quiproquo”…

…and this Chanel frock could be had in misses’ sizes for $145 (roughly equivalent to about $2K today)…

…Philip Morris hadn’t yet discovered the “Marlboro Man,” and were still hawking their cigarettes through a “distinguished handwriting contest.” The latest winner was Edmund Froese…

…who would go on to become a popular mid-century landscape painter…

*Port of New York,* by Edmund Froese (undated)

…another artist in the midst of our ads is Carl “Eric” Erickson, who created these lovely images for R.J. Reynolds that would induce people to take up the habit with a Camel…

…and then we have some rather unlovely ads from the back pages, including these two that would not go over well with today’s readers…

…or this from Dr. Seuss, still sharpening his skills with Flit insecticide…

…or this ad from Abercrombie & Fitch, wrong on so many levels…

…on to happier things, here’s an illustration by Reginald Marsh that ran along the bottom of “Talk of the Town”…(click to enlarge)

…Alan Dunn found love in the air above the streets of Manhattan…

…and Leonard Dove revealed the hazards of apartment rentals…

Next Time: Race to the Sky…

Conventional Follies of ’28

U.S. presidential elections have long provided fodder for the nation’s humorists, and the 1928 contest between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith was no exception.

March 31, 1928 cover by Theodore G. Haupt.

In the March 31, 1928 issue of the New Yorker writer Frank Sullivan and cartoonist Al Frueh took particular delight in skewering the party nominating conventions. As Sullivan observed:

Regarding item No. 3, Sullivan was referring to Minnesota’s famed Mayo Clinic, and the related pride that was doubtless associated with the removal of an appendix from the wife of Al Smith, four-term governor of New York and nominee to lead the Democratic ticket.

The candidates could not have been more different. The first Catholic to be nominated for president, Al Smith was a crowd-loving, charismatic personality, a Tammany Hall politician and a committed “wet” who opposed Prohibition. He attracted strong support from Catholics, women, drinkers and those who were tired of the crime and corruption associated with dry America.

WET VS. WET BLANKET…The staid, “dry” Republican candidate Herbert Hoover (left) easily defeated the charismatic “wet” Democratic candidate Al Smith (right) in the 1928 U.S. Presidential Election.

Hoover, on the other hand, was deliberately dull and humorless, as stiff as his heavily starched collars and committed to keeping the country dry. But the economy under fellow Republican Calvin Coolidge was booming, and it didn’t hurt that many Protestants believed the Catholic Church would dictate Al Smith’s policies if he were elected. Sullivan had some fun with this perceived religious prejudice:

In light of the recent 2016 elections and the prominence of “Islamophobia” in the political rhetoric, Sullivan’s joke regarding the role of “Mohammedans” in the 1928 election is noteworthy:

Illustrations by Al Frueh, both top and bottom, aptly captured the picture Sullivan painted of the nominating process:

Al Smith would lose in a landslide. Journalists at the time attributed his defeat to the three P’s: Prohibition, Prejudice and Prosperity. Rural voters, who favored Hoover, also had a bigger say than their urban brethren: Republicans would benefit from a failure to reapportion Congress and the electoral college following the 1920 census, which had registered a 15 percent increase in the urban population. After the election, Smith became the president of Empire State Inc., the corporation that would build the the Empire State Building in 1930-31.

In his piece Sullivan also took at parting shot at President Coolidge…

…as did cartoonist J. Price in the same issue…

For reference, the image that inspired Price:

BIG CHIEF… Coolidge donned a headdress while being named an honorary Sioux chief (“Leading Eagle”) in Deadwood, South Dakota in the summer of 1927. (AP)

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New Yorker Monotypes

Another humorist who regularly contributed to the New Yorker was Baird Leonard, who beginning with the second issue of the magazine (Feb. 28, 1925) wrote a series titled “Metropolitan Monotypes.” Over five years and 36 installments Leonard wrote free-verse characterizations of various New York “types,” from debutantes to aesthetes to “The Anglomaniac” as described below in this installment from March 31, 1928:

As I’ve noted before, Anglophilia oozed from the New Yorker ads, particularly those directed at the male reader (France was a common lure in ads for women). Every issue from the 1920s is rife with examples, but sticking to the March 31 issue we find this ad employing the British slang for cigarettes to market a silly, dog-shaped cigarette case to fashionable women:

In the same issue this ad from Macy’s appealed to participants of a famous cultural event for the posh set—the annual Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue. A tradition dating back to the 1870s, in its first decades the “parade” was a display of wealth and beauty, as the well-to-do strolled from church to church to check out various floral displays.

The parade has changed considerably over the years, with high fashion given over to camp as the event has become far more democratic…

Young Couple strolling in the Easter Parade, 1928. (Retronaut)

WHAT A DIFFERENCE 90 YEARS MAKES…The Easter Parade in 2012. (nycxplorer.com)

In 1928, the poor and middle classes were merely observers of the passing parade, perhaps hoping to learn something about the latest fashions. The April 14 “Talk of the Town” suggested as much:

And finally, our cartoon comes courtesy of Leonard Dove, who explores the lighter side of boxing…

Next Time: We Americans…

Office Romance

The New Yorker’s founder and editor, Harold Ross, did not approve of office romances. He had a magazine to run after all, and didn’t want any distractions from Cupid’s arrow.

30e6d833482958226738b30ce4244558 — August 13, 1927 cover by Julian de Miskey.

But then again, it seemed inevitable that Lois Long and Peter Arno–two of the magazine’s most lively personalities and important early contributors–would end up together. Arno cut a dashing figure as one the New Yorker’s most celebrated cartoonists. He often drew upon the same subject matter as Long, who covered the nightclub and speakeasy scene in her column, “Tables for Two” and in the process defined the lifestyle of the liberated flapper. Long is also credited with inventing the field of fashion writing and criticism with her other New Yorker column, “On and Off the Avenue.”

screen-shot-2016-11-16-at-9-33-38-am — OFFICE SWEETHEARTS… Arno and Long personified the witty, cosmopolitan image cultivated by the *New Yorker*. (*Wall Street Journal,* Wikipedia)

In Vanity Fair, Ben Schwartz (“The Double Life of Peter Arno,” April 5, 2016) wrote that Arno and Long “personified what people thought The New Yorker was, which was very fortunate…(Long was) tall, lanky, a Vassar grad with bobbed hair and a wicked sense of humor, a minister’s daughter to Arno’s judge’s son, and she matched him as a hell-raiser.” It was actually their raucous affair that set Ross on a “permanent scowl” regarding office romances.

Schwartz quotes Arno’s and Long’s daughter, Patricia (Pat) Arno, about her parents’ wild relationship: “There were lots of calls to (gossip columnist Walter) Winchell or some other columnist about nightclub fights…with my mother calling and saying, ‘Oh, please don’t print that about us,’ trying to keep their names out of the papers.”

Schwartz suggests that Arno drew on personal experience when in 1930 he published Peter Arno’s Hullabaloo, a “collection of cartoons that included a set of racy drawings featuring a dashing couple much like himself and Long. In one, a nude woman, in bed, yells at her sleeping lover: ‘Wake up, you mutt! We’re getting married to-day.'”

Long and Arno were married by her father, the Rev. Dr. William J. Long, at her parents’ home in Stamford, Conn., on August 13, 1927. Their daughter, Patricia, was born September 18, 1929.

According to Schwartz, Arno’s first three books sold well (Whoops Dearie! 1927, Parade 1929, and Hullabaloo 1930) “allowing the young family to move into an East Side penthouse. Their social circle included New Yorker staffers, the magazine’s owner, Raoul Fleischmann, publishers Condé Nast and Henry Luce, Kay Francis (Broadway actress, future Hollywood star and Long’s former roommate), and some of the city’s financial powers. ‘Once my mother was having trouble with her Plymouth,’ says Pat Arno, “and Walter Chrysler took off his evening coat, rolled up his sleeves, and fixed it himself.'”

kay-glam — STAR POWER…Actress Kay Francis, no stranger to wild living, was Lois Long’s longtime friend and also her roommate until Long married Peter Arno in 1927. (flickchick1953)

peter-arno-curtis-arnoux-peters-jr-cartoonist-ben-schwartz-07 — HAPPY INTERLUDE…Arno and Long with their baby daughter, Patricia, in 1929. (*Vanity Fair*)

Less than two years after the birth of their daughter, Arno and Long would get a divorce in Reno on June 30, 1931. Arno later married debutante Mary Livingston Lansing in August 1935; they divorced in July 1939. After his divorce from Lansing, Arno moved to a farm near Harrison, New York, where he lived in seclusion, drawing for the New Yorker and enjoying music, guns, and sports cars. He died of emphysema on February 22, 1968 at the age of 64.

peter-arno-curtis-arnoux-peters-jr-cartoonist-ben-schwartz-11 — Arno with second wife, debutante Mary Livingston “Timmie” Lansing, Winsted, Connecticut, 1939. (Digital Colorization by Lorna Clark)

In 1938 Long would marry Donaldson Thorburn, a newspaper and advertising man. After his death in 1952 she would marry Harold Fox, head of an investment brokerage firm. Long’s colleague at the New Yorker, Brendan Gill, described Fox as “a proper Pennsylvanian named Harold A. Fox.” They lived in an 1807 Pennsylvania-Dutch farmhouse, where Long delighted in the woods, farms and wildlife as well as in her two grandchildren—Andrea Long Bush and Katharine Kittredge Bush. In 1960 she wrote to her alma mater, Vassar College, that the “hectic fifteen years or so after graduation, when I thought I had New York City by the tail and was swinging it around my head, seem very far away. Thank God. I like things this way.” Long would continue working as a columnist for the New Yorker until the death of Harold Fox, in 1968. She died in 1974 at age 72.

screen-shot-2016-11-16-at-10-40-11-am — BEFORE IT ALL BEGAN…Left, Lois Long’s photo in Vassar’s yearbook, The Vassarion. At right, during her senior spring, Lois posed for a photo by Sunset Lake. Long studied English and French, graduating in1922 with an English major. (vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu)

* * *

The big news in the Aug. 13, 1927 edition (the same date as the Long-Arno wedding) was President Calvin Coolidge’s brief, ambiguous announcement that he would not run for president. Almost everyone assumed he would run for a second term, given the booming economy in the age of “Coolidge Prosperity.”

Coolidge was summering in Black Hills when he gave his secretary, Everett Sanders, a piece of paper that read, “I do not choose to run for president in 1928.” Sanders then scheduled a midday press conference for August 2, 1927. At 11:30 a.m., Coolidge cut out strips of paper with this statement–I do not choose to run—and at the conference handed each reporter one of the strips. Coolidge offered no further information, and only remarked, “There will be nothing more from this office today.” This led to considerable debate among the press as to intentions of the president. The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” mused…

…Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column offered this wry observation…

…while humorist Robert Benchley (writing under the pseudonym “Guy Fawkes”) in his “The Press in Review” column continued the New Yorker’s stinging attack on the media for its continued attempts to sensationalize events or impart personality traits on colorless newsmakers:

02-calvin-coolidge-cowboy_69085_600x450 — HAPPY TRAILS, CAL…No doubt the simple life of the Black Hills influenced Calvin Coolidge’s decision in 1927 to decline a second term as president. (Library of Congress)

Next Time: The Movies Take Wing…

Picking on Charlie Chaplin

In 1927 silent film star Charlie Chaplin was working on his latest film, The Circus, when his second wife, Lita Grey, filed for divorce, accusing her husband of infidelity, abuse, and of harbouring “perverted sexual desires.” Life imitated art, and Charlie’s own life became a circus.

5128947dc365cb603134bbb6e56f67aa — July 23, 1927 cover by Stanley W. Reynolds.

The New Yorker’s Ralph Barton, who contributed countless illustrations for the magazine, wrote about Chaplin’s latest travails in a column titled “Picking on Charlie Chaplin.”

chaplin1928circus — LIFE ON THE HIGH WIRE…Charlie Chaplin in *The Circus* (1928). (MoMA)

The “2” Barton mentioned were teenaged actress Lita Grey and her mother, Lillian Parker.

In 1924 the 35-year-old Charlie Chaplin married the 16-year-old Lita Grey in a discreet ceremony in Mexico — because Grey was pregnant, Chaplin could have been charged with statutory rape under California law (it was Chaplin’s second marriage, and his second to a teenaged actress). Chaplin and Grey had two sons from their brief union–Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr., was born in 1925, followed by Sydney Earl Chaplin in 1926.

The divorce made headline news as Chaplin was reported to be in a state of nervous breakdown. Filming for The Circus was suspended for ten months while he dealt with the mess:

Chaplin’s lawyers agreed to a cash settlement of $600,000 – the largest awarded by American courts at that time (Roughly equivalent to more than $8 million today). Groups formed across America calling for his films to be banned (no doubt the same groups that had earlier protested his marriage to a pregnant, teenaged minor). Barton mused that the protests might cause Chaplin to abandon America for the more permissive atmosphere in Europe:

lita-charlie-flirtatious-angel — HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU…Chaplin first became acquainted with the 12-year old Lillita McMurray (later Lita Grey) during the filming of *The Kid* (1921).

Charlie-Chaplin-and-Lita-Grey — PRATFALL…Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey during their brief, tumultuous marriage. (The Artifice)

The Circus was released in January 1928 to positive reviews, and during the first-ever Academy Awards Chaplin received a special trophy “For versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus. Despite the film’s success, he rarely spoke of it again. For Charlie, it was a time best forgotten.

* * *

And now, an advertisement from the July 23 issue urging readers to buy the 1920s equivalent of “Smart Water” endorsed by the Sun King himself…

…and a cartoon by Reginald Marsh, portraying a distinctly American view of the grandeur of Niagara Falls…

* * *

On to July 30, 1927 issue, in which the New Yorker once again takes a poke at our 30th President…

a5bc3067a36eb35927e56509e2fd7092 — July 30, 1927. (Cover is unsigned, but I suspect it is by John Held Jr.)

…and his latest adventures in the wilds of South Dakota’s Black Hills:

BIG CHIEF CAL…President Calvin Coolidge donned a headdress while being named an honorary Sioux chief (“Leading Eagle”) in Deadwood, South Dakota. His advisers cautioned that the headdress would make him look funny, but he apparently replied, “Well it’s good for people to laugh, isn’t it?” (AP)

Safely back in the environs of the big city, the New Yorker continued to take stock of summer sports such as tennis, polo, and the yacht races at Larchmont (but still no mention of the legendary ’27 Yankees). This illustration of the races (unsigned, but I guess it is Reginald Marsh) graced a double-spread below “The Talk of the Town”…

screen-shot-2016-11-02-at-1-02-09-pm — **(click to enlarge)**

…and if you were attending the races, or wanted to look stylish on your yacht (or if you just wanted to dress this way to appear that you owned one), you could check out the selections at B. Altman’s…

…looking smart was everywhere in the issue, from multiple ads for fall furs, to this come-on from Buick, which suggests that even though it is no Cadillac, and certainly not a Rolls, its smartness will prevail “on any boulevard”…

The Buick ad is somewhat revolutionary for an early automobile ad in that it doesn’t actually show the product advertised.

As for those not among the smart set, and not enjoying the races at Larchmont, there were other summer diversions, as rendered here by J.H. Fyfe:

Next Time: Babe Comes Home…

Summer in the City

The July 1927 issues of the New Yorker were filled with news of yacht races, polo matches and golf tournaments as the city settled into the heart of the summer. The artist for the July 9 cover, Julian de Miskey, was in the summertime mood with this lively portrayal of Jazz Age bathers:

21b6fac0e9233b827d578cf6175dd79d — July 9, 1927 cover by Julian de Miskey. Born in Hungary in 1898, de Miskey emigrated to the United States in 1914.

Although Julian de Miskey was was one of the most prolific of the first wave of New Yorker artists, his work seems to be little known or appreciated. But even 40 years after his death in 1976, his influence is still felt in the magazine, particularly in the spot illustrations and overall decorative style that grace the pages of “The Talk of the Town.”

Here is a sampling of de Miskey’s spot illustrations for “Talk” in the July 9 and July 16, 1927 issues…

…and here are examples of spot illustrations for some recent (Aug-Sept. 2016) New Yorker “Talk” sections, as rendered by Antony Huchette:

De Miskey did it all–spots, cartoons, and anywhere from 62 to 100 covers (varying numbers are reported).

A member of the Woodstock Art Association, de Miskey was well known in the New York art circles of his day, rubbing elbows in the Whitney Studio Club in Manhattan with artists including Edward Hopper, Guy Pene du Bois, Mabel Dwight and Leon Kroll. De Miskey also illustrated and designed covers for a number of books, studied sculpture and created stage sets and costume design.

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-11-18-07-am — PROLIFIC…Julian de Miskey illustrated a number of children’s books, including *Chúcaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa* (1958-Newbery winner); *The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear* (1960); and *Piccolo* (1968) which was both written and illustrated by de Miskey.

The June 9 issue also featured this cartoon by de Miskey:

* * *

President Calvin Coolidge fled the bugs and heat of Washington, D.C. for cooler climes in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The New Yorker regularly mocked Coolidge’s dispatches from the Dakotas, including this item in “Of All Things”…

The magazine’s July 16 issue added this observation in “Talk of the Town”…

Closer to home, one cartoon offers an urban sophisticate’s take on nature:

For those who couldn’t flee the city, respite was sought in Central Park, as illustrated by Constantin Alajalov for “Talk of the Town…”

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-10-14-08-am — ***click to enlarge***

Summer themes continued with the July 16 issue, which featured a cover by Helen Hokinson depicting one of her favorite subjects–the plump society woman:

1f64e9e51d307bb03097744ebbb681f6 — July 16, 1927 cover by Helen E. Hokinson.

From 1918 to 1966, thousands of New Yorkers attended summer open-air concerts at Lewisohn Stadium, an amphitheater and athletic facility on the campus of the City College of New York. For many years Willem Van Hoogstraten conducted the nightly concerts, including the summer of 1927 when George Gershwin played his Rhapsody in Blue to adoring crowds.

summer-conerts — Performance at Lewisohn Stadium, located at 136th Street and Convent Avenue. (nyc-architecture.com)

Program for the 1925 Stadium Concerts series. (archives.nyphil.org) **Click to enlarge**

serpico-1973 — FINAL BOW…A still from the 1973 film *Serpico,* showing actors Al Pacino and Tony Roberts walking through the abandoned Lewisohn Stadium just before it was demolished. (YouTube)

110927-gon039-01 — UGH…The Lewisohn Stadium site is now occupied by a City College of New York building with the inspiring name, “North Academic Center.” (nyc-architecture.com)

And finally, another illustration in the “Talk of the Town” of summer in the city, this a teeming Coney Island beach courtesy of Reginald Marsh…

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-10-24-00-am — **click to enlarge**

However, if you wanted to avoid the rabble at the beach, you could fly over them–in style, of course…

Next Time: Picking on Charlie Chaplin…

Party Time With Gentleman Jimmy

Screen Shot 2015-07-23 at 12.08.59 PM — Nov. 21, 1925 cover by Stanley W. Reynolds.

Mayor Jimmy Walker wasn’t known for being cerebral. But as the voters’ choice to lead the City of New York, he could not have been more well-suited (pun intended) to the zeitgeist of the final, dizzying, roaring years of The Jazz Age.

Walker was a flamboyant man-about-town, a clothes horse who was no stranger to speakeasies or the backroom politics of Tammany Hall.

As Jonathan Mahler wrote in New York magazine (April 1, 2012), Gentleman Jimmy “perfectly embodied that moment of indulgence: the public servant who favored short workdays and long afternoons at Yankee Stadium, who was loath to miss a big prizefight or Broadway premiere, who left his wife and Greenwich Village apartment for a chorus girl and a suite at the Ritz-Carlton.”

Not that there weren’t some concerns. “The Talk of the Town” offered this early observation of the incoming mayor:

Screen Shot 2015-07-24 at 1.01.10 PM — New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker during a visit to Boston. (voxart)

Mahler quoted a columnist from Walker’s time, who noted that “No man could hold life so carelessly without falling down a manhole before he is done.” And Walker would fall to scandal by 1932. But we will get to that. For now, it’s party time in Gotham.

The New Yorker continued to have fun with President Calvin Coolidge, publishing this cartoon by Izzy Klein that took a poke at Coolidge’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, in which Coolidge spoke at length about the nation’s abundance:

Talk also reported the latest bootleg prices in “The Liquor Market…”

“Profiles” examined the life of New York Times owner Adolph Ochs. The writer Elmer Davis observed that “More than any other newspaper owner, he is his paper, and his paper is himself…”

Screen Shot 2015-07-24 at 12.23.11 PM — Detail from a lantern slide depicting Basil Sydney as Hamlet and Charles Waldron as Claudius in the Booth Theatre’s 1925 production of *Hamlet* in “modern dress.” (Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton)

In “The Theatre,” critic Herman J. Mankiewicz addressed criticisms of the Booth Theatre’s new approach to Hamlet, which was presented “in modern dress.” Mankiewicz wrote that the departure from traditional Elizabethan costumes had brought the play “into the open,” and that Basil Sydney was a “splendid” Hamlet.

In “Books,” reviewer Harry Este Dounce recommended Ford Madox Ford’s No More Parades (“a fine display of virtuoso writing”) and Arthur Schnitzler’s Fraulein Else (“a scintillant little firework”).

tumblr_mqej7s8XOl1qzx4bjo1_1280 — Lilyan Tashman, left, and Pauline Starke in Robert Z. Leonard’s *Bright Lights,* 1925 (Tumblr)

In “Motion Pictures,” Theodore Shane panned the movie Lord Jim (based on the Joseph Conrad novel), but he enjoyed the “simple hokum tale” of Bright Lights and the “restrained” performance of Pauline Starke, “a perfect miniature Gloria Swanson.”

In “Tables for Two,” Lois Long despaired of finding a decent “swank dinner” on a rainy autumn evening, and finally headed to a Viennese restaurant (Frau Greta’s) for some German comfort food. The rain turned to torrents as she then headed out for some nightlife:

Long concluded her “Tables” column with this peevish note on “grammar:”

In her other column, “On And Off The Avenue,” Long wrote about the increasing popularity of New Yorkers traveling to Florida for the winter, and in anticipation of the Christmas holiday, offered this advice on what not to give as gifts:

In her report from Paris, Janet Flanner commented on the popularity of Josephine Baker at the Champs Elysees Theater:

b0eb9a7f4c28207dba1c475c70e61e24 — Josephine Baker and Joe Alex in their opening night performance of “La Revue Negre” at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris, 1925 (Tumblr)

Flanner also commented on the growing appreciation of paintings by Henri Rousseau, who just a decade or so earlier was considered something of a joke among art circles:

60.1583 — Henri Rousseau’s *The Football Players*, 1908. Today even Rosseau’s lesser-known works are valued in the millions (Wikimedia)

And finally, Julian de Miskey’s take on The Big Game:

Next Time: A Debutante’s Diatribe…

Roll the Presses

You need not read far into Issue #1 before you realize how utterly distant this world is from our own. Launched in the midst of the Jazz Age, the magazine assumed its readers to be bourgeois (judging from the ads), cosmopolitan, Anglo- and/or Francophile, Ivy- or private school-educated and with enough disposable income to strike the disinterested pose of the cover mascot, Eustace Tilley.

Original_New_Yorker_cover — Issue 1, Feb. 21, 1925, cover by Rea Irvin

Issue No. 1, Feb. 21, 1925, opened with a section titled “Of All Things,” and these first words:

Right next door to the Follies, some young adventurer has opened a penny peep-show where you can see five hundred and fifty glorified young women for what Mr. Ziegfeld charges for his much smaller collection.

The section concluded with a manifesto by the magazine’s founder and editor-in-chief, Harold Ross, who famously proclaimed, “It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.”

foto-670x920 — Harold Ross (theharlow.net)

There is scant advertising in the slim first issues (No. 1 is just 32 pages plus cover). In an article written for the 90th anniversary issue (Feb. 23, 2015), Ian Frazier explains how it was first funded:

After returning to the States, in 1919, he (Ross) edited a short-lived version of Stars & Stripes for veterans and became a New York night-life figure known for carrying around a dummy of his still unnamed magazine and talking about it endlessly. When he finally published the first issue of The New Yorker, ninety years ago, he paid for it partly himself. Nearly half the magazine’s original funding was a twenty-one-thousand-dollar stake put up by Ross and his wife, Jane Grant, and their friend Hawley Truax. Raoul Fleischmann, a baking heir and almost millionaire whom Ross had met through mutual friends, supplied another twenty-five thousand.

Harold Ross’s involvement in World War I figured prominently in the origins of the New Yorker. It was during his time at Stars & Stripes that he met Alexander Woollcott, who was already an established New York theater critic.

At this time Ross also met Jane Grant, who was serving in the YMCA entertainment corps and was a frequent visitor to the Star & Stripes offices. Although Ross’s name looms large in most accounts of the early New Yorker, Grant played a major role in its conception and launch.

I highly recommend Thomas Kunkel’s Ross biography, Genius in Disguise, for a complete account of the magazine’s early days.

It took a few issues for the editors to sort out regular features and their order of appearance. The opening section of Issue No. 1 featured the famous Rea Irvin masthead—flanked by Eustace Tilley and the night owl—and Irvin’s distinctive typeface that would introduce “The Talk of Town” for many issues to come. However in Issue No. 1 “Of All Things” appeared under the masthead, followed by “Talk of the Town” which was (for the first and last time) under this banner:

The magazine’s second issue, Feb. 28, paired the Eustace Tilley masthead with “The Talk of the Town” for its opening section, but the March 7 issue paired it with “Behind the News” for the opening section.

With the March 14th issue, the editors decided to permanently install “The Talk of the Town” below the masthead in the lead section, relegating “Of All Things” and “Behind the News” to inside pages.

For the sake of comparison, here is the current 2015 version:

A number of short-lived regular features made their appearance in these early issues: “The Story of Manhattankind” offered drawings by Herb Roth and tongue-in-cheek accounts of early Manhattan life that featured cartoonish Indians and bumbling settlers. It is here where the magazine took its first of many shots at William Randolph Hearst, perceived rival and publisher of Cosmopolitan (more of a literary magazine in 1925, and not the sex tips and cleavage rag it is today).

The first two cartoons ever featured in the New Yorker were by Al Frueh:

“Profiles” were established at the start, the first issue featuring opera maestro Giulo Gatti-Casazza, the second issue taking aim at “Princess” Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and the third issue probing New York Times managing editor Carr Vatell Van Anda. “In Our Midst” featured local celebrity sightings and gossip, such as actress Tallulah Bankhead and writer Edna Ferber in Issue 3 (March 7).

Screenshot 2015-03-12 10.57.25 — *New Yorker* Issues 2 & 3, Feb. 28 (cover by Al Frueh) and March 7 (cover by Rea Irvin), 1925.

Most of the cartoons from the very beginning were famously droll, such as this illustration by Alfred Leete…

…but a few recall an earlier style in which the action is captioned (like old Punch cartoons) in a more formal manner. The first issue featured an Ethel Plummer cartoon of an “uncle” and a “flapper” (niece or a mistress?) looking at a theater bill for The Wages of Sin:

Uncle: Poor girls, so few get their wages.

Flapper: So few get their sin, darn it!

A section titled “The Hour Glass” offered short, casual accounts of various local personalities. “Lyrics from a Pekinese” was another recurring feature by writer Arthur Gutterman, who was known for his silly poems.

Music reviews in early issues were almost entirely devoted to classical, live performances. Fritz Kreisler’s violin mastery was featured prominently in the first issue, while it wasn’t until the third issue that jazz was briefly mentioned (it was becoming “respectable” in some concert halls). It was reported that violinist Damuel Dushkin ended his performance with selections from George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

The “Art” section featured an exhibition of British paintings at the Central Art Galleries, and a show by the Society of Independent Artists (paintings sell from 24 to 99 dollars), at the Waldorf Hotel (soon to be razed and replaced by the Empire State Building). Joseph Stella was at the Dudensing Galleries, described as a “gifted young American.”

017- Waldorf Astoria — Old Waldorf-Astoria, razed in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building (nycago.org)

“Motion Pictures” looked at Greed (Frank Norris’s McTeugue transferred to the screen), which was playing on the Loew Circuit; The Lost World at the Astor (“Through camera trickery, dinosaurs and other beasts of the prehistoric past live again. Interesting because it proves that the camera is a liar”); the “splendid” German-made The Last Laugh by Carl Mayer (of Dr. Caligari fame) and The Salvation Hunters by Josef Von Sternberg. The magazine called it “deadly monotonous”…”the characters just sit around and think.” German actor Emil Jannings was a favorite, and would be lauded in subsequent issues.

The-Lost-World-poster-still-2 — Still image from *The Lost World,* 1925 (Wikipedia)

The first issue closed with an ad from Royal Cord Balloon Tires. Later issues would depend heavily on advertising revenue from auto manufacturers.

The early issues also featured two-page-drawings that illustrated some event described in the opening section. The Feb. 28 issue (#2), mentioned that Ciro’s opened with the Mary Hay and Clifton Webb dancing team (illustration by Reginald Marsh)…

As this was the age of Prohibition, there was a notable absence of alcohol in ads and even in print articles, although references are made to “speakeasies” and later issues would report black market prices for liquor.

The second issue’s “Talk of the Town” further elaborated on the magazine’s manifesto:

And we won’t aim to please. If we happen to please we will not apologize, but we are not in the vast army of bores struggling frantically to give people what they want.

We may not do much for the magazine world. We don’t know that we’re aiming to. But of one thing we feel quite sure: if we ever run out of things to say, just for the fun of saying them, we expect to close up this little playhouse and go to work.

The “Theatre” section of Issue No. 2 featured James Joyce’s Exiles at the Neighborhood Theatre, while a section titled “And They Do Say” featured the first (of the many subsequent references) to Eddie Cantor’s various comings and goings. It was reported Cantor left for Boston in his “Kid Boot” and that altercations between Cantor and veteran stage actress Jobyna Howland “kept 42^nd Street nervous for weeks.”

Screenshot 2015-06-30 15.01.06 — Eddie Cantor and Jobyna Howland (Wikipedia, Travalanche)

Issue #2 marked the first appearance of a recurring column filler labeled “The Optimist.” It went as follows:

Pop: A man who thinks he can make it in par.

Johnny: What is an optimist, Pop?

“Books” featured a review of Ford Madox Ford’s “Some Do Not…” The reviewer Harry Este Dounce (under the nom de plume “Touchstone”) called it “as gratuitously black-biled a work of art as we ever saw.”

Under “Washington Notes” were the first of many humorous references to President Calvin Coolidge, his hayseed habits and his extreme frugality. Below, a drawing by Miguel Covarrubias (a regular contributor beginning with the first issue) in March 14 issue:

Another Covarrubias illustration in Issue # 3 (March 7) depicted journalist Heywood Broun (old Ross friend and Algonquin Round Table stalwart) hard at work on his column for the New York World:

Next Time: The Queen of Romania…