Charles Pierre Casalasco – A New Yorker State of Mind

Hell’s Angels

Among the films in 1930 that marked a new era in motion pictures was Howard Hughes’s epic war film Hell’s Angels.

Originally shot as a silent, Hughes (1905-1976) retooled the film, and over a period of three years (1927-30) poured much of his own money into making what many consider to be Hollywood’s first sound action movie. The film also introduced audiences to 19-year-old Jean Harlow (1911-1937), handpicked by Hughes to replace Norwegian actress Greta Nissen in the lead role (Nissen’s accent posed a problem for the talkies). The film would make Harlow an instant star, propelling her to worldwide fame as the “Platinum Blonde” sex symbol of the 1930s.

Beset by delays due to Hughes’s incessant tinkering, the movie was famously expensive. For example, a total 137 pilots were used in just one flying scene at the end of the film. In addition to monetary costs, the filming also claimed the lives of three pilots and a mechanic, and Hughes himself would fracture his skull during a stunt flying attempt.

PRE-CODE…Before **Will Hays** imposed his moral code on Hollywood, films in the early thirties were frank with sexual references, as the image at left attests. When **Howard Hughes** switched the filming of *Hell’s Angels* to sound, he replaced Norwegian actress **Greta Nissen** with 19-year-old **Jean Harlow** (seen with co-star **Ben Lyon**). Harlow’s first major film appearance would make her an overnight star; at right, **Frank Clarke** and **Roy Wilson** flying an S.E.5A (front) and a Fokker D.VII (back, note camera) in the filming of *Hell’s Angels*. (Wikipedia)

The New Yorker’s John Mosher found the action scenes enticing, but the acting left something to be desired…

COSTLY VENTURE …This Sikorsky S-29A (left), repainted to represent a German Gotha bomber, would crash into the California hills during filming (right), killing mechanic **Phil Jones,** who failed to bail out along with the pilot. (Northrop Grumman)

GEE WHIZ…The media often reported on the progress of the film, such as in this May 1930 article in *Modern Mechanics* that detailed a $1 million sequence in which a fighter dives his plane into the top of a Zeppelin, causing it to explode and crash to earth. (Modern Mechanix)

We skip ahead briefly to the Aug. 30 issue, in which “The Talk of Town” featured a mini profile of Howard Hughes and his film. Note how Hughes’s extravagance is described through his frequent use of long-distance telephone calls:

A STAR IS BORN…19-year-old **Jean Harlow** and **Ben Lyon** in *Hell’s Angels* (1930); at right, Harlow and **Howard Hughes** at the premiere of the film. (IMDB/Pinterest)

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A Whale of a Movie

Critic John Mosher also took in a film adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a very loose adaptation that excluded the novel’s central character, Ishmael, and invented a love story for the maniacal Capt. Ahab…

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH…From left, **Noble Johnson** as Queequeg, **John Barrymore** as Ahab, and **Walter Long** as Stubbs in 1930’s Moby Dick. At right, top, the whale puts the hurt on a boat; bottom, **John Bennett** as Faith, a contrived love interest for the old salt. (IMDB)

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Daily Dazzle

“The Talk of the Town” gushed over the lobby of the new Daily News Building, likening it to the glitz of a Broadway revue:

A HOME FOR CLARK KENT…The Daily News Building served as the model for the headquarters of the fictional *Daily Planet*, the building where Superman worked as mild-mannered Clark Kent; at right, an image from 1941 of the lobby, dominated by the world’s largest indoor globe.

A LOBBY FOR LEARNING…The lobby includes an array of clocks, top left, that give the time in various global destinations. (aatlasobscura.com)

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A Busboy’s Dream

Charles Pierre Casalasco left his life as a busboy in Corsica and studied haute cuisine in Paris before arriving at the shores of Manhattan in the early 1900s. He became a renowned headwaiter who by 1929 garnered enough financial backing from New York’s most powerful families to construct the exclusive Hotel Pierre. Writing under her pseudonym, “Penthouse,” New Yorker columnist Marcia Davenport described the building’s apartments to eager readers:

FUN WHILE IT LASTED…The 41-story, 714-room Hotel Pierre officially opened in October 1930 to great fanfare. The party would be short-lived, as the deepening Depression would force the hotel into bankruptcy just two years later. At right, photo of the Rotunda, before a 2017 remodeling. (New York Public Library)

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So Much For Title IX

Then as now, women athletes were held to a separate set of standards, not only judged for their athletic abilities, but also for their “sex appeal,” as John Tunis suggests more than a few times in his profile of English tennis champion Betty Nuthall (1911-1983). Excerpts:

HOW’S THAT BACKHAND?…**Betty Nuthall** greets American tennis star **Bill Tilden** in September 1930; on the cover of *Time* after winning the 1930 U.S. Open. (Digital Commonwealth/Time)

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Free Expression

Robert Myron Coates (1897 – 1973) was a writer of experimental, expressionistic novels who later became a longtime art critic for the New Yorker (he is credited with coining the term “abstract expressionism” in 1946). In the Aug. 23 issue he contributed the first installment of “Dada City,” here describing street life in Harlem. Excerpts:

STREET LIFE…Scenes around Harlem’s 125th Street, clockwise from top left: the Apollo Theatre marquee punctuates a busy street scene in 1935; NW corner of 125th and Broadway, 1930; Regal Shoes storefront, 1940s, photo by Weegee; 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue in 1934. (Skyscraper City/Museum of the City of New York)

AMERICAN ORIGINAL…**Robert M. Coates’s** *The Eater of Darkness* (1926) has been called the first surrealist novel in English. (Goodreads)

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From Our Advertisers

New Yorkers who were still enduring the brutal summer of 1930 could find relief, if they could afford it, on a New York Airways flight…

…or if you had the means, you could take your yacht out to sea, like this chap in a coat and tie who calmly steers with one hand while offering a box of chocolates to his guests with the other…

…our sailor wasn’t the only one dressed to nines…here are two ads offering suggestions to young folks returning to college or prep school…

…for comparison, this is how a group of college students at Columbia University dress today…

…Dr. Seuss continued to crank out drawings on behalf of Flit insecticide…

…and on to cartoons, yet another rerun (the sixth) of this Peter Arno drawing with a new caption (Dorothy Dix was a popular advice columnist)…

…and another look at country life courtesy Rea Irvin (originally printed sideways on a full page)…

…and another country scene, this time among the toffs, thanks to Garrett Price…

…back in the city, some parlor room chatter as depicted by Barbara Shermund…

…downtown, I. Klein looked at the economic challenges of peep shows…

…and we close with this reflection on city life, by Reginald Marsh…

Next Time: Marble Halls…

At Home With the Capones

In 1928 Al Capone bought an estate on Miami’s Palm Island as a getaway from the hustle and bustle of Chicago gangster life. He was apparently basking in the Florida sun on Feb. 14, 1929 when four of his associates gunned down seven members of a rival Irish gang on Chicago’s North Side.

March 2, 1929 cover by **Adolph K. Kronengold.**

WINTER RETREAT…**Al Capone’s** estate on Miami’s Palm Island. (miami.curbed.com / sallyjling.org)

It is widely believed Capone ordered the killings, given that he dominated Chicago’s illegal bootlegging, gambling and prostitution trades and was known for his ruthless elimination of rivals. On the heels of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, James Thurber contributed this item in the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” describing a more mundane side of gangster life:

Shortly after Thurber’s article appeared in the March 2, 1929 New Yorker, Capone would be arrested in Chicago by FBI agents on a contempt of court charge and again in May 1929 on a weapons charge. The following March Capone would be referred to as “public enemy number one” by the Chicago Crime Commission, and a month later he would be arrested on vagrancy charges during a visit to Miami—the Florida governor wanted him out of the state. In 1932 Capone would be sent to Federal Prison for tax evasion.

SNOW BIRD OF A DIFFERENT FEATHER…**Al Capone** relaxes at his Palm Island estate, left, and tries his hand at deep sea fishing off the Florida coast, circa 1929. (miami-history.com)

TEN YEARS LATER…Al Capone and his wife Mae (at right), with their son, **Albert** and their soon-to-be daughter-in-law **Diana Ruth Casey**. The photo was taken at Palm Island in 1940 after Al Capone’s release from prison. (AP)

When Capone finally returned to Palm Island in 1940, he was a very different man. When he entered the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta in 1932 he was found to be suffering from both syphilis and gonorrhea, and when he was released seven years later his mental capacities were severely diminished due to late-stage syphilis. In 1946 a physician concluded Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. He died on Jan. 25, 1947, having just turned 48 years old.

Another mention of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre could be found in Howard Brubaker’s column “Of All Things”…

MY ALIBI…**Al Capone** poses with boxer **Jack Sharkey** in Miami on Feb 13, 1929, the day before the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Sharkey was in training for his bout with **Young Stribling**. (classicboxingsociety.blogspot.com)

MEANWHILE IN THE WINDY CITY…The *Chicago Herald-Examiner’s* front page coverage of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. (Chicago Public Library)

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Pierre’s Hotel

Back in New York, patrons of famed chef Charles Pierre Casalasco were abuzz over his plans for a luxury high-rise hotel. Writing in “Talk of the Town,” Leonard Ware made these observations about Pierre’s big plans:

A BUSBOY’S DREAM…Lloyd Morgan’s 1928 rendering of the Hotel Pierre (left), and the Hotel Pierre today, as viewed from Central Park. The hotel’s builder, **Charles Pierre Casalasco,** started out as a busboy in his father’s restaurant in Corsica. (Half Pudding Half Sauce / Wikimedia Commons)

Ware recounts how Pierre went from humble busboy to renowned haute cuisine restaurateur:

The Rotunda of the Hotel Pierre. (Wikimedia Commons)

The 1897 **Elbridge T. Gerry** mansion, designed by **Richard Morris Hunt,** was torn down to make way for the Hotel Pierre. French artisans were hired to construct the elaborate wrought iron *porte-cochere* at the main entrance. (New York Public Library / *American Architect & Building News)*

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Famed Bluestocking

The New Yorker’s Paris correspondent, Janet Flanner, who wrote under the pen name Genêt, wrote under her own byline for the first time in a profile of the famed novelist Edith Wharton, featured in the March 2 issue. Although born a New Yorker, Wharton mostly lived in France after 1914. Below is a drawing of Wharton by Hugo Gellert that accompanied the profile, of which a few excerpts are included below:

VIVE LA FRANCE…**Edith Wharton** at her spring and winter home in France, Sainte-Claire du Chateau, circa 1930. She finished her novel, *The Age of Innocence* at Sainte-Claire. (Pinterest)

STILL LOVELY…Sainte-Claire du Chateau today. (sydneynearlydailyphot.blogspot.com)

GOLDEN YEARS…**Edith Wharton** in her garden at Sainte-Claire du Chateau, circa 1930.

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From Our Advertisers

Automobile manufacturers were keen to snob appeal even 90 years ago, as can be seen in this advertisement for Dodge cars—the company had been acquired the previous year by Walter Chrysler. Dodge cars were noted for dependability and value, but this ad suggested even blue bloods would find them appealing…

…Chrysler did however take a more direct aim at the top-hat set with a new model— Imperial—to compete with luxury carmakers such as Lincoln and Cadillac…

…just for kicks, this is what the Chrysler Imperial would look like just 30 years later…

…not to be left out, Cadillac placed its downscale luxury model next to Mont-Saint-Michel in this illustrated advertisement. The LaSalle was comparable in price to the Imperial (around $2,500 to $3000) while top-of-the-line Caddies were priced up to $7000…

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Speaking of mixing, I like this advertisement for Cliquot Club, whose manufacturers finally—and not so subtly—hint at how their product is to be enjoyed…

…and finally, this ad for the new Fuller Building, which touted gallery spaces for “superior merchandise” on its first six floors…

ART DECO GEM…The 1928-29 Fuller Building by Walker & Gillette at 41 East 57th St. The crown (at left), and a view of the entrance. The lower floors still serve as gallery spaces for art dealers such as Neuhoff and Emmerich. (nyc-architecture.com)

In the cartoon department, we have I. Klein’s take on recent activities associated with the inauguration of President Herbert Hoover…

…and Abe Birnbaum, who provided this sketch of Hoover for the opening pages…

…Otto Soglow’s manhole denizens looked for signs of spring…

…and finally, a comment on the diversification of drugstore wares, by a cartoonist signed as “Kinol.” I’ve had no luck tracing this name, so if anyone has the scoop on this artist, please drop me a note!

Next Time…Sky-High Fitness…