Lois Long employed the Prohibition-era slang term “Everything’s Jake” (“it’s all good”) to headline her latest installment of “Tables for Two.” If you’ve been following the exploits of our nightlife correspondent in this blog, you might recall that for a time in the early thirties she found the New York club scene lackluster, without the daring and grit of the speakeasy era. Lately, however, she was finding some new adventures after dark.
Jan. 19, 1935 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
Long checked out the Revue Folies Bergère at the Earl Carroll Theatre, which had been renamed the French Casino, as well as the cavernous Flying Trapeze and the refurbished Hollywood Restaurant, headlined by crooner Rudy Vallée.
FROLIC AND FOLLY…Clockwise, from top left, a Dec. 24, 1934 Herald-Tribune advertisement for the Revue Folies Bergère, the show that opened the new French Casino; a bubble dance as part of the revue, circa 1936; the interior of the French Casino, view from the stage; interior view of former lounge underneath the balcony converted to a cocktail lounge for the French Casino. (Images from Chris Arena and Anthony L’Abbate via drivingfordeco.com/MCNY)THE SERPENTINE WRITHINGS of dancers Harald and Lola (Harold Liebmann and Lola Werbesz) dazzled Lois Long during a Folies Bergère performance at the French Casino…They are seen here performing at New York’s Shubert Theatre during their first U.S. tour in 1932. (roosvt.com)OTHER NIGHTLY DISTRACTIONS…Clockwise, from top left, postcard image of the cavernous Flying Trapeze Restaurant; Lois Long missed Sally Rand’s bubble dance at the Paradise, but she did catch a swell show at the Hollywood Cabaret at 48th and Broadway featuring Rudy Vallee, seen here on a 1935 postcard; exterior of the Hollywood Cabaret, circa 1935. (Pinterest)NAUGHTY OR NICE…Lois Long was astonished by the female impersonators at the “naughty” Club Richmond…the club’s performers included Harvey Lee. (ualr.edu)
Long also checked out the “naughty” Club Richmond, and returned to the Central Park Casino, which was not long for the world.
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The Cost of Living
In 1934 Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt famously lost custody of her daughter, Gloria Laura Vanderbilt, to her sister-in-law Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Granted limited parental rights, Gloria Morgan was allowed to see her daughter on weekends in New York, but the court had removed GMV as administrator of her daughter’s trust fund, her only source of support. Howard Brubaker had this to say in his column “Of All Things.”
WHAT’S A MOTHER TO DO? Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt in a 1933 photo. Inset, daughter Gloria Laura Vanderbilt in 1935. (Duke University)
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Too Much of a Good Thing
The French automaker Citroën established its reputation for innovation with the 1934 Traction Avant—the first car to be mass-produced with front-wheel drive, four-wheel independent suspension, and unibody construction. However, the cost of making all of these swell improvements—including the tearing down and rebuilding of company’s factory in just five months—led to the financial ruin of the company. After Citroën filed for bankruptcy in December 1934, its largest creditor, the tire-making giant Michelin, swept in to become the principal shareholder
Not only did Citroën lose control of its car company, it also lost its claim to the world’s largest advertising sign. Four nine years Citroën had its brand name emblazoned on the Eiffel Tower, but with bankruptcy (high electricity bills didn’t help) the company was forced to turn off the sign. Paris correspondent Janet Flanner had this observation:
CAN’T MISS IT…From 1925 to 1934, 125,000 glowing lights advertised the Citroën brand on the Eiffel Tower. At right, the company’s innovative 1934 Traction Avant. (Pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
The National Motor Boat Show replaced the New York Auto Show as the main attraction at the Grand Central Palace…
…the folks at Pond’s found another Vanderbilt to shill for their cold cream, Muriel Vanderbilt, a socialite and noted thoroughbred racehorse owner…she is joined here by Washington Debutante Katrina McCormick, who was also a fancier of the horse circuit…
…the famed slogan Guinness is Good for You was launched in 1929, and apparently there is some truth to the claim (antioxidants, according to a University of Wisconsin study), and no doubt it was kinder to one’s morning head than other libations…
…if you preferred the stronger stuff, you could take the advice of cartoonist Peter Arno and Penn Maryland Whiskey, here making a play on words with the title of the 1925 novel (and Broadway play) Gentleman Prefer Blondes…
…here’s Arno again, with a touching moment among the upper crust…
…Mary Petty also looked in on the gilded set, and a callous young toff…
…but down in the lower classes, George Price found the youth quite engaging…
…Alain looked in on a formidable ping-pong opponent…
…Barbara Shermund was evesdropping backstage at a Broadway revue…
…and we close with James Thurber, and a polite suggestion…
Above: The Cat and the Fiddle (Pete Gordon) and Mickey Mouse (a monkey in a very creepy costume) were featured in 1934's Babes In Toyland.
We close out the old year and ring in the new with a bit of song and dance from three musicals that entertained New Yorkers in the waning days of 1934.
Dec. 22, 1934 cover by Arnold Hall.
The work of composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II were prominent in two of those films, adapted from successful Broadway productions—the romantic comedy Music in the Air and the sentimental Sweet Adeline. Success on the stage did not necessarily translate to the screen in either case, according to critic John Mosher.
SOUR NOTES…The famed silent movie star Gloria Swanson showed off her singing chops in Music in the Air, but it wasn’t enough to save the film from becoming a box office failure. The film centered on the stormy relationship between opera star Frieda Hotzfelt (Swanson) and librettist Bruno Mahler (John Boles, pictured). (TCM)TALL ORDER…For those who recalled Helen Morgan’s tragedy-tinged Broadway performance as Addie in Sweet Adeline, Irene Dunn’s more comical take, although delivered with authority, could not hold up the pallid performances of her co-stars, including Donald Woods, right. (TCM)
And there was Babes in Toyland, a Hal Roach film headlined by the comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The film was well received by critics, including Mosher, who wrote that Babes in Toyland “was far more successful than [1933’s] Alice in Wonderland, and the children will probably be far less bored by it than they generally are by those films designed especially for them.” However, similar to Alice the costumes seem creepily crude, such as the weird rubber pig costumes and the almost terrifying Mickey Mouse, portrayed by a hapless monkey dressed to resemble the big-eared icon. It was apparently the first and last time Walt Disney allowed the Mickey Mouse character to be portrayed outside of a Disney film. No wonder.
Clockwise, from top left, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy with Felix Knight (Tom-Tom) and Charlotte Henry (Bo-Peep); the Three Little Pigs with the villain Silas Barnaby, portrayed by Henry Brandon; a very creepy Mickey Mouse (a monkey in costume); and Laurel and Hardy with The Cat and the Fiddle (Pete Gordon). (eofftvreview.wordpress.com/psychotronicaredux.wordpress.com/YouTube/MUBI)
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Alms for the Poor
Woolworth store heiress Barbara Hutton was one of the richest women in the world in the 1930s, and her lavish lifestyle in the midst of Depression attracted the attention, and the ire, of newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan. In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White made this observation:
COUGH IT UP, LADY…Ed Sullivan, who in 1934 was a well-known Daily News show business columnist, thought Woolworth dime store heiress Barbara Hutton should show more concern for the needy. Known for her lavish spending during the Great Depression, in 1934 Hutton was married to a self-styled Georgian prince named Alexis Mdivani—Mdivani would be the first of Hutton’s seven husbands. Sullivan would go on to greater fame on television with the Ed Sullivan Show. (clickamericana.com/npg.org.uk)
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Oh Baby
Most of us know something about the weird and somewhat tragic tale of the Dionne quintuplets, raised from infancy before the public gaze and exploited to sell everything from dolls and books to soap and toothpaste. When E.B. White made this brief mention in his “Notes and Comment,” the story of the quintuplets was still a jolly one, and their delivering physician, Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe had gone from being a country doctor to one of North America’s most trusted medical authorities. Dafoe would become the childrens’ guardian and impresario, and make a fortune marketing their story and images.
QUINTUPLE YOUR MONEY…After he delivered the Dionee quintuplets, Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe went from being a country doctor to one of North America’s most trusted medical authorities. That later translated into big profits from companies eager to cash in on the quint’s popularity, as these 1937 ads attest. (Pinterest)
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In the Year 2400
“The Talk of the Town” examined the “Buck Rogers” craze, fed by a cartoon strip, a radio show, and an array of toys.
YESTERDAY’S TOMORROW…A Buck Rogers “pop-up” book was just one of the many formats that could be consumed by avid followers of the early sci-fi hero. Also pictured are a themed pocket watch and the “must have” sci-fi toy of 1934, Buck’s XZ-31 Rocket Pistol. (Pinterest/Bullock Museum)
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What’s It All About, Alfie?
Art and architecture critic Lewis Mumford offered praise for Alfred Stieglitz’s latest exhibition at the photographer’s gallery, An American Place. Mumford noted Stieglitz’s “astringent quality” that rose above the philistine tastes and “stupidities” of American life.
LIFE AND WORK INTERTWINED…Clockwise, from top left: Alfred Stieglitz’s famed 1930 image of Grand Central Terminal; one of the photographer’s many images of clouds under the title Equivalent, 1930; image taken from Stieglitz’s studio/gallery window titled From My Window at An American Place, North, 1931; Dorothy Norman, circa 1931; Georgia O’Keeffe, 1933. Stieglitz, who was married to Georgia O’Keeffe, became Dorothy Norman’s mentor and lover in the late 1920s. (National Gallery of Art/Art Institute of Chicago)
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From Our Advertisers
The back cover of The New Yorker was coveted by tobacco companies, the makers of Camels and Lucky Strikes (seen here) both featuring sumptuous photos of stylish women using their product, women being a key growth market for the companies…
…same for the brewers, who also sought out female consumers to bolster sales of their brands…
…Ponds continued to roll out the seeming legions of socialites and lower-tier royalty to sell their jars of cold cream…
…the magazine’s ads were often directed at middlebrow class anxieties, as we see here…
…by constrast, this ad from Bonwit Teller (graced by fashion illustrator W. Mury) took us out of the stuffy parlor and onto the beckoning beaches of the Caribbean…
…we move on to our cartoonists…all of the spot illustrations in the issue were holiday-themed, and here are a few choice examples…
…Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein introduced a bit of color to a monastery’s dining hall…
…James Thurber continued to explore the dynamics between the sexes…
…Barbara Shermund did a bit of dreaming with her modern women…
…Carl Rose gave us Christmas cheer, with some reservations…
…and lastly, Perry Barlow with something for the holiday procrastinator…
Above: Walter Dorwin Teague's design for Kodak's "Brownie" camera, circa 1930. (Milwaukee Art Museum)
Walter Dorwin Teague pioneered industrial design as a profession, firmly believing that great, heirloom-quality design could be available to all, and that even mass-produced objects could be beautiful if they possessed “visible rightness.”
Dec. 15, 1934 cover by William Cotton.
Cultural critic Gilbert Seldes profiled Teague (1883–1960) in the Dec. 15 issue, and in this excerpt he examined the designer’s role in the streamlining craze that emphasized movement and speed in everything from locomotives and automobiles to radios and pencil sharpeners.
GOING WITH THE FLOW…Top left, early applications of streamlining in the 1931 Marmon 16, designed by Walter Dorwin Teague; at right, Teague at work in an undated photo; below, wooden model of Teague’s Marmon 12, 1932. (drivingfordeco.com/North Carolina State University/Smithsonian Design Museum)GEE WHIZ…Henry Ford called on Teague to design an exhibit hall like no other for the 1934 re-opening of the Chicago World’s Fair. The exhibit featured an automobile cut lengthwise, and explained how various materials were extracted to create the final product. Teague helped usher in the era when world’s fairs served as arenas for the advancement of corporate identities. (Hemmings Daily)WHAT A GAS…Teague created this ubiquitous streamlined design for Texaco’s service stations in the late 1930s. (encyclopedia.design)
In this next excerpt, Seldes noted that Teague shared the thinking of other modernists of the time, namely that people could be herded into towers, even in rural landscapes. At any rate, Teague’s ultimate objective, according to Seldes, was to make everyday living more attractive to the masses.
CHROME-PLATED WORLD…Teague designed the Kodak Baby Brownie Camera (top left) and its packaging. It sold for just one dollar; at right, Teague’s console radio design Nocturne, 1935, which featured glass and chrome-plated metal; at bottom, Kodak gift camera, ca.1930. (Cooper Hewitt/design-is-fine.org/Brooklyn Museum)
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Art Depreciation
Lewis Mumford did a bit of hate-viewing during a visit to the Whitney Museum, which hosted the Second Biennial of Contemporary American Painting. Mumford found a few works he genuinely liked, but had to admit he also enjoyed the ones he hated. Excerpts:
MYSTERY WOMAN…at left, Lewis Mumford was at a loss regarding the meaning, if any, of Walt Kuhn’s latest circus painting, Sibyl, 1932; at top, Mumford found Grant Wood’sArbor Day (1932) perfectly suited to the Cedar Raids art scene, while he derived great pleasure in his dislike of Eugene Speicher’s Red Moore: The Blacksmith, 1933-34. (americangallery.wordpress.com/Wikiart/lacma.org)
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The Swash Buckles
Film critic John Mosher checked out Douglas Fairbanks Sr’s latest movie, The Private Life of Don Juan, which would prove to be the old swashbuckler’s last hurrah.
FINAL BOW…Douglas Fairbanks and Merle Oberon in Alexander Korda’s comedy-drama The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). It was the final role for the 51-year-old Fairbanks, who died five years later. (TCM)
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Toyland 1934
The New Yorker continued its seasonal tradition of offering exhaustive descriptions of various wares around the city, including the many new toys that would be available to children whose parents could afford them. An excerpt:
XMAS JOYS…According to The New Yorker, the Union Pacific Streamline Train was a big hit with the kiddos, as were the dolls and other items created to exploit the hapless Dionne Quintuplets. And then there was a Buck Rogers rocket ship that shot real sparks from its tail.(airandspace.si.edu/PBS/Paleofuture)
“Patsy” dolls and doctor/nurse kits were also popular sellers in 1934…
THEY’RE AFTER YOU…The much sought-after Patsy doll and the Patsy Nurse Outfit graced many a Christmas morning in 1934. (eBay)
The article was followed by detailed listings of department stores and select toys. Here are excerpts featuring two of the toy biggies: Macy’s and F.A.O. Schwarz:
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS…Top, children peering into a Macy’s window circa 1930; below, F.A.O. Schwarz display window at its Fifth Avenue location in 1935. (Library of Congress/MCNY)
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From Our Advertisers
We kick off the holiday season with Santa bringing cheer to the world, his bag laden with tobacco products from the jolly elves at R.J. Reynolds…
…along with your cigarette you could enjoy a cup of this frothy eggnog spiked with a generous shot of Paul Jones…
…and I pity the poor soul who was hoping for a toaster from Santa…perhaps the companion “Hospitality Tray” will add an extra dose of good cheer…
…however some may have wished for a revolutionary Parker “vacumatic” pen…no more dipping into the old ink-well…
…I include this ad simply for the terrific Abe Birnbaum caricature of Broadway producer Sam Harris…
Image at right is of Harris in 1928. (Wikipedia)
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with this merry spot by George Price…
…William Crawford Galbraith gave us another person in the spirit of the season…
…as did Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein…
…a less cheery note comes to us from James Thurber, who gave us a patron unhappy with changes to his familiar watering hole…
…and we have Alain again, and a spirited salesperson…
…Barbara Shermund gave us a glimpse of the awkward courtship rituals of the male peacock…
…and we close with Jack Markow, and the demands of Hollywood life…
Above: The Dec. 2, 1934 opening of the reconstructed Central Park Menagerie drew such luminaries as Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, pictured at left with his family, and, at right, former New York Governor Al Smith, who was designated honorary zookeeper. Smith, who, lived across from the zoo at 820 Fifth Avenue, poses with two donkeys at the Menagerie in 1940. (New York Parks Archive)
The Central Park Zoo was not part of the original Olmstead-Vaux plan for the park, but beginning in 1859 it evolved spontaneously as a menagerie located near the Arsenal; its odd collection of animals included exotic pets donated as gifts, and other random creatures including a bear, a monkey, a peacock and some goldfish.
Dec. 1, 1934 cover by Leonard Dove.
The menagerie accepted animals of all kinds, even sick ones, and by the 1920s the quality of the animals as well as the hodgepodge of buildings had degraded significantly (the lion house had to be guarded to prevent the animals from escaping their rotting quarters). In early 1934 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses addressed the adverse conditions in the menagerie, putting a redesign on a fast track and insisting that only healthy animals, in more humane settings, would be displayed.
DUMBOS…According to a 1911 Department of Parks Annual Report, the menagerie at Central Park submitted animals to questionable treatment, as suggested by this photo of a trainer and a dog perched on top of an elephant. (nycgovparks.org)
Built of brick and limestone, the new zoo was designed in just sixteen days by an in-house team led by architect Aymar Embury II. Construction on the roughly six-acre zoo took just eight months, employing federally financed Works Progress Administration (WPA) labor.
MOSES PARTS THE RED TAPE…Robert Moses wasted no time after his appointment as parks commissioner (in January 1934) to get rolling on the menagerie makeover—it took just eight months to complete the new zoo. Clockwise, from top left, invitation to the opening celebration of the Central Park Menagerie—12,000 invited guests attended the opening, while another 25,000 lined Fifth Avenue hoping to be admitted; the popular sea lion pool was a central attraction on opening day (it is one of several elements from the 1934 zoo that still exists); conditions had improved for elephants and other animals, but they were still far from ideal; aerial view of the zoo as it neared completion on Oct. 9, 1934. (nycma.lunaimaging.com/digitalcollections.nypl.org)
Much ado was made of Al Smith’s appointment as “Honorary Night Superintendent”—in these clips from the Dec. 3 New York Times, Smith gave a brief “lecture” about the zoo’s bison, to which he offered a slice of bread…
(Excerpts from The New York Times via the TimesMachine)
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From Our Advertisers
R.J. Reynolds continued to roll out its list of distinguished women who preferred their Camel cigarettes: “Mrs. Allston Boyer” nee Charlotte Young was a model with the John Robert Powers agency who was married to resorts planner Allston Boyer from 1934 to 1939. Young (1914–2012) would later marry New York Times Moscow correspondent Harrison Salisbury, and the two would embark on lengthy journeys throughout Asia, including a grueling 7,000-mile journey retracing the route of The Long March that Charlotte recounted in one of her seven travel books. Whether she continued her Camel habit is unknown, but she did live 98 years…
…a house ad from The New Yorker celebrated the holiday season with special Christmas rates (and Julian de Miskey embellishments)…
…Rea Irvin continued to have fun with the federal government’s new food and drug labeling standards…
…while Richard Decker had these two castaways contemplating a simpler form of government…
…and James Thurber continued to stir up trouble among the sexes…
…on to Dec. 8, 1934…
Dec. 8, 1934 cover by Richard Decker.
…which featured (on page 135) a handwritten letter from Kewpie Doll inventor Rose O’Neill, who commented on her recent New Yorker profile…
…here is an excerpt from the Nov. 24 profile referenced by O’Neill:
…and on to our advertisements from the Dec. 8 issue, including another Julian de Miskey-illustrated house ad…
…the clever folks at Heinz enlisted the talents of Carl Rose for a play on his famous Dec. 8, 1928 New Yorker cartoon…
…a closer look at the illustration (note the mother’s softer, more conservative appearance, five years removed from her flapper days; the child hasn’t changed a bit, except now we can see her face)…
…and the 1928 original, with caption by E.B. White…
…Peter Arno also popped up in the advertising section on behalf of Libby’s…
…the magazine grew thicker with many Christmas-themed ads, including this one from Johnnie Walker…
…Marlboro continued to take out these modest, back-page ads aimed at tobacco’s growth market—women smokers…
…the makers of Spud menthol cigarettes continued their campaign to encourage chain-smoking with this rather depressing image…
…while Spud’s new competitor in menthol cigs, KOOL, kept things simple with their smoking penguin mascot and valuable coupons for keen merchandise…
…the Citizens Family Welfare Committee offered this reminder that the Depression was still very much a challenge for 20,000 New York families…
…on to our cartoonists, beginning with Alan Dunn’s rather dim view of Robert Moses’s generously funded parks department…
…George Price gave us the latest update on his floating man, who had been up in the air since the Sept. 22 issue…
…Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein marked the season with dueling Santas from Macy’s and Gimbel’s…
…and we end with James Thurber, and some reverse psychology…
Above, left, a 1935 portrait of Gertrude Stein by Carl Van Vechten; right, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas arriving in New York aboard the French Line’s SS Champlain in 1934. (Library of Congress/AP)
Much of America’s literary world was abuzz about the arrival of Gertrude Stein in New York after her nearly three-decade absence from the States. Audiences were mostly receptive to Stein’s lectures, even if they were largely unintelligible, but The New Yorker would have none of it.
Nov. 17, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
Stein (1874–1946) visited the U.S. at the urging of friends who suggested that a lecture tour might help her gain an American audience for her work. She crisscrossed the country for 191 days, delivering seventy-four lectures in thirty-seven cities.
Writing for the Smithsonian Magazine (October 2011), Senior Editor Megan Gambino notes that publishing houses regarded Stein’s writing style as incomprehensible (Gambino writes that shortly after her arrival in the U.S., “psychiatrists speculated that Stein suffered from palilalia, a speech disorder that causes patients to stutter over words or phrases”), but in 1933 “she at last achieved the mass appeal she desired when she used a clearer, more direct voice” in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. However, Stein was still best known in the U.S. for her “insane” writings, as one New York Times reporter described Stein’s work upon the writer’s arrival in New York. Excerpts from the Oct. 25, 1934 edition of the Times:
Stein had also achieved success in America via her libretto to Virgil Thomson’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts. Prior to her visit, Stein was featured in a newsreel reading the “pigeon” passage from the libretto, which James Thurber satirized in this piece titled “There’s An Owl In My Room.” Excerpts.
Here is a YouTube clip of the newsreel satirized by Thurber. Stein begins her “pigeon” reading at the 30-second mark:
If Thurber found the libretto ridiculous, it was an opinion not necessarily shared by audiences who attended Four Saints in Three Acts, which premiered in Hartford, Connecticut, before making a six-week run on Broadway.
SAINTS AND PIGEONS…The original cast of Four Saints in Three Acts, onstage at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1934; at right, Gertrude Stein reviews the libretto for Four Saints with American composer Virgil Thomson, 1934. (Harold Swahn/Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)
Since Stein had never seen the opera performed, writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten convinced Stein and Toklas to fly on an airplane for the first time in order to be able to see the play in Chicago.
FLIGHT INSURANCE…Stein and Toklas were anxious about flying, so Van Vechten gave each a small Zuni fetish—a good luck charm as they prepared to board their plane at Newark. (Boatwright Memorial Library, The University of Richmond)
Thurber wasn’t the only New Yorker writer to throw shade on Stein’s visit. In his “Books” column, Clifton Fadiman described Stein as a “mamma of dada” and a “Keyserling in divided skirts” (Hermann Keyserling was a non-academic German philosopher known for his platitudinous, obscure writings). Excerpt:
Fadiman continued by excoriating Stein’s latest book, Portraits and Prayers, likening its “shrill, incantatory” quality to “the rituals of a small child at solitary play.”
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Over the Rainbow
We leave Gertrude Stein for the time being and check in with Lois Long, who was sampling the fall attractions of the New York nightclub scene in “Tables for Two.” In these excerpts, the 32-year-old Long continued her pose as a much older woman (“about to settle down with a gray shawl”) as she bemoaned the bourgeoisie excess of places like the Colony, once known for its boho, speakeasy atmosphere. And then there was the Rainbow Room, with its organ blaring full blast to the delight of gawking tourists.
LOST IN NEW YORK…Lois Long lamented the demise of cafe life in Manhattan; from left, the Colony, circa 1940, which went from boho to upscale; the 21 Club, a favorite Prohibition-era haunt of Long’s where she was suddenly a nobody; and high above the city, the Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, and its interminable organ music. (Pinterest/Alice Lum via Daytonian in Manhattan/nycago.org)
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From Our Advertisers
Just one ad from the Nov. 17 issue (more to come below)…the latest athlete to attest to the energizing effects of Camel cigarettes…Cliff Montgomery (1910–2005) was famed for a hidden ball trick play that led one of the greatest athletic upsets—Columbia’s 7-0 win over Stanford in the 1934 Rose Bowl. Montgomery would play one year with the NFL Brooklyn Dodgers, and would later earn a Silver Star for his heroism during World War II…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with Robert Day’s jolly illustration for the “Goings On About Town” section…
…Rea Irvin looked into fair play among the fox hunting set…
…Garrett Price gave us a tender moment among the bones at the American Museum of Natural History…
…and Peter Arno introduced two wrestlers to an unwelcoming hostess…
…on to Nov. 24, 1934 issue, and the perils of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as illustrated on the cover by William Cotton…
Nov. 24, 1934 cover by William Cotton.
…where we find still more scorn being heaped upon Gertrude Stein. “The Talk of the Town” offered this observation (excerpt):
…and E.B. White had the last word on Stein in his Dec. 1, 1934 “Notes and Comment” column:
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There Goes the Neighborhood
Returning to the Nov. 24 issue, Alberta Williams penned a lengthy “A Reporter at Large” column, titled “White-Collar Neighbors,” about the new Knickerbocker Village development in the Lower East Side. Real estate developer Fred French razed roughly one hundred buildings to build what has since been criticized as an example of early gentrification in Manhattan. Williams assessed the development after more than a year of construction, finding that despite federal funding, the leasing company had yet to rent any apartments “to Negroes or Orientals.” Although the development was meant to serve some of the families it displaced, the vast majority were forced to move back into slums due to escalating rents.
BREATHING ROOMS…Knickerbocker Village in 2019. To make way for the development, one hundred buildings were razed in the “Lung Block,” so named because of its high tuberculosis mortality rate. The development continues to be designated as affordable housing. (Wikipedia)
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Dollmaker
Raised in rural Nebraska, at an early age Rose O’Neill (1874–1944) demonstrated an artistic bent, and was already a published illustrator and writer when she drew her first images of “Kewpie” around the year 1908. A German doll manufacturer began producing a doll version of Kewpie in 1913, and they became an immediate hit, making O’Neill a millionaire and for a time the highest-paid female illustrator in the world. When Alexander King penned a profile of O’Neill, Kewpies were no longer the rage, but O’Neill was nevertheless determined to find success in a new doll line. Excerpts:
QP QUEEN…Clockwise from top left, Rose O’Neill circa 1910, just before her Kewpie dolls made it big; Kewpie doll in original box, undated; as the Kewpie craze faded in the 1930s, O’Neill tried to launch a new line called Little Ho Ho, a laughing baby Buddha, but before production plans were finalized the doll factory burned to the ground; a 1935 ad for a Rose O’Neill-branded “Scootles” doll, another attempt at a comeback. (Wikipedia/Pinterest/museumobscura.com)
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Last Call
Lois Long was back with another installment of “Tables for Two” and in these excerpts she found the Central Park Casino a welcome place to hang out, apparently unaware that Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had already served an eviction notice to the Casino’s owners (Moses would tear down the Casino in 1936, mostly to settle a personal vendetta). Long also found respite at the Place Piquale, which featured the musical stylings of Eve Symington.
BYE BYE…The Central Park Casino was not long for the world when Lois Long paid an enjoyable visit in November 1934. Long also found a good time at the Place Piquale, which featured the “startling,” deep voice of cabaret singer Eve Symington. (centralpark.org/Pinterest)
At the Place Piquale, Long was “grateful” to see that silent film star Louise Brooks was also a good dancer. An icon of Jazz Age flapper culture, Brooks loathed the Hollywood scene and the mediocre roles it offered, and after a stint making films in Europe she returned to the States, appearing in three more films before declaring bankruptcy in 1932. A former dancer for the Ziegfeld Follies, Brooks had turned back to dancing in nightclubs to make a living.
IT’S A LIVING…Promotional photo for the Place Piquale featuring Louise Brooks (sans her familiar flapper bob) and Dario in “Spectacular Interpretive Dances,” April 17, 1934. (books0977.tumblr.com)
…and dance remains a theme with John Mosher’s film review of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger musical The Gay Divorcee, which was based on the 1932 Broadway musical Gay Divorce starring Astaire and Claire Luce.
YOU WILL HAVE TO DANCE BACKWARD, IN HEELS…Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire trip the light fantastic in The Gay Divorcee. (precode.com)
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Using Her Heads
Clifton Fadiman praised Peggy Bacon’s collection of caricatures, Off With Their Heads!, which included drawings of fellow New Yorker contributors as well as various Algonquin Hotel acolytes. Excerpt:
HEAD HUNTER…Peggy Bacon offered up caricatures of forty celebrities in her new book, Off With Their Heads! Bacon (1895–1987) contributed cartoons as well as poetry and fiction to The New Yorker from 1927 to 1950. Clockwise, from top left, title page with Bacon’s self-portrait; undated photo of Bacon, likely circa 1930; caricatures of Dorothy Parker, Carl Sandburg and Heywood Broun. (villagepreservation.org/printmag.com/Wikipedia–Peter A. Juley & Son)
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“Beautiful Vanderbilts” Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt and Miss Frederica Vanderbilt Webb wowed one unnamed dermatologist who discovered that both had 20-year-old skin even though they were seven years apart! “Mrs. Reginald” was Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, who was thirty when this ad was produced (Miss Frederica was apparently twenty-three). We’ve met Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt before, shilling for Pond’s—she was the maternal grandmother of television journalist Anderson Cooper, and earned her “bad mom” rep from Vanderbilt vs. Whitney, one of America’s most sensational custody trials…
…we move from skin care to who cares…in this case how many Spud cigs you smoke…hell, smoke three packs a day if you like, the cooling menthol will always keep you feeling fresh even as your lungs gradually darken and shrivel up…
…and here’s a lesson from the makers of Inecto hair dye, no doubt a company solely run by men, who schooled wives with the advice that you’d better color that gray hair pronto or your hubby will kick you to the curb…
…the New York American was a Hearst broadsheet known for its sensationalism, however it did claim Damon Runyon, Alice Hughes, Robert Benchley and Frank Sullivan among its contributors…the morning American merged with the New York Evening Journal to form the American and Evening Journal in 1937. That paper folded in 1966…
…illustrator Stuart Hay drew up this full page ad for the makers of Beech-Nut candy and chewing gum…when I was a kid we used to call this “grandpa gum”…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with a Thanksgiving spot by Alain (Daniel Brustlein)…
…Barbara Shermund delivered another life of the party…
…George Price was finally bringing his floating man back to earth…
…Otto Soglow gave us an unlikely detour…
…Gardner Rea signaled the end to the 1933-34 Chicago World’s Fair…with a boom…
…Leonard Dove dialed up a familiar trope…
…and we close on a more pious note, with Mary Petty…
Above: Bill "Bojangles" Robinson demonstrating his famous stair dance, which involved a different rhythm and pitch for each step. At left, Robinson in Broadway's Blackbirds of 1928; at right, publicity photo circa 1920s. (Vandamm collection, New York Public Library/bet.com)
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1878–1949) is considered one of the greatest tap dancers of all time, introducing a style of remarkable lightness and complexity that was perhaps best represented by his famous stair dance.
Oct. 6, 1934 cover by Charles Alston. This was Alston’s only New Yorker cover. Active in the Harlem Renaissance, Alston was also a painter, sculptor and muralist (see more on Alston at the conclusion of this post).
St. Clair McElway wrote about the 57-year-old Robinson in a two-part profile that examined his personal life and habits, including his propensity for getting shot. Two brief excerpts:
The New Yorker profile coincided with Robinson’s rising career in films, including four he made with Shirley Temple. For the 1935 film The Little Colonel, Robinson taught the stair dance to the child star, modifying his routine to mimic her movements. Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history (however, the step dance scene was cut from the film shown to Southern audiences). Temple and Robinson, who became lifelong friends, also appeared together in 1935’s The Littlest Rebel, 1938’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and 1938’s Just Around the Corner.
DANCING WITH THE STAIRS…Bill Robinson was also known as Bojangles, a nickname from his childhood in Richmond, Virginia. Clockwise, from top left, with his second wife Fannie Clay in 1933; performing the stair dance with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel (1935); profile illustration by Peggy Bacon; Robinson with Temple in 1938’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. (blackpast.org/Wikipedia)
Robinson is remembered for his generous support of fellow dancers including Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr and Ann Miller, as well as his support for the career of 1936 Olympics star Jesse Owens.
FAST IN BOTH DIRECTIONS…Robinson befriended Jesse Owens (left) after the track & field great returned from the 1936 Olympics (where Owens won four golds). Known for his generosity to his friends, Robinson helped Owens establish a successful post-Olympics career. Robinson himself was also something of a runner, having set the world record for running backward in 1922 (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). (Public domain image)
Although Robinson was the highest paid black performer of his time, his generosity with friends as well as his gambling habits left him penniless at his death from heart failure in 1949. Longtime friend Ed Sullivan paid for Robinson’s funeral, and more than 30,000 filed past his casket to pay their respects.
I’VE STILL GOT IT…Bill Robinson with Lena Horne in 1943’s Stormy Weather, a film loosely based on Robinson’s own life. (MoMA)
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In a Romantic Mood
That is how St. Clair McKelway found Hollywood in two of its latest offerings, The Barretts of Wimple Street and Caravan. To his relief, he found the Hollywood version of Barretts quite “sensible”…
LET’S BE SENSIBLE…The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) starred Fredric March and Norma Shearer in the lead roles. (TCM)
…as for Caravan, McKelway wrote that he’d “never seen a picture with so much grinning in it.” He found the “peculiar, unreal gleam” of the actors’ teeth a real distraction in closeup shots.
THAT PEPSODENT SMILE…Charles Boyer and Loretta Young showed off their pearly whites in 1934’s Caravan. (IMDB/TCM)
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From Our Advertisers
The Oct. 6 issue opened with a study in contrasts: an image of two Civil War veterans swapping stories over whiskey on the inside front cover, paired with an illustration of a lithe model sheathed in the latest fashion from Bergdorf…
…the folks at Campbell’s continued to suggest that their canned soup was a delight of the elite…
…Heinz took a similar tack, showing the smart set having fun with their sandwich spreads…
…Lord & Taylor touted its “tomorrow look” in furniture…
…R.J. Reynolds continued its series of “distinguished women who preferred Camel’s “costlier tobaccos,” adding to their growing list a the “charming debutante” Evelyn Cameron Watts, who later became Evelyn Watts Fiske (1915–1976)…
…in contrast to Camel’s fashionable ads, the upstart menthol brand Kool offered a series of cheap, back-page ads featuring a smoking penguin, here in the Halloween spirit (detail)…
…another recurring back page ad was this weird spot from Satinmesh, a product that apparently helped close a woman’s “gaping pores”…those pores apparently prompted one man to ponder the eternal why…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with a two-page spot by Carl Rose…
…James Thurber spiced up a game of ping-pong…
…Mary Petty explored the miracle of birth…
…Peter Arno discovered you’re never too old to play with toys…
…Garrett Price offered a young man’s perspective on a father’s avocation…
…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) gave us a disappointed plutocrat on vacation in Mexico…
…George Price continued to mine the humor of his “floating man” series…
…and contributed a second cartoon that featured some office hijinks…
…and Otto Soglow returned without The Little King, offering in its stead the closest thing to royalty in America…
Before we sign off, a note on the Oct. 6 cover artist, Charles Henry Alston (1907–1977). A Harlem-based painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist and teacher, Alston was active in the Harlem Renaissance and was the first Black supervisor for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. In 1990, Alston’s bust of Martin Luther King Jr. became the first image of an African American displayed at the White House.
Clockwise, from top left, Charles Henry Alston’s 1970 bust of Martin Luther King Jr; Walking 1958; Andrew Herman photo of Alston, 1939; Midnight Vigil, 1936. (Smithsonian/Wikipedia/Columbia.edu)
During the roughly thirteen years of Prohibition, many Americans had forgotten how to mix a decent cocktail; the concoctions they devised during those dry years were often created to mask the taste of bootleg liquor—sales of Coca-Cola steadily increased throughout the 1920s in part because it made ardent spirits such as rum and whisky a bit more palatable.
August 18, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Donald Barr Chidsey examined the phenomenon in “The Talk of the Town,” visiting with traumatized bartenders around Manhattan:
LOST ART…Donald Barr Chidsey relayed the horror of a customer at Sherry’s (top left, photo of the 300 Park Avenue entrance, c. 1925) who asked for ice cream in his rum punch; directly across the street from Sherry’s was the Waldorf Astoria (top right), where a customer asked for a drink of half ice cream, half Coca-Cola; bottom images are from Albert Crockett’sThe Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book—as to what one gathers from Chidsey’s account, more than a few people needed to check the “Glossarial” to get reacquainted with the spirit world. (Museum of the City of New York/kitchenartsandletters.com)CUBA LIBRE…According to Chidsey, the go-to for women patrons at the Hotel Weylin was a Barcardi and Coke; at left, Hotel Weylin in 1935; at right, lobby card featuring entertainment at the Weylin Bar, circa 1930s. (Museum of the City of New York/ebay)THE LAST STRAW…Chidsey wrote of an alarming trend among patrons at Schrafft’s who demanded straws in their Tom Collinses. The sleek, art moderne Schrafft’s at 61 Fifth Avenue was among more than two-dozen Schrafft’s locations in New York City in the 1930s. Known for cleanliness and home-style cooking, target clientele were middle-class women. (Architectural Record photos via daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)
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From Our Advertisers
Speaking of Schrafft’s, here is their advertisement from the Aug. 18 issue, offering breakfasts ranging from 35 to 75 cents that apparently were the stuff of O. Henry’s dreams…
…what is a woman to do with a restless husband?…drawing on the wisdom of the ages, she hands him a beer and coaxes him into his easy chair…this ad encouraged women to “always keep a few bottles in your refrigerator”…in other words, keep ’em coming until he settles into a manageable stupor…
…and see just how easily he slips away, leaving you with a few moments to yourself…
…if highballs were more to your taste, the folks at Poland Water stood ready to help…
…R.J. Reynolds claimed their Camels could solve all sorts of life challenges…we’ve seen ads claiming that Camels soothed “jangled nerves” and helped one relax, but apparently they also could give you energy and pep, at least that is what tennis star Ellsworth Vines, Jr claimed…
…lots of color in the ads for the Aug. 18 issue…here the folks at Buick featured a woman in a red dress serving as an exclamation point to their automobile, which was no ordinary motorcar, but rather a “congenial companion, alive with good-natured personality”…
…the folks at General Tire went one better, making their tires the star attraction…those tires look so attractive it seems almost a shame to dirty them on the road…
…on to our cartoons, we cool off with this spot in the opening pages by Alan Dunn…
…William Cotton contributed this caricature of New Deal Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson that accompanied a three-part profile…
…Rea Irvin offered up a bird of a different feather…
…Robert Day gave us this master of understatement…
…Alan Dunn again, examining the trials and tribulations of the leisure classes…
…Peter Arno offered this take on the Hays Code (after politician Will Hays), which was going into effect after the brief “Pre-Code” period (roughly 1930 to 1934) during which filmmakers felt freer to explore themes featuring sex and violence…
…George Price gave us a man have trouble hitting his mark…
…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) contributed a cartoon with a talking animal, common today but rare in the early New Yorker…
…Raeburn Van Buren was also down on the farm…I think we know the answer to this woman’s query…
…and we close with James Thurber, where mixed doubles were naturally fraught with peril…
Photo above circa 1930 via mensfashionmagazine.com.
Lois Long took a break from reviewing the latest fashions to offer some thoughts on the relations between men and women, and more specifically, what was expected of women if they ever hoped to land the type of man who represented a “potential Future” for them.
August 4, 1934 cover by Otmar. Likely Otmar Gaul, sometimes spelled “Ottmar.”
Based on what we know about Long, this column has a strong “tongue-in-cheek” quality. It should also be noted that the 32-year-old Long had been divorced from cartoonist Peter Arno for three years, and was possibly contemplating the dating scene (she would marry newspaper ad man Donaldson Thorburn in 1938). In this excerpt, Long dispelled the notion that “the brutes” never notice a woman’s appearance:
THEY MIGHT BE BRUTES, but they notice the little things, according to Lois Long. (fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu)
SEEING RED…According to Long, discerning men preferred women in brimmed hats (actress Sylvia Sidney models above), but found red fingernails to be disturbing. (glamourdaze.com/vintagehairstyling.com)SEEING RED in women’s clothes, however, wasn’t a problem, according to Long, who wrote that men liked to see women in bright, tropical colors. (clickamericana.com)
Long concluded that in the end, it didn’t matter what men thought about women’s clothes, but letting them “yap” about such things was a good way for them to blow off some steam.
Check out these patronizing examples from an illustrated guide for women published in 1938 by Click Parade magazine. It gives us some idea of what Long, and millions of other women, were up against…
(dailymail.co.uk)
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Fifth Avenue Remnant
The first years of The New Yorker coincided with some of the most transformational years in Manhattan’s urban fabric, including the replacement of Gilded Age mansions with upscale commercial buildings. One of the last remaining mansions was the Wendel house, featured in “The Talk of the Town.”
A ONCE GRAND MANSION becomes diminished as the city grows around it. At left, the Wendel mansion as it appeared circa 1901; at right, shorn of its balconies and shutters, the mansion shrinks in contrast to the city around it, circa 1930. (Wendel Family Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Drew University Library)WHAT HO!…A “very British-looking” zinc-lined bathtub (with shower) was state-of-the-art when installed at the Wendel mansion. (New York Public Library)BARELY A MEMORY….The glass-and-steel structure towering above the former Knox Hat Building sits on the site of the Wendel mansion. (Photo by Nicolson & Gallowy via Daytonian in Manhattan)
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White noted the spurious nature of cinema newsreels, including one featuring the case of Thalia Massie, a navy wife stationed in Hawaii whose immature behavior and trail of lies would implicate five men in a crime they could not have committed (one would even be killed by vigilantes) and would cast Hawaii into a state of racial turmoil. (You can read more about it at the PBS site for American Experience.
FATAL FEMME…Thalie Massie, circa 1930. (Library of Congress)
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Blunders, Part II
Howard Brubaker commented on the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War. Today we call it World War I, and as we know, the blunders did not cease with the Armistice.
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RIP Madame Curie
Janet Flanner, Paris correspondent for The New Yorker, noted the passing of Marie Curie, a pioneer in field of radioactivity.
THE CURIE CURE…Marie Curie and daughter Irène, 1925. (Wikipedia)
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From Our Advertisers
The folks at Chrysler were trying every angle to get car buyers interested in the Airflow—although the car offered a number of advanced features, consumers just weren’t ready for its radical aerodynamic design…note how the ad downplays the car’s sweeping curves…
…and we have more deception from the cigarette industry, including claims that cigarettes gave you more energy and improved the performance of top athletes…
…the makers of Chesterfields gave us this sunny picture of health…indeed, there was sunshine in every pack…
…The Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company launched KOOL cigarettes in 1933 as the sole competitor to the other menthol brand, Spud, which was a big advertiser in the early New Yorker. Maybe it was the coupons, or the modern brand name, that helped KOOL knock Spud from the market by the 1940s. As for those coupons, it appears each pack contained only one of them…
…so you would have to smoke a ton of those things to get one of these swell prizes…
…early Budweiser ads often featured images of the Old South…here they conjured up the ghost of Mark Twain (who had been dead only 24 years), putting the great humorist and writer on par with their bottled beer…
…Canada Dry didn’t have Mark Twain, but what they did have was a beer (Hupfel’s) lacking “that queer yeasty taste that beer usually has”…
…a couple of ads from the back pages featured, at left, an ad for a pre-mixed Tom Collins, which must have been awful, and at right, a spot for Bacardi rum, which was actually made in Cuba before the revolution…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with Alain (Daniel Brustlein) and some not-so-intrepid mountain climbers…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King sought a glimpse of the street life…
…William Steig took a dip with his Small Fry…
…Isadore Klein gave us a glimpse of sensationalist radio reporting…
…and we close with Richard Decker, and a game of charades…
Above: Al Smith waving to crowds on arrival at Chattanooga, Tennessee during his presidential campaign in 1928. (Museum of the City of New York)
It’s hard to not like Al Smith, the governor of New York from 1923 to 1928, a man who avoided the temptations of political power and stayed true to his working class roots of the Lower East Side.
July 14, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
The son of Irish, Italian and German immigrants, Alfred Emanuel Smith (1873–1944) was raised in the Tammany Hall-dominated Fourth Ward, and although he was indebted to Tammany’s political machine throughout much of his professional life (including stints in the New York State Assembly and as York County Sheriff, President of the Board of Alderman, and finally Governor) he remained untarnished by corruption. Smith’s unsuccessful bid for the U.S. presidency in 1928 put an end to his political life, but there was still much to do, as “The Talk of the Town” explained:
HALL MONITORS…At left, Charles “Silent Charlie” Murphy with Al Smith in 1915. Murphy was the longest-serving head of Tammany Hall (1902 to 1924), and was known for transforming Tammany’s image from one of corruption to semi-respectability; at right, in 1929, Smith greets Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had just succeeded him as governor. (Library of Congress/Wikipedia)
Smith first sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924. According to historian Robert Slayton, Smith advanced the cause of civil liberty by decrying lynching and racial violence at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, where Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the nominating speech for Smith and saluted him as “the Happy Warrior of the political battlefield.”
Following his 1928 presidential election loss to Herbert Hoover, Smith became president of Empire State, Inc., the corporation that built and also operated the Empire State Building, which was then the tallest building in the world. Smith was also known for his fondness of animals, and in 1934 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses made Smith “Honorary Night Zookeeper” of the renovated Central Park Zoo. Smith was given keys to the zoo and often took guests to see the animals after hours. According to Rebekah Burgess of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, “As a resident of 820 Fifth Avenue, directly across the street from the entrance of the Central Park Zoo, Smith was known to appear with snacks for the animals or to launch into impromptu lectures for visitors. Al Smith took his honorary title to heart. Throughout the rest of his life, Smith could often be found attending to the animals at the zookeepers’ sides during open hours. At night, Smith visited with guests, or more often, one-on-one with the animals.”
Smith was also a humanitarian, and in addition to advocating for the working class, he was an early critic of the Nazi regime in Germany, vigorously supporting the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933. Here is another excerpt from the “Talk” piece:
LIFE OUTSIDE THE OFFICE…Scenes of post-political life, clockwise from top left: Al Smith fishing in 1933; with his family at the May 1, 1931 opening of the Empire State Building—Smith’s grandchildren cut the ribbon; golfing in 1930 with baseball great Babe Ruth in Coral Gables, Florida; with Rosie, the hippopotamus, at the Central Park Zoo, 1928. (Museum of the City of New York/Wikipedia)
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Culture Club
In the Nov. 9, 1929 issue of The New YorkerMurdock Pemberton hailed the opening of the Roerich Museum. For the July 14, 1934 issue, “The Talk of the Town” took another look. A brief excerpt:
MORE THAN A BUILDING…”The Talk of the Town” noted the changing shades of the art deco landmark Master Building on Riverside Drive (left, in 1929) which originally housed the Nicholas Roerich Museum. Today the Roerich is located in this brownstone at 319 West 107th. (Wikipedia)FOOTNOTES FROM A FULL LIFE…Two of Nicholas Roerich’s paintings from the 1920s: at top, Remember, 1924; below, Drops of Life, 1924. (roerich.org)
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Itinerant Showman
Alva Johnston filed the first installment of a three-part profile of famed sports promoter Jack Curley (1876–1937). A brief excerpt:
FIGHT CLUB…Sports promoter Jack Curley (left) with boxing manager Eddie Kane, circa 1920. (Library of Congress)
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Over There
In his column “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker made this brief mention of the “Night of the Long Knives;” on June 30, 1934 Adolf Hitler ordered SS guards to murder the leaders of the paramilitary SA along with hundreds of other perceived or imagined opponents.
Here is a clip from the front page of The New York Times, July 3, 1934:
(The New York Times)
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Pimm’s and Soda
July in England meant Wimbledon, and The New Yorker was there to observe the “snobbish and sacred” rite…
WATCH THE BOUNCING BALL…British tennis great Fred Perry (left) and Australian Jack Crawford before their men’s singles final at the 1934 Wimbledon tournament, which Perry won. Perry would claim three consecutive titles between 1934 and 1936. (Image: Mirrorpix)
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Midsummer Dreams
In the summertime (and before widespread use of air conditioning) stage entertainments such as theater and musical performances took to the outdoors during their off-season, seeking the evening cool of intimate rooftops or large, open venues such as Lewisohn Stadium, A brief excerpt describing a performance of Samson et Dalila:
EVENING SHADE: Andre Kostelanetz conducts at Lewisohn Stadium in 1939. The stadium was demolished in 1973 to make way for City College of New York’s North Academic Center. (PressReader.com)
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From Our Advertisers
The folks at struggling carmaker Hupmobile took out this bold, full-page ad to tout their flashy “Aero-Dynamic” by noted designer Raymond Loewy…
…this ad from Harriet Hubbard Ayer was bold in a very different way, essentially calling some women ugly unless they used the company’s “beauty preparations”…
…consommé, a clear soup that was particularly popular among the upper classes, offered up some keen competition between two food giants…here Heinz enlisted the help of William Steig to move their product…
…while the folks at Campbell’s offered up this lovely patio setting for their “invigorating” consommé…
…meanwhile, White Rock mineral water could be found on patios all over Manhattan, as this ad attested…
…this is a reminder that most city folks had their milk and other dairy products delivered in the early part of the 20th century…by the early 1960s about 30 percent of consumers still had their milk delivered, dropping to 7 percent by 1975 and .4 percent by 2005…
…affordable home air-conditioning wouldn’t be available to the masses until after World War II…this unit (designed for a single room) from Frigidaire retailed for $340 (a little less than $8,000 today)…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with Robert Day in the “Goings On’ section…
…Day again, exploring the baffling, glassy interiors of modern restaurants…
…the birdwatching continued with Rea Irvin…
…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) gave us a swimming somnambulist…
…Helen Hokinson explored the paranormal, via domestic plumbing…
…and we close with James Thurber, and the missing Dr. Millmoss…
Power broker Robert Moses always made sure he was few steps ahead of any possible opposition to his grand development plans in and around New York City. That included the yacht clubbers along the Hudson River, who were more or less erased from the scene by Moses in one fell swoop.
May 19, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
The Upper West Side’s Columbia Yacht Club probably thought it was just swell that the city was dumping waste and rock along the shores of the Hudson River, since it eventually created driveway access for members who previously had to access the club via a footbridge over the New York Central’s tracks. What hadn’t occurred to them was that nearly 25 years-worth of infill had also created a new strip of land that extended from 79th to 96th street, land that Moses envisioned as an expansion of Riverside Park (and the abrupt end of the West Side yacht club scene). “The Talk of the Town” explained:
LOCATION, LOCATION…Two views of the Columbia Yacht Club at West 86th Street, circa 1930. The club was razed to make room for Robert Moses’s expansion of Riverside Park. Moses’s ambitious project, which cost twice as much as Hoover Dam, put the train tracks underground and topped the park with the Henry Hudson Parkway. (newyorktoursbygary.blogspot.com/NYPL Digital Collections)HEADS UP…Elsie Henneman dives into the water near the Hudson River Yacht Club, circa 1930. Located at the foot of West 74th Street, the club moved onto a barge at 145th Street to escape Moses’s park expansion plans, but it was eventually banished from the West Side. (Reddit)
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Ode to the Road
We now shift gears to E.B. White, who was poetically inspired by an advertisement in the Herald Tribune that featured Prince Alexis A. Droutzkoy (a member of the exiled White Russian colony in New York) praising the “magic silence” of the new “Dodge Six” automobile:
SILENCE OF THE CAMS…The 1934 Dodge Six. (detail from a vintage ad)
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Führer’s Filmmaker
The ability (or inability) to separate art from an artist’s personal conduct or beliefs has been a particular topic of the last two decades, given the litany of stars who have been “cancelled” despite the quality or importance of their work. The work of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003), still debated nearly ninety years after her collaboration with Nazi leaders, demonstrates the fine line many a film historian or critic must walk when assessing the career of an innovative artist (for an American example, see filmmaker D. W. Griffith). Riefenstahl’s 1932 film, The Blue Light (Das blaue Licht), made prior to her Nazi collaborations, was praised for its beauty by American critics, including the New Yorker’sJohn Mosher, when it was released in the U.S. in 1934.
The Blue Light also captivated Adolf Hitler, who saw the attractive and athletic Riefenstahl as an ideal of Aryan womanhood. A subsequent meeting with Hitler would result in Riefenstahl’s controversial 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens). We will explore that film, and Riefenstahl’s role, in a later post.
CAREER MOVE…Clockwise, from top left, Leni Riefenstahl demonstrated her acting ability, athleticism and filmmaking talents in 1932’s The Blue Light (Das blaue Licht); Riefenstahl filming in Nuremberg during the 1934 Nazi Party congress—the footage was used in 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will; working at a film cutting table, 1935; with Adolf Hitler at Nuremberg, 1934. (IMDB/Library of Congress/UTK Cinema Studies/The Irish Times)HI HITLER…Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler pay a visit to Leni Riefenstahl at her Berlin estate, circa 1937. (Roger-Viollet)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with more Carl “Eric” Erickson-inspired artwork, here promoting the bygone elegance of transatlantic travel…
…perhaps a bit less upscale but still pretty nice, the “Santa” line of ships operated by the Grace Line between New York and Latin America included air-conditioned interiors paneled with aluminum (a fireproofing measure) and spacious cabins with private baths that faced to outside…
…this ad must have been a happy sight to folks who had to endure more than a decade of bootleg Scotch during Prohibition…
…Smirnoff vodka had its origins in 1860s Russia, capturing two-thirds of the Moscow market by the mid-1880s…forced to leave Russia in 1904 after the Tsar nationalized the Russian vodka industry…Smirnoff relocated to Turkey, then Poland, and then Paris, each time with limited success…at the end of Prohibition the brand relocated once again to a distillery in Bethel, Connecticut, hence this advertisement…
…the habanero pepper has been used to infuse everything from tequila to vodka to whiskey…this particular product was marketed as something new that could be mixed with a variety of spirits or topped up with club soda or ginger ale…
…I include this ad from the maker of Spud cigarettes for its sheer audacity…it claims your mouth will feel dewdrop fresh after an entire day of smoking menthols…
…stunt driver Billy Arnold was one of the “Hell-Drivers” Chrysler employed to tout the safety of its low-priced Plymouths at promotional events…
…including Chicago’s “Century of Progress”…below, a crowd watches Arnold take his Plymouth for a roll and emerge unscathed…
…the folks at Redi-Spred employed a murder theme to promote their “Pâté de Foie”…which foie was used…duck, goose or lord knows what, is not specified…
…the signature is muddled, but this looks like another illustration by Herbert Roese, who never published a cartoon in the New Yorker but sure had its style down, especially Peter Arno’s…
…Harold Ross’s high school friend and cartoonist John Held Jr. was a frequent contributor to the New Yorker from 1925 to 1932 (he also contributed to Life, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar), but when demand for his Jazz Age cartoons and illustrations fell off in the 1930s, he turned to painting and illustrating children’s books. So it was a surprise to catch this glimpse of Held’s work in a one-column ad promoting a Held-drawn map of New England inns…
…speaking of elusive illustrators, I am often challenged to discover the identities of spot illustrators in the early issues…this one appears to be signed by “Maurice Dreco”…
…the signature on this one looks like “Saphire,” but again, it is not clear…
…but there is no doubt this little gem is by Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein…
…which leads us to Richard Decker, and a hostage situation gone flat…
…and Decker again, with a back-handed compliment…
…James Thurber was in his familiar world of dogs and battling sexes…
…Mary Petty found some good news on the dentistry front…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King believed more is merrier…
…and we close with William Crawford Galbraith, and a wedding day surprise…
A New Yorker State of Mind 