Tag: Dick Powell

National Treasure

Above: Detail of a mural by William Gropper, "Construction of a Dam," 1939, located in the U.S. Department of the Interior. (gsa.gov)

Sociologist and urban design critic Lewis Mumford was well known for his strong convictions regarding the development of cities, but he also applied those convictions—namely his ideas of organic balance—while writing “The Art Galleries” column for The New Yorker.

October 17, 1936 cover by William Steig.

Mumford (1895–1990) was neither a traditionalist nor a modernist, but rather a proponent of art and architecture that was human-scaled and that honestly reflected the times and places it which they were created. In his Oct. 17 column he cited Washington’s new Supreme Court Building as a prime example of sham architecture, and lamented a “certain staleness” in an exhibition of the U.S. Treasury’s Relief Art Project, which commissioned numerous murals and sculptures for installation in federal buildings. Excerpts:

SUPERANNUATED CLASSICISM was the term Lewis Mumford used to describe new buildings in Washington, D.C., and suggested (in jest) commissioning murals to cover their outside walls, including those of the new Supreme Court building, completed in 1935. According to the Federal Judiciary Center, the building was designed on a scale in keeping with the importance and dignity of the Court and the Judiciary as a coequal, independent branch of the United States Government, and as a symbol of “the national ideal of justice in the highest sphere of activity.” (fjc.gov)

Although Mumford noted the “hacks and mediocrities” of Treasury-sponsored art, he also noted the inclusion of a number of distinguished artists. The problem, it seemed to him, was not the artists but rather the outmoded, monumental murals they were commissioned to create.

MONUMENT MEN…Clockwise, from top: mural by William Gropper, Construction of a Dam, 1939, located in the Department of the Interior; mural created in 1937 by Peppino Mangravite for the U.S. Post Office in Hempstead, New York, depicting the arrival of British dirigible R.34 with the first air mail in 1919; Ernest Fiene painting from 1938 depicted a wildfire battle, one of a set of four Fiene oil-on-canvas murals at Interior. (gsa.gov/livingnewdeal.org)

Mumford concluded: “We need a type of painting that is flexible and renewable…capable of renewal every month, or as often as a Japanese changes a kakemono.”

THE ART OF IMPERMANANCE…Lewis Mumford wrote that public art should change as often as the Japanese change their kakemono. (britannica.com)

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Been There, Done That

E.B. White gave voice to New Yorker mascot Eustace Tilley in 1927 when Tilley bade farewell as the author of “The Talk of the Town.” White also checked in on Tilley in a 1932 “Notes and Comment” column, recounting how Tilley almost lost his silk top hat to the tax man. Tilley turns up again in this week’s “Notes,” this time appearing quite inebriated and refusing to attend a star-studded party at the Waldorf:

HO-HUM…Not even Benny Goodman and a bevy of Hollywood stars could distract Eustace Tilley from his drink and a tin of oysters. (bennygoodman.com)

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Stunt Pilots

I’m not sure which “Talk of the Town” writer went up on the airplane, but either Eugene Kinkead or Russell Maloney hopped aboard an American Airlines charter in a publicity stunt that involved flying a group of reporters above a ship (the S.S. Santa Paula) that was carrying two Hollywood stars—newlyweds Joan Blondell and Dick Powell.

AHOY THERE!…Newlyweds Joan Blondell and Dick Powell greet admirers as they arrive in New York aboard the S.S. Santa Paula. A New Yorker writer was flying somewhere overhead. (godsandfoolishgrandeur.blogspot.com)

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Gielgud’s Gig

After enormous success on the London stage, John Gielgud brought his Hamlet to Broadway’s Empire Theatre, where he was paired with Lillian Gish as Ophelia. Robert Benchley was there for the action. Excerpt:

ACTING ROYALTY…The queen of the silents met the king of the stage when Lillian Gish joined John Gielgud for Broadway’s production of Hamlet at the Empire Theatre. The play ran for 132 performances, a record at that time for a Shakespeare play on Broadway. (James Grissom via facebook.com)

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At the Movies

Some light fare at the cinema, with Shirley Temple cranking out her thirteenth starring role in Dimples, and Mary Carlisle teaming up with Lew Ayres for some shore leave hijinks in Lady Be Careful.

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD FILM VETERAN Shirley Temple and co-star Frank Morgan featured on a lobby card promoting Dimples; at right, Mary Carlisle and Lew Ayres in Lady Be Careful. (eBay.com/facebook.com)

A quick note about the actress, singer and dancer Mary Carlisle (featured above): Best known for her roles as a wholesome ingénue in 1930s musical-comedies, she was with us until just eight years ago. The last surviving WAMPAS Baby Star, Carlisle died at age 104 in 2018.

AGELESS…Publicity photo of Mary Carlisle, circa 1930s. (facebook.com)

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Saving Face

Famed stage actress Blanche Yurka had some choice words for Frank Sullivan after she read his Sept. 26 humor piece, “Save Your Face, Miss Blondell”…

WHAT ABOUT ME?…Blanche Yurka (left) called out Frank Sullivan for his attentions to “movie cutie” Joan Blondell. Yurka (1887–1974) was an acclaimed actress known for her intense commitment to both stage and screen roles—she even learned to knit (center image) so that she could play the role of the vengeful Madame Defarge in the 1935 film adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. (tmdb.org/michaelbalter.substack.com/sspl.org)

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The latest mini-bio from the calendar section featured famed violinist Friedrich “Fritz” Kreisler (1875–1962)…illustration is by Hugo Gellert…

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From Our Advertisers

We begin with this full-page advertisement for Heinz tomato juice, which featured a photo of a man who resembled playwright/actor Noël Coward…the person in the ad is not identified, but Coward was known for endorsing products from time to time, including Bulova watches and Rheingold beer…

…another ad illustrated by Margaret Sommerfeld, who produced promotional artwork for Saks…

…and another full page ad for Old Gold illustrated by pin-up artist George Petty…

…the Old Gold ad marks a departure from a long series of Petty-illustrated ads that were more in the pin-up style and featured a leering little man rather than a handsome masher:

…most cigarette ads still targeted the growing market of women smokers, including this line of smokes manufactured by Benson & Hedges…

…Ozzie Nelson was a famed bandleader until he reached even greater fame on his own radio series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, launched in 1944, and his television show by the same name, which ran from 1952 to 1966…

…if Ozzie Nelson wasn’t your thing, you could tap your toes to Paul Draper’s dancing ensemble or Shep Fields’ “Rippling Rhythm Orchestra” at the Hotel Pierre…

…some advertisers persisted in running wordy appeals for their products, including the execs at the Chrysler, who thought consumers could be swayed by the story of a nineteenth-century amateur chemist who accidentally refined coal tar and spawned a billion-dollar industry…

…the makers of the luxury brand Packard continued to stay afloat during the Depression by marketing lower-priced models like the Packard Six…

…lower-priced options were also featured in this ad from an organization called “Living American Art,” which offered “faithful” color collotype reproductions by modern artists, including New Yorker contributors Peggy Bacon and Reginald Marsh…

1936 lithograph of Peggy Bacon’s The Nosegay, featured in the ad above. (posted on Facebook Marketplace)

…and we have another striking Abe Birnbaum caricature (of stage actress Gertrude Lawrence) for Stage magazine…

…imagine entering this dining room while aboard a Grace Line Santa liner…not a waterslide or buffet line in sight (this was the same liner that Joan Blondell and Dick Powell took on their honeymoon from California to New York)…

…Otto Soglow continued illustrating ads for WOR radio…

…which segues to our cartoonists, beginning with a spot by Arthur Getz…

…a caption-less entry by Alain…

…Alain again, with a puzzling challenge…

…a horticultural mystery courtesy of Helen Hokinson…

…Charles Addams presented an ideal client to this fortune teller…

…Carl Rose got a little spooky…

…Gardner Rea served up an Olympian boast…

…Peter Arno drew up a doubtful doctor…

…Whitney Darrow Jr illustrated the power of motion pictures…

…George Price sampled the latest styles in ice bags…

…Barbara Shermund went shoe shopping…

…and we close with the first New Yorker cartoon by Douglas Borgstedt (1911–2001), and a good one at that!…

Next Time: The President’s Mystery…

 

It Can’t Happen Here

Above: Cover of Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel about a fascist takeover of America, It Can't Happen Here. At right, 22,000 people attended a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. (Wikipedia/Reddit)

Ninety years ago Sinclair Lewis published It Can’t Happen Here, a dystopian novel that responded to the rise of fascism in Europe as well as to American demagogues like Louisiana Senator Huey Long.

October 26, 1935 cover by Roger Duvoisin. Duvoisin (1900–1980) was a Swiss-born American writer and illustrator best known for children’s picture books. He illustrated 32 covers for The New Yorker, along with five cartoons. Duvoisin won the Caldecott Medal in 1948 (along with author Alvin Tresselt) for White Snow, Bright Snow.

In his 2016 New Yorker article, “Getting Close to Fascism with Sinclair Lewis’s ‘It Can’t Happen Here,'” journalist Alexander Nazaryan notes how Lewis was arguing for journalism and civic education as essential pillars of democracy. The title of Lewis’s book, Nazaryan observes, suggests that ‘It’ was something more subtle: “a collective apathy, born of ignorance, and a populace that can no longer make the kind of judgments that participatory democracy requires.”

Lewis’s novel also made book critic Clifton Fadiman sit up and take notice. Here are excerpts from the first part of his review:

HOME-GROWN…American fascism was represented by organizations such as the German American Bund, the Silver Legion of America, and radio host Charles Coughlin, who opposed the New Deal and promoted conspiracy theories and antisemitic views. Clockwise, from top left: Nearly a thousand uniformed men wearing swastika arm bands and carrying Nazi banners parade past a reviewing stand in New Jersey on July 18, 1937. The New Jersey division of the German-American Bund had opened the 100-acre Camp Nordland at Sussex Hills; Huey Long in 1935, the same year he was assassinated; Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. (AP/Wikipedia)

If you zoom in on the photo at bottom right, you can’t help but notice the woman in the black hat, who seems a little unsure about what she is doing, especially in front of a camera…the woman to her right appears to be hiding her face.

Here is more of Fadiman’s review (click to enlarge). It’s worth a read.

WE’VE BEEN WARNED…Published nearly seventy years apart, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935) and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004) both explored the dangers of fascism in the United States. (pulitzer.org/Wikipedia/Nancy Crampton via stanford.edu)

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It Was Happening There

In her “Letter from Paris,” Janet Flanner was noting “increasing Fascist sentiment and  sympathy” in her adopted city:

OVER THERE…The French Popular Party (Parti populaire français, PPF) was a French fascist and anti-semitic political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during World War II. Formed in June 1936, with an estimated 120,000 members by 1937, it is generally regarded as the most collaborationist party of France. (thefrenchhistorypodcast.com)

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All Talk

Marion Sayle Taylor (1889–1942) was the popular host of a radio advice show, The Voice of Experience. Margaret Case Harriman (1901–1966) penned a two-part profile of Taylor titled “The Voice.” I’ve included the opening lines to Part One here:

IF ONLY SHE KNEW…Margaret Case Harriman, left, circa 1936, profiled Marion Sayle Taylor before his misdeeds were revealed. (Vogue Archive/eleanorbritton.blogspot.com/Oregon Encyclopedia)

After reading both parts of Harriman’s profile piece, it appears she wasn’t yet aware that Taylor was more than a radio personality; he was also dishonest, manipulative, and opportunistic, according to a biography by Dick and Judy Wagner featured in the Oregon Encyclopedia. For example, Harriman reported (likely from Taylor’s official bio) that Taylor’s first wife, Pauline, had died in childbirth, when in fact she was quite alive and suing him for divorce that same year. Taylor also divorced his second wife, Jessie, who sued him in 1936 after he deceived her about another woman. Not surprisingly, his radio image as a reliable marriage counselor was damaged irretrievably.

FALSE ADVERTISING…A streetcar, possibly in Newark, N.J., advertising a lecture by Taylor, circa 1931. In addition to hiding a previous prison record, Taylor also falsely reported that he had studied at several universities (he did not earn a Ph.D, as the redundant title claims in the above photo). It appears Taylor also kept much of the money he solicited for charitable causes. (Oregon Encyclopedia)

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Selling Pooh

Commercial cross-marketing of children’s books with toys and other products had its origins in the late nineteenth century with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and in the first years of the 20th century Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit series inspired everything from dishes and wallpaper to board games and dolls—in 1903 Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy.

Then came another character from British children’s literature, A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. In January 1930, Stephen Slesinger (1901–1953) purchased U.S. and Canadian merchandising, television, recording, and other trade rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh works from Milne (for $1,000, plus royalties), marketing a wide range of products. For the column “Onward & Upward With the Arts,” St. Clair McKelway paid a visit to Slesinger at the Park Avenue offices of Winnie-the-Pooh Association, Inc. Excerpts:

KEEP YER SHIRT ON…The Parker Brothers were the first to feature Winnie-the-Pooh in color for a 1932 board game. Stephan Slesinger added the iconic red t-shirt to Pooh for the game and a children’s record, a look that was later adopted by the Disney Corporation when it acquired the rights from Slesinger’s widow and daughter in 1961. (thedisneyclassics.com)
FUNNIES MAN…At left, Stephan Slesinger in an undated photo. Slesinger was a radio, television and film producer, and a curator of comic strip characters including Alley Cop, Captain Easy, Buck Rogers and Blondie, among others; at center, a record of “Winnie-the-Pooh Songs,” 1932; an ad for the Red Ryder BB gun—in 1938 Slesinger created the comic strip Red Ryder along with artist Fred Harmon. (alchetron/yesterdaysgallery.com/Port Isabel Press)

In another excerpt, McKelway gave us an idea of the scope of Slesinger’s Pooh empire:

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At the Movies

Critic John Mosher found few thrills in the latest fare from Hollywood, offering his views of Admiral Richard Byrd’s Into Little America and the musical Metropolitan, featuring famed baritone Lawrence Tibbett. 

FOR THE BYRDS…At left, lobby card for Into Little America; at right, Alice Brady and Lawrence Tibbett in Metropolitan. (eBay.uk/rottentomatoes.com)

With a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and direction by Howard Hawks, one would hope for some rough and tumble in a film about Gold Rush San Francisco. Instead, Mosher found the trappings of Barbary Coast rather mild. This was doubtless due in part to the Hays Code that curtailed the sex and violence portrayed in films of the 1920s and early 1930s.

TAKING A SPIN…Miriam Hopkins runs the roulette wheel as Edward G. Robinson looks on in Barbary Coast. A brief 2019 review in the Harvard Film Archive praised the film’s Gothic feel created by the “evocative portrayal of early San Francisco as a foggy labyrinth of rickety boardwalks and ominous, sky-high ship masts…” (harvardfimarchive.org)

One might think that a film featuring the destruction of Pompeii would have some thrills, however RKO’s The Last Days of Pompeii proved to be a “temperate affair” in Mosher’s eyes, “one of the great bores of the moment.” The Dick Powell/U.S. Navy vehicle Shipmates Forever didn’t prove to be any better.

HOT TIMES IN POMPEII?…John Mosher called The Last Days of Pompeii “one of the great bores of the moment,” including the “drearily enacted” eruption of Vesuvius in which “Paper temples fall and there is a bit of bustle, and that is all there is to that.” Mosher did single out Basil Rathbone’s performance as an urbane Pontius Pilate, “a Pontius Pilate with a Long Island manner.” (tcm.com)
GO GET ‘EM DICK…The U.S. Naval Academy provided the setting for the musical Shipmates Forever, featuring Dick Powell as a crooner who ultimately chooses the Navy over a singing career. (tcm.com)

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From Our Advertisers

We begin with the inside front cover, where the folks at Fisher touted their innovative “Turret Top” design…Body by Fisher began as a separate company in 1908, specializing as an automobile coach builder…although acquired by General Motors in 1926, the Fisher brand was promoted until the 1980s…

…there were many fall and winter fashion ads in this issue, including this continuing series by Russeks promoting Rayon fabrics…and women smoking, no doubt considered a sign of sophistication…

…Guerlain perfume ads featured the unmistakable style of illustrator Lyse Darcy…

…the Heyward/Gershwin production of Porgy and Bess made a splash in this ad for Stage magazine…

…World Peaceways often used terrifying imagery to promote their anti-war messages…this ad was on the inside back cover…

…and as you closed the magazine, the back cover greeted you with this stylish appeal to smoke Luckies…

…on to our cartoonists, starting with Al Frueh in the Theatre section…

…and Frueh again, in this interesting arrangement…

…George Price was featured twice…

…with scenes of domestic life as only Price could render…

…and speaking of distinctive, no one did it quite like the great James Thurber…

…Robert Day gave us two Republicans looking in on the progress of the New Deal…

…Carl Rose bid farewell to a writer sick of his peace and quiet…

…Whitney Darrow Jr illustrated a literary exchange on a park bench…

…and I close with today’s New Yorker cover artist, Roger Duvoisin—here is his cover for White Snow, Bright Snow, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1948.

Next Time: Planes, Trains and Automobiles…