E. Simms Campbell – A New Yorker State of Mind

America’s Sweetheart

Above: A scene from Mary Pickford’s 1922 film Tess of the Storm Country. (Library of Congress)

In today’s celebrity-saturated culture it is difficult to find a parallel to silent film star Mary Pickford, who was dubbed Queen of the Movies more than a century ago. Indeed, during the 1910s and 1920s Pickford was regarded as the most famous woman in the world.

Pickford was also known as “America’s Sweet” for her portrayal of gutsy but tenderhearted heroines. In real life she was also a gutsy and shrewd businesswoman who co-founded United Artists in 1919 with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and director D. W. Griffith. Commanding a salary only rivaled by Chaplin, her stardom only grew when she married Fairbanks in 1920, forming the first celebrity supercouple; together they ruled Hollywood from their Beverly Hills mansion, Pickfair (apparently staging dull affairs, per the “Profile” excerpt below).

The end of the silent era also put an end to Pickford’s stardom, as well as to her fairytale marriage to Fairbanks. Margaret Case Harriman’s profile of Pickford, simply titled “Sweetheart,” gave readers a glimpse into the decline of a silent superstar. Excerpts:

SINGULAR STAR…Clockwise, from top left, **Mary Pickford** in a publicity photo, circa 1910; Pickford visits close friend and screenwriter **Frances Marion** during filming of *Straight is the Way* (1921); **Douglas Fairbanks** and Pickford in the early 1920s; Pickford with a movie camera in 1916—in addition to being a shrewd businesswoman, she was also skilled behind the camera. (thehollywoodtimes.today/Time/Library of Congress)

Harriman concluded her profile with some thoughts on Pickford’s future:

THE SOUND BARRIER…With the advent of sound movies **Mary Pickford** turned to writing books and serving various charities. From left, sharing ice cream with rising star **Bing Crosby** in 1934; center, **Al Frueh’s** caricature of Pickford for the profile; Pickford in a 1934 promotional picture supporting The Salvation Army. (Pinterest/Library of Congress)

A note on the profile’s writer, Margaret Case Harriman (1904-1966), who doubtless sharpened her people-watching skills at the Hotel Algonquin (famed birthing ground of the New Yorker), which was owned by her father, Frank Case. Douglas Fairbanks was one of Case’s best friends, and Harriman knew both Fairbanks and Pickford well, since they often stayed at the hotel.

HOME SWEET HOME…**Margaret Case Harriman**, photographed May 31, 1937 by Carl Van Vechten. Harriman was born in 1904 in room 1206 of the Hotel Algonquin, which was owned by her father, **Frank Case.** (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

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Master of Masters

The founder of perhaps the world’s most prestigious golf tournament was an amateur and a working lawyer by profession. When Bobby Jones (1902–1971) co-founded the Masters Tournament in 1934 with investment dealer Clifford Robert, it was called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament (it was Robert’s idea to call it The Masters, a name Jones thought immodest). Jones dominated top-level amateur competition from the early 1920s through 1930—the year he achieved a Grand Slam by winning golf ’s four major tournaments in the same year. However, by the 1934 Jones’s skills began to wane. The New Yorker had little to say about the first Masters (it wasn’t a big deal yet), other than Howard Brubaker making this observation in “Of All Things”…

A SWING INTO HISTORY…**Bobby Jones** (center) drives during the first-ever Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia on March 22, 1934. (augusta.com)

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From Our Advertisers

Wanna get away? This colorful advertisement beckoned New Yorker readers to take the next boat to sunny Bermuda…

…while the Grace Line offered a southern cruise through the Panama Canal…

…but who needed to travel when you could enjoy a beer that was beloved the world over?…

…Mrs. Potter d’Orsay Palmer nee Maria Eugenia Martinez de Hoz was content to stay home in Chicago and smoke a few Camels, apparently…

…we’ve encountered her before—she appeared in a Ponds ad (below) in the Aug. 8, 1931 issue of the New Yorker, where we learned she was wife No. 2 of Potter d’Orsay Palmer, son of the wealthy family of Chicago Palmer House fame…they would divorce in 1937, and the playboy Potter would marry two more times before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in May 1939—following a drunken brawl in Sarasota, Florida with a meat cutter called Kenneth Nosworthy. Maria Eugenia would remarry and return to her homeland of Argentina to raise a family…

…this ad from Nash looks like a scene from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, if she had a car to match, that is…

…the Cadillac V-16 was a truly massive automobile, but in contrast to the Nash ad, you can barely see the car as it approaches from the vanishing distance…

…E. Simms Campbell got in on the advertising game with this spot that features contrasting images of storm and calm…

…James Thurber offered this cartoon on behalf of Heinz soups…

…and Thurber again, as we kick off the cartoons with the ongoing battle…

…Adolph Schus made a rare appearance in the New Yorker…according to Ink Spill, he also contributed a cartoon on March 19, 1938, and was editor of Pageant Magazine in 1945…

…Gluyas Williams looked in on the sorrows of moneyed classes…

…Helen Hokinson’s “girls” were in search of lunch, and propriety…

…and Leonard Dove gave us a renter surprised by something not included in his lease…

…on to April 14, 1934…

April 14, 1934 cover by **Harry Brown.**

…and book reviewer Clifton Fadiman, who found F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary gifts “bewilderingly varied”…

A NOT-SO-TENDER RECEPTION…**F. Scott Fitzgerald’s** status as a symbol of Jazz Age excess hurt his career during the Depression years. *Tender Is the Night* received mixed reviews, which didn’t help his alcoholism and deteriorating health. When **Carl Van Vechten** took this photo of Fitzgerald in June 1937, the author had a little over three years to live. (Wikipedia)

…speaking of F. Scott Fitzgerald, fellow author Ernest Hemingway defended Fitzgerald’s writing, arguing that criticism of his Jazz Age settings stemmed from superficial readings. One then wonders what Hemingway thought of E.B. White’s poetic “tribute” to his big game hunting excursions…

I ONLY SHOOT STRANGERS…Author Ernest Hemingway poses with a lion shot during a safari in Africa in 1934. (MPR News)

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From History’s Ash Heap

Various reference sources cite “freak shows” as a normal part of American culture in the late 19th to the early 20th centuries, but I have to admit I saw exhibits at state fairs of half-ton humans and conjoined twins when I was a kid in the 1970s (not to mention things in jars at a carnival in St. Louis that should have been given a decent burial).

When Alva Johnston penned the first installment of a three-part profile series titled “Sideshow People,” such attractions could be found across the U.S. and Europe—Coney Island featured “Zip the Pinhead,” who was actually William Henry Johnson (1842–1926), one of six children born to former slaves living in New Jersey. His desperately poor parents agreed to allow P.T. Barnum to display him at a museum and at circus performances billed as a missing link, a “What-Is-It” supposedly caught in Africa.

FOR THE SUCKERS…**P.T. Barnum** exhibited **William Henry Johnson** as a “wild man”, a “What-Is-It” that subsisted on raw meat, nuts, and fruit, but was learning to eat more civilized fare such as bread and cake. Note the difference between the poster depiction at left and the actual man. Civil War-era photo at right by **Mathew Brady’s** photography studio in New York City. (National Portrait Gallery)

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Floating and Sinking

As much as New Yorker cartoonists (and E.B. White) liked to take pokes at Chrysler’s futuristic Airflow, there was much to be admired by the innovations the car represented. Unfortunately, the car’s design was too advanced for the buying public, and despite a big manufacturing and sales push by Chrysler the car was shelved by late 1936.

Writing for Time, Dan Neil noted the Airflow’s spectacularly bad timing. “Twenty years later, the car’s many design and engineering innovations — the aerodynamic singlet-style fuselage, steel-spaceframe construction, near 50-50 front-rear weight distribution and light weight—would have been celebrated. As it was, in 1934, the car’s dramatic streamliner styling antagonized Americans on some deep level, almost as if it were designed by Bolsheviks.”

SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA. A restored 1934 Airflow. (Hagerty Media)

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More From Our Advertisers

Maybe the buying public wasn’t ready for a car with a sloping hood and embedded headlights, but the folks at Cadillac were eager to unveil concepts for the new streamlined La Salle, which retained the familiar bullet headlights so as not to alarm consumers too much…

…and here’s a lovely image from Goodyear…I assume this woman is merely resting in a rumble seat, since this pose would not be possible above 25 mph…

…full-bleed color ads were coming into their own, as demonstrated by this stylish entry from the purveyors of silk garments…

…on the other hand, our well-heeled friends at Ponds stuck with the tried and true copy-heavy approach…here they offer the flawless features of Anne Gould (1913–1962), granddaughter of Gilded Age robber baron Jay Gould…

…R.J. Reynolds continued their campaign to convince us that Camels bring success to the average Joe and the champion athlete…

…the makers of Old Gold opted for the super creepy approach, asking entertainer Jimmy Durante to shove a pack of smokes into the face of what appears to be a teenager…

…here’s another ad from World Peaceways, reminding us of the futility of war…

…speaking of futility, you could visit the USSR, which doubtless took great pains to steer tourists away from mass starvation in Ukraine and mass executions of Stalin’s many “enemies”…

…while folks in the USSR were worshiping Lenin and Stalin, Americans were rightly transfixed by the miracle of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes…a producer of industrial and advertising films, Castle Films would become a subsidiary of Universal and would go on to make a line of science-fiction and horror films including The Wolf Man, The Mummy, and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

…on to our cartoons, Alain took on the recent MoMA exhibition of “Machine Art”…

…and speaking of machine art, George Price was to latest cartoonist to take a crack at the Airflow…

…James Thurber offered this bit of spot art for the opening pages…

…and returned to a somber scene on the battlefield of the sexes…

Next Time: Model Citizens…

Under the Knife

Above: Surgery being performed at the Hospital of Saint Raphael (Conn.) in the late 1930s. Operating rooms were often located near large windows and under skylights to offer greater illumination. (Yale New Haven Hospital)

For all the challenges of 21st century, I always remind myself that advances in medicine during the past ninety years have made our lives better, and substantially longer, even if our current health care system is far from ideal.

Feb. 3, 1934 cover by **E. Simms Campbell.**

People could live to a ripe old age in the 1930s, however the average life expectancy at birth in 1930 was only 58 for men and 62 for women. The Depression didn’t help matters, and neither did the Dust Bowl, unregulated urban smog, the dramatic rise in smoking, and the lingering effects of more than a decade of bootleg alcohol consumption.

Polio was a serious problem in the 1930s, as was syphilis, which affected as many as ten percent of Americans. Blood groups would not be identified until 1930 (by Nobel Prize-winner Karl Landsteiner), and human nutrition remained something of a puzzle—Vitamin C wasn’t identified until 1932. There was exciting chatter about penicillin (discovered in late 1920s) and the antibacterial effects of sulfonamides (first observed in 1932), but it would be years before antibiotics would come into common use. So yes, infection was also a big killer.

Nevertheless, progress had been made, as told by Morris Markey in the column, “A Reporter at Large.” An excerpt:

FORTRESS ON THE HEIGHTS…Top, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center loomed large when it opened in Washington Heights in 1928; below, New York Hospital, most likely the building described in **Morris Markey’s** column; at left, **Dr. George Crile, Sr.**, completing his landmark 25,000th thyroid operation in 1936. (CUIMC/Wikipedia/Cleveland Clinic)

This next excerpt describes the work of the anesthetist after the patient receives a spinal injection of novocaine, which had replaced cocaine as a pain blocker. At the start of the 1930s, the most-used anesthetic was ether, used in this account to calm the patient. Ether carried its own risks—in was unstable, and sparks from X-ray machines and other equipment could cause an explosion.

NO SMOKING, PLEASE…Anesthetist in the 1920s carefully administers ether while surgeon swabs a patient with iodine (inset). Ether was unstable, and sparks from equipment could cause an explosion. (Internet Archive/Flickr)

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And Then There’s Maude

American actress and stage designer Maude Ewing Adams (1872–1953) defined the role of “the boy who wouldn’t grow up” in her Broadway adaptations of Peter Pan in the early 1900s (1905, 1906, 1912 and 1915). She would appear in 26 Broadway productions between 1888 and 1916, but after a severe bout of the Spanish flu in 1918 she retired from the stage and focused on developing better stage lights with General Electric; her electric lights ultimately set the industry standard with the advent of sound movies. As this excerpt from “The Talk of the Town” revealed, Adams was also quite shy and highly valued her privacy.

THE RETIRING SORT…**Maud Adams** in a Broadway publicity photo, circa 1900. (Vintage Everyday)

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In The Trenches

Just before the Nazis decided to turn their country back into a warlike state, Victor Trivas and George Shdanoff wrote and directed an allegorical anti-war film. Niemandsland (released in the U.S. as Hell on Earth) featured five soldiers, from different backgrounds, who find themselves together in a dugout in no man’s land and together come to terms with the absurdity of war. The film premiered in Berlin in December 1931 and was greeted by thunderous applause. A little over a year later it was banned by the Nazis. Critic John Mosher made these observations:

**WAR, WHAT’S IT GOOD FOR?**…*Niemandsland (released in the U.S. as Hell on Earth)* featured five soldiers from different backgrounds on a front lines during WWI: a carpenter from Berlin, a mechanic from Paris, an English officer, a Jewish tailor and a Black dancer (the only one who understands everyone’s languages). Actor and dancer **Louis W. Douglas** (top right) was a Philadelphia native who moved to Paris in 1925 with his dancing partner, **Josephine Baker**, in the popular *La Revue Nègre.* He went on to establish a successful musical and film career in Germany until his death in 1939. (silverinahaystack.wordpress.com/IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

We begin with this jolly color image from Lucky Strike representing the joys of cigarette smoking…

…a trio of ads culled from the back pages, everything from “Tiara Trouble” (apparently a common problem) to a smoking penguin introducing a new line of menthol cigarettes, KOOL, challenging the dominance of the Spud menthol brand (we know who won that battle)…in the final ad, Atlantic City resort hotel Haddon Hall attempted to drum up business using a slavery/emancipation theme—Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is at hand…why not slip the shackles of work and run away to sunshine and freedom?…

…These Paul Whiteman ads were ubiquitous in the 1930s…the distinctive caricature of his pudgy, mustachioed face—Whiteman’s “Potato Head” emblem—was featured in ads and on 78 rpm record labels and various promotional items…on the more classical side, violinist David Rubinoff sawed away on his famed $100,000 Stradivarius for audiences at the Roosevelt Hotel…

…automobile ads continued to grace the pages of The New Yorker, including this one suggesting that young blue bloods would look quite smart in a ’34 Chevy…

…in the 1930s Studebaker marketed car lines including the high-end President, the mid-priced Commander, and the low-priced Dictator…the Dictator was introduced in 1927, so named because it “dictated the standard” other automobile makes would be obliged to follow…the rise of Mussolini and Hitler attached unsavory connotations to the car’s moniker…it was renamed “Director” for European markets and was finally abandoned in 1937…

…Chrysler continued to push its radical new Airflow, here demonstrating how it blows the doors off of an old-timer…

…as we jump into our cartoons, Kemp Starrett referenced the Airflow in his latest contribution to The New Yorker…

…the issue included two from George Price…a playful pairing in the events section…

…and a somewhat unkind nod to new Hollywood star Katharine Hepburn…apparently David O. Selznick had misgivings about casting a “horse face” like her…well, she obviously proved him wrong…

…the magazine pulled out this old illustration by H.O. Hofman to break up the copy in Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column…

…more antics from the precocious set, courtesy Perry Barlow…

…Mary Petty offered this observation on the state of medicine in 1934…

…a sobering and topical contribution from Alan Dunn…

…Carl Rose made preparations for the annual Charity Ball…

…and James Thurber gave us Part III of his “War Between Men and Women”…

Next Time: Made in Germany…

A Joycean Odyssey

Above, James Joyce and his longtime partner Nora Barnacle, in Zurich, 1930. They would marry the following year when Joyce established residency in the UK. (SUNY Buffalo)

It began 103 years ago when the American literary magazine The Little Review published its latest installment of James Joyce’s landmark novel Ulysses—a chapter that featured an account of a wanker on a beach.

Jan. 20, 1934 cover by **Adolph K. Kronengold.**

More specifically, the passage described the novel’s main character, Leopold Bloom, pleasuring himself while gazing at a teenage girl. It didn’t take long for the pearl-clutchers at the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to go after the editors of The Little Review, who were ultimately fined for obscenity and banned from publishing the remainder of the novel, which, by the way, Joyce had structured along the lines of Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey.

Scenes in the novel that frankly described sexual acts and mocked rituals of the Catholic Church kept the book off American shelves until 1934, when District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the book was neither pornographic nor obscene. One wonders if Judge Woolsey took a cue from the end of Prohibition.

Lovers of literature, including New Yorker book reviewer Clifton Fadiman, rejoiced at the judge’s decision. We skip ahead to the Jan. 27 issue for Fadiman’s thoughts on the matter:

DUBLINER…**James Joyce** in 1928, as photographed by **Berenice Abbott**; announcement by Shakespeare & Company (Paris) of the first publication of *Ulysses,* 1921; cover of the American first edition, 1934, with **Ernst Reichl’s** “calmly audacious” jacket design. (Wikipedia/Abe Books)

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Pleasurable Diversion

We now turn to the Jan. 20 issue, in which Robert Benchley concluded his stage reviews with a generous nod to his dear friend and colleague, Dorothy Parker, whose short stories were being performed as sketches at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel, the first fully-equipped music and arts residential center in the U.S.

INCIDENTAL ATTRACTION…Stories from **Dorothy Parker’s** 1933 collection *After Such Pleasures* were performed as sketches at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel; at left, Parker with her husband, actor/author **Alan Campbell.** (Pinterest/Biblio)

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Une Séduction Américaine

Janet Flanner began writing her weekly New Yorker column “Letter from Paris” in September 1925, keeping readers informed on a variety of subjects ranging from arts and culture to politics and crime. In the Jan. 20 issue she introduced readers to French actor Charles Boyer (1899–1978), who was preparing to try his luck in Hollywood. Actually, Boyer made his first trip to Tinseltown in 1930, but his return would mark the beginning of a successful run in American cinema, including the 1944 mystery-thriller Gaslight and the 1967 romantic-comedy Barefoot in the Park.

MAKING BEAUTIFUL MUSIC…**Charles Boyer** as the ” gypsy” vagabond Latzi, with **Jean Parker** (center) and **Loretta Young** in 1934’s *Caravan*. (MoMA)

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The Way Of All Flesh

Lois Long continued to chronicle New York nightlife in her “Tables for Two” column, exuding “rapture” over the new theatre/restaurant Casino de Paree, which featured ample nudity as well as top performers dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and comedienne Sheila Barrett.

The Casino de Paree featured revues, dancing, and side shows such as fire-eaters and animal acts. It closed in 1937, and the building later became home to the trendy 80s–90’s hot spot Studio 54.

CLOTHES OPTIONAL…A 1934 brochure offered glimpses of the entertainment to be had at the new theatre/restaurant Casino de Paree.

The Casino de Paree’s menu gave patrons some idea of what could be expected on the stage…

…but if food and drink was the only thing on your mind, you could enjoy lobster thermidor for a buck seventy-five…

(The Culinary Institute of America Menu Collection; Craig Claiborne Menu Collection)

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From Our Advertisers

How reliable were Goodyear’s tires? Hopefully more reliable than this adage, which Abraham Lincoln apparently never uttered…

…major exhibitions at the Grand Central Palace changed like the seasons, the National Automobile Show ceding to the National Motor Boat & Engine Show…

…if you’d rather have someone else do the sailing, the Bermuda line could take you on a round-trip cruise for as little as $60…

…with the end of Prohibition, the folks at White Rock were doubtless pleased to overtly advertise their product as a cocktail mixer…

…on to our cartoonists, Al Frueh contributed this rendering for the theatre review section…

…Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein found this salon conversation a bit Mickey Mouse…

…Helen Hokinson explored the results of family planning…

…E. Simms Campbell gave us an unlikely den of thieves…

…Gilbert Bundy had us wondering what ensued at this gentlemen’s club…

…and James Thurber fired the first shot in The War Between Men And Women…

…on to Jan. 27, 1934…

…where writer W.E. Woodward profiled Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), whose manner had changed noticeably after receiving the Nobel Prize. An excerpt (with caricature by Al Frueh):

I’M SOMEBODY NOW…**Sinclair Lewis** (far right) with his 1930 Nobel Prize for literature. Other 1930 prize winners were, from left, **Venkata Raman** (physics), **Hans Fischer** (chemistry), and **Karl Landsteiner** (medicine).

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We begin with this lovely color illustration by Helen Hokinson, which also graced the cover of the January 1934 issue of The Stage…

…the vintners at Moët & Chandon let New Yorkers know that their fine Champagne could be had from sole distributors Labourdette and Company…

…cultural critic Gilbert Seldes advised drinkers to abandon their degraded ways and return to the civilized consumption of an old favorite…

…while the folks at Guinness reminded us of their product’s deep history as well as its health benefits…

…and for the teetotalers the purveyors of Joyz Maté encouraged Yankees to take up this “strange” South American drink…the ad claimed it “fortifies the body against fatigue” (thanks to the generous amount of caffeine) and acts as a “corrective and a balancer” (it helped stimulate bowel movements)…

…on to our cartoons, we begin with Gardner Rea, borrowing from a running gag in the Marx Brothers’ 1930 film Animal Crackers, which featured Harpo chasing a sexy blonde around a mansion (apologies for the poor reproduction quality—the archival image was quite faint)…

…Gilbert Bundy gave us a couple confronting the subtleties of Times Square…

…Robert Day commented on the latest trend in taxicab conveniences: coin-operated radios for passengers…

…this two-page Little King cartoon by Otto Soglow revealed another side to our diminutive potentate…

…and the war between the sexes raged on, with James Thurber…

Next Time: Under the Knife…

An Immemorial Year

Perhaps it was the end of Prohibition, or the implementation of the New Deal, but throughout the pages of the final New Yorker of 1933 you could sense a lightening of spirit.

By most accounts 1933 was one of the Depression’s worst years, and that is likely why E.B. White chose to remember “only a few scattered moments,” mixing the silly with the salient.

Of the silly, there was the time when the Barnum & Bailey circus dwarf Lya Graf sat on J.P. Morgan’s lap while he was waiting to testify before the Senate Banking Committee…

HE DIDN’T BANK ON THIS…**J.P. Morgan** was paid a visit by Barnum & Bailey circus dwarf **Lya Graf**, prior to his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on June 1, 1933. (NY Magazine)

White also noted the passing of Texas Guinan. Known as “Queen of the Nightclubs,” she was a fixture on the Manhattan speakeasy scene throughout the Roaring Twenties and a reliable source of nightlife headlines. White also recalled George Bernard Shaw’s controversial speech at the crowded Metropolitan Opera House, during which he referred to American financiers as “lunatics” and called the U.S. Constitution a “charter of anarchism.”

YEAR IN A NUTSHELL…Clockwise, from top left: The year 1933 saw the passing of the “Queen of the Nightclubs” **Texas Guinan**—more than 10,000 showed up for her funeral in November; also that month **Thomas G.W. Settle** and **C.L Fordney** ascended to the stratosphere in the Century of Progress balloon; *The New York Times* (April 12, 1933) published the full text of George Bernard Shaw’s Met speech; *Esquire* published its first issue in the fall, featuring **Ernest Hemingway** and **John Dos Passos** as well as *New Yorker* cartoonists **Constantin Alajalov, William Steig** and **E. Simms Campbell**; according to *Vogue*, 1933’s breasts were “high and pointed.” (bounddv.medium.com/history.navy.mil/NYT/Pinterest)

White also had more to say about the streamlining trend in automobiles, led by Chrysler’s new “Airflow.” White preferred the older, boxier models, with plenty of head and hat room.

In 1922 White set off across America in the car of his dreams, a Model T, which had plenty of headroom and, as he later wrote, transformed his view of the land, a vision “shaped, more than by any other instrument, by a Model T Ford…a slow-motion roadster of miraculous design—strong, tremulous, and tireless”…

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG…Clockwise, from top left: **E.B. White** and wife **Katharine Sergeant** take a spin in a Model T in the mid 1930s; despite White’s remonstrations regarding headroom, the makers of the Chrysler Airflow advertised their streamlined car’s interior as practically cavernous. (Goodreads/Pinterest)

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Crying in His Beer

A couple of issues back we saw Lois Long bid a sad farewell to the cosy and secluded atmosphere of the speakeasy…Ogden Nash turned to verse to offer his own lament, feeling naked and exposed in dining rooms “full of 500 assorted debutantes and dowagers”…

FEELING EXPOSED…**Ogden Nash** (1902–1971) missed the sacrilegious rite of the speakeasy and lamented the “humdrumness” of legal drinking. (vpoeticous.com)

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Wondering About Alice

Combine horrific character designs with a young adult playing a child and you have the recipe for 1933’s star-studded Alice in Wonderland, a film the Nerdist’s Kyle Anderson calls “a fascinating, unintentionally disturbing take on a classic.” Almost ninety years earlier the New Yorker’s John Mosher found it disturbing in other ways, save for W.C. Field’s portrayal of Humpty Dumpty.

Writing for The Roarbots, Jamie Green notes that Charlotte Henry was 19 when she played Alice: “This version of Alice doesn’t feel like a sweet look at the twists and turns of adolescence; it feels more like a commentary on repressed desire and self-identity.” The film was a flop at the box office.

CHANNELLING HER YOUTH…Clockwise, from top left: 19-year-old **Charlotte Henry** as Alice in 1933’s *Alice in Wonderland;* **W.C. Fields** as Humpty Dumpty; **Roscoe Karns** as Tweedledee and **Jack Oakie** as Tweedledum; Alice has a chat with Gryphon (**William Austin**) and Mock Turtle (**Cary Grant**). Except for Henry, most of the cast was unrecognizable in their macabre makeup and costumes. (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

We start with a selection of three one-column ads, featuring, from left, the latest back-to-school look for the collegiate male (apparently attending Columbia); the dustless, noiseless, smokeless, AIR-CONDITIONED railway wonder called the Orange Blossom Special; the automobile arm of the REO Motor Car Company trying to pack everything it could into this narrow little ad (REO would stop producing cars in 1936 in order to focus solely on trucks)…

…the distillers of Holloway’s London Dry Gin warned newly liberated American drinkers about the consequences of imbibing cheap gin…

…the folks at R.J. Reynolds found another member of the gentry to push their Camels onto aspiring young women…

…on to our cartoons, the Dec. 30 issue featured a James Thurber double-header, beginning with this “Talk of the Town” spot illustration…

…a rare one-panel Little King from Otto Soglow…

…ringing in the New Year with Syd Hoff…

…and George Price…

…and we close with Gilbert Bundy, seeking from fresh air…

Next Time: American Love Affair…

College Days

For its Sept. 23, 1933 issue The New Yorker continued its serialization of James Thurber’s autobiography, My Life and Hard Times…

Part Seven, titled “College Days,” included Thurber’s reminiscences of an economics class and the challenges one “Professor Bassum” faced in keeping a star football tackle academically eligible:

DEAR OLD ALMA MATER…**James Thurber** attended The Ohio State University from 1913 to 1918. Clockwise, from top left, the football team during Thurber’s time featured some smart players as well, including All-American quarterback/halfback **Gaylor “Pete” Stinchcomb** (left) and All-American halfback **Chic Harley** (right); Thurber’s drawing of the dim-witted tackle Bolenciecwez from *My Life and Hard Times;* OSU University Hall circa 1910; Thurber drawing of an OSU botany professor who “quivered with frustration” over Thurber’s inability to see through a microscope. (Ohio State/Wikipedia)

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From Our Advertisers

We begin with the makers of White Rock, who touted the international appeal of their home-grown product, here enjoyed by an old warrior and his much-younger mistress who were busy keeping the colonies in line in Southeast Asia…

…speaking of colonial exploitation, here’s Frank Buck keeping his nerves steady smoking Camels as he lugs “tons of rhinos, tigers, and gorillas across the Pacific” to live out their lives in cramped, fetid cages…

…hey there New York sophisticates of 1933, we have just the place for you, where only the BEST PEOPLE are apartment hunting, far from the din of immigrants, the unemployed, and other undesirables…

…if you wanted to hang out with the best people, you could get yourself exact copies of the latest Paris fashions from Saks Fifth Avenue…

…or if you were on a tighter budget, you could check out the wares at Wanamaker’s, who trumpeted their “fashion-firsts” on this ad on page 41 followed by a double-spread on the following pages…

…James Thurber lent his talents to the makers of Fisher car bodies…in the early days of automobile production Fisher made car bodies for a number of GM cars as well as for Packard, Studebaker, Hudson and other manufacturers…in 1926 it was absorbed by GM as an in-house coach-building division…

…on to our cartoons, we take a boat ride with Robert Day…

…discover the perils of historical research with Barbara Shermund…

…Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein offered a new perspective on portrait painting…

…Helen Hokinson found a Red among the blue bloods…

…and a wee conundrum in the hat department…

…Gardner Rea pulled out all stops in this patriotic tableau…

…on to the Sept. 30, 1933 issue…

Sept. 30, 1933 cover by **William Cotton.**

…in which journalist Robert Wohlforth contributed a profile on poet and writer James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance most widely known today for the lyrics of the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” A brief excerpt with illustration by Hugo Gellert:

LIFT EVERY VOICE...James Weldon Johnson, photographed by **Carl Van Vechten**, 1932. (Library of Congress)

* * *

Mexican Morass

E.B. White took on the movie review duties and landed himself a doozy—Sergei Eisenstein’s Thunder Over Mexico. The famed Soviet filmmaker had come to the U.S. in 1930 to make a film for Paramount, but when the deal fell through American socialist author Upton Sinclair and others invited Eisenstein to make an artistic travelogue exploring the themes of life and death in Mexico. More than thirty hours of film was shot before the project was abandoned and Eisenstein returned to the USSR. The footage was later cut into three films, including Thunder Over Mexico. White was less than pleased with the film’s “butchered” edits.

LIFE AND DEATH IN MEXICO…Avant-garde Soviet filmmaker **Sergei Eisenstein** shot more than 30 hours of film in Mexico without producing a final product. An independent Hollywood producer, **Sol Lesser**, later produced two short features and a short subject culled from the footage—*Thunder Over Mexico, Eisenstein in Mexico*, and *Death Day*; these were released in 1933-34. Clockwise, from top left, poster for the film, the film featured scenes of cinematic beauty as well as brutal violence; Eisenstein visiting Mexican artists **Diego Rivera** and **Frida Kahlo**; Eisenstein directing a scene from the film. (IMDB/www.otago.ac.nz)

* * *

Dreaming in Color

In this “Talk of the Town” entry, attributed to James Thurber, we learn of various wonders at the National Electrical Exposition at Madison Square Garden, including a “Clavilux Color Organ” designed for home use. Excerpts:

EINE KLEINE LICHT MUSIK…Danish musician **Thomas Wilfred** (top) constructed his first Clavilux in 1919. Sitting at a large console, Wilfred could control infinite color projections. His first public performance was in New York in 1922 (top right), featuring an abstract light show audiences compared to an aurora borealis. Bottom right, the Clavilux Junior was developed for home use, operated with special glass records, each hand-painted with a distinct composition that would create the projected image. (cdm.link/Yale University Art Gallery)

This YouTube video offers some idea of the effect:

* * *

More From Our Advertisers

Warm, idealized images of American life, in the vein of Norman Rockwell, were popular among advertisers seeking to reassure Depression-era consumers…here we have the avuncular scientist working to ensure that your Packard is not only reliable as transportation, but also a place of solace…

…this same idea was conveyed by the makers of Goodyear tires…

…this ad on page 55 for Guerlain’s Shalimar Powder somewhat recalls the art deco style of Tamara de Lempicka…

…but flip the page and you are brought back to reality with Shefford’s “Snappy Cheese”…

…you needed to lay off the cheese, however, if you wanted to take up a Ry-Krisp diet, endorsed here by Sylvia Ulback, better known at the time as “Sylvia of Hollywood” — in 1933 she was one of the most famous voices on radio…

STRETCH FOR SUCCESS…Norwegian-born **Sylvia Ulback** (1881–1975) was a Hollywood fitness guru from 1926 until 1932. Known as Sylvia of Hollywood, she abandoned the Tinseltown scene after publishing a “tell all” book about her clients titled *Hollywood Undressed* (1931). From 1933 to 1936 she appeared on the radio show, *Mme. Sylvia*, a 15-minute beauty and celebrity broadcast sponsored by Ry-Krisp, and she also published three health and fitness books, including 1939’s *Streamline Your Figure. (*youmustrememberthispodcast.com)

…on to our cartoons, Alan Dunn discovered a budding Picasso…

…another cryptic cartoon by James Thurber was featured in the “Talk of the Town” section…

…Whitney Darrow Jr gave this dowager an off-stage surprise…

…E. Simms Campbell put a snag in an old yarn…

…and we end with Peter Arno, and an old walrus feeling his oats…

Next Time: As Thousands Cheer…

Not Worth a Dime

First performed in Berlin in 1928, The Threepenny Opera was Bertolt Brecht’s socialist critique of capitalist society and was a favorite (somewhat ironically) of that city’s bourgeois “smart set.” However when it landed on the Broadway stage in 1933, it famously flopped, and closed after just twelve performances.

April 22, 1933 cover by **Helen Hokinson.**

The first American production, adapted by Jerrold Krimsky and Gifford Cochran, opened April 13, 1933, at the Empire Theatre, featuring Robert Chisholm as Macheath (“Mack the Knife”) and Steffi Duna as his lover, Polly. Critic Robert Benchley found value in the play’s “modernistic” music, but seemed puzzled by its enigmatic production, an opinion shared by other contemporary critics.

HANGING IN THERE…Scenes from the 1928 Berlin premiere of **Bertolt Brecht’s** musical, *The Threepenny Opera*. At left, Macheath (tenor/baritone **Harald Paulsen**) is spared the noose during the closing act, much to the relief of his lover, Polly (soprano **Roma Bahn**); at right, in a *deus ex machina* moment, a messenger arrives at the hanging and announces that Macheath has been pardoned by the queen. (British Library)

Some critics today defend the 1933 American production, noting that the Krimsky–Cochran adaptation was quite faithful to the Brecht original. Perhaps something was lost in translation, or maybe the world in which the play was conceived no longer held much relevance to Depression-era Americans.

THE FINAL CURTAIN fell after just twelve performances of the first American production of *The Threepenny Opera* at Broadway’s Empire Theatre. The production featured Robert Chisholm as Macheath and **Steffi Duna** as Polly. (discogs.com/bizzarela.com)

Benchley half-heartedly concluded that the play was probably worth seeing, for no other reason than to experience something different for a change.

By 1933 the world that had conceived The Threepenny Opera was long gone—Brecht fled Nazi Germany two months before his play opened in New York, fearing persecution for his socialist leanings. Things were quickly going “from bad to worse” under Adolf Hitler’s new regime, as Howard Brubaker observed in his “Of All Things” column:

* * *

Look Ma, No Net!

Karl Wallenda (referred to as “Carl” here) was born to an old circus family in Germany in 1905, and by 1922 he would put together a family-style high-wire act (with brother Herman) that would come to be known as “The Flying Wallendas.” They debuted at Madison Square Garden in 1928, notably without their safety net, which had been lost in transit. So they performed without it, much to the acclaim of the adoring crowd. They soon became known for their daring high-wire acts, often performed without safety nets. E.B. White filed this (excerpted) report for “The Talk of the Town.”

In the years that followed Karl developed some of troops’ most startling acts, including the famed seven-person chair pyramid. They performed this incredibly dangerous stunt until their appearance at the Detroit Shrine Circus in January 1962; the wire’s front man, Dieter Schepp, faltered, causing the pyramid to collapse. Schepp, who was Karl’s nephew, was killed, as was Richard Faughnan, Karl’s son-in-law. Karl injured his pelvis, and his adopted son, Mario, was paralyzed from the waist down.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME…The Wallenda family practices the seven-person pyramid just prior to the Shrine Circus in Detroit, where the group fell, killing **Dieter Schepp** (far right, bottom row) and **Dick Faughnan** (second from left, on bottom). (*Sarasota Herald-Tribune*)

Karl’s own luck finally ran out on March 22, 1978, on a tightrope between the towers of Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. High winds, and an improperly secured wire, caused the 73-year-old Wallenda to wobble, and then fall, one hundred feet to the ground. He was dead on arrival at a local hospital.

THE SHOW ENDED for Karl Wallenda on March 22, 1978, on a tightrope between the towers of Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The 73-year-old high-wire legend fell one hundred feet to his death. (esquire.com)

* * *

Safer Entertainments

Lois Long continued to file nightlife reports in her “Tables for Two” column, reveling in the sights and sounds (and rhythms) of the Cotton Club’s orchestra, led by Duke Ellington…but the real attraction was Ellington’s unnamed drummer, whom I assume was the great Sonny Greer…

JAZZ GREAT **Sonny Greer** wowed **Lois Long** and the rest of the crowd at Harlem’s Cotton Club in April 1933. (jazz.fm)

* * *

From Our Advertisers

Given the news Howard Brubaker shared earlier in this post, I wouldn’t use the word Gemütlichkeit (basically, warmth and friendliness) to describe the state of things in Nazi Germany…

…a better option would be a trip to the British Isles or France on the White Star lines, nicht wahr?…

…RCA’s mascot, Nipper, appeared to contemplating fatherhood in this two-page ad for the company’s new “baby sets”…

…Camel took a break from its magician-themed “It’s Fun to be Fooled” ads to run another elegant Ray Prohaska-illustrated spot…

…on to our cartoons, Carl Rose demonstrated the economic benefits of legal beer…

…E. Simms Campbell showed us a woman seeking a bit of motherly wisdom…

…Whitney Darrow Jr (1909–1999), who began his 50-year career at The New Yorker on March 18, 1933, offered this look at childhood’s hard knocks…

…James Thurber drew up an odd encounter at a cocktail party…

…Peter Arno served up a proud patriarch…

…and William Steig explored the perils of somnambulism…

…on to our April 29, 1933 issue with a cover by Garrett Price…although we’ve already seen many cartoons by Price, we haven’t seen many covers (he did two covers in the magazine’s first year, 1925). Price would ultimately produce 100 covers for The New Yorker, in addition to his hundreds of cartoons…

April 29, 1933 cover by **Garrett Price.** Note the little train illustration along the spine.

…for the record, here is Price’s first New Yorker cover from Aug. 1, 1925…

…there was more troubling news from Nazi Germany, this time from Paris correspondent Janet Flanner in her “Letter from Paris” column…Flanner would later gain wider fame as a war correspondent…

THUGS…SA members stick a poster to the window of a Jewish store in Berlin on April 1, 1933. The poster is inscribed, “Germans, Defend yourselves, Do not buy from Jews”. (Bundesarchiv, Berlin)

* * *

From Our Advertisers

Camel followed up its elegant ad from the previous issue with another “Fun to be Fooled” spot, this time presented as a multi-panel comic strip…

…Powers Reproduction was a frequent advertiser in the early New Yorker, touting the “realism” of their color photography, but in this case the model looked more like a department store mannequin…

…Otto Soglow continued to ply a lucrative sideline illustrating ads for Sanka decaf…

…as we segue to our cartoonists, the opening section featuring work by both James Thurber and George Price…

…Gardner Rea’s snake charmer expressed her belief that all men are created equal…

…here is a cartoon by a new artist, Howard Baer, who contributed to The New Yorker between 1933 and 1937…

…and another by newcomers Whitney Darrow Jr. …

…and E. Simms Campbell…

…Barbara Shermund continued to rollick with her modern women…

…and we end with the ever-reliable Peter Arno…

Before we close I want to remember Roger Angell, who died last week at age 101. A literary legend and a great baseball writer to be sure, but also one of the last living links to the first days of The New Yorker. Rest in Peace.

Photo by Brigitte Lacombe, for *The New Yorker.*

Next Time: Bohemian Rhapsody…

Beauty and the Beast

One of Hollywood’s most famous motion pictures was a story about a giant ape that (literally) falls for a beautiful woman.

New Yorker film critic John Mosher found the premise of King Kong ridiculous, but he also found many of its scenes diverting, especially those featuring Kong and a number of prehistoric creatures (created by Marcel Delgado), miniature models brought to life through stop-motion animation techniques pioneered by Willis O’Brien and his assistant, Buzz Gibson. Mosher’s review:

THE TRIALS OF GIANT APEHOOD…King Kong battled nature and man in the eponymous 1933 film that featured a silly love story between actors **Bruce Cabot** and Fay Wray (lower right, with Robert Armstrong); this being a pre-Code film, Wray had trouble keeping on her blouse, although a scene depicting Kong undressing her and sniffing his fingers was cut, as were some of the more gruesome scenes featuring Kong stomping and chomping his way through Manhattan. (IMDB)

By today’s standards the film’s special effects are quite dated, but they astonished audiences in 1933 and again in a 1952 re-release.

NEW YORK OR BUST…A huge bust of King Kong’s head and torso was fashioned from wood, cloth, rubber and bearskin by **Marcel Delgado, Buzz Gibson** and **Fred Reese.** Three operators inside the bust used metal levers, hinges, and an air compressor to manipulate the mouth and facial expressions. In addition, two versions of the ape’s right arm were constructed of steel, rubber and bearskin — one was non-articulated, mounted on a crane, and the other had articulated fingers that allowed Kong to grasp Fay Wray in close-ups (below). A separate non-articulated leg was also mounted on a crane for scenes depicting Kong stomping on villagers. (reddit.com/Pinterest)

* * *

Oh Baby

Before child labor laws were finally enforced in the late 1930s, children were routinely exploited for profit, most famously the Dionne quintuplets by Dr. Allan Roy Defoe, not to mention the many child stars fed into the Hollywood meat grinder. For a public seeking novelty as a distraction from the Depression, there were also numerous “baby orchestras” organized by one Karl Moldrem. “The Talk of the Town” commented:

NURSERY SONGS…One of Karl Moldrem’s baby orchestras assembled in Southern California, 1931. (digitallibrary.usc.edu)

* * *

Edible Art

“The Talk of the Town” has always been a source for light anecdotes, including this brief account of a hungry Vanity Fair photographer:

MMM, PRETZEL ART…*Vanity Fair’s* edible cover, March 1933. (Vanity Fair Archive)

* * *

Lend Me An Ear

Alexander Woollcott led his “Shouts and Murmurs” column with an account from a recent benefit performance, during which his friend Noël Coward decided to strike up a conversation regarding the survival of the stage in an era of talking films:

TALKING TALKIES… **Noël Coward** (left) voiced his concerns about the future of stage entertainment with **Alexander Woollcott** during a benefit performance likely held on behalf of the theatrical world. (npg.org)

* * *

From Our Advertisers

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…and a couple of back pagers…thanks to Sonotone, the deafened shall not only hear but will also be stricken by a sudden voiding of the bowels…and below, a surprising ad from the Plaza, one place I never thought would need to advertise…but those were tough times…

…and on to our cartoons, and this spot drawing from Peggy Bacon, whom we haven’t seen in awhile…

…Gilbert Bundy took us to a sanctuary of song…

…another day with our fellow citizens, and Gluyas Williams…

…one from E. Simms Campbell…

…who was the first Black cartoonist published in nationally distributed, “slick” magazines…

…and also the creator of Esky, the pop-eyed mascot of Esquire magazine…

…Carl Rose gave us a night at the opera in this two-page cartoon with the Depression-inspired caption: The artists will now pass among you. Anything you can give will be greatly appreciated….

…and James Thurber returned to the nudist colony for another look at the age-old struggle between the sexes…

Next Time: Not Even Funny…

Life With Father

If you’ve ever come across the byline B.H. Arkwright, you were most likely reading the work of Clarence Day Jr., who in February 1931 began writing for the New Yorker under that pseudonym and also under his given moniker, which in four short years would become a household name.

Jan. 21, 1933 cover by **Theodore Haupt.**

In the Jan. 21, 1933 issue Day would publish his first humorous story in the New Yorker about upper-middle-class family life in the 1890s. A subsequent collection of these stories would be published in 1935 under the title Life with Father. Sadly, Day would die shortly thereafter and wouldn’t witness the enormous cultural impact his stories would have on mid-century America.

Here is an excerpt of Day’s first story about his father, describing an exchange between his parents that would set the tone for the series:

Life with Father was a hit with readers, inspiring a 1939 Broadway production by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse that would run for 3,224 performances over 401 weeks — it was, and still is, the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway. The play would be adapted into a 1947 film featuring Irene Dunne and William Powell in the leading roles. The stories even made it to the small screen in a CBS TV series that ran from 1953 to 1955.

ALL IN THE FAMILY…Clockwise, from top left, **Clarence Day, Jr.** (1874-1935) in undated photo; **Dorothy Stickney** and Howard Lindsay in the Broadway production of *Life with Father,* 1939; Day’s father and inspiration, stockbroker **Clarence Day, Sr**. (1844-1927); scene from the 1947 feature film *Life with Father* with **Irene Dunne, William Powell,** and a 14-year-old **Elizabeth Taylor.** (britannica.com/theguardian.com/IMDB)

Day was also a cartoonist, contributing satirical cartoons for U.S. suffrage publications in the 1910s and also publishing collections of humorous essays including a Darwinian satire on the origins of human nature, This Simian World (1920), and the rambling, whimsical The Crow’s Nest (1921). Both featured Day’s simplistic cartoons and anthropomorphic tales that anticipated the work of James Thurber later in the decade.

CATTAIL…Self-portrait of **Clarence Day** rendered as a cat in a selection from *The Crow’s Nest* (1921). The entire book is available as a free e-book from The Project Gutenberg.

As we know, New Yorker founding editor Harold Ross was a man of contradictions, at once profane and puritanical, the latter on display when it came to one of Day’s cartoon submissions for the magazine. According to Brendan Gill’s memoir Here at The New Yorker, Ross balked at publishing the drawing below because it showed an exposed breast. Either Day or an editor simply removed the nipple (note the broken line in the nipple’s place) and the cartoon was published.

* * *

Big Man’s Big Man

August Gennerich not only served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bodyguard, he was also a close family friend. “The Talk of the Town” featured a lengthy account of the man, an excerpt of which is below:

ON GUARD…**Augustus “Gus” Gennerich** (1887-1936) was a friend of **Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s** as well as one of FDR’s most trusted guards. He began his career in 1909 as a NYC policeman and in 1929 was assigned to be then-Governor Roosevelt’s bodyguard in the city. The Roosevelts were heartbroken when Gus died unexpectedly at age 50 from a heart attack. (picryl.com)

* * *

Desert Solitude

In 1933 Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) was well into her Southwestern phase when her husband Alfred Stieglitz staged a show of her work at his last New York gallery, An American Place. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York until 1929, when O’Keeffe began spending more time in the Southwest — most likely to put some distance between herself and Stieglitz, who was in a long-term affair with photographer and writer Dorothy Norman. After this show opened O’Keeffe would suffer a nervous breakdown (per the above) and not return to painting until 1934. Lewis Mumford visited An American Place and had this to say about O’Keeffe’s work:

ANOTHER AMERICAN PLACE…New Mexican Landscape by **Georgia O’Keeffe,** 1930. (springfieldmuseums.org)

* * *

The Bookish Type

Modernist American poet and writer Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) was a man of letters to the letter, serving as the ninth Librarian of Congress (1939-44) and during which time initiating the process of naming U.S. poet laureates. Here he contributes some of his verse to the New Yorker:

DESK JOB…**Archibald MacLeish**, circa late 1930s. (Library of Congress)

It was no accident that MacLeish contributed to the New Yorker: in addition to being among the literary expatriates in Paris including Gertrude Steinand Ernest Hemingway, MacLeish and his wife, Ada Hitchcock, were part of the Riviera crowd hosted by Gerald and Sara Murphy, which included among other notables John O’Hara, Dorothy Parker, and Robert Benchley.

OVER THERE…**Gerald and Sara Murphy** hosting friends at a Riviera beach party, circa 1923. Gerald is the man standing in the striped shirt; Sara is at right with a parasol. I believe that is Benchley at the bottom right, but not positively sure. (Beinecke Library)

* * *

From Our Advertisers

We begin with this ad from Helena Rubinstein that parodies Lois Long’s “Tables for Two” column (Long signed that column as “Lipstick”) and announced a new “Red Poppy” shade…

…on the other hand, the folks at Tangee borrowed from the old Temperance Movement song, The Lips that touch liquor, shall never touch mine, to promote a lipstick guaranteed to snag a sugar daddy like the one illustrated below (recalling Monopoly’s Uncle Pennybags)…

…more advertising weirdness comes our way from the staid Best & Company, its execs somehow persuaded by an ad man to go with this chef motif…

…Leg ‘O Mutton referred to a type of puffy sleeve introduced in 1830s France that had a revival in the late 1880s…

MMMMM, MUTTON…The Leg ‘O Mutton look, circa 1890s. (genealogylady.net)

…the National Auto Show moved on and the National Motor Boat and Engine Show took its place at the Grand Central Palace…

…I’m trying to imagine the guy at left stowing his top hat in an overhead bin…

…down on earth folks could enjoy some down-to-earth home cooking at Mary Elizabeth’s, or go some Italian at Caruso’s…

…and for reference…

Top left, Mary Elizabeth’s success on Fifth Avenue led to expansion into Boston; below, a 1921 menu at Mary Elizabeth’s in New York; at right, 1930s postcard advertising Caruso’s on 42nd Street. (restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com)

…of course you couldn’t legally drink at those places, so you had to go to a speakeasy or mix your cocktails at home…but this is just sad, ‘ol Buddy here flavoring his bootleg with some Green Ribbon…let’s hope the playboy’s guests aren’t blinded before the night is over…

…we all know the tricky ways of the tobacco companies, including this 3-page Q&A from the makers of Camels offering smokers and would-be smokers THE TRUTH and THE FACTS about the cigarettes folks smoke…turns out Camels are the best…it’s true…