Joan Crawford was an MGM star by the 1930s, and according to many critics, an absolute scene-stealer in 1932’s Grand Hotel. However, The New Yorker’s film critic John Mosher saw Garbo, and only Garbo, in this Academy Award-winning pre-code drama.
April 23, 1932 cover by E.B. White. Although White’s friend and early office mate James Thurber had been contributing drawings for more than a year, it was White who would land the first cover—his only one (Thurber’s first cover would come in 1936). Maria Popova (brainpickings.org) shares this excerpt from a 1969 Paris Review interview, during which White explained to George Plimpton: “I’m not an artist and never did any drawings for The New Yorker. I did turn in a cover and it was published. I can’t draw or paint, but I was sick in bed with tonsillitis or something, and I had nothing to occupy me, but I had a cover idea—of a sea horse wearing a nose bag. I borrowed my son’s watercolor set, copied a sea horse from a picture in Webster’s dictionary, and managed to produce a cover that was bought. It wasn’t much of a thing. I even loused up the whole business finally by printing the word ‘oats’ on the nose bag, lest somebody fail to get the point.”
Greta Garbo’s previous films hadn’t exactly wowed Mosher, but the gossip he was hearing even before he screened Grand Hotel suggested it was not to be missed. Mosher touted the unseen film (in the April 16 issue), expressing his hope that the rumors would prove true—he feared Garbo would quit the business altogether and leave the country if she didn’t land a hit. His fears were laid to rest:
Adapted from the 1929 German novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel is considered the first all-star epic. The brainchild of MGM’s production head Irving Thalberg, the film proved a triumph for director Edmund Goulding, who somehow managed to direct five leading roles into one film classic.
GRAND OPENING…The April 12, 1932 opening of Grand Hotel at Broadway’s famed Astor Theatre was much anticipated by critic John Mosher and pretty much everyone else. (ny.curbed.com)STELLAR CAST…Set at a luxurious Berlin hotel, Grand Hotel brought together the stories of five seemingly unrelated lives. Clockwise, from top left, crooked industrialist Preysing (Wallace Beery), trades innuendos with an ambitious stenographer, Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford); Baron Felix von Gaigern (John Barrymore), a once wealthy man fallen on hard times, supports himself by stealing from vulnerable marks like the depressed ballerina Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo), and also teams up with a gravely ill accountant (Lionel Barrymore, John’s real brother, not pictured here); hotel entrance from the film; MGM movie poster deftly juggled the film’s five big stars; advertisement from the April 16, 1932 New Yorker made much of the film’s star power. (Wikipedia/IMDB)THE OTHER BIG STAR in Grand Hotel was the luxurious Art Deco set created by Cedric Gibbons. Centered on the hotel’s reception desk, the set allowed filming in 360 degrees. (IMDB)
And let’s not forget that it was in this film Garbo famously uttered “I want to be alone” — it ranks number 30 in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes. In 2007 Grand Hotel was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
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She’s Back
Lois Long aka “Lipstick” turned in yet another “Tables for Two,” even though she had abandoned that column as a regular feature two years earlier. Unlike those earlier columns, Long seemed to have had her fill of the night life, but occasionally she found a diversion or two worth mentioning. She also offered her thoughts about the decline of civilization, indicated by such behaviors as dining at the early hour of 7 p.m.—”rawboned” she called it…
NIGHT LIGHTS…Singer Kate Smith and comedic performer Beatrice Lillie managed to keep Lois Long awake in the wee hours of nightclub entertainments. (katesmith.org/The Poster Corp)
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Notes, and More Notes
Despite his cover contribution, and his continued presence in the “Notes and Comment” section, the year 1932 is regarded as one of E.B. White’s leanest as a full-time writer for The New Yorker. According to Scott Elledge in E.B. White: A Biography, White published only a few “Talk” pieces or signed contributions. With a toddler about the house (Joel White had just turned 1 the previous December), White and wife Katharine enjoyed what Elledge describes as perhaps “the happiest of their years together, “able to enjoy fully their professional and private lives in the city they both loved.” So perhaps that explains this particular “Notes” entry for the April 23 issue. Still, it’s good stuff:
(Note Otto Soglow’s Tammany-themed spot cartoon — the political machine was still chugging along, but its days were numbered)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with this colorful ad from McCutcheon’s to brighten our day…
…the Franklin Automobile Company responded to competition from other luxury car makers by introducing its own 12-cylinder model, the only American car to be powered by a 12-cylinder air-cooled engine (according to the H.H. Franklin Club)…
…introducing a 12-cylinder luxury car was not a good move in 1932—one of the worst years of the Depression—and the company folded by 1934…but what a swell-looking car…
(Courtesy H.H. Franklin Club)
…one innovation that would stick around, however, was the lighted refrigerator, something to brighten those dim days of 1932, that is if you could even afford an electric fridge…
…named to evoke the luxury automobile, the British-made Rolls Razor made its debut in the back pages of The New Yorker with this panel cartoon ad featuring a hapless suitor and his girlfriend’s nosy kid brother…
…the razor came in a rigid case enclosed by two detachable lids; one carried a sharpening stone and the other a leather strop. When a lid was removed, the razor’s oscillating a handle drove a shaft along the frame, pushing the solid, hollow ground blade forward against the stone or dragging it against the strop…
…and here’s an ad you don’t see often in The New Yorker…one featuring children…
…on to our cartoonists, we have more kids via William Steig’s Small Fry…
…James Thurber continued to ply his cartooning craft with one of his favorite subjects:
…here is a more detailed look at the above…
…John Held Jr. continued to take us back to those saucy days of yore…
…Gardner Rea sketched this hereditary pratfall…
…E. McNerney gave us a woman whose beau was in alliance with architecture critic Lewis Mumford…
…Alan Dunn looked in on the fast-paced world of business…
James Thurber became acquainted with all sorts of dogs throughout his life, and in each he found something to admire. Unlike the men and women who were bound up by silly customs or norms, the dog stood steadfast as a “sound creature in a crazy world.”
Jan. 2, 1932 cover by Rea Irvin.
In the Jan. 2, 1932 issue, Thurber began what would become a decades-long paean to the noble canine—an embodiment of the freedoms conventional man would never attain. An excerpt from “A Preface to Dogs”…
“So why dogs?” Adam Gopnik asked the question under the title, “A Note on Thurber’s Dogs,” in Nov. 1, 2012 issue of The New Yorker. Gopnik explains that for Thurber, the dog represented “the American man in his natural state—a state that, as Thurber saw it, was largely scared out of him by the American woman. When Thurber was writing about dogs, he was writing about men. The virtues that seemed inherent in dogs—peacefulness, courage, and stoical indifference to circumstance—were ones that he felt had been lost by their owners.”
STOICAL INDIFFERENCE…Clockwise, from top left, James Thurber’s illustration of a childhood pet, a terrier named “Muggs” from the story “The Dog That Bit People” (1933); photograph of the real Muggs; dogs appear in many of Thurber’s cartoons as a stoic presence among maladjusted humans; Thurber at work on one of his dogs in an undated photo. (ohiomemory.org/jamesthurber.org)
Here’s one more excerpt that gives us glimpse into a dog’s day, as related by Thurber…
We’ve seen Thurber writing about dogs before, most notably in his spoof on newspaper pet columns titled “Our Pet Department.” Here is an excerpt from his first installment in the series, which appeared in fifth anniversary issue of The New Yorker, Feb. 22, 1930:
A final note: For more on Thurber, check out New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin’sThurber Thursday entries at his terrific Ink Spill website.
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Choo Choo
While Thurber’s mind was on dogs, his buddy E.B. White was musing about the joys of train travel, and the hope that awaited journey’s end. Excerpts:
THIS DOES NOT SUCK…Riding on the Great Northern Railroad in 1926. (Pinterest)
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Party Poopers
Journalist Chester T. Crowell contributed the Jan. 2 “A Reporter at Large” column by looking through the thin facade of Prohibition enforcement in New York. He tells of Prohibition agents who visit a roadside tavern for several weeks (and enjoy the beer) before finally raiding the place. Beer kegs are broken up and the door to the bar is padlocked. But all was not lost for the proprietor, who got some business advice from the raiding agents…
KEG PARTY…The New York Daily News featured this photo on June 18, 1931 with this caption: “Tears mingled with strong beer in Newark, N.J. as prohibition agents destroyed the unlawful liquor, some of which was seized in Hoboken raid.” (NY Daily News/Mashable)
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No Laughing Matter
As we move through the 1930s we’ll see more signs of the world (war) to come. Reed Johnston had some fun with the messy politics of Weimar Germany, making a parenthetical reference to the “Nazis” of the National Socialist party who would soon take control of the country…
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Upstaged
A box office and critical success, Hell Divers is considered Clark Gable’s breakout role, but the real stars were the Curtiss F8C-4 “Helldivers” that were used in filming aerial battle scenes. Critic John Mosher takes it from there…
ART IMITATES LIFE…Wallace Beery and Clark Gable played rivals onscreen and offscreen in Hell Divers. The upstart Gable disliked the veteran actor Beery, a well-known misanthrope whom many actors found difficult to work with. (IMDB)
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Yet More Diego
Art critic Murdock Pemberton had more to say about Diego Rivera’s appearance at the Museum of Modern Art, noting that Rivera “has been fortunate to be living in a liberal country (Mexico), where his propaganda could be spread upon the walls of public buildings.” Pemberton correctly surmised that Rivera would “starve” if he tried to paint similar themes in the U.S. (Indeed, in 1933 Rivera would refuse to remove an image of Lenin from a Rockefeller Center mural, and would be asked to leave the country).
I SHALL RETURN…Diego Rivera returned to New York in 1933 on a commission to paint a mural for the new Rockefeller Center. The inclusion of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin (inset) in the work was not well-received in the Capital of Capitalism. (npr.org/Wikipedia)
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From Our Advertisers
It’s snowing in Manhattan, and you’re tired of slogging though the snow and slush—well, if you didn’t lose your shirt in the stock market, and if you didn’t need to work a steady job, then you could get away from it all and head to the “sunlit paradise” of the West Indies…
…or grab some sun time in Nassau…
…but before you go, you might want to pick up some warm-weather duds at Lord & Taylor…
…or at L.P. Hollander on East 57th…
…to ring in the New Year we kick off the cartoons with William Crawford Galbraith…
…Gardner Rea showed us how old money and no money don’t mix…
…Helen Hokinson gave us a double entendre to go along with car trouble at a service station…
…communication also seemed to be a challenge for this chap in a William Steig cartoon…
…and we end where we began, with the great James Thurber and the looming battle between the sexes…
James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein remains one of the most iconic horror films of all time, not only setting a standard for monster movies to come, but creating one of popular culture’s most enduring characters.
Dec. 12, 1931 cover by Theodore Haupt.
The New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall called the film “far and away the most effective thing of its kind,” and the public agreed, making it a box office success. The New Yorker’sJohn Mosher, on the other hand, was among the crowd with a more literary bent, preferring Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel by the same name to the film adaptation. He dismissed Whale’s Frankenstein with this brief review:
THIS WON’T HURT A BIT…Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) prepares to destroy Henry Frankenstein’s monster (Boris Karloff), but he is stopped short of his goal when the monster awakens and strangles him to death. (IMDB)SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED…Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) meets up with his creation in 1931’s Frankenstein. (IMDB)I WISH HENRY WOULD FIND A NEW HOBBY…Henry Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth Lavenza (Mae Clarke) is confronted by the monster (Boris Karloff) in 1931’s Frankenstein. (IMDB)ALL IN A DAY’S WORK…Boris Karloff takes a break between scenes. (mashable.com)
One thing Mosher did like about the film was the makeup applied to Karloff, and it would be a look that endures to this day in popular culture. Less than two years after the 1931 film’s release, Walt Disney featured the monster in 1933’s Mickey’s Gala Premier, and since then in countless cartoons, dozens of films, and a television series. From what I can gather, comic portrayals of the monster are far more common than ones involving horror themes…
THE BAT PACK…Clockwise, from top left, 1933’s Mickey’s Gala Premier featured Frankenstein’s monster with pals Dracula and the Werewolf; Daffy Duck conducts an interview in 1988’s The Night of the Living Duck; the monster makes an expected appearance in the first season of Scooby-Doo (A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts 1969); and the monster has appeared as a regular in four Hotel Transylvania films. (Wikipedia/Pinterest)A FAMILIAR FACE…Frankenstein’s monster has also appeared in dozens of films, a TV sitcom, and even on a box of cereal. Clockwise, from top left, Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster in NBC TV’s The Munsters (1964-66); Boris Karloff’s original monster makes an appearance on a FrankenBerry cereal box (1987); Peter Boyle as the monster with a different look (but retaining those electrodes) in Mel Brooks’Young Frankenstein (1974); and Abbott & Costello team up with the monster (Glenn Strange) in 1948’s Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. (Wikipedia/Pinterest/filmforum.org)
It seems I’ve gone down a rabbit hole with this subject, but here’s one more for the holidays: the late Phil Hartman portrayed Frankenstein’s monster in several SNL sketches during the 1988-89 season…
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No Fantasy Island, This
New York’s Blackwell’s Island is probably best known for the asylum where reporter Nellie Bly went undercover in 1887 to expose its horrid conditions. The asylum closed in 1894, but a penitentiary established there in 1832 remained in operation for more than a century. When journalist Robert Littell (1896-1963) visited the island in 1931 for “A Reporter at Large” column, he found it was still occupied by workhouses and a penitentiary—a place where the city still sent it “undesirables.” Littell, a former associate editor of the New Republic and a drama critic for various New York newspapers, described the island’s gray, grim appearance and the “ugly old buildings, model 1858” that contained its sorry residents. An excerpt:
BY ANY OTHER NAME…Called “Minnehanonck” by the Lenape Tribe and “Varkens Eylandt” (Hog Island) by New Netherlanders, this East River island was dubbed Blackwell’s Island during colonial times, and that was the dreaded name referred to by reformers who decried the horrifying conditions of its “Lunatic Asylum,” workhouses and penitentiary in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Renamed Welfare Island in 1922, its prison can be seen in a 1931 photo (top) and in an interior shot from the 1920s. In 1973 the island was renamed Roosevelt Island in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt and redeveloped with housing for more than 20,000 residents. (Associated Press)
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Outshining the Sordid
Architecture critic Lewis Mumford also mentioned Welfare Island in the Dec. 12 issue, but only as a reference point to view the new Cornell Medical Centre, which he found “indisputedly exhilarating.” Note the final lines of this excerpt, and how Mumford took a not-so-subtle swipe at New York architecture firms.
Mumford wasn’t alone in his praise. According to a 1933 Architectural Forum article, hospital director Dr. G. Canby Robinson made this observation about the lobby: “the average person should walk through it without noticing it, but the cultured person should be arrested by its beauty.”
HIGH MASS…The hospital in 1954. (Sam Falk/The New York Times)ABOVE AVERAGE…The main entrance in 1933. (Avery Architectural Library)
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Brainy Boxer
“The Talk of the Town” reported on the “Rockne Memorial Eulogy” at Yankee Stadium to honor the late Notre Dame football coach who perished in a March 1931 plane crash. A nice gesture, except for a minor squabble prior to the event:
NO SHOW…Fr. Charles O’Donnell (left) refused to share the stage at a Knute Rockne Memorial with retired boxer Gene Tunney. (findagrave.com/Wikipedia)
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Silver Bells
A precursor to The New Yorker’s annual holiday poem, “Greetings Friends!” was this entry in the Dec. 12, 1931 issue, written by short-story writer and novelist James Reid Parker…
…New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin has noted an interesting relationship Parker had with cartoonist Helen Hokinson. You can read about it at his lively Ink Spill site.
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From Our Advertisers
We kick off our ads with another entry from Condossis cigarettes…these will continue to the end of the year and beyond, but I won’t run them all…
…I liked this Rex Cole ad because it placed its very architectural refrigerator in the midst of the city…
…as the company did in the physical realm…this Rex Cole showroom was in Queens…
…with the holidays in full swing, we see ads for the kiddies…
…and for the grown-ups, again exchanging Champagne bottles filled with scarves and socks rather than bubbly, thanks to Prohibition (which still had two years to go)…
…maybe a game could distract you from your forced sobriety, such as table-top bowling…note the drawing of J.P. Morgan, which looked very similar to Peter Arno’s Major…
…here’s an advertising ploy no longer used today (at least not overtly)…
…and on to our cartoons, beginning with Gardner Rea…
…this odd little political cartoon was contributed by Otto Soglow, who vaguely anticipated trouble ahead in the international sphere…
…I remember seeing this familiar trope in old movies and 60s sitcoms…John Reehill gave us his rendition here…
…and we close with William Steig, and an after-hours close encounter…
In 1931 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (image above) opened a new art museum in Greenwich Village that would be unlike any other in Manhattan, one that would focus exclusively on American art and artists.
Nov. 28, 1931 cover by Harry Brown.
Ninety years ago American painters and sculptors were mostly considered second-rate by critics who had cut their teeth on the Old World’s “Great Masters.” An exception was TheNew Yorker’s first art critic, Murdock Pemberton, who accused such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of discouraging American art. It is a bit surprising, however, that Pemberton initially gave a cool reception to the opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art, perceiving that its founders were putting the cart before the horse:
AMERICAN ORIGINAL…The original Whitney Museum of American Art was located at 8–12 West Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. Above, images from a 1937 museum catalog, and (bottom right) a view of the building’s West Eighth Street facade, circa 1940-50. (Whitney Museum/Life magazine)SHE WORE THE PANTS…Robert Henri’s 1916 portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, sculptor and founder of the Whitney Museum. Gertrude’s husband, Harry Payne Whitney, would not allow his wife to hang the portrait in their Fifth Avenue town house because he didn’t want visitors to see his wife “in pants.” Instead, the portrait hung in Gertrude’s West 8th Street studio, which became the first Whitney Museum in 1931. (whitney.org)
Despite Pemberton’s initial concerns, the Whitney became a beloved New York institution, moving in 1954 from the West Eighth location to a larger space on West 54th, and then to its iconic Marcel Breuer-designed building at Madison and 75th, which opened in 1966. The museum would move again in 2015 to its current location at 99 Gansevoort Street in a building designed by Renzo Piano.
IMPERMANENT COLLECTION…The Whitney would move three times after its 1931 opening, first to West 54th in 1954, then to its iconic Marcel Breuer-designed home at Madison and 75th (opened in 1966), and finally to its current location at 99 Gansevoort Street. (museuminforme.blogspot.com)
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Party Pooper
William Faulkner attracted much attention among literary circles during his extended visit to New York in 1931, however (as reported in “The Talk of the Town”) the author was able to dodge most of it by staying put in his Tudor City apartment.
HOME ALONE…William Faulkner spent most of his time in New York holed up in his Tudor City apartment, where he worked on the manuscript for Light in August. (LA Times/Wikipedia)
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This or That
While we are on the subject of literary giants, here is a poem submitted by E.B. White to the Nov. 28 issue that explored some universal half-truths:
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From Our Advertisers
As the market for cigarettes continued to increase, so did the number of new brands launched to take advantage of all those eager young puffers. The makers of Condossis Cigarettes hoped to create some buzz for their new product through a series of ads written by Mark O’Dea and illustrated by The New Yorker’sGardner Rea. Apparently the makers of Condossis believed that a posh backstory would lend a certain élan to their smokes. This seems all for naught—I haven’t found a record of the brand beyond 1938…
…a few of those posh smokers might have considered heading to Monte Carlo for the holidays, where they could also legally drink and gamble and forget about the jobless masses back home…
…but you needn’t go to Monte Carlo to signal your taste for the finer things, at least that is what B. Altman claimed with their lower-priced French knock-offs (although $95 was still a lot of dough in 1931)…
…Bonwit Teller also boasted of its low-priced evening wraps, so affordable that one could consider having a different wrap to complement every gown in one’s wardrobe ($135 in 1931 is roughly equivalent to $2,300 today)…
…the makers of Lenthéric perfumes offered the potential for shame and embarrassment if one didn’t choose their product for that special holiday gift…(illustration by Frank McIntosh, who contributes a cartoon in the next issue)…
…but perhaps the happiest shopper of all could shell out a mere $2.50 for the latest editions of The Fourth New Yorker Album or The New Yorker Scrapbook (drawings of a delighted couple courtesy Peter Arno)…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with Mary Petty and a tête-à-tête over tea…
…and Petty again with one woman’s attempt at noblesse oblige…
…Barbara Shermund looked in on the very idle rich…
…William Steig spotted a bald-watcher…
…E. McNerney revealed a secret among siblings…
…and William Crawford Galbraith gave us a backstage glimpse of a Broadway revue…
* * *
On to the Dec. 5 issue…
Dec. 5, 1931 cover by Rea Irvin.
…which featured a profile of renowned violinist and composer Efrem Zimbalist (1889-1985). The son of a Russian conductor, Zimbalist was married to the famous American soprano Alma Gluck…
…and the entertainment gene continued on through the family line, as Zimbalist and Gluck’s son, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., would become a star in Hollywood, as would their granddaughter, Stephanie Zimbalist.
ALL IN THE FAMILY…Famed violinist Efrem Zimbalist and American soprano Alma Gluck (top, left) would pass on their entertainment genes to son Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (known for his starring roles in 77 Sunset Strip and The F.B.I.) and granddaughter Stephanie Zimbalist, who portrayed sleuth Laura Holt in the NBC series Remington Steele. Top right, a “Profile” caricature of Zimbalist by Al Frueh. (Wikipedia/Pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
Much to the delight of The New Yorker advertising department, the makers of Condossis Cigarettes were back with their second installment of the adventures of the “Condossis Family”…
…on the other hand, the well-established Chesterfield brand didn’t have to try quite as hard — offering an attractive woman and some supporting copy that subtly suggested that a woman could credit her fine demeanor to a mere cigarette…
…on to our comics, we have this two-page entry by Rea Irvin…
…a bit of offensive driving, Helen Hokinson-style…
…Carl Rose gave us an unlikely candidate for a chaste role…
…Alan Dunn’s entry played to the stereotypes of his day…
…Frank McIntosh plied the Sugar Daddy waters to come up with this gem…
…Garrett Price gave us a gift designed to light a man’s fire…
…Barbara Shermund lit a flame of a different sort between a dowager and her latest escort…
…and we end with James Thurber, and one of my all-time favorites…
We first encountered critic Lewis Mumford in the June 30, 1931 issue of The New Yorker when he roundly excoriated plans for Rockefeller Center. The Nov. 14 issue once again found him in a surly mood, this time regarding the decorative arts and how they had been poorly displayed at the otherwise esteemed Metropolitan Museum.
Nov. 14, 1931 cover by B.H. Jackson.
To say that Mumford was displeased with the Met’s decorative arts exhibition would be an understatement:
BED, BATH AND BEYOND…Let’s just say Lewis Mumford probably needed a stiff drink after strolling through the Met’s latest displays of the decorative arts. (Library of Congress)PAST IMPERFECT…Norman Bel Geddes was known for his theatrical, futuristic visions of streamlined everything, but the radio he exhibited at the Met was more Queen Victoria’s speed in Mumford’s view. (Pinterest)
Mumford pondered this sudden decline: was it the Depression, or just a streak of bad taste? And what could be done with the purveyors of bad taste, short of shooting them? Let’s read on…
MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET…Mumford suggested that Macy’s International Exposition of Art in Industry in the late 1920’s had more vision than the Met’s 1931 offering. Above, living room furniture designed by Houbert et Petit exhibited in a showroom during the 1928 “International Exposition of Art in Industry” at Macy’s department store. (Library of Congress)LESS THAN A PRETTY FACE?…The streamlined form of Norman Bel Geddes’ “House of Tomorrow” probably wowed a few readers of Ladies Home Journal in April 1931, but critic Lewis Mumford was likely not among them, as he often criticized Bel Geddes for his theatricality at the expense of good taste and functionality (see first excerpt above). Mumford was especially critical of Bel Geddes’ glorification of the automobile and the highway at the expense of livable cities. (Pinterest)
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Peter, We Have Your Back
When your colleague has a play made from his book, and it closes after just seven performances, what can you say, especially if you are theater critic for The New Yorker? Well, here is what Robert Benchley did:
THAT’S SHOW BIZ…Here Goes The Bride, based on a Peter Arno book, closed after just seven performances. However, as a cartoonist, Arno was at the top of his game. (Britannica/Ebay)
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From Our Advertisers
Depression? Who needs it? If you had the means, and didn’t lose your shirt in the 1929 crash, you could get away from it all and book passage to the Bahamas, where you could drink legally, soak up some sun, and forget about those lengthening bread lines you occasionally glanced from the window of your town car…
…well, that bootleg gin was a mind eraser…
…Helen Hokinson continued to offer her cartooning skills to the folks at Frigidaire…
…on to our cartoons, the George Washington Bridge drew the envy of some out-of-towners, as illustrated by Garrett Price…
…nearly 90 years ago folks were almost as nuts about college football as they are now, except for Perry Barlow’s lone dowager, who would rather be sitting in her parlor with a cup of tea…
…Gardner Rea explored the wonders of heredity…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King employed a guard ready for any emergency…
…Barbara Shermund gave us an artist with a god complex…
…James Thurber continued to probe the nuances of the sexes…
…Peter Arno sketched this two-page spread with the caption: J.G’s a card all right when he gets to New York…
…and from the mouth of babes, we have these observations of the underworld from Chon Day…
…and Denys Wortman…
On to the Nov. 21 issue, which featured the last in a series of eleven covers Helen Hokinson contributed to The New Yorker in 1931. The covers featured one of Hokinson’s “Best Girls”—a plump, wealthy, society woman—on an around-the-world cruise, which began with the March 2 issue and ended on Nov. 21 with a stop at the customs office, and a nosy customs officer…
Nov. 21, 1931 cover by Helen Hokinson.
Bread & Circuses
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White reported on a recent editorial in the Columbia Spectator, that university’s student newspaper, which took issue with the professionalization and “furtive hypocrisy” of college football (if only they could see us now). White observed:
In 1931, Columbia was a football power, and the Ivy League was a big-time conference. To the editors of the Spectator, this was not a point of pride, which they made clear in this 89-year-old editorial that could have been written yesterday:
Clippings from Columbia Spectator ArchiveJUST GETTING MY KICKS…1931 press photo of Columbia University football star Ralph Hewitt, who still holds the school record for the longest field goal — a 53-yarder he dropped kicked in a 1930 upset victory over Cornell. Hewitt went on to coach high school sports.
* * *
Sorry, Charlie
William “Billy” Haines was a top-five box-office star from 1928 to 1932, portraying arrogant but likable characters in a string of pictures that ended abruptly when Haines refused to deny his homosexuality and was cut loose by MGM. “The Talk of the Town” looked in on Haines at his Santa Barbara home, where he entertained a mysterious visitor:
THE INTERIOR LIFE…The actor William Haines in a 1926 publicity shot taken at his Hollywood home. Haines would abandon acting in the 1930s and take up a successful career as an interior designer. (Photofest)
* * *
Coveted Coiffeur
Writer Bessie Breuer wrote an admiring profile of Polish hairdresser Antoine (aka Antoni Cierplikowski), considered the world’s first celebrity hairdresser. The opening paragraph:
A CUT ABOVE…In 1914 famed hairdresser Antoine (aka Antoni Cierplikowski) invented the “shingle cut” (at left, sported by actress Louise Brooks in the 1920s), which was all the rage during the Roaring Twenties. (Pinterest)
* * *
The Look of Relief
In “The Talk of the Town” E.B. White noted that a familiar face was gracing advertisements for President Herbert Hoover’s Unemployment Relief Agency:
I NEVER FORGET A FACE…E.B. White referred to this ad featuring an unnamed woman who had a familiar look about her. (period paper.com)
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More His Style
We return again to Lewis Mumford, this time cheered by the sight of the new Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea, designed by Cory & Cory. An excerpt from “The Sky Line” column:
THAT’S MORE LIKE IT…Lewis Mumford praised the striking effect of the Starrett-Lehigh Building’s alternating bands of brick, concrete and steel. (Atlas of Places)
* * *
The Chump
John Mosher was neither moved nor charmed by the appearance of little Jackie Cooper in The Champ, a tearjerker story of an alcoholic ex-boxer (Wallace Beery) struggling to provide for his son. He did, however, appreciate the boy’s ability to carry “on his little shoulders a heavy and tedious and lengthy story.”
BUMMER…John Mosher had little to like about King Vidor’sThe Champ, featuring Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper. Mosher was no doubt a bit dismayed when Beery received an Academy Award for his performance. (IMDB)
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A Wishful Christmas List
It was that time of the year when the New Yorker began running its lengthy features on possible gifts for Christmas. This excerpt caught my eye for what might have been possible in 1931 — buying a photographic print directly from Berenice Abbott or Nickolas Muray:
NO LUMP OF COAL, THIS…In 1931 it might have been quite possible to buy this print directly from photographer Berenice Abbott.Barclay Street, Hoboken Ferry 1931, is in MoMA’s photography collection.
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From Our Advertisers
It has been well-established in previous posts that Anglophilia ran rampant among New York’s smart set, and this advertisement from Saks provides everything we need to underscore the point…
…and the top hat mades another appearance in this spot for Lucky Strike, featuring an endorsement from actor Edmund Lowe...
…our cartoons featured a song-less songbird courtesy of Perry Barlow…
…and from James Thurber, another creature with little appetite for song, let alone wine and women…
…William Steig brought us back to the bleachers with another nonconformist…
…Gluyas Williams gave us this sad sack all alone in the crowd…
…Richard Decker sought to bring order to this court…
…and we end with Carl Rose, and this two-page cartoon illustrating a dicey parking challenge…
In an age of toe-tapping musicals and screwball comedies — which served to distract from the grim realities of the Great Depression—one playwright was content to continue mining the deep veins of tragedy and pessimism than ran through the 1930s.
Nov. 7, 1931 cover by Margaret Schloeman.
A Chekhovian realist, Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) had yet to write his masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey into Night, but in 1931 he was already well established as America’s preeminent playwright. When his naturalistic Mourning Becomes Electra hit the Guild Theatre stage, New Yorker theatre critic Robert Benchley had little doubt about O’Neill’s greatness as a playwright, even if he wasn’t so sure about the play itself:
O’Neill’s tragic pose was borne from childhood, the son of an alcoholic father and a mother who became addicted to morphine after his difficult birth. His older brother, Jamie, would drink himself to death. It doesn’t end there. O’Neill’s own two sons would commit suicide, and he would disown his remaining daughter, Oona O’Neill, when at age 18 she married silent film star Charlie Chaplin, 36 years her senior. An odd footnote: Chaplin was best friends with Ralph Barton, a cartoonist for the early New Yorker who took his own life after Eugene O’Neill married Barton’s ex, Carlotta Monterey. To close the loop, O’Neill and Monterey had a mess of a marriage between his alcoholism and her addiction to sedatives. No wonder the man rarely smiled.
WRONG MEDS, MY DEAR…Christine Mannon (Alla Nazimova) recoils from her husband, Ezra (Lee Baker) after giving him a poison that he mistakes for his heart medicine. At right, Christine and her daughter, Lavinia (Alice Brady), await the return of Ezra from battle. All three actors were part of the original cast of Eugene O’Neill’sMourning Becomes Electra, which was a retelling of Oresteia by Aeschylus. (allanazimova.com)FAMILIAR FACE…Eugene O’Neill made his third appearance on the cover of Time magazine for the Nov. 2, 1931 issue. He made a total of four appearances on the magazine’s cover (1924, 1928, 1931 and 1946). At right, cover of Guild Theatre program. (Time/Pinterest)SAY CHEESE…Eugene O’Neill wore his familiar scowl in this undated portrait with his third (and final) wife, stage and film actress Carlotta Monterey. (famousfix.com)
* * *
Go West, William
When Mae West announced she was going to present a modern version of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and play the part of Lady Macbeth, Wolcott Gibbs went to work on possible scenarios for such a production. Here is one of them:
LADIES MACBETH?…Actually, only two of these women made the cut to play Lady Macbeth. Gladys Cooper (center) appeared as Lady Macbeth in a 1935 production at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre that lasted barely a month. The following year Edna Thomas (right) portrayed Lady Macbeth in a Federal Theatre Project production of Macbeth with an all-Black cast. Orson Welles adapted and directed the production, which was staged at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre. It became a box office and critical sensation.
* * *
Those Hats Again
And now to E.B. White, who once again explored the mysteries of the Empress hat:
TAKE THIS, MR. LIPPMANN…Thelma Todd wearing an Empress Eugénie hat in the 1932 comedy Speak Easily. (Wikipedia)
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Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Bah
And so, in a city with one of the most storied teams in Major League Baseball, The New Yorker continued to ignore that sport as it gushed over college football, John Tunis even going the extra mile to check out homecoming at Ohio State.
HOMECOMING ROYALTY…THE Ohio State football team went 6-3 in 1931, but they blanked Navy 20-0 in their homecoming game. (elevenwarriors.com)
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Boxing Brainiac
Several times before in this blog we have encountered boxing great Gene Tunney and his taste for the literary life. E.B. White gave us the latest on the Champ in “The Talk of the Town”…
THE FINER THINGS…Heavyweight Boxing Champion Gene Tunney, left, discusses things that don’t involve hitting people with writer George Bernard Shaw during a 1929 vacation to Brioni. (Associated Press)
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From Our Advertisers
It’s the Depression, Prohibition is still in force (kind of), so what’s a body to do to blow off some steam? Well, you could take up smoking, every waking moment, at least when it came to this guy…
…and these were the days when tobacco companies offered competing claims about the health benefits of their cigarettes (weight loss, calmer nerves etc.). So the folks at Listerine, who were all about keeping you safe from nasty mouth germs, launched a cigarette of their own, which was “taking the country by storm,” at least in their estimation…
…and I throw this in to give you an idea of how far cigarette companies would go, and how folks would respond in the early 1930s…at left is a 1932 advertisement from the back cover of Popular Mechanics, telling us that “Everybody” is deeply inhaling their product…of course people became addicted, including this young woman (right) featured in a 1931 Popular Science news item who managed to smoke and read a book while reducing her figure…
…back to the ads from the Nov. 7 issue, here is one that offered a “scientific” way to remove nicotine from cigarettes, allowing only “pure tobacco” to enter your pink lungs…
…and now a couple of lovely color ads for Houbigant cosmetics…
…and our friends at Alcoa, diligently working to convince Americans that aluminum furniture was the modern way to keep your house “in step” with the times…
…and finally, RCA Victor was offering an early version of the LP record, so you wouldn’t have to stop necking to turn the damn record…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with Gardner Rea…
…John Reehill gave us a lover who probably watched too many romance movies…
…contrasting with this fellow illustrated by Carl Rose, who doesn’t lift a finger to find some romance…
…and while we are on the subject of love, here is a modern twist offered by Barbara Shermund…
…William Crawford Galbraith gave us a far more detached view of the game of love…
…while Helen Hokinson found an attraction of a different sort with one of her “girls”…
…Alan Dunn looked in on the baking business, industrial-sized…
…and we end with Richard Decker, and the price of war…
When Earl Carroll’sVanities hit the Broadway revue scene in 1923, it faced strong competition from George White’sScandals and the long-running Ziegfeld Follies. Carroll’s answer: More of everything.
Sept. 5, 1931 cover by Theodore Haupt.
That included more nudity than the other revues. Critics, including the New Yorker’sRobert Benchley, found the nudity gratuitous, a titillating distraction from what was otherwise a mess of a show. It also landed Carroll in court from time to time on charges of public indecency. All of this, of course, was just more publicity to drive audiences to his theatre at 753 Seventh Avenue, which he built in 1922 and then partially tore down just nine years later to replace it with an even grander venue. This is where Benchley found himself on the evening of August 27 — at the grand opening of the Earl Carroll Theatre and the 1931 edition of the Vanities. Benchley found nothing grand about it:
AUTOGRAPHS, ANYONE?…Accompanied by his Vanities showgirls, Earl Carroll leaves the Essex Market Police Court on July 20,1930, after appearing to answer charges of public indecency. Police raided a Vanities matinee on July 9, arresting eleven including famed burlesque dancer Faith Bacon, who performed in nothing but fans made of ostrich feathers. No doubt police were tipped off by critics who called the 1930 edition the “nudest” cast in American theatre history. From the looks on their faces, it seems even the police enjoyed the spectacle. (Worthpoint)IS THERE A PROBLEM, OFFICER?…Faith Bacon in a less-revealing pose with the ostrich-feather fans that brought the police ‘a calling. (fanpix.net)
Carroll’s ambitions were always big, whether it was the size or lavishness of his stage shows or the Art Deco theatre (designed by George W. Keister) he erected in 1931 in answer to Flo Ziegfeld’s 1927 Joseph Urban-designed theatre on Sixth Avenue. With 3,000 seats, Carroll’s theatre was nearly twice the size of Ziegfeld’s.
THEY DON’T COME FOR THE SCRIPTWRITING…Earl Carroll made it clear what audiences could expect in his 1931 Art Deco-style theatre, which featured black velvet-covered walls relieved with gold and silver-colored highlights. Its 3,000 seats made it one of the largest theatres in the world. Clockwise, from top left, portrait of Carroll (a gift from the 1930 Vanities showgirls) flanked by busts of Vanities girls Doris Andrese and Beryl Wallace in the theatre lobby; sign above theatre entrance; a two-page spread from the theatre’s “Beauty Souvenir” booklet; cover of the booklet, featuring singer Lillian Roth. (New York Historical Society).DECO DRAMA…Clockwise, from top left, Earl Carroll circa 1925; ceiling detail inside the Earl Carroll Theatre; mezzanine lounge; the stage. (New York Historical Society).
The show itself left Benchley baffled, a mishmash of lights, colors, and effects including a drooling dinosaur that dropped a naked woman on stage for a dance number…
LAUNCH SITE….The Vanities stage helped launch the careers of many entertainers. Clockwise, from top left, undated photo of a Vanities production — some shows would feature more than 100 women on stage at one time; singer Lillian Roth was a star attraction; Vanities alumni included William Demarest (Uncle Charlie!), Jack Benny and Vincente Minnelli. (assumption.edu/flickr.com/classicmoviehub.com/amazon.com/sensesofcinema.com)
This wasn’t last word from The New Yorker on the new theatre; the Sept. 12 issue featured these observations by Creighton Peet:
In the end, Carroll’s ambitions were too big for the deepening Depression, and just six months after his theatre’s opening he would lose it to creditors. The property would be snapped up by rival Florenz Ziegfeld and renamed the Casino, but the Ziegfeld connection would be short-lived; Ziegfeld would die a few months later in July 1932. Later that year another rival, George White, would take over the venue to stage his Music Hall Varieties, which ended in 1933 with middling results. The theatre would go through several more tenants—including Billy Rose—until 1940 when the discount “dime store” Woolworth’s would move in, demolishing the lobby and walling off the remaining ceiling and walls. Woolworth’s would close the location in the late 1980s—the store, and the last remnants of the Earl Carroll Theatre, would be demolished in 1990.
CLOSING NUMBER…At left, a sneak peek behind the false walls of Woolworth’s in 1988 shows a detail of the theatre’s proscenium, ceiling and sidewall. At right, top to bottom, the second Earl Carroll Theatre at 7th Avenue & 50th Street; the Woolworth’s store that replaced it, circa 1980; the site today. (Large image from the book Lost Broadway Theatres, via drivingfordeco.com/Google Maps)
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From Our Advertisers
Fall is upon us, and so the social season begins, according to the Hotel St. Regis…
…and what better way to prepare for the season than to acquire a new mink coat…
…maybe politics and world affairs were more your bag, in which case you probably wanted to get a subscription to the Herald Tribune and read the latest from commentator Walter Lippmann…
…the makers of Marlboro cigarettes, an upstart brand that initially targeted women, continued with their prize contests, but now they began courting men as well…
…on the other hand, the more established brand Chesterfield had the resources to run a color back-cover ad with endorsements from the brother-sister dance team Fred and Adele Astaire…
…Fleishmann’s continued to run their full-page ads touting the wonders of daily yeast consumption (“Eat three cakes a day”). The ads were there because Raoul Fleishmann used his wealth from the family baking business to keep the New Yorker afloat during its fledgling years…
…Farrar and Rinehart announced the arrival of Otto Soglow’s first book, Pretty Pictures…
…here is the cover of the book…
…and we move on to the cartoons with the character that would make Soglow rich and famous…The Little King…
…although Fleischmann likely saved The New Yorker with large infusions of cash, its cartoonists, including Gardner Rea, still took an occasional poke at the company’s health claims…
…anticipating his “Small Fry” cartoons, William Steig finds two of them examining the wonders of human physiology…
…Rea Irvin looked in on some stuffy Western Union censors…
…newcomer Robert Day illustrated the challenges of a doorman (Day would be a longtime contributor)…
…Garrett Price found humor abuzz between the bold and the meek…
…Alan Dunn tracked down a clueless hunter…
…and we end with Leonard Dove, who takes flight and anticipates our next installment…
In my last post we visited the Central Park Zoo, circa 1931, and found a collection of animals displayed as curiosities in barren enclosures that in no way resembled natural habitats.
Aug. 29, 1931 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
It’s hard to say if those creatures were better or worse off than their cousins at the American Museum of Natural History, a short walk across the park to the northwest. Unlike the zoo, the tigers and rhinos at the museum were displayed in naturalistic, almost dreamlike settings. But then again they were dead; indeed, all that remained of them were their skins, skillfully fitted over skeletons of wood and clay.
SIMULACRUM…Clockwise, from top left, American Museum of Natural History staff mounting rhinoceros and Indian elephant, circa 1930; preparing African buffalo group diorama; staff cleaning elephant skin in preparation for mounting on a frame consisting of a skull and some wood. This would be covered with clay before the skin is fitted. (vintag.es)
E.B. White stopped by the famed museum to take a look at its new Asiatic Hall, and filed this report for “The Talk of the Town.”
The animals pictured below came from a couple of British big game hunters, gathered during expeditions in the 1910s and 1920s…
PLEASE HOLD STILL…American Museum of Natural History staff prepare the tiger group diorama in 1931. The display was in the new Asiatic Hall referred to by E.B. White. (vintage.es)SURVIVORS OF A SORT…Nearly 90 years later, the tiger group is still on display at the American Museum of Natural History, now in the Hall of Biodiversity. (AMNH)STILL THE SAME…This Asiatic leopard diorama, which so impressed E.B. White, also survives to this day, in the Hall of Asian Mammals at AMNH. (atlasobscura)NEVER-ENDING BATTLE…The Sambar stag diorama, dating to 1911, is also mentioned by White in his article. (atlasobscura)
I am delighted that the AMNH (which I visited in December as an avid fan of diorama art) preserves these exhibits, which not only display animals—many now endangered—but also the artistry of painters, sculptors and taxidermists from a century ago. Sadly, many museums are scrapping these cultural treasures and replacing them with gaudy, interactive displays and video screens. An article in Newsweek (“Museum Dioramas Are as Endangered as the Animals They Contain,” Aug. 2, 2015) notes that around 2008 “the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., closed two diorama halls and reopened them with video screens, interactive features and stand-alone specimens where the dioramas had been.” In other words, the specimens were removed from naturalistic scenes and displayed as stand-alone curiosities, rather like those poor animals in the Central Park Zoo of yesteryear.
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Everyday Icons
Gilbert Seldes profiled industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904–1972), who along with contemporaries Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes was among celebrity designers of the midcentury. Like Bel Geddes, Dreyfuss was a well-known Broadway set designer who would go on to become an industrial designer in the era of streamlining. But unlike Loewy and Bel Geddes, Dreyfuss went well beyond mere styling, taking a practical, scientific approach to problems that would not only make products better looking, but also safer and more comfortable to use. An excerpt:
GOT MY START IN SHOW BIZ…Henry Dreyfuss in 1946, and his 1930-31 design of the RKO Theatre in Davenport, Iowa (now the Adler Theatre). (Wikipedia/qctimes.com)ICONS OF EVERYDAY LIFE…Some of Dreyfuss’s designs included, top row: the Western Electric Model 500 telephone (center), which replaced the clunkier Model 300 (left) in 1950; the Hoover model 150 vacuum cleaner, from 1936; middle row: Dreyfuss designs for the New York Central Railroad’s streamlined Mercury train (1936); and the NYC Hudson locomotive for the Twentieth Century Limited (1938); bottom row: Dreyfuss designed things as varied as tractors for John Deere (1960); the Honeywell T87 circular wall thermostat (1953–present); and the Polaroid SX-70 Land camera (1972).
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Body-Building Barnum
Another well-known figure of the 1930s was Bernarr Macfadden (1868–1955), an early proponent of physical culture who would prefigure such notables as Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But none of them were quite like McFadden, who also created a pulp publishing empire (among his magazines: Liberty, True Detective, True Story, True Romances, Photoplay and the notorious tabloid newspaper The New York Evening Graphic).
READ ALL ABOUT IT…Macfadden’s Evening Graphic was all about scandal, and especially sex and murder.
Macfadden also established numerous “healthatoriums” across the East and Midwest, including (in 1931) his latest venture, the Physical Culture Hotel near Dansville, New York. E.B. White explained, in his “Notes and Comment”…
MCFADDEN SHOWS OFF HIS BOD in 1910 (left) at age 42, and at age 55 in 1923. (Wikipedia)BEFORE AND AFTER…Mcfadden acquired the 1882 Jackson Sanatorium near Dansville, NY in 1931 and renamed it the Physical Culture Hotel. Circa 1930s images at top contrast with the condition of the property today — it fell into disrepair after MacFadden’s death in 1955, and closed for good in 1971. Known to locals as the “Castle on the Hill” in its heyday, it can still be glimpsed by motorists traveling on I-390. (bernarrmacfadden.com/abandonedplaces.livejournal.com)
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For the Birds
When I came across “Farewell to Birds,” on page 17, I thought for a moment it was one of James Thurber’s animal parodies (there was even a Thurber cartoon at the bottom of the page), but then I noticed our writer was Will Cuppy, (1884-1949) who wrote in the Thurber vein (Cuppy was ten years Thurber’s senior) and like Thurber, was a bit of a curmudgeon. From 1931 until his death Cuppy wrote satirical pieces for The New Yorker that were later collected into books (also like Thurber). Here is an excerpt from “Farewell to Birds.”
THE SIMPLE LIFE…Satirist Will Cuppy (center, in 1932) and two of his early books. How to be a Hermit (1929) was a humorous look at his life residing in a Jones Island seaside shack from 1921 to 1929 (he was escaping city noise and hayfever); How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes was a 1931 compilation of Cuppy’s articles, including the one above.
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Puttin’ on the Ritz
Lois Long, newly divorced from cartoonist Peter Arno, concluded her fashion column (“On and Off the Avenue”) by telling readers about her “swell new hairdo”…
HAVE A SEAT, LOIS…The perm room at Charles of the Ritz, 1932. (Museum of the City of New York)
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Your Majesty
Speaking of new looks, Central Park West was boasting the addition of a new “skyscraper apartment building” called the Majestic. “The Sky Line” reported:
APTLY NAMED…The Majestic at Central Park West. (Pinterest)
Another building making its mark was the Parc Vendôme on West 57th, offering more than 600 apartments with annual rents ranging from $1,100 to $6,600. Condos in the same building today range from $495,000 to $5,495,000.
BREAD BOX INCLUDED…The Parc Vendôme on West 57th. (street easy.com)
From Our Advertisers
Henry Mandel, one of New York City’s most ambitious developers in the 1920s and early 30s, touted the Parc Vendôme in this advertisement…
…I wonder if Lois Long (see above) got one of these “dos” at the Ritz…I love the snob appeal of this ad — “The New Paris Way of Doing Your Hair”…
…which seemed to work…here is a random sample of Hollywood stars in 1931, all wearing the look…
DOING THE WAVE…From left, Tilly Losch, Constance Bennett, and Barbara Stanwyck.
…other ads appealing to the Continental lifestyle…a very understated yet elegant ad for Guerlain lipstick, and Nellie Harrington-Levine gave us a disinterested deb sporting “the wave,” a cigarette and a velvet dress…
…and Pond’s continued its parade of rich society women to sell its cold cream…here we are presented with “Mrs. Morgan Belmont,” aka Margaret Frances Andrews (1894–1945), a Newport socialite and prize-winning show dog breeder…
Andrews didn’t limit herself to cold cream, here appearing in a 1927 ad for Simmons mattresses…
Margaret Frances Andrews was a noted dog breeder, seen above at the Newport Dog Show around 1915; below, Andrews had a small role in the 1920 Mary Pickford film Way Down East. Andrews—seen at left, she was credited as “Mrs. Morgan Belmont.”
…and we move on to this sad little ad from the back pages, featuring something called “Peeko,” which apparently mimicked the flavors of Rye, Gin and Rum…it must have tasted awful…
…our cartoons feature Perry Barlow, and I can’t quite tell if this guy is drinking a soda or some bootleg gin, which was often sold at select gas stations…
…a two-page sequence from Gardner Rea…
…Otto Soglow went fishing…
…and commiserated with a couple of unemployed guys whose plight is ignored by the celebrity-obsessed media…
…Alan Dunn hit the lecture circuit…
…Kemp Starrett sketched some wink-wink, nudge-nudge at the men’s store…
…and we close with James Thurber, and the trials of our elders…
With the explosion of car ownership in the 1920s and 30s came improved highways across America, but if one were to undertake a long-distance journey, like TheNew Yorker’s Morris Markey, you were bound to find a wide range of conditions, from concrete highways to muddy dirt roads.
July 25, 1931 cover by Gardner Rea.
Markey wrote about his experience of driving from New York City to Atlanta for his “Reporter at Large” column, noting that stops at filling stations also offered opportunities to fill up on bootleg gin. Drunk driving, it seems, wasn’t a big concern in the early 1930s.
BLUE HIGHWAYS…Although the U.S. launched into major roadbuilding projects in the 1920s and 30s, rutted and muddy roads were still common in many areas of the country. Clockwise, from top left, Route 1 winds through Maryland in the 1920s; marker indicating the Mason and Dixon Line dividing Pennsylvania from Maryland, circa 1930; a 1930s dirt road in the Eastern U.S.; a policeman directs traffic in Richmond, Va., in the 1930s. (Library of Congress/fhwa.dot.gov/theshockoeexaminer.blogspot.com)TIME TO GIN UP…James H. Brown (left), at the first of his four service stations in Richmond, Va., circa 1930. Some service stations offered Morris Markey bootleg gin during his journey to Atlanta. My use of this photo, however, does not imply that Mr. Brown offered the same service. (vintagerva.blogspot.com)
Unfortunately, Markey shared the sensibilities of many of his fellow Americans 89 years ago, and made this observation about drivers below the Mason and Dixon Line:
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Pale Riders
Since the mid-19th century Chelsea’s Tenth Avenue was known as “Death Avenue” due to the killing and maiming of hundreds who got in the way of freight trains that plowed through 10th and 11th Avenues in the service of warehouses and factories in the district. In the 1850s the freight line hired horsemen known as “West Side Cowboys” to warn wagons and pedestrians of oncoming trains, but even with this precaution nearly 450 people were killed by trains between 1852 and 1908, with almost 200 deaths occurring in the decade preceding 1908. Calls for an elevated railroad were finally answered with the opening of the High Line in 1934. “The Talk of the Town” looked in on the last of these urban cowboys:
WESTSIDE COWBOYS…Clockwise, from top left, a steam locomotive rumbles down 11th Avenue in the 1920s; a West Side Cowboy William Connolly rides ahead of a train to warn pedestrians in 1932; George Hayde led the final ride of the West Side cowboys up 10th Avenue on March 24, 1941; aerial view of the High Line from 18th Street heading north. Opened in 1934, the High Line lifted most train traffic 30 feet above the street. Today it serves only pedestrians, and is one of New York’s biggest tourist draws. (Forgotten NY/AP/NY Times/thehighline.org)
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Guys and Dolls
“The Talk of the Town” had some fun with a little-known aspect of a notorious gangster’s life; namely, the doll-filled house belonging to Jack “Legs” Diamond:
DOLL HOUSE…This house on Route 23 near Cairo, New York, once sheltered gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond, his wife, Alice, and her extensive collection of dolls and other knick-knacks. (nydailynews.com/Zillow)
“Talk” also made joking reference to the number of times Diamond had been shot and survived to tell about it.
Diamond’s luck would run out at the end of 1931 — Dec. 18, to be exact — when gunmen would break into his hotel room in Troy, NY, and put three bullets into his head.
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Ziggy’s Stardust
Florenz Ziegfeld (1867-1932) had a knack for show business, launching the careers of many entertainers through his Ziegfeld Follies, which got its start in 1907 during vaudeville’s heyday. The advent of sound movies signaled the end of the vaudeville era and of Ziegfeld himself, who would stage one final Follies before his death in 1932. Gilbert Seldes penned a two-part profile of Ziegfeld under the title “Glorifier” (caricature by the great Abe Birnbaum). An excerpt:
GO WITH THE FLO…Broadway impresario Florenz “Flo” Ziegfeld Jr with his Follies cast, 1931. It would prove to be his last Follies show. Revivals following his death in 1932 would prove to be much less successful. (Wall Street Journal)
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If Looks Could Kill
The New Yorker’s film critic John Mosher had a difficult time making sense of Murder by the Clock and its lead actress, Lilyan Tashman, who gave a tongue-in-cheek performance as the film’s femme fatale.
ARE YOU NUTS?…Irving Pichel and Lilyan Tashman in Murder by the Clock (1931). Tashman was known for her tongue-in-cheek portrayals of villainesses in films she made before her untimely death in 1934. (IMDB)
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Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Open-air performances of classical music and opera were popular summertime diversions in the days before air-conditioning. In 1931 crowds gathered in Lewisohn Stadium to hear the New York Philharmonic perform under the direction of Willem van Hoogstraten, who conducted the Lewisohn summer concert series from 1922 to 1939. Here is a listing in The New Yorker’s “Goings On About Town” section:
MUSIC IN THE AIR…Cover of the 1931 program for concerts at Lewisohn Stadium, College of the City of New York. Bottom right, signed photo of Willem van Hoogstraten from 1930. (digitalcollections.nypl.org/ebay.com)
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From Our Advertisers
Flo Ziegfeld’s 1931 Follies were lavish productions, but his advertising in The New Yorker was anything but as evidenced in this tiny ad that appeared at the bottom of page 52…
…no doubt anticipating the demise of Prohibition, the makers of Anheuser-Busch beverages ramped up the promotion of their non-alcoholic products to create associations with pre-Prohibition times…
…not to be outdone by the East Coast chocolates giant Schrafft’s, Whitman’s took out this full page ad to suggest how you might enjoy their product…
…which was in sharp contrast to the approach Schrafft’s took in this full-page ad featured in the April 25, 1931 New Yorker, which touted the health benefits of its candy…
…on to our cartoons, Richard Decker took us swimming with a middle-aged man who was anything but bored…
…Barbara Shermund went en plein air with a couple of her ditzy debs…
…Garrett Price also went to the country to find a bit of humor…
…Helen Hokinson found a home away from home for a couple looking to take the sea air…
…James Thurber continued to explore his brewing war between the sexes…
…Harry Haenigsen gave us a novel approach to landing a trophy fish…
…William Steig illustrated the wonders of the tailoring profession…
…and Alan Dunn aptly summed up the generation gap of the 1930s…
…on to the Aug. 1, 1931 issue…
August 1, 1931 cover by Rose Silver.
…”The Talk of the Town” mused about the advertising jingles made famous by the makers of Sapolio soap…
…Bret Harte actually did write jingles for the brand, once described by Time magazine as “probably the world’s best-advertised product” in its heyday. With a huge market share, Sapolio was so well known in the early 20th century that its owners decided they no longer needed to spend money on advertising. It was a poor decision, and by 1940 the product disappeared from the marketplace.
SEEING THE LIGHT OF DAY…A 19th century Sapolio sign on Broadway and Morris Street revealed after an adjoining building was demolished in 1930. (Museum of the City of New York)MONEY WELL SPENT…Sapolio ad from its heyday in the early 20th century. (Pinterest)
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Tough Love
As a charter member of the famed Algonquin Round Table, Heywood Broun was a friend to many of the founding writers and editors of The New Yorker. And so it must have been quite a task to review his play, Shoot the Works, which The New Yorker found wanting in a number of aspects. And because he was so close to Broun himself, Robert Benchley left the review writing to someone who signed the column “S. Finny.” I can’t find any record of an S. Finny at The New Yorker, and I don’t believe this is a Benchley pseudonym (he used “Guy Fawkes” in The New Yorker). At any rate, here is an excerpt:
SHOOT GETS SHOT…The New Yorker wasn’t crazy about Heywood Broun’s play, which ran for 87 performances at George M. Cohan’s Theatre. (Playbill)
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From Our Advertisers
The makers of the “Flexo” ice cube tray continued to tout the wonders of their product with these Ripley-themed ads. This might appear rather mundane to modern eyes, but electric refrigerators with built-in freezers were still rather novel in 1931…
…another way to stay cool in the summer of 1931 was to take an excursion to the Northern climes…
…this ad for the New York American featured an illustration by Herbert Roese, whose early work strongly resembled that of Peter Arno’s…
…on to our cartoons, we have the latest antics of the Little King courtesy Otto Soglow…
…William Steig added levity to a heavy moment…
…Barbara Shermund found humor at an antiques shop…
...John Held Jr continued his revels into our “naughty” Victorian past…
…and we end with Garrett Price, and a look at the ways of the modern family…
Charles Lindbergh gained worldwide fame when he flew solo across the Atlantic in 1927, but the staid Lindy had nothing on Hubert Fauntleroy Julian when it came to personality (and politics, as we shall see). The Trinidad-born Black aviator not only pushed the limits of early 20th century aviation, but did it all with style and pizzazz.
July 18, 1931 cover by Helen Hokinson. More on Helen’s 1931 travel covers in the cartoon section at the end of this blog entry.
Julian (1897-1983), known as “The Black Eagle,” left Trinidad in 1914 for Montreal, where he first learned to fly. He moved on to Harlem in 1921, where he polished his flying skills with aviator Clarence Chamberlin and practiced his parachute jumps. In the first of a two-part “Profile,” Morris Markey related Julian’s first encounter with Chamberlin:
DOING IT WITH STYLE…At left, Hugo Gellert portrait for The New Yorker “Profile;” at right, the dapper Hubert Julian in 1937 (note the monocle hanging in front of his waistcoat). (harlemworldmagazine.com)
Julian did everything with brio; during one jump in New Jersey in 1923, he played “I’m Running Wild” on the saxophone while plummeting toward the earth. Keep in mind that the first planned free-fall jump from an airplane with a packed parachute occurred just four years earlier, in 1919. Heaven only knows how Julian made it to age 85.
BRING IT ON…Julian poses with his airplane, Ethiopia I, in the 1920s. At right, a 1935 syndicated feature on Julian’s exploits. In 1931 he became the first flyer of African descent to fly coast-to-coast in the United States. (Brooklyn Eagle/Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 2, 1935)THIS IS HOW WE DO IT…In the early days, parachute jumpers often climbed onto a wing to make their jump. Pictured here is Leslie Irvin, who on April 28, 1919, became the first aviator to make a descent with a “free type” manually operated parachute. (wondersofworldaviation.com)
During the 1930s Julian briefly headed the Ethiopian Air Corps, then returned to the States to tour as a member of an all-Black flying troupe, “The Five Blackbirds.” Incensed over comments Nazi leaders were making about Blacks and other races during World War II, Julian famously challenged Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, to an aerial duel above the English Channel (Göring did not respond to the challenge). By contrast, Charles Lindbergh received a medal from Göring during a dinner at the American Embassy in Berlin in 1938, and praised the Nazi regime that would later go to war against his own country.
Julian was no choirboy, however, and after the war he became a licensed arms dealer, which eventually got him in trouble with the United Nations and earned him a four-month stint in jail. After his release, Julian retired, appearing on talk shows (including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson) and hobnobbing with celebrities such as boxer Muhammad Ali.
(Louisville Courier-Journal, March 21, 1964)
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I’ll Take a Dozen
“The Talk of the Town” followed its sweet tooth to a Broadway storefront where Adolph Levitt’s famed doughnut-making machine was cranking out 1,200 doughnuts an hour before hungry, wondering crowds.
MR DOUGHNUT…Clockwise, top left, doughnut machine inventor Adolph Levitt (front row, dark suit) with some chums at a train station; doughnut gawkers gather before the window at Levitt’s Mayflower Doughnuts, 1933 (photo by Martin Munkácsi); ad touting one of Levitt’s machines as a form of entertainment; and an illustration by Robert McCloskey from his beloved children’s book, Homer Price, of a doughnut machine gone berserk. (ice.org/econlife.com/Pinterest)
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Surfing the Jersey Cliffs
Along with doughnut machine-watching, another fun summertime diversion was New Jersey’s Palisades Amusement Park, which was purchased in 1909 by brothers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck and transformed into one of the most visited amusement parks in the country. “The Talk of the Town” recalled its origins:
COME HITHER suggests the sign for Palisades Amusement Park, offering dancing, vaudeville and surf-bathing among other diversions. Circa-1940 postcards featured the mechanically generated surfing pool and the famed “Cyclone” roller-coaster. (Pinterest)
And these were the guys responsible for all of that fun…
Joseph (left) and Nicholas Schenck might not look like carefree sorts, but both had a knack for the entertainment world that would make them two of the most powerful executives in mid-century Hollywood. Among other things, Joseph played a key role in launching the career of Marilyn Monroe. He was, naturally, infatuated with her.
IS THAT YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER?…Joe Schenck and Marilyn Monroe are flanked by Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons at a birthday party for Winchell at Ciro’s Nightclub, May 13, 1953. (Pinterest)
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Claptrap
Robert Benchley couldn’t seem to let go of his recent experience at the revived Ziegfeld Follies. In his latest theatre column, he groused about the witless rubes in the audience who clapped over the sound of the performances, including Ruth Etting’s signature “Shine on Harvest Moon.” Take it away, Bob…
HOLD YOUR APPLAUSE…PLEASE…It was impossible to hear the trademark “cry” in Ruth Etting’s voice let alone anything else over the incessant applause at Ziegfeld Theatre.
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Coping With a Dry Climate
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White mused over the explosion of corkscrews, flasks and other drinking accessories that were patented during Prohibition:
WHERE THERE’S A WILL…Flapper displays her garter flask in this photo from 1926. At right, a Demley “Old Snifter” corkscrew and bottle opener. (Wikipedia)
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From Our Advertisers
If you needed a stiff drink and an escape from the summer heat, well the heavenly shores of Bermuda might have been your (ahem) cup of tea…
…or you could have enjoyed the merriment aboard one of Cunard’s liners, which were headed both south to Bermuda and north to Nova Scotia (note Cunard’s continuing use of New Yorker cartoonists for their ads, Peter Arno, H.O. Hofman, and this week Barbara Shermund)…
…and we have another ad from Canadian Pacific announcing its around-the-world cruise on the Empress of Britain…
…which brings us to our cartoonists, or specifically, Helen Hokinson, who featured one of her “Best Girls” — a plump, wealthy, society woman — on an around-the-world cruise of her own, chronicled on a total of 11 covers in 1931.
Today’s cover marks the mid-way point of the dowager’s journey, where she encounters a situation perhaps not described in her travel folder…
…and here are the 11 covers that take us from bon voyage in March to the customs office in November…
…and appropriately, we launch into the cartoons with one of Hokinson’s “girls” being a bit naughty, even smoking a cigarette…
…one artist we don’t see much of during the summer of 1931 was Peter Arno, and for good reason: he ended a tempestuous marriage to Lois Long (relocating to Reno to obtain the divorce) in June, then immediately got involved in a sex scandal with a socialite, all the while working on a Broadway musical. Taking up the slack were cartoonists like Barbara Shermund, who for a time could be seen as a “near doppelgänger” of Arno, according to Michael Maslin in his excellent book,Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker’s Greatest Cartoonist (also see chapter six for more on Arno’s crazy summer of ’31). I feature two from Shermund in this issue:
…moving along, Garrett Price makes me wonder if drunken driving laws were enforced in 1931…
…William Steig gave us a couple of buddies discussing their literary tastes…
…and yet another cartoon with precocious kids, this time by Alice Harvey…
…speaking of being alone, a day at the beach would not be an option according to Gardner Rea…
…and we end with A.S. Foster, and a very modern-looking cartoon not only for its style but for the fact that it features anthropomorphic animal characters, rare in the early New Yorker…
A New Yorker State of Mind 