During the roughly thirteen years of Prohibition, many Americans had forgotten how to mix a decent cocktail; the concoctions they devised during those dry years were often created to mask the taste of bootleg liquor—sales of Coca-Cola steadily increased throughout the 1920s in part because it made ardent spirits such as rum and whisky a bit more palatable.
August 18, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Donald Barr Chidsey examined the phenomenon in “The Talk of the Town,” visiting with traumatized bartenders around Manhattan:
LOST ART…Donald Barr Chidsey relayed the horror of a customer at Sherry’s (top left, photo of the 300 Park Avenue entrance, c. 1925) who asked for ice cream in his rum punch; directly across the street from Sherry’s was the Waldorf Astoria (top right), where a customer asked for a drink of half ice cream, half Coca-Cola; bottom images are from Albert Crockett’sThe Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book—as to what one gathers from Chidsey’s account, more than a few people needed to check the “Glossarial” to get reacquainted with the spirit world. (Museum of the City of New York/kitchenartsandletters.com)CUBA LIBRE…According to Chidsey, the go-to for women patrons at the Hotel Weylin was a Barcardi and Coke; at left, Hotel Weylin in 1935; at right, lobby card featuring entertainment at the Weylin Bar, circa 1930s. (Museum of the City of New York/ebay)THE LAST STRAW…Chidsey wrote of an alarming trend among patrons at Schrafft’s who demanded straws in their Tom Collinses. The sleek, art moderne Schrafft’s at 61 Fifth Avenue was among more than two-dozen Schrafft’s locations in New York City in the 1930s. Known for cleanliness and home-style cooking, target clientele were middle-class women. (Architectural Record photos via daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)
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From Our Advertisers
Speaking of Schrafft’s, here is their advertisement from the Aug. 18 issue, offering breakfasts ranging from 35 to 75 cents that apparently were the stuff of O. Henry’s dreams…
…what is a woman to do with a restless husband?…drawing on the wisdom of the ages, she hands him a beer and coaxes him into his easy chair…this ad encouraged women to “always keep a few bottles in your refrigerator”…in other words, keep ’em coming until he settles into a manageable stupor…
…and see just how easily he slips away, leaving you with a few moments to yourself…
…if highballs were more to your taste, the folks at Poland Water stood ready to help…
…R.J. Reynolds claimed their Camels could solve all sorts of life challenges…we’ve seen ads claiming that Camels soothed “jangled nerves” and helped one relax, but apparently they also could give you energy and pep, at least that is what tennis star Ellsworth Vines, Jr claimed…
…lots of color in the ads for the Aug. 18 issue…here the folks at Buick featured a woman in a red dress serving as an exclamation point to their automobile, which was no ordinary motorcar, but rather a “congenial companion, alive with good-natured personality”…
…the folks at General Tire went one better, making their tires the star attraction…those tires look so attractive it seems almost a shame to dirty them on the road…
…on to our cartoons, we cool off with this spot in the opening pages by Alan Dunn…
…William Cotton contributed this caricature of New Deal Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson that accompanied a three-part profile…
…Rea Irvin offered up a bird of a different feather…
…Robert Day gave us this master of understatement…
…Alan Dunn again, examining the trials and tribulations of the leisure classes…
…Peter Arno offered this take on the Hays Code (after politician Will Hays), which was going into effect after the brief “Pre-Code” period (roughly 1930 to 1934) during which filmmakers felt freer to explore themes featuring sex and violence…
…George Price gave us a man have trouble hitting his mark…
…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) contributed a cartoon with a talking animal, common today but rare in the early New Yorker…
…Raeburn Van Buren was also down on the farm…I think we know the answer to this woman’s query…
…and we close with James Thurber, where mixed doubles were naturally fraught with peril…
Above: Final Design of Grand Central Terminal, ca. 1910. (New York Transit Museum)
The heat wave of 1934 spread misery from the Midwest to the East Coast. The temperature in New York City hit 101 degrees F (38.3 C) on June 29, and July recorded at least ten days of temps in the mid- to upper 90s. It must have been miserable in the days before air-conditioning, and since no adult would dare be seen in public wearing shorts and a t-shirt, an outing on a crowded tour boat, as illustrated below by William Cotton, must have been hellish.
July 21, 1934 cover by William Cotton.
…putting a fine point on it, recall this wryly captioned cartoon from the June 30 issue by Garrett Price…
…but let us move ahead to the July 28 issue, where E.B. White was hopefully keeping his cool in the men’s waiting room at Grand Central Station, where he plunked down a nickel to cool his heels in the “middle class” section, where he observed side attractions including a vending machine that dispensed handkerchiefs and a coin-operated peep show featuring burlesque star Sally Rand.
NO MASHERS ALLOWED…Separate men’s and ladies’ rooms were available in three classes at Grand Central Station—free, five cents and ten cents. Top, the Ladies’ room, Grand Central Terminal (Central Lines), and below, a men’s room at the station. A nickel back then was worth about a dollar today. (Library of Congress)NICKEL AND DIMED…Machines similar to these could be found in some men’s waiting rooms at train stations in the 1930s. (pinballhistory.com/comics.ha.com)
…White referred to a peep show that featured famed fan dancer Sally Rand…
DOING HER DEEP KNEE BENDS…Sally Rand in the 1930s. (www.vintag.es)
White also commented on the growing number of travelers, still pinched by the Depression, opting for the free section:
We settle in with the June 21 issue (which leads this post) with White once again, this time enjoying a drive to Stamford, Conn., where he admired the “splendor” of the Condé Nast printing plant (apparently the plant also printed The New Yorker, although the magazine itself would not be acquired by Condé Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications, until 1985).
ONLY A MEMORY…Postcard image of the Condé Nast printing plant; at left, a relic of the long-gone plant, one of two pillars that flanked the road to the plant. (Greenwich Historical Society/greenwichtime.com)
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Disney’s Other Mouse
Film critic John Mosher was a fan of Disney’s “Silly Symphony” cartoon shorts, which were produced between 1929 and 1939. Animation, and especially color animation, was in its infancy, so these doubtless had an uplifting effect on many moviegoers.
DON’T CALL ME TINKERBELL…The Butterfly Fairy brought some Disney magic to 1934’s The Flying Mouse. (disney.fandom.com)
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The Great McGonigle
W.C. Fields appeared in more than a dozen silent films before making his first talkie, 1930’s The Golf Specialist, and it was in sound films that Fields was able to truly express his vaudevillian wit. It was also in the sound era that Fields teamed up with Baby LeRoy for three films (in 1933 and 1934), including The Old Fashioned Way, in which Fields portrayed “The Great McGonigle,” leader of a traveling (and perpetually underfunded) theater troupe who was always a step ahead of police and creditors. Critic John Mosher found the film’s riff on an old morality play, The Drunkard, to be a bit dated, but overall thought it a cheerful diversion.
HONK…Baby LeRoy, aka Ronald Le Roy Overacker (1932–2001), was just 16 months old when he became the youngest person ever put under term contract by a major studio. He is best known for his appearances in three W. C. Fields films: Tillie and Gus (1933), The Old Fashioned Way (1934) and It’s a Gift (1934). (Rotten Tomatoes/IMDB)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with scientific proof (from a “famous research laboratory in New York”) that Camel cigarettes increased one’s flow of energy…
…if that crackpot claim doesn’t get you, here’s one that recommended downing a PBR before a big meeting, a sure remedy for that “listless, tired-out feeling”…
…of course we all know that a few sugary Cokes will get you going…back then they were taking it in six- and ten-ounce bottles, not 30- to 50-ounce Big Gulps…
…it’s not every day you see a dog food ad in The New Yorker…in the 1930s there was no secret to where ol’ Sparky ended up…
…popular were these Rockwellian ads that equated various products with happy and wholesome (and safe) living, in this case a massive “Dual-Balloon” tire that dominated this tableau featuring a stylish mommy and her little boy slumming with an old sea salt…
…the folks at Essex House hired an illustrator who did his or her best to channel Helen Hokinson and William Steig for this New Yorker ad…as we have seen before, Essex House ads walked a fine line between thrift and snob appeal…
…on to our cartoons, beginning with Ned Hilton, whose work appeared in The New Yorker from 1934 to 1957…
…Mary Petty recorded some sweet nothings by the seaside…
…George Price drifted along with two men and tuba…
…Carl Rose revealed a modest side to life at a nudist colony…
…we know Clarence Day for his Life With Father series, but on occasion he also contributed illustrated poems such as this one from the July 21 issue…
…on to July 28…
July 28, 1934 cover by Adolph K. Kronengold.
…where we encounter more “scientific research” that encouraged folks to smoke…This ad was placed on the very last page of the July 28 issue by the Cigarette Research Institute, based in Louisville, Kentucky…
…the booklet was filled with “amazing facts” uncovered in a “scientific investigation,” facts did not address the health effects of smoking, but rather such important topics as how to hold a cigarette the right way and how to reduce staining on your teeth…it also helpfully debunked the notion that nicotine was a “dread demon”…
…take for example this woman smoking a Lucky…now she knew how to hold a cigarette!…
…the folks at Essex House were back, aggressively playing the class/caste card…apparently if you lived there you were entitled to kick your old friends to the curb…
…the antacid and pain reliever Bromo-Seltzer was ubiquitous in 1930s medicine cabinets, but after the recipe was changed in the 1970s (all Bromides were withdrawn from the U.S. market in 1975) the brand slowly fizzled away…
…Mildred Oppenheim Melisse was a popular illustrator of ads for department stores and various household goods, including Cannon towels, here guaranteed to absorb even this man’s sweaty “flood”…
…Dr. Seuss back again for Flit, once again having no issues mixing insecticide with food preparation…
…Rea Irvin kicks off the cartoons with his Double Breasted Dowager…
…Helen Hokinson found some misplaced pity at a garden party…
…Garrett Price offered some unsolicited advice…
…Reginald Marsh filled two pages with a scene from Central Park…
…Robert Day looked for a unique experience at an auto camp…
…and we close with Barbara Shermund, and some alarming news on the domestic front…
Above: Illustration of the Dorchester Hotel’s ballroom in the 1930s. (dorchestercollection.com)
Lois Long took her nightlife column, “Tables for Two,” to London and its famed nightclub scene, where everyone from British royalty to gangsters reveled in a boozy, bohemian scene.
July 7, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Prince Edward, a well-known party animal (who would serve as king for less than a year and abdicate in 1936) was known to get up on the stage of the Embassy Club and perform drum solos, while at the Savoy his fellow toffs would sip Champagne and glide in elegant dress across the dance floor. London nightlife included a lively jazz scene in edgy Soho basement clubs, featuring such greats as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie.
Long hoped that the visit to London, her first in eight years, would give her some much-needed rest and a change of scene. What she found instead was a red-hot, all-night party, where the smart set took dinner near midnight and danced until dawn.
SAVVY SAVOY….Clockwise from top left, the famed Savoy bartender Harry Craddock, credited with inventing the White Lady and the Corpse Reviver, at the Savoy’s American Bar in the 1930s; a Savoy elevator operator in 1926; diners at the Savoy circa 1930s; Savoy entrance. (madamgenevaandgent.co.uk/The Savoy/YouTube)LONDON SWINGS…More Lois Long haunts in London included, clockwise from top left, the Dorchester Hotel; the crowded dance floor at the Monseigneur with Roy Fox and his Orchestra (photo from 1932); patrons kicking up their heels at the Embassy Club on Old Bond Street; the Café de Paris, where American actress Louise Brooks demonstrated a new dance craze, The Charleston, in 1924. (dorchestercollection.com/albowlly.club/lucyjanesantos.com/Wikipedia)
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Misery Loves Company
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White observed that almost everyone was “made miserable” by the Depression, but if one looked around there were signs that things weren’t so bad after all.
REASON FOR CHEER…For those still feeling blue about the Depression, E.B. White suggested watching kids cool off at a pier, such as these lads seen diving into the East River on the Lower East Side on July 3, 1935. (Jack Gordon/New York Daily News)
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He Came Up a Bit Short
Howard Brubaker, in his column “Of All Things,” made this observation about Adolf Hitler’s prediction that Nazism would endure a thousand years.
And now a retreat into the cool darkness of the cinema, where John Mosher singled out Bette Davis’s performance in Of Human Bondage…Mosher’s instincts were correct—the film proved to be Davis’s breakout role on her road to major stardom.
ROAD TO RUIN…Bette Davis wowed the critics with her portrayal of a tearoom waitress who seduces a young medical student (Leslie Howard) and leads him down a path of self-destruction. The film was based on the 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. (IMDB)
Mosher also took in the “bright” performances of William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man, a pre-Code comedy-mystery based on the Dashiell Hammett novel by the same name. Powell and Loy portrayed Nick and Nora Charles, who added spice to their leisurely lives through numerous cocktails, flirtatious banter, and crime-solving. Critics loved the film, as did audiences, spawning five sequels from 1936 to 1947.
CHEERS…Top photo: Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) enjoy a drink with their client’s fiancee (Henry Wadsworth) in The Thin Man (1934); Bottom photo: Charles takes aim at a Christmas ornament (with a BB gun) while Nora enjoys the comforts of her new fur coat in a scene from The Thin Man. (Daily Beast/Austin Chronicle)
Another star of the show was Asta, the Charles’s wire fox terrier. Asta was portrayed by Skippy, a dog actor who not only appeared in The Thin Man films but also acted alongside Cary Grant in 1937’s The Awful Truth and in 1938’s Bringing Up Baby. Skippy appeared in three Thin Man movies and in more than twenty films altogether between 1932 and 1941. Being an actor in the film must have been good for one’s health: Powell lived 91 years, Loy 88 years, and Skippy, 20 years—a good long life for any pooch.
ROUGH NIGHT…Nick (William Powell) and Asta (Skippy) tend to Nora (Myrna Loy), who nurses a hangover in The Thin Man. (Wikipedia)
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From Our Advertisers
While Chrysler’s styling of their streamlined Airflow proved to be too far advanced for the buying public (the Depression didn’t help), Studebaker’s own foray into the streamlined future caused a sensation…
…thanks to Studebaker’s brief merger with Pierce-Arrow (1928–33), Studebaker’s designers took cues from Pierce’s streamlined 1933 Silver Arrow and created more than 800 cars with “Year-Ahead” design features—the positive reception convinced the company to continue the style in 1935…here is a top-of-the-line 1934 President Land Cruiser…
1934 Studebaker President Land Cruiser with “Year-Ahead” design features, yet not as radical as Chrysler’s Airflow. (hemmings.com)
…we continue with those round rubber things that held the cars up…a lot of tire ads in the 1930s emphasized safety—blowouts were common back then…funny how it took nearly four decades to add seat belts to cars…those tires wouldn’t help much in a head-on collision, especially with your kid standing on the from seat…
…now let’s cool off with crisp Canadian Ale, thanks to Carling’s entry into the American market…
…Carling’s Black Label beer was popular in the states…my parents had a set of these coasters with the Black Label tagline…
…Budweiser continued its artful series of ads featuring the well-heeled enjoying its product…here it appears old dad (wearing some kind of medal) is getting to know his daughter-in-law over some cold chicken…”hey boy, she’s one of us!”…
…and we move on to three very different approaches to selling cigarettes, beginning with Spud, continuing its message that menthol cigarettes are as refreshing as a shower on a July afternoon…
…a close up of the message…
…Camel, on the other hand, continued its campaign against irritability…it apparently did wonders for this woman, who seems to be on something more than nicotine…
…and from the people who brought us the tagline “blow some my way” in 1928 (as a way to encourage women to take up the habit), by 1934 she is owning that cigarette, and apparently setting some ground rules with the gentleman…
…contrast with the more submissive pose in the Chesterfield ad from the late 1920s…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with spot art by Alan Dunn, which appears to have originated as a captioned cartoon…
…William Steig offered up this bit of art for a profile of an “insurance man” by St. Clair McKelway…
…Helen Hokinson drew up a full page of cartoons along the theme of outdoor dining…
…we continue Rea Irvin’s series on native birds…
…George Price found a way to save on the cost of light bulbs…
…and we close with James Thurber, and a welcome to the family…
Above: For this Hollywood-heavy post we feature stars of the 1930s—the two Joans, Joan Blondell (left) and Joan Crawford, marking the Fourth of July holiday.
The New Yorker marked the Fourth of July with this William Steig cover featuring a patriotic “strap” along the binding and one of his precocious “Small Fry”…
June 30, 1934 cover by William Steig.
We’ve been looking at ways New Yorkers kept their cool in the hot summer of 1934, and one way to beat the heat was to escape into the air-conditioned darkness of a movie theater. It was not uncommon for folks to remain seated after the credits rolled and watch the feature all over again, just enjoy some cold comfort.
Film critic John Mosher no doubt enjoyed this particular perk, and perhaps this made him a bit more agreeable to whatever was playing on the big screen, including three rather dull pictures featuring actresses Marion Davies, Kay Francis and Elissa Landi.
Marion Davies (1897–1961) was the veteran of the group, beginning her film career in 1917 and appearing in thirty silent films before breaking into sound movies. Sadly, her talents as an actress and comedian were overshadowed by her reputation as William Randolph Hearst’s mistress. Known for her aristocratic bearing, Austrian-American actress Elissa Landi (1904–1948) appeared in several British silents and on Broadway before signing with Fox Films in 1931. Kay Francis (1905–1968) began her film career with the advent of sound movies in 1929. A major box-office draw for Warner Brothers, by 1935 Francis was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors (she was also a former roommate and longtime friend of The New Yorker’s Lois Long).
BEFORE SCARLETT AND RHETT…Gary Cooper and Marion Davies as star-crossed lovers in the 1934 Civil War drama Operator 13. Davies portrayed actress Gail Loveless, recruited by the Union to infiltrate a Confederate camp, where she falls for Capt. Jack Gailliard, a Confederate officer played by Cooper. (IMDB)
Perhaps one of the more notorious examples of a white actor in blackface, Operator 13 featured Davies as a Union spy who poses as a Black maid to infiltrate a Confederate camp…
FOOLING NO ONE…Marion Davies, in blackface, with Sam McDaniel in Operator 13. (IMDB)PLAYING DOCTOR…Kay Francis and Warren William in the 1934 Pre-Code drama Dr. Monica. (IMDB)JUST KEEP PRETENDING UNTIL THE CREDITS…From left, Adolphe Menjou, Elissa Landi, and David Manners in the 1934 romantic comedy The Great Flirtation. (IMDB)
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Sentimental Journey
Another critic enjoying the cool of the theater was Robert Benchley, who used this break in the Broadway season to reveal his passions regarding a number of stage actresses. An excerpt:
BENCHLEY’S BROADWAY…Robert Benchley’s all-time favorite Broadway actresses included, from top row, left to right, Maud Adams, Florence Reed, Gladys Hanson, and Charlotte Walker; second row, from left, Laura Hope Crews, Julia Marlowe, Maxine Elliott, and Ethel Barrymore; third row, Janet Beecher, Ina Claire, Marguerite Clark, and Jane Cowl; fourth row, Elsie Ferguson, Martha Hedman, Marjorie Rambeau, and Pauline Frederick. (NYPL/Wikipedia/IMDB)
* * *
A Poke at Palooka
In his column “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker took a shot below the belt at the new heavyweight boxing champ, Max Baer.
WHO SEZ I CAN’T READ?…Max Baer in the 1930s. (boxing.fandom.com/wiki)
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From Our Advertisers
It was hot outside, folks were cooling off with their favorite beverages, and advertisers responded in kind…we begin with a familiar green bottle, and with apologies to Max Baer, you didn’t need to know how to read to know this was a bottle of Perrier…
…if your taste was more on the domestic side, there was White Rock…
…a series of Hoffman Club Soda ads sought to convince consumers about their superior carbonation…
…or how about a brandy, perhaps lightly chilled, especially if it’s late in the evening, and you happen to be sitting on a breezy hotel rooftop…
…or you could cool down with a Lion beer…considered a heritage brewery, Lion Brewery is one of only ten pre-Prohibition breweries that has independently and continuously operated since the repeal of Prohibition…
…a fairly new brand of cigarettes, Marlboro, was still taking out these bargain-sized ads to build brand recognition…Flit insecticide, on the other hand, was well-known thanks to these ubiquitous Dr. Seuss ads…
…the folks at General Tire & Rubber were the latest advertiser to tie their product to the glamour of aviation…
…and on to our cartoons, we begin with another installment of native birds via Rea Irvin…
…Al Frueh chimed in with this three-panel encounter at a nudist colony…
…Robert Day presented a case of indigestion…
…Garrett Price welcomed us aboard a dream cruise…
…George Price gave us this gem in the “Goings On About Town” section,,,
…Gardner Rea gave us his spare line to illustrate an enormous space…one of his specialties…
…Gilbert Bundy marked the Fourth with an entitled jaywalker…
…and we close with Mary Petty, and a banker’s contentment…
Back in the days before we had a zillion different entertainment options, almost anyone with a pair of ears would tune in to hear the radio broadcast of a heavyweight title fight.
June 23, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney dominated the late 1920s, while Joe Louis, Max Schmeling and Jack Sharkey were marquee names in the 1930s along with Max Baer and Primo Carnera, who met on June 14, 1934 at the outdoor Madison Square Garden Bowl in Long Island City. The reigning champ Carnera (1906–1967), who stood six-and-a-half feet tall and weighed in at 260 pounds, had won more fights by knockout than any other heavyweight champion. But Baer (1909–1959) was known as a knockout puncher who beat one opponent so savagely that he died the following day.
DEADLY DUEL…Max Baer (right) fought Frankie Campbell on Aug. 25, 1930, in San Francisco for the unofficial title of Pacific Coast champion. In the fifth round Baer got Campbell against the ropes and hammered him senseless. Campbell died the next day. An autopsy revealed that Campbell’s brain was “knocked completely loose from his skull.” Baer was profoundly affected by Campbell’s death, and donated purses from succeeding bouts to Campbell’s family. (thefightcity.com)
Baer was also something of a showboater, a quality Morris Markey found distasteful when he wrote about the Baer–Carnera bout in “A Reporter at Large.”
ALL SMILES…A year before their championship bout Max Baer (left) and Primo Carnera starred with Myrna Loy in The Prizefighter and the Lady. (theusaboxingnews.com)
GIANT SLAYER…The Italian prizefighter and wrestler Primo Carnera, nicknamed the “Ambling Alp,” was the reigning heavyweight champion when he faced Max Baer on June 14, 1934 at the Madison Square Garden Bowl. Baer felled the champion eleven times before the fight was stopped in the eleventh round. Baer would only hold the title for a year, losing to James J. Braddock on June 13, 1935, in what has been called one of the greatest upsets in boxing history. (theusaboxingnews.com)
Markey further explained why Baer’s behavior in the ring was so bothersome, and how it differed from the comic antics of other famous athletes:
RETIRING TYPES…Both Primo Carnera and Max Baer acted in films during their boxing careers, and continued acting after their retirements (Carnera in 1944, Baer in 1941). At left, Carnera with Bob Hope in the 1954 American comedy Casanova’s Big Night (Carnera appeared in eleven Italian films and in a half-dozen American films); at right, Max Baer and brother Buddy Baer (also a boxer) with Lou Costello in the 1949 comedy Africa Screams. Baer would appear in more than 20 films.(theusaboxingnews.com/monstermoviemusic.blogspot.com)
Complications from diabetes would take Carnera down for good at age 60. Baer would die even younger, from a heart attack, at age 50. His last words reportedly were, “Oh God, here I go.” Baer’s son, actor and director Max Baer Jr. (best known as Jethro Bodine from TV’s The Beverly Hillbillies) is still with us, at age 85.
We aren’t quite finished with the Baer–Carnera fight…E.B. White led his “Notes and Comment” with this observation regarding the fight’s mass appeal and seeming universality:
* * *
Apologies to Ms. Winslow
I seem to have given short shrift to author Thyra Samter Winslow (1886–1961) who published more than 200 stories during her career in magazines such as The Smart Set and The American Mercury. She published more than thirty in TheNew Yorker, from 1927 to 1942, including the serialization of her short story collection, My Own, My Native Land. The story “Poodles” was featured in the June 23 issue.
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Winslow’s early life in Fort Smith (Ark.) “provided background for her view of small towns as prejudiced, hypocritical, and suffocating places…many stories expose the hypocrisy, prejudice, and carefully maintained social structures of both small town and urban life. She was particularly adept at portraying women of every social class, often in an unfavorable light. Money, especially the pursuit of it as a means to happiness or status, is an important theme throughout her work.”
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS…Thyra Samter Winslow with friend, 1937. (findagrave.com)
* * *
Hot Enough For Ya?
So what did New Yorkers do when the summer heat set in? The next few items offer some clues, beginning with this poem by E.B. White:
SUMMER STOCK…Theatergoers fled to shady villages in New York, New Jersey and New England in the 1920s and 30s when summer stock theater was at its height. The above photo shows theatergoers leaving a performance at the Lakewood Theatre near Skowhegan, Maine. The theater was claimed to be the oldest and finest summer stock company in America with a Broadway cast. Nearby Lakewood Inn provided recreation, camping, and tourist bungalows. (mainememory.net)
You could also take in some entertainment while enjoying the cooling breezes of the Hudson River. Robert Benchley hopped aboard the Alexander Hamilton to enjoy Bobby Sanford’s showboat revue:
SOME REAL SHOWBOATING…Clockwise, from top left, the steamboat Alexander Hamilton hosted Bobby Sanford’s showboat revue; comedian Lester Allen served as emcee for the show; the Meyer Davis Orchestra supplied the music; the revue featured the “exotic” DuVal sisters (image from program) among other diversions. (Hudson River Maritime Museum/IMDB/vintagebandstand.blogspot.com/Worthpoint)
“Tables for Two” took a look at summer dining options, from sidewalk cafes to hotel rooftops featuring dinner and dancing—this “Tables” was not written by Lois Long, but by Margaret Case Harriman, who knew a thing or two about nightlife (she was the daughter of the Hotel Algonquin’s owner, Frank Case)…
DANCING WITH THE STARS…The Waldorf-Astoria’s “Starlight Roof” was a popular summer restaurant for dining and dancing. Image from a 1935 publication The Waldorf-Astoria by Richard Averill Smith. (The Waldorf-Astoria)
* * *
Doing Swimmingly
Historian Henry F. Pringle published part two of his series on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, here marveling at the president’s health despite his serious bout with polio (drawing by William Cotton).
TAKING THE WATERS…President Franklin D. Roosevelt took to swimming for therapy and exercise. (FDR Presidential Library and Museum)
* * *
Get Yourself to Chi-Town
The Chicago World’s Fair (The Century of Progress) was in its second and final year, and The New Yorker found everything “terrific.” Excerpt:
MAKING A SPECTACLE OF ITSELF…The 11-acre Ford Motor Company exhibit at Chicago’s Century of Progress became the most talked-about exhibit of 1934, featuring a central rotunda designed to simulate graduated clusters of gears. At right, Proof of Safety Exhibit in the Ford Building. (chicagology.com)
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From Our Advertisers
Just a couple of entries this week…You could take a plane to the Chicago World’s Fair on a United Airlines Boeing 247…
…the lower section of the ad claimed you could fly to Chicago in about five hours in planes featuring “Two pilots…stewardess…two-way radio…directive radio beam”…
TSA? WHAT’S A TSA?…United Airlines Boeing 247-D at an airport terminal with passengers and crew. (digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu)COZY CONFINES…Passengers enjoy a game of checkers aboard a Boeing 247 in 1933. (digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu)
…and what would our advertising section be without two fashionable people lighting up?…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with Reginald Marsh’s illustration of a Rep Theatre production…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King found his artistic side…
…Rea Irvin continued his examination of native fauna…
…Gardner Rea correctly predicted the global domination of Mickey Mouse…
…Peter Arno showed the dizzying effects of a Coney Island ride…
…however at the altar the thrill was gone, per Garrett Price…
…another take on the ways of love, with Barbara Shermund...
…the newfangled diagonal bathtub continued to dazzle, with George Price…
…Gardner Rea offered up some subtle irony on the farm…
…and we close with James Thurber, in a poetic moment…
Above: Wooden Horses(detail) by Reginald Marsh, 1936. Marsh was a frequent visitor to Coney Island, a place that inspired numerous sketches and paintings. (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)
We officially kick off the summer with a visit to Coney Island, where “The Talk of the Town” took in the latest sights and amusements.
June 16, 1934 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
This excerpted “Talk” piece, attributed either to an “H. Beckett” orFrancis Steegmuller, describes a post-Prohibition Coney Island with liquor to be had (although at only three locations) and new attractions including several imported from the 1933-34 Chicago’s World’s Fair (aka “The Century of Progress”).
CLANKITY CLANK…The mechanical man referred to in the “Talk” piece was likely similar to the one pictured above in this October 1933 feature in Popular Mechanics. Like many “robots” of that era, they were often pictured smoking cigarettes. (Google books)WET YOUR WHISTLE…Beer flowed up and down the boardwalk at Coney Island, but if you wanted something stronger you had to stop by the Half Moon Hotel or one of these establishments, Childs (left) or Feltmans’. (www.coneyislandhistory.org)LEAVE SOME FOR ME…An estimated one million New Yorkers visited Coney Island on July 4, 1934 to get away from the heat of the city. (stuffnobodycaresabout.com)DIFFERING INTERPRETATIONS…In his 1934 painting, Coney Island (left), artist Paul Cadmus portrayed beachgoers as ridiculous and uncouth rabble, while Cadmus’s friend and fellow artist Reginald Marsh took a somewhat kinder approach to the same subject in his 1936 Coney Island (right). (Jon F. Anderson, Estate of Paul Cadmus, licensed by VAGA, obtained via lacma.org / Syracuse University Art Collection)
Of course it wouldn’t be Coney Island without grisly wax museum scenes inspired by the latest sensational headlines…bank robber John Dillinger was still on the run, and “little June Robles” was finally free and apparently unharmed after being kidnapped and locked in a desert cage for 19 days…
THANKS WINDY CITY…At left, the Chicago World’s Fair inspired Coney Island to build a trackless, bobsled-style “flying turns” coaster in Steeplechase Park (the wooden ride was destroyed by fire after only five years of operation). At right, a postcard image of the Eden Musee wax museum. (riverviewparkchicago.com / New York Public Library)ON THE BOARDWALK…Another Coney scene by Reginald Marsh, titled Pip and Flip, 1932. (Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago Daniel J. Terra Collection via artblart.com)
* * *
Luck of the Irish
The Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake (more commonly known as the Irish Sweepstakes) was established in 1930 to raise funding for hospitals in Ireland. Although lotteries were generally illegal in the U.S., millions of tickets were sold in the States, many of them in New York and New England. In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White wondered what would become of the lottery’s newest American winners, including former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Alma Mamay, who won $152,000 in the Irish sweepstakes. White might have been pleased to know that Mamay moved to California, married a millionaire oil tycoon, and lived to the age of ninety-one.
CALIFORNY IS THE PLACE YOU OUGHTA BE..Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Alma Mamay took her Sweepstakes winnings and fled to California, where she married a millionaire oil tycoon. (ziegfeldfolliesgirls.com)
* * *
Rugged Individual
Matthew Alexander Henson (1866–1955) was an African American explorer who accompanied Polar explorer Robert Peary to the Arctic seven times, participating in a 1908–1909 expedition that arguably made Henson the first explorer to reach the geographic North Pole. “The Talk of the Town” caught up with Henson on the feat’s 25th anniversary.
GO NORTH YOUNG MAN…At left, Matthew Henson circa 1910. At right, photograph of Henson and four Inuit guides on the last stretch of their 1908–09 expedition, taken by Robert Peary at what they believed to be the North Pole. Henson (center) planted the flag. (Wikipedia)
* * *
POTUS Profiled
Pulitizer Prize-winning historian Henry F. Pringle published the first installment of a three-part profile of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this excerpt Pringle writes about FDR’s sense of humor (illustration by William Cotton):
* * *
Mattress Campers
The “About the House” column featured the latest in home-cooling devices. Couldn’t afford the zillions it would cost to install a home air-conditioner? Well the folks at Crosley—an electronics company known for its radios—offered a more affordable solution: an air-conditioned tent that could be erected over one’s bed for $150 (about $3,500 in today’s dollars):
Here is a 1934 ad for the contraption I found at worldradiohistory.com:
…and we continue with more from our advertisers, including the Broadway magazine The Stage, which offered up this idyllic scene showing what folks did in the days before air-conditioning…
…you could also escape the heat by taking to the high seas aboard the Italian liner SS Rex…
…seen below arriving in New York in this 1932 photo, the 911-foot SS Rex was the largest ship built in Italy before World War II…it was destroyed by the British RAF in 1944…
(adventures-of-the-blackgang.tumblr.com)
…you could also cool off like these two old gents, sharing a toast and some Budweisers…
…or you could get yourself a jug of applejack brandy and mix it 1:1 with pineapple juice…not sure who or what is being “saved” here…
…long before there were Nikes or Adidas, golfers could hit the links in a pair of Sportocasins…
…Hupmobile was still hanging in there, enlisting the talents of illustrator Herbert Roese to extol the comforts and the beauty of its “air-line design”… it isn’t clear why it required five middle-aged men to take her on that beautiful ride…
…the real-life bellboy Johnny Roventini made his debut in the New Yorker as the spokesman for Phillip Morris cigarettes…
…Roventini (1910–1998), who stood less than four feet tall as an adult, was working as a bellboy at the New Yorker Hotel when he was discovered by an advertising executive in 1933. Apparently the exec had Roventini shout the line “Call for Philip Morris!” and learned the bellboy could repeatedly, and on cue, vocalize a perfect B-flat tone. Representing the company for more than forty years, he helped Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz with the initial success of I Love Lucy (Philip Morris was the show’s sponsor)…
WHAT’S HIS LINE?…TV producers Mark Goodson, left, and Bill Todman greet Johnny Roventini during a 1952 radio broadcast of their quiz show, What’s My Line? The program’s sponsor was Phillip Morris. Note Goodson and Todman both hold cigarettes. (Wikipedia)
…by the looks of it, Anne Gould (heiress daughter of Jay Gould II and Anne Douglas Graham Gould) didn’t need anyone to tell her what to smoke…
…on to our cartoons, we continue our birdwatching with Rea Irvin…and we also get…
…high-flying nuptials with Isadore Klein…
…a mismatch with George Price…
…the prospects for war with Otto Soglow…
…marital bliss with James Thurber…
…and a courtship scene, with an expiration date, from Mary Petty…
Above: British architect Norman Foster's 2010 recreation of R. Buckminster Fuller's 1933 Dymaxion car. (Wikipedia)
Despite the limitations of 1930s technology, a few architects and designers were hell-bent on building a streamlined future that until then was mostly the stuff of movies and science fiction magazines.
May 5, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
One of them was R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), architect, designer, and futurist probably best known today as the inventor of the geodesic dome (think Disney’s Epcot Center). In the 1930s Fuller was all about a concept he called Dymaxion. Derived from the words dynamic, maximum, and tension, when applied to architecture and design it would supposedly deliver maximum gain from minimal energy input. The writer of the New Yorker article (pseud. “Speed”) was fascinated by the Dymaxion’s motorboat-type steering, no coincidence since Fuller intended to adapt his futuristic car for use on and under the water, as well as in the air.
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME…Clockwise, from top left: Workers at a Bridgeport, Conn., plant creating the first of three Dymaxion cars; the Dymaxion at Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress exposition—the car was involved in a fatal accident at the fair; interior view of the Dymaxion; using the same engine and transmission as a Ford sedan (pictured), the Dymaxion offered three times the interior volume with half the fuel consumption and a 50 percent increase in top speed. (Buckminster Fuller Institute/Poet Architecture)THINKING WITHOUT THE BOX…In 1927 R. Buckminster Fuller (pictured) developed a Dymaxion House, a “Dwelling Machine” that would be the last word in self-sufficiency. Although the aluminum house was intended to be mass-produced, flat-packaged and shipped throughout the world, the design never made it to market (however its ideas influenced other architects); at right, a Fuller geodesic dome at Disney’s Epcot Center in Florida. (archdaily.com/Wikipedia)
The 1933 Century of Progress exposition in Chicago was supposed to be a major showcase for Fuller, but when professional driver Francis Turner was killed while demonstrating the first prototype of the Dymaxion, the car’s prospects dimmed considerably. According to an article by Stephanie d’Arc Taylor (cnn.com Oct. 30, 2019), during the demonstration a local politician tried to drive his own car close to the Dymaxion—to get a better look—and ended up crashing into the unwieldy prototype, which rolled over, killing the driver and injuring its passengers. “The politician’s car was removed from the fracas before police arrived, so the Dymaxion was blamed for the accident,” writes Taylor, who notes that the rear wheel–powered car, though unconventional, was not necessarily the problem. However, “the thing that made the Fuller death-mobile singularly deadly was the fact it was also steered by the rear wheel, making it hard to control and prone to all kinds of terrifying issues.”
That history did not stop architect Norman Foster from building a replica of the Dymaxion in 2010. Foster worked with Fuller from 1971 to 1983, and considers Fuller a design hero.
GIVING IT ANOTHER GO…Architect Norman Foster with his 2010 recreation of the Dymaxion. To build a new Dymaxion, Foster sent a restorer to the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada (home of the only surviving Dymaxion, Car No. 2), and after thousands of photos and measurements Foster had the car recreated using only materials available in 1933: Foster’s Dymaxion consists of an ash frame sheathed in hand-beaten aluminum, mounted on the chassis of an old 1934 Ford Tudor Sedan. (CNN/The Guardian)
According to Taylor, Foster cleaved so closely to Fuller’s original designs that he refers to his creation as a fourth genuine Dymaxion—not a replica. “The car is such a beautiful object that I very much wanted to own it, to be able to touch as well as contemplate the reality for its delight in the same spirit as a sculpture,” said Foster. “Everything in (the car) was either made in 1934, or recreated using techniques and materials that Bucky would have had access to in that period.”
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Meanwhile, At The Tracks…
If Fuller’s attempt at the streamlined future was a bit of bust, the Burlington railroad was making a splash with its gleaming new Zephyr. E.B. White reported:
ZOOM ZOOM…The Burlington Zephyr set a speed record for travel between Denver and Chicago when it made a 1,015.4-mile (1,633 km) non-stop “Dawn-to-Dusk” dash in 13 hours 5 minutes at an average speed of almost 78 mph (124 km/h). In one section of the run it reached a speed of 112.5 mph. Following a promotional tour that included New York, it was placed in regular service between Kansas City, Missouri, and Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, on November 11, 1934. Other routes would be added later in the Midwest and West. (BNSF)
…we continue with E.B. White, here with some observations regarding Mother’s Day and bank robber/murderer John Dillinger, who had escaped from prison in March 1934 and was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List…
I REMEMBER MAMA…John Dillinger posed with Lake County prosecutor Robert Estill, left, in the jail at Crown Point, Ind. while he awaited his trial for murder in January 1934. Dillinger would escape from the jail in March and would be on the lam until July, when FBI agents would gun him down outside a Chicago movie theatre. (NY Daily News)
…and a last word from White, about an important change at Radio City:
* * *
Voice In The Wilderness
A combination of newsreel footage, documentary, and reenactment, Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr’sHitler’s Reign of Terror played to capacity crowds for two weeks in New York City, despite the refusal of the state’s censor to license the film. Disinherited by his parents when he became a newspaper publisher, Vanderbilt was a determined journalist, covertly filming scenes in Nazi Germany and even briefly encountering Adolf Hitler outside the Reichstag, where Vanderbilt yelled to Der Führer, “And what about the Jews, Your Excellency?” (Hitler ignored the question and referred Vanderbilt to one of his lackeys). Unfortunately, Vanderbilt wasn’t much of a filmmaker, and although he warned Americans about the emerging threat in Germany, few took the film, or his warning, seriously, including John Mosher:
UNHEEDED…Audiences flocked to see Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr’sHitler’s Reign of Terror, but critics dismissed the rather amateurish film—Film Daily scoffed at the film’s prediction that Hitler’s Germany was a future threat to world peace; at right, in the film Vanderbilt confronted “Hitler” in a recreation. (TMDB/Library of Congress)
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It wouldn’t seat eleven people like a Dymaxion, but a Body by Fisher (coach builder to General Motors) certainly impressed this young woman…but better check with the hubby just in case…
…in this next ad, we find what looks like the same woman, perhaps celebrating her decision with a nice smoke…
…this spot seems out of place in the New Yorker, like it snuck over from Better Homes & Gardens...
…on to our cartoons…with James Thurber’s war of the sexes over, life returned to normal…
…and both sides shared in the gloom of a rainy afternoon…
…by contrast, Perry Barlow brightened things up with this life of the party…
…but a good time doesn’t always translate over the airwaves, per George Price…
…Alain illustrated the consequences of losing one’s nest egg…
…Peter Arno didn’t leave any room for dessert…
…and Charles Addams returned, a macabre cast of characters still percolating in his brain…
…on to May 12, 1934…
May 12, 1934 cover by Leonard Dove.
…and back to the movies, this time critic John Mosher found more cheery fare in 20th Century, a pre-Code screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard. Battling alcohol abuse since age 14, Barrymore nevertheless managed to display his rare genius as a comedian and turned in what is considered to be his last great film performance.
GETTING HER KICKS…Top, Carole Lombard delivers a swift one to John Barrymore in the screwball comedy 20th Century. Below, director Howard Hawks with the cast. (greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com)
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Playing the Ponies
Horse racing correspondent George F. T. Ryall (pseud. “Audax Minor”) considered a losing wager at the Kentucky Derby in his column, “The Race Track.”
A HORSE OF COURSE…Jockey Mack Garner rode Cavalcade to victory at the 1934 Kentucky Derby. (Appanoose County Historical Society)
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We begin with Camel cigarette endorsers Alice and Mary Byrd, residents of Virginia’s famous Brandon plantation and cousins of Virginia Senator and Governor Harry F. Byrd, known for his fights against the New Deal and his “massive resistance” to federally mandated school desegregation...
…also to the manor born, Whitney Bourne, a New York deb who would go on to a brief stage and film career that would end when she married her first husband (diplomat Stanton Griffis) in 1939…
AN EYE FOR STYLE…Whitney Bourne in a scene with Solly Ward in 1937’s Flight From Glory. Named in 1933 as one of America’s best dressed women, Bourne was a noted New York socialite, skier, golfer and tennis player as well as an occasional actress.
…we move along from the effervescent Whitney Bourne to the sparkling waters of Perrier…
…Gardner Rea followed other New Yorker cartoonists by illustrating an ad for Heinz…
…which brings is to more cartoons, where according to Richard Decker, the move to streamlined trains wasn’t welcomed by everyone…
…Carl Rose illustrated this two-page spread with an imagined right-wing response to the recent left-wing May Day parades…
…William Steig eavesdropped onto a saucy little conversation…
…Barbara Shermund continued her explorations into the trials of the modern woman…
…James Thurber was back to his old tricks…
…and we conclude our cartoons with Eli Garson, and a new perspective…
Before I close, a bit of housekeeping. The first issues in 1925 sometimes ended “The Talk of the Town” with…
…but on May 23, 1925, “Talk” signed off with —The New Yorkers. That continued until the March 31, 1934 issue (below), the last time the New Yorker signed off “The Talk of the Town” with —The New Yorkers:
Above: Modeling agency founder John Robert Powers poses with participants of a fashion queen contest at the 1939 New York World's Fair. (NYPL)
John Robert Powers was a household name in the 1930s, founder of one of the world’s first modeling agencies—he supplied countless advertisers with mostly female models, some moving on to Hollywood careers.
April 21, 1934 cover by Abner Dean.
Writing for “A Reporter at Large” under the title “Perfect 36,” frequent New Yorker short story contributor Nancy Hale (1908 –1988) looked into the mysteries behind the fabled “John Powers Book” and its collection of sophisticated models.
TYPING BOOK…John Robert Powers (1892–1977) wrote a bestselling 1941 book, The Powers Girls, that told “the story of models and modeling and the natural steps by which attractive girls are created,” organizing various models by type; at right, a page from the book featuring Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Gibbons—despite her Alabama roots, she was described by Powers as being “The Urban Type.” (Wikipedia/lastyeargirl.blogspot.com)
Hale was given a tour by a company representative who described the types of women the Powers company represented, noting the successes of women who landed in major cigarette ads or went on to become Hollywood stars:
SMOKE AND MIRRORS…Clockwise, from top left: Powers model Janice Jarratt (in a 1934 publicity photo from her only film, Kid Millions), who for a time was known as the “Lucky Strike Girl” as well as the “most photographed woman in the world”; Jarratt offering a Lucky to a nervous young man in a 1935 ad; Powers model Ethelyn Holt in a publicity photo for the Billy Rose Theatre; Holt in a 1933 ad for Camel cigarettes. (MGM/NPR/NYPL/propadv.com)
A number of Hollywood stars got their start or were discovered through their work with Powers, who himself was a sometime actor and the subject of a 1943 musical comedy, The Powers Girl.
POWER STARS…Former Powers models turned Hollywood stars included, from left, Norma Shearer,Frederic March and Kay Francis. (TCM/TMDB)
A note about the author, Nancy Hale: A brilliant short story writer, Hale published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1929 (when she was just 21) and would publish more than eighty stories in the magazine through 1969—she holds the record for the most stories in the magazine in a single year, publishing twelve between July 1954 and July 1955. New Yorker editor William Maxwell regarded Hale’s writing technique as “flawless.”
PROLIFIC…Nancy Hale published more than a hundred short stories in her lifetime, ten of which were recipients of an O. Henry Prize. Writer Joanne O’Leary (London Review of Books) notes that Hale also worked for Vogue (where she “pinch-hit as a model”) and became the first female news reporter at the New York Times. Above left, Hale in an undated photo; at right, Hale photographed in 1936 for Harper’s Bazaar. (Nancy Hale Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College)
* * *
Tat For Tat
Alva Johnston explored the world of “tattooed people” in his second installment of a three-part profile series titled “Sideshow People”…
MARKED FOR LIFE…Alva Johnston noted such celebrated tattooed ladies as Mae Vandermark (left, circa 1920s), and Lady Viola, pictured at right with tattoo artist Fred Clark, 1930s. (Vintage Everyday)INKSLINGER…Charlie Wagner, a tattoo artist who lived from 1875 to 1953, is considered one of the kings of American tattooing. Practicing his art in New York’s Bowery, he not only developed an influential art style; he invented new machinery that helped spread the art of modern tattooing. (nyctattooshop.com)
* * *
Bloody Satisfying
Film critic John Mosher declared David O. Selznick’s production Viva Villa! to be “thoroughly satisfying”—with a screenplay by Ben Hecht and starring actor Wallace Beery as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, the film was considered violent and bloody by 1934 standards.
REVOLUTIONARY…Clockwise, from top left, Pancho Villa (Wallace Beery) finds himself attracted to a benefactor’s sister (Fay Wray); MGM film poster; Beery with Katherine DeMille (who was Cecil B. DeMille’s adopted daughter) and Stuart Erwin; Beery striking a pose on the set of Viva Villa! (IMDB)
Mosher found some of the film’s violence to be startling. Being one the last Pre-Code films, censors would start clamping down on such scenes in the coming years.
MAKE SURE YOU GET MY GOOD SIDE…Pancho Villa (Wallace Beery) faces a firing squad before receiving a last-minute reprieve in Viva Villa! (IMDB)
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MGM took out a full-page ad to tout the success of Viva Villa and other MGM “hits”…
…note the bottom left hand corner of the MGM ad—a cartoon by Otto Soglow promoting the upcoming film Hollywood Party, a star-studded comedy musical featuring Laurel & Hardy, Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez and Mickey Mouse…
…those looking for a different kind of entertainment could have been enticed by this lavish center-page spread from German ocean liner companies…they were inviting Americans to Oberammergau, Germany to witness the “only performances of the Passion Play until 1940″…the play was usually performed every ten years (years ending in the digit zero) but in 1934 a special performance was supported by the Nazi Party…incidentally, the 1940 play was cancelled due to World War II…
…the same German-American shipping companies also advertised an African cruise…with some racist imagery…
…perhaps you wanted to go to Europe on a ship with fewer Nazis on board…in that case you could grab a berth on a ship with the United States Lines, and hang out with these stiffs…
…the makers of Old Gold referenced a previous ad featuring Jimmy Durante with a new spot starring actor/comedian Eddie Cantor…both ads depicted impressionable young women admiring the smoking wisdom of older men…
…for reference, the creepy Durante ad…
…the famous “Call for Philip Morris” advertising campaign began during World War I, but in 1933 Johnny Roventini, a bellhop at the Hotel New Yorker, would become the living symbol of the cigarette brand…
…by contrast, Frankfort Distilleries showed us an image of man who would not represent them, namely Jed Clampett…
…Chevrolet continued its rebranding campaign, positioning itself as an affordable choice that was nevertheless favored by the posh set…
…who would rather be driving a Packard, here appealing to the nostalgic sensibilities of old-timers who had the means to afford one…
…on to our cartoons, and some “Small Fry” baseball from William Steig…
…an unusual captioned cartoon (from George Price) featured in the opening “Goings On About Town” section…
…Syd Hoff gave us an alarmed matron confronting the unthinkable…a doorman as a son-in-law…
…we haven’t seen Isadore Klein’s work in awhile—understandable, as he was busy in his career as an animator––in 1934 he worked on films for Van Beuren Studios (Rainbow Parade Cartoons) and in 1936 he would move to Disney’s Silly Symphonies…
…Paul Manship’sPrometheus at Rockefeller Center is iconic today, but when it was installed in 1934 it puzzled more than a few onlookers, including Robert Day…
…and we close with James Thurber, and a turn of events in his “war”…
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.
April 7, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
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)
* * *
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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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 PalmerneeMaria 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)
* * *
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)
* * *
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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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…
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”…
A New Yorker State of Mind 