Above: Walter Dorwin Teague's design for Kodak's "Brownie" camera, circa 1930. (Milwaukee Art Museum)
Walter Dorwin Teague pioneered industrial design as a profession, firmly believing that great, heirloom-quality design could be available to all, and that even mass-produced objects could be beautiful if they possessed “visible rightness.”
Dec. 15, 1934 cover by William Cotton.
Cultural critic Gilbert Seldes profiled Teague (1883–1960) in the Dec. 15 issue, and in this excerpt he examined the designer’s role in the streamlining craze that emphasized movement and speed in everything from locomotives and automobiles to radios and pencil sharpeners.
GOING WITH THE FLOW…Top left, early applications of streamlining in the 1931 Marmon 16, designed by Walter Dorwin Teague; at right, Teague at work in an undated photo; below, wooden model of Teague’s Marmon 12, 1932. (drivingfordeco.com/North Carolina State University/Smithsonian Design Museum)GEE WHIZ…Henry Ford called on Teague to design an exhibit hall like no other for the 1934 re-opening of the Chicago World’s Fair. The exhibit featured an automobile cut lengthwise, and explained how various materials were extracted to create the final product. Teague helped usher in the era when world’s fairs served as arenas for the advancement of corporate identities. (Hemmings Daily)WHAT A GAS…Teague created this ubiquitous streamlined design for Texaco’s service stations in the late 1930s. (encyclopedia.design)
In this next excerpt, Seldes noted that Teague shared the thinking of other modernists of the time, namely that people could be herded into towers, even in rural landscapes. At any rate, Teague’s ultimate objective, according to Seldes, was to make everyday living more attractive to the masses.
CHROME-PLATED WORLD…Teague designed the Kodak Baby Brownie Camera (top left) and its packaging. It sold for just one dollar; at right, Teague’s console radio design Nocturne, 1935, which featured glass and chrome-plated metal; at bottom, Kodak gift camera, ca.1930. (Cooper Hewitt/design-is-fine.org/Brooklyn Museum)
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Art Depreciation
Lewis Mumford did a bit of hate-viewing during a visit to the Whitney Museum, which hosted the Second Biennial of Contemporary American Painting. Mumford found a few works he genuinely liked, but had to admit he also enjoyed the ones he hated. Excerpts:
MYSTERY WOMAN…at left, Lewis Mumford was at a loss regarding the meaning, if any, of Walt Kuhn’s latest circus painting, Sibyl, 1932; at top, Mumford found Grant Wood’sArbor Day (1932) perfectly suited to the Cedar Raids art scene, while he derived great pleasure in his dislike of Eugene Speicher’s Red Moore: The Blacksmith, 1933-34. (americangallery.wordpress.com/Wikiart/lacma.org)
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The Swash Buckles
Film critic John Mosher checked out Douglas Fairbanks Sr’s latest movie, The Private Life of Don Juan, which would prove to be the old swashbuckler’s last hurrah.
FINAL BOW…Douglas Fairbanks and Merle Oberon in Alexander Korda’s comedy-drama The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). It was the final role for the 51-year-old Fairbanks, who died five years later. (TCM)
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Toyland 1934
The New Yorker continued its seasonal tradition of offering exhaustive descriptions of various wares around the city, including the many new toys that would be available to children whose parents could afford them. An excerpt:
XMAS JOYS…According to The New Yorker, the Union Pacific Streamline Train was a big hit with the kiddos, as were the dolls and other items created to exploit the hapless Dionne Quintuplets. And then there was a Buck Rogers rocket ship that shot real sparks from its tail.(airandspace.si.edu/PBS/Paleofuture)
“Patsy” dolls and doctor/nurse kits were also popular sellers in 1934…
THEY’RE AFTER YOU…The much sought-after Patsy doll and the Patsy Nurse Outfit graced many a Christmas morning in 1934. (eBay)
The article was followed by detailed listings of department stores and select toys. Here are excerpts featuring two of the toy biggies: Macy’s and F.A.O. Schwarz:
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS…Top, children peering into a Macy’s window circa 1930; below, F.A.O. Schwarz display window at its Fifth Avenue location in 1935. (Library of Congress/MCNY)
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From Our Advertisers
We kick off the holiday season with Santa bringing cheer to the world, his bag laden with tobacco products from the jolly elves at R.J. Reynolds…
…along with your cigarette you could enjoy a cup of this frothy eggnog spiked with a generous shot of Paul Jones…
…and I pity the poor soul who was hoping for a toaster from Santa…perhaps the companion “Hospitality Tray” will add an extra dose of good cheer…
…however some may have wished for a revolutionary Parker “vacumatic” pen…no more dipping into the old ink-well…
…I include this ad simply for the terrific Abe Birnbaum caricature of Broadway producer Sam Harris…
Image at right is of Harris in 1928. (Wikipedia)
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with this merry spot by George Price…
…William Crawford Galbraith gave us another person in the spirit of the season…
…as did Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein…
…a less cheery note comes to us from James Thurber, who gave us a patron unhappy with changes to his familiar watering hole…
…and we have Alain again, and a spirited salesperson…
…Barbara Shermund gave us a glimpse of the awkward courtship rituals of the male peacock…
…and we close with Jack Markow, and the demands of Hollywood life…
Above, Donald Deskey's Design for a Sportshack, 1940 (Cooper Hewitt)
If you’ve never heard of Donald Deskey, you’ve most likely seen his work.
Feb. 25, 1933 cover by Rea Irvin.
Cultural critic Gilbert Seldes featured Deskey in the Feb. 25 profile (“The Long Road to Roxy” — with illustration by Al Frueh), noting that his subject had come to his profession as an industrial designer in a rather roundabout fashion. Here is a brief excerpt:
Deskey (1894–1989) was locally known in the late 1920s for his window displays at New York’s Franklin Simon Department Store, but it was his work at Roxy Rothafel’s new Radio City Music Hall that made him a marquee name in the design world. Although known for popularizing the Art Deco style, his interior designs for RCMH were noted for their restraint, signaling a break from the lavish, ornate designs of the city’s earlier performance spaces.
FEAST FOR THE EYES…Donald Deskey designed more than thirty spaces in Radio City Music Hall, including the Grand Foyer (left) and several lounges, each featuring a distinct visual motif. At bottom right, auditorium’s “Singing Woman” carpeting. (archdaily.com/drivingfordeco.com)
Original Deskey creations are highly prized today by collectors and museums…
DESIGN IN MOTION…Clockwise, from top left, Deskey’s “Guest Bedroom for Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.” (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller), on display at the 1931 American Union of Decorative Artists exhibition; Deskey table lamp, circa 1927; linen panel, circa 1930s; Deskey desk, circa 1930. (brooklynmuseum.org/artic.edu/Pinterest)
…and if that wasn’t enough, Deskey also designed logos for many consumer products in the late 1940s and 1950s…
THE TOTAL PACKAGE…Deskey designed some of the most iconic logos of midcentury America, including, clockwise from top left, Tide laundry detergent (1947); Gleem (1956) and Crest (1955) toothpastes; Cheer laundry detergent (1952); JIF peanut butter (1956) and Joy dishwashing liquid (1950).
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From Our Advertisers
It seems appropriate to follow Mr. Deskey with some words and images from our sponsors, including the folks at Cadillac who continued to hammer home the snob appeal of their motorcar while also giving a nod to those hard times by emphasizing the car’s economy…
…meanwhile, Studebaker was back with another full page ad—again featuring the admiring giant woman—in a vain attempt to push their fledgling, and unpopular line of Rockne automobiles…
…and Helena Rubenstein continued her series of ads disguised as advice columns…the advice here was to shame women into buying her products…
…after Helena removed your wrinkles you could restore them with GE’s Mazda sunlight lamp…
…Otto Soglow, on the brink of becoming a very wealthy man thanks to his Little King cartoons, continued to lay down some ink on behalf of the makers of Sanka decaf…
…and we move along to Soglow’s fellow cartoonists, beginning with Gardner Rea and a cartoon sequence spread across pages 24-25…
…here it is again, rearranged for closer inspection…
…and we have another terrific “Fellow Citizens” drawing by Gluyas Williams, which originally ran sideways on a full page…
…I like this James Thurber drawing for its utter disregard of scale—but of course (and thankfully) it wouldn’t be a Thurber if he cared about such things…
…William Crawford Galbraith was still hung up on showgirls and sirens…
…while Peter Arno explored his spiritual side, as only Arno could…
…and we move along to March 4, 1933…
March 4, 1933 cover by Rea Irvin.
…in which The New Yorker’s Paris correspondent Janet Flanner (“Genêt”) wrote about a new book of “extreme interest to both sides of the Atlantic”…
BOOK OF REVELATION…Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein were well known in the ex-pat community of 1920s Paris, but the publication of the American edition of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (written by Stein) brought them fame in the wider world. Stein claimed she wrote the book — now considered a 20th century classic — in six weeks to amuse herself and to make money. At right, Toklas and Stein at 27 Rue de Fleurus in a portrait by Man Ray, 1922. (Library of Congress)
* * *
Hope Springs Eternal
Even in the deepest depths of the Depression signs of hope abounded in works of public art, including a mosaic of one million hand-cut and hand-set glass tiles being prepared for the Sixth Avenue entrance to Rockefeller Center. Intelligence Awakening Mankind, by Barry Faulkner, celebrated the triumph of knowledge over the evil of ignorance. “The Talk of the Town” explained:
GOOD VIBES…Details of Intelligence Awakening Mankind include the central figure of Intelligence (top) sending knowledge into the far corners of the world. (Pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
The folks at luxury brand Packard continued to counter their stodgy image with ads that emphasized other qualities including speed, durability, and here, serenity…despite the lengthy text, the ad also suggested modernity, with the sliced-off image and the single word “Hush!” to entice prospective buyers…
…if you couldn’t afford $3,720 for a 12-cylinder Packard, then you might have considered a Buick, “livable as a fine home” this ad claimed. And look at that back seat — you could comfortably fit three adults and a baby elephant in there…
…and then there’s Hupmobile—for the price of a Packard 12 you could have purchased three Hupmobile Victorias (pictured below) with a good chunk of change left over…here the company celebrates its silver anniversary…a couple of odd facts: in 1914 a Minnesota Hupmobile salesman used an unsold vehicle to found Greyhound bus lines…the National Football League also traces its origins to Hupmobile — the league was created in 1920 at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio…both Greyhound and the NFL survive Hupmobile, which went belly up in 1939…
…and now we move to the world of fashion, and some cultural appropriation by Lord & Taylor…
…in 1929 J. Walter Thompson President Stanley Resor observed how people instinctively wanted to be told what to do by authorities they respected. Applying this thinking to the marketing of Pond’s cold cream, Resor’s firm hired famed photographers to create idealized portraits of society women…
…Writing for Indy Week (July 7, 2010) Amy White observes that a 1933 portrait (above) of Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt, aka Gloria Mercedes Morgan, reveals patrician eyes as “languid jet pools, her lips full and dark, her finely coiffed hair oiled to ebony perfection. However, a bit of backstory might explain the painful and hollow look Mrs. Vanderbilt can barely suppress. In that same year, she was declared by the courts to be unfit as a parent, and her young daughter was placed under the guardianship of her sister, Gertrude.” That young daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt, would later find fame for her designer jeans, her glittering lifestyle, and as mother of newscaster Anderson Cooper. White concludes, “I wonder if somehow, subconsciously, those consumers saw the pain in the eyes of some of those upper-crust spokeswomen, and it was basic humanness and empathy, as well as desire for wealth and beauty, that won them over”…
Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt, aka Gloria Mercedes Morgan, and her daughter, “Little Gloria,” in 1928. (Wikipedia)
…and we move along to the toasted pleasures of Luckies, and Howard Chandler Christy’s “Christy Girl” looking the picture of health and vitality in this back cover ad…
…we make an abrupt switch to the cheaper ads in the magazine’s nether pages…here “Miss Eleanor, formerly with Mme. Binner,” announced her selection of modern corsets for the “debutante and young matron”…and below, in a sign of the times, repossessed homes for sale…
…looks like Fifi had a bit too much of the Green Ribbon-flavored bootleg…
…and if you thought taking probiotics was a new thing…
…the French Line once again featured the art of James Thurber to promote its Mediterranean cruises…
…and Thurber kicks off our cartoons with spot art that headed the “Goings On About Town” section…
…and this gem with one of Thurber’s beloved dogs…
…below is the second New Yorker cartoon by Gruff with the “Buy American” slogan juxtaposed with an ethnic stereotype…I have no idea who this artist is, or if “Gruff” is a pen name — the style looks familiar but I haven’t had any luck chasing this artist down…
…here is the first one from the Feb. 18 issue…
…but we all know Al Frueh, who contributed this delightful bit of art to the theater review section…
…Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein gave us an enterprising Frenchman offering peeks at exiled New York Mayor Jimmy Walker sunning on a beach at Cannes…
…and we close with Peter Arno, and the first signs of spring…
In the spring of 1928, Walt Disney collaborated with cartoonist Ub Iwerks in creating a new cartoon character, Mickey Mouse, and later that year Mickey would be featured in the first-ever post-produced sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. The film was an immediate hit, bringing almost instant fame to Disney.
Dec. 19, 1931…A classic cover by Peter Arno.
Just three years after the birth of Mickey, Disney had already carved a place for himself in American culture, drawing the attention of millions of Mickey fans—and one critic for The New Yorker—Gilbert Seldes, who penned a profile of the “Mickey-Mouse Maker” (illustration by Hugo Gellert). Note in the second of these two excerpts how Disney was already connecting his product to patriotism and clean living through his Mickey Mouse Clubs:
CASH COW…ER…MOUSE…Left, Walt Disney poses with his famous creation in 1935; top right, the Disney family in 1915: Parents Elias and Flora Disney in back row, right; Walt is seated with sister Ruth in front; photo of Disney proves the merchandising value of his little mouse from the very start. (IMDB/PBS/The Telegraph)A THING OF NIGHTMARES…Before the television show there was a theater-based Mickey Mouse Club. Pictured above is an early meeting of the Club at a theater in Ocean Park, California. Although the Club had a million members in the U.S. by 1932, Disney pulled the plug on the clubs in 1935. They were revived through several television series in 1955-59, 1977-79, and 1989-1994 (that last class featured a number of future stars including Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake). (www.vintag.es)
In his conclusion, Seldes marveled at Disney’s productivity—a new picture made every two weeks—and his seemingly endless creativity. Little could Seldes imagine that one day the man and his mouse would become a multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate.
I’M YOUR VEHICLE, BABY…Mickey gives Minnie a ride in his cab in 1931’s Traffic Troubles. (YouTube)
You can watch 1931’s Traffic Troubles here:
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Big Man on Canvas
It seems the earth almost shook when Mexican artist Diego Rivera arrived in New York for only the second one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art. His work habits, his comings and goings, and his enormous girth (modest by today’s standards) were reported in The New Yorker, including this entry in “The Talk of the Town”…
COME TO MOMA…Cover of the Museum of Modern Art’s catalog for the Diego Rivera exhibition. (MoMA)MAN AT WORK…Left, Diego Rivera at work on The Uprising, at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1931. Rivera painted five frescoes on portable supports of steel-braced cement in conjunction with his MoMA exhibition. Among the works featured was The Rivals (right), which sold for $9.76 million in 2018, overtaking an auction record for Latin American art previously set by his wife, Frida Kahlo. Her Two Nudes in the Forest sold for $8 million in 2016. (MoMA/Pinterest)
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Winds of War
It’s the end of 1931, but one can already detect the rumblings of the future to come, namely world war. The former Allied and Axis powers of the First World War were all busy developing new weapons, particularly of the airborne variety that all believed would provide a decisive edge if (or rather when) the next war commenced. Japan was already making moves on China, and in just four years the Germans would reoccupy the Saarland and Italy would invade Ethiopia. E.B. White, in his “Notes and Comment,” found the current state of affairs more than a bit troubling…
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE…Wars and rumors of wars drove rapid advances in aviation in the 28 years following the Wright Brothers’ first flight. The Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company developed the A-8 (above) in 1930-31 to serve as a ground-attack aircraft. (ww2aircraft.net)
…and hints of the world to come could also be found in Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column, where he made this observation:
Brubaker was likely referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cautious approach to announcing his candidacy for president. The outcome, of course, proved quite different for the German people.
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From Our Advertisers
Preparations for war drove the development of the aircraft industry, which quickly adapted its designs during peacetime for civilian purposes. This ad from United Airlines touted the advantages of plane over train travel for corporate executives. Within 30 years the airlines would indeed supplant railroads as the preferred means for business travel…
…Prohibition would remain in force until the end of 1933, so brewers like Anheuser-Busch continued finding ways to link their non-alcoholic products to the ghosts of drinking past…
…on to our cartoons, James Thurber rendered this apt portrait of our civilization…
…Barbara Shermund gave us an actress with a reputation to protect…
…and Garrett Price presented an unlikely harmonica player…
…on to our next issue, where we find more Diego Rivera…
Dec. 26, 1931 cover by Madeline S. Pereny. Artist’s note: Pereny (1893–1970) was born in Kecskemet, Hungary. A baroness, she studied at Vienna Art Academy before emigrating to the U.S. in the early 1930’s. In addition to creating cover art and illustrations for The New Yorker, she was also a cartoonist for the Disney Studios.
…and we begin with this entry from “The Talk of the Town,” attributed to James Thurber…
WHERE’S DIEGO?…in December 1931 he could be found working on his frescoes on the sixth floor of the Heckscher Building—the Museum of Modern Art’s first home. In the foreground is the Cornelius Vanderbilt mansion, demolished in 1926. (Library of Congress)GET THE POINT?…Thurber referred to Diego Rivera’sIndian Warrior, one of five frescoes Rivera created during his Museum of Modern Art exhibition.
Thurber refers to “a lady” who accompanied Rivera, most likely Frida Kahlo, who was emerging as an artist in her own right around this time.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY…Wedding photograph of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, 1929. (Throckmorton Fine Art)
More on Diego could be found in the art review section, where critic Murdock Pemberton offered a cautionary message to the rabble who might not abide some of the artist’s controversial themes:
* * *
Head Cracker
In the 1920s and 30s Johnny Broderick was known as New York’s toughest cop, known for personally assaulting gangsters (and suspects) and for once facing down armed gunmen during a prison break at the Tombs. His valor won him many fans (and some detractors), making him a local celebrity and a subject of gossip columns. Reporter Joel Sayre offered his assessment of Broderick in a “Profile” for the Dec. 26 issue (illustration by Abe Birnbaum). Excerpts:
WISE GUY, EH?…Johnny Broderick (see arrow) escorts an unfortunate perp in 1927. (Public Domain)
* * *
Something to Cheer About
On the lighter side, Hollywood took a shot at Noel Coward’s 1930 comedy of manners, Private Lives. The original play featured Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier, while the Hollywood version Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery. For once, critic John Mosher actually liked this screen adaptation:
GIVE ME THAT LOVIN’ FEELING…Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery in the film adaptation of Noel Coward’sPrivate Lives. (TCM)
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From Our Advertisers
Just one ad from the Dec. 26 issue to close out the year, and what better way to say “Merry Christmas” than with a fresh cigarette…
…on to our cartoonists, William Crawford Galbraith offered a look backstage in this two-page illustration across the bottom of “The Talk of the Town”…
…Richard Decker showed us the importance of making oneself clear, especially when aloft in a dirigible…
…Robert Day found humor in a barren landscape…
…Garrett Price offered us a cheesy predicament…
…Helen Hokinson found a man about to make an important point…
…and we end 1931 with this classic from James Thurber…
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.
* * *
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).
* * *
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)
* * *
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:
* * *
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)
* * *
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.
* * *
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)
* * *
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)
* * *
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)
* * *
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)
* * *
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…
“Everyone in this life draws bad cards with the good. The great trouble with most of us is that we do not know when to discard quickly,” observed New York Mayor Jimmy Walker.
April 4, 1931 cover by Theodore Haupt.
Signs that the first bad card was being turned were apparent in the April 4, 1931 edition of The New Yorker. In his weekly collection of quips — “Of All Things” — Howard Brubaker suggested that Walker — known for his frequent trips and general lack of attention to governance — had a different sort of homecoming awaiting his return from California…
…Walker was no doubt hobnobbing with the Hollywood crowd back in the Golden State…the mayor loved donning fine attire (thus the nickname “Beau James”) and enjoyed throwing lavish events for famous people…
MIGNIGHT MAYOR was one of the many nicknames New Yorkers bestowed on Mayor Jimmy Walker, known for his love of nightlife, fine clothes, and beautiful people (another nickname was “Beau James”). Although he was married at the time, he conducted a very open affair with actress Betty Compton (left), who later became his wife. At right, in his element, Walker (center) accompanies actress Colleen Moore to the October 1928 premiere of her film, Lilac Time. (IMDB/konreioldnewyork.blogspot.com)
…which made him an easy target for parody, such as this 1932 Vanity Fair cover, where the mayor even welcomes himself to the city…
(Conde Nast)
…Ralph Barton revived his “Hero of the Week” feature to welcome the mayor back to the city…Barton alluded to the fact that Walker preferred conducting his office outside of the official confines:
Walker (1881-1946) made a far more interesting personality than an effective mayor. When he took office in 1926 he proved to be a terrible administrator, partying at speakeasies late into night, sleeping till noon, and leaving city matters (except the lavish ceremonies) to Tammany Hall cronies. This didn’t seem to bother voters when the economy boomed in the 1920s, and indeed they re-elected him by an overwhelming margin in 1929.
The 1929 market crash quickly changed things. The Roaring Twenties abruptly ended, and with people losing their jobs (and fortunes), the mayor’s antics didn’t seem so amusing anymore. Reform was in the air, and leading the charge was Gov. Franklin Roosevelt, who was no fan of Walker’s.
IF LOOKS COULD KILL…Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with Mayor Jimmy Walker in conference at Roosevelt’s home on E. 65th St. in December 1928; at left, campaign banner for Walker on Tammany Hall, 4th Avenue and 17th Street, Oct. 28, 1929. Walker was a product of the Tammany Hall political machine, and much of the mayor’s backroom dealings were conducted there, as well as at various speakeasies and nightclubs. (NYC Municipal Archives/NY Daily News)
Investigations into corruption in Walker’s administration landed Walker before an investigative committee of led by Judge Samuel Seabury in 1931…
IN THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY…Mayor Jimmy Walker takes the stand in the New York County Courthouse on May 25, 1932, to answer questions from Judge Samuel Seabury (left). Thousands of New Yorkers showed up to cheer the mayor when he entered the courthouse, but those cheers soon became jeers as details of the administration’s corruption were made public. (NY Daily News).
…Mayor Walker resigned the following year and fled to Europe, where he married his mistress, Betty Compton (1904-1944) in Cannes, France, on April 19, 1933. We will revisit this tale in later issues…
SEE YA…
* * *
On the Lighter Side
“The Talk of the Town” included this note about the play Peter Pan, which was being staged at the Fourteenth Street Theatre. Much was made of the wizardry that enabled actors to float above the audience.
Eva Le Gallienne (1899-1991), who portrayed the title character, made the theatre home of her stage company in 1926, and renamed it the Civic Repertory Theatre. Le Gallienne played the role of Peter Pan 129 times, and although the flying effects were quite hazardous, she said she “took to flying like the proverbial duck to water.”
NO STAGE FRIGHT HERE…The Fourteenth Street Theatre, originally constructed in 1866, was dubbed the Civic Repertory Theatre when Eva Le Gallienne (center) made it the home of her stage company. Le Gallienne played the role of Peter Pan 129 times on the theatre’s stage, and loved performing the dangerous flying stunts. Images of Le Gallienne from Bruce K. Hanson’s book, Peter Pan on Stage and Screen, 1904-2010. (Wikipedia/Bruce K. Hanson).DARLINGS…The Darling family as portrayed in the Civic Repertory Theatre’s production of Peter Pan. At bottom, right, “The Wendy House” as it appeared on stage. And a bit of trivia: the young lad who portrayed John Darling (see arrow) was none other than Burgess Meredith, who would go on to a long and successful career on the stage, television (he played the Penguin in the 1960s Batman TV series), and in film, seen top right as Sylvester Stallone’s trainer Mickey in 1976’s Rocky. (Bruce K. Hanson/IMDB)
Eva Le Gallienne lived 92 years, and Burgess Meredith made it to 89. Such was not the fate of the Civic Repertory Theatre, which closed in 1934 due to the Depression. The 1866 building was demolished in 1938. Not a trace remains.
* * *
Fightin’ Words
It’s really too bad Dorothy Parker didn’t stay on as theatre critic for The New Yorker (she was subbing for her friend, Robert Benchley) because her weekly forays into the middlebrow world of Broadway produced some of her most entertaining writing. For the April 4 issue Parker offered some thoughts about The Silent Witness, which ran from March to June at the Morosco Theatre.
Instead of turning cartwheels, Parker took aim at actress Kay Strozzi, “who had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. … Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.”
She ended the review with another plea to Benchley, who was traveling abroad:
WHAT ABOUT THIS OUTFIT, DOROTHY?…I don’t have a photo of the “horrible” gown worn by Kay Strozzi (left) in The Silent Witness, so you’ll have to settle for this image of Ms. Strozzi from the 1931 film Captain Applejack. At right, and dressed to kill, Dorothy Parker posed for Edward Steichen in this 1931 portrait. (IMDB/Pinterest)
* * *
Tipsy Tots
Tired of Prohibition, and its farcical enforcement, Wolcott Gibbs had some fun with the official Wickersham Report’s conclusions regarding the success of the 18th Amendment:
Wolcott Gibbs (wsj.com)
On a loftier note, we have this ode to the new Empire State Building from Price Day, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and noted editor of the Baltimore Sun:
The profile, written by Gilbert Seldes, featured artist Gaston Lachaise…I include a brief excerpt for personal reasons, because I first encountered this artist in the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery’s sculpture garden in Lincoln, Nebraska (my hometown), many years ago, via his “Floating Figure”…
WEIGHTLESS…”Floating Figure” by Gaston Lachaise was cast in bronze at the end of 1934 after a retrospective held in January 1935 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This is one of seven casts, at the University of Nebraska’s Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. (Lincoln Arts Council)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Pierce Arrow would struggle to promote its luxury cars in the Great Depression (and they would go under by the mid-1930s) but their advertising still harked back to the carmaker’s early days of refined travel…
…the folks at Ethyl would make that car run smoother, thanks to the lead they added to gasoline (and to the air folks were breathing)…
…tired of driving? Then hop a freighter and fire up a Chesterfield…
…or go for a more cushy ride on the French Line…
…we turn to our cartoons, and Ralph Barton’s revival of his old “Graphic Section”…
…Helen Hokinson showed us the nuances of the DMV…
…Leonard Dove showed us a pet on the wild side…
…thanks to the typography skills of The New Yorker’s layout artist Popsy Whitaker, Otto Soglow zigzagged across the pages with his Little King…
…and Gardner Rea revealed the wonders of world travel…
We lead off with a couple of winners from the Feb. 7, 1931 issue, beginning with a cover by Rea Irvin that takes measure of a lighter moment at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Feb. 7, 1931 cover by Rea Irvin.
The 1930 Best of Show winner Pendley Calling of Blarney also took the top honor in 1931, giving the wire fox terrier back-to-back Westminster wins. Overall, terriers have dominated Westminster — wire fox terriers have won Best of Show fifteen times, with Scottish terriers a distant second, with eight wins.
TOP DOG…Pendley Calling of Blarney won back-to-back crowns in 1930-31 at Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden. The dog’s owner, John Grenville Bates, mercifully retired the pooch after the ’31 win. (Westminster Kennel Club)STANDARD? WHO ARE YOU KIDDING?…Standard poodle Siba won Best in Show at the 144th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Feb. 11, 2020, at Madison Square Garden. (Reuters)
The other winner was Cimarron, the first film to receive more than six Academy Award nominations, winning three including Best Picture (then called Best Production). It was the first Western to win Best Picture, and it would be nearly sixty years until another Western, Dances with Wolves, would take the top honor.
HE LOST HIS SHIRT, TOO…
Despite some “sagging moments,” John Mosher mostly lavished praise on the film, which was showing at the Globe Theatre:
THAT’S NO WELCOME WAGON…Clockwise, from top left, Yancey and Sabra Cravat (Richard Dix and Irene Dunn) join the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush with their son, Cim (Junior Johnston); a less-than-friendly greeting at a boomer town; wagons line up for the big land grab; a young prostitute, Dixie Lee (Estelle Taylor), outwits Yancey for a piece of prime property. (IMDB)OH DEAR, THERE’S THAT LOOK AGAIN…Yancey (Richard Dix) takes it upon himself to establish order in the boomer town of Osage. On the bed are Yancey’s son, Cim (Junior Johnston) and wife Sabra (Irene Dunn). (IMDB)
* * *
Handy Painter
It is hard to imagine the struggles of one-handed painter José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), who despite his handicap was able to complete huge murals in true fresco style (paint applied quickly on fresh, wet plaster), including five socially-themed frescoes at the Joseph Urban-designed New School. The murals included controversial depictions of Lenin and Stalin, but it wasn’t until the 1950s — during the McCarthy era — that school officials felt compelled to cover the images with a curtain. More protests followed, this time from faculty and students, and the curtains fell along with Joe McCarthy. “The Talk of the Town” looked in on the artist at work:
HE LOOKS FAMILIAR…José Clemente Orozco’s “The Struggle in The Occident”, 1930-1931, one of five frescoes at the New School. (Pinterest)
* * *
Prescience of Mind
News reporter and author Elmer Davis submitted this humorous piece to The New Yorker doubtless thinking how preposterous, and therefore humorous, the following notion would be (a brief excerpt):
* * *
Funny Cigarettes
In the early years of broadcast radio (and later TV) tobacco companies rightly saw a huge gold mine in radio show sponsorships. So when CBS radio executives accepted a sponsorship from Lorillard (the makers of Old Gold), they realized they had a challenge on their hands. “Talk” explained:
COUGH ME A MELODY…The makers of Old Gold cigarettes had CBS in their clutches in this September 1933 ad featuring bandleader Fred Waring and singer Babsie. (period paper.com)
…The above “Talk of the Town” item referred to the famous Murad ads illustrated by The New Yorker’s own Rea Irvin…
…while other advertisers were scaling back a bit due to the Depression, lovely full-color ads continued to flow from tobacco companies (and oil companies)…
…Pierce-Arrow was also known for its sumptuous ads, but they wouldn’t save the luxury car maker from going under by the mid-1930s…
…Some less expensive black and white ads, such as this hand-lettered ad from Stein & Blaine, could be quite charming…
…speaking of charm, this ad from Arthur Murray could have used a little of it…note the stern visage of the woman, described as “typical of Arthur Murray’s staff of expert teachers”…
…on to our Feb. 7 cartoons, we have one of Peter Arno’s stock characters, the Sugar Daddy, in an awkward moment at a costume party…
…Arno’s party looked a lot more lively than this affair, illustrated by William Crawford Galbraith...
…and Carl Rose gave us this pair, who seem to having the best time of all…
…Mary Petty eavesdropped on a guileless young woman…
…and Gardner Rea paid a visit to the Met…
* * *
On to our Feb. 14 issue, and Gardner Rea once more…
Feb. 14, 1931 cover by Gardner Rea.
The Feb. 14 issue featured a profile of actress Katharine Cornell (1893-1974), written by cultural critic Gilbert Seldes. The caricature of Cornell is by Al Frueh. Excerpts:
Promotional photograph of Katharine Cornell as Elizabeth Barrett in the original 1931 Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. It was her most famous role. (Theatre Magazine, March 1931)
Cornell is considered one of the greatest actors of American theater, known for her eloquence and romantic stage presence. Seldes concluded:
* * *
Strange Bedfellows
In his column “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker referred to an exchange between American capitalists and Soviet Russians that resulted in the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union. That actual story behind this effort is pretty amazing.
* * *
Sneak Peek
Film critic John Mosher was so excited about Charlie Chaplin’s latest film that he offered this teaser to readers…
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We have this ad from the developers of the Empire State Building, which was being readied for a May 1931 opening…
…the Empire State Building was erected on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The new Waldorf-Astoria, also completed in 1931, was located more than 15 blocks away from its original site. Both the Empire State Building and the Waldorf Astoria would become Art Deco landmarks, and both shared the distinction of holding world records: the Empire State was the world’s tallest building (a record it would keep until 1970), and the Waldorf would claim the title of the world’s tallest hotel (until 1963)…
…on to our cartoonists, we have Ralph Barton contributing one of his last illustrations to the theater review section…
…Richard Decker references a recent change in New York telephone numbers with this prison scene…
…Decker was referring to this bit of news, here interpreted by E.B. White in his Feb. 14 “Notes and Comment.”
…James Thurber returned with his second-ever stand-alone cartoon for the New Yorker…
…Garrett Price mined a theme that would become common in New Yorker cartoons: the tycoon vs. meek employee…
…Nancy Fay gave us a glimpse of the seamier side of family life…
Almost ninety years after the lights went out on the Roaring Twenties, our collective imagination of New York City still harks back to that time…the sights and sounds of nightclubs and speakeasies and Broadway lights set to the tune of the Jazz Age.
Oct. 12, 1929 cover by Adolph K. Kronengold.
And no wonder, since that decade made the city what it is today. Changing social mores, along with labor-saving electrical appliances and the ubiquitous automobile, altered the tempo of life. And this quickened pace was also reflected in the built environment, old landmarks reduced to rubble while gleaming skyscrapers rose up in their place seemingly overnight. A Victorian edifice like the Waldorf-Astoria — little more than 30 years old — seemed positively ancient to Jazz Age New Yorkers, who unceremoniously knocked it down to make way for what would become the city’s most iconic landmark.
New Yorker architecture critic George S. Chappell (aka “T-Square”) sensed that something big was on the horizon with his regular “Sky Line” updates on the city’s “tallest-building-in-the-world” contest. In the Oct. 12, 1929 issue he looked on admiringly as the Chrysler Building’s distinctive dome began to take shape:
IT’LL BE A SURPRISE…The Chrysler Building still lacked its gleaming art deco dome in this photo taken in the fall of 1929. At left is the Chanin Building, completed earlier that year. (reddit/adamunderhill.wordpress.com)
Chappell observed that the Chrysler Building’s claim as the world’s tallest would be short-lived, as plans for the Waldorf-Astoria site called for a much taller structure…
DOOMED…The old Waldorf-Astoria hotel (left), completed in 1897, was scarcely more than 30 years old when it was demolished to make way for the Empire State Building. The former governor of New York, Al Smith (inset) led the corporation that knocked down the old hotel and erected the world’s tallest building on the site. Demolition of the hotel began on October 1, 1929 (images at right). In his 2014 book The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark,John Tauranac observes the demolition was an arduous process, as the hotel had been constructed using more rigid material than what was found in earlier buildings. Those materials — granite, wood, and metals such as lead, brass, and zinc — were not in high demand. Most of the wood was deposited into a woodpile on nearby 30th Street or burned in a swamp. Other materials, including the granite and bronze, were dumped into the Atlantic near Sandy Hook, NJ. (New York Historical Society/New York Public Library Digital Gallery)RISING FROM THE RUBBLE…The Empire State Building under construction in 1930. When completed in 1931, the 1,250 foot (1,454 with antenna) building would claim the title as the world’s tallest. It was something of a definitive victory, as the building held that record for nearly forty years. (Museum of the City of New York)
Although Al Smith’s building seemed assured to win the “world’s tallest” title, another giant was taking shape on the drawing boards…
LAND OF THE GIANTS…City Bank-Farmers Trust Building (left), now known as 20 Exchange Place, was originally designed in 1929 to be the world’s tallest building at 846 feet, but the realities of the Depression brought it down to a more modest 741 feet, making it the fourth-tallest building in New York when it was completed in 1931. At right, the 22-year-old Century Theatre on Central Park West was demolished to make way for Irwin Chanin’s Century Apartments, also completed in 1931. (Museum of the City of New York/nyc-architecture.com)
…while we are on the subject of skyscrapers, The New Yorker reprinted this illustration by Andre De Schaub to fill in a space at the bottom of page 54 in the Oct. 12 issue…
…the drawing originally appeared in the magazine three years earlier, as a cartoon in the October 16, 1926 issue. It included a caption: “High position on Wall Street” (thanks to Michael Maslin’s invaluable Ink Spill for helping me track this one down)…
As the demolition crews picked apart the old Waldorf, E.B. White wondered why more fanfare wasn’t attached to such occasions, whether they be demolitions or ribbon-cuttings…
NEEDS MORE HOOPLA…Al Smith with his wife Catherine Dunn Smith, and two of his grandchildren at the opening ceremony of the Empire State Building, May 1, 1931. President Herbert Hoover officially dedicated the building by pressing a button in the White House that turned on the building’s lights (it was merely symbolic; they were actually turned on by some unknown maintenance worker in New York). (Museum of the City of New York)
* * *
A Novel Idea
My last post featured a brief excerpt of an Oct. 5 theater review by Robert Benchley, who sized up Elmer Rice’s new play, See Naples and Die. Rice pops up again in the Oct. 12 issue, this time as the author of A Voyage to Purilia, the first novel serialized in The New Yorker. The novel was a satire on the silent film industry, set in the fictional land of Purilia. Here is the first page of the piece, with illustrations provided by Peter Arno:
SENDING UP THE SILENTS…Elmer Rice in 1920; his satirical novel about the silent film industry, A Voyage to Purilla, was serialized in The New Yorker in 1929 and published the following year. It was re-published in the 1950s as a science fiction novel. (Wikipedia/Amazon)
* * *
Siren Song
Writer and cultural critic Gilbert Seldes trained his discerning eye on the famed torch singer and speakeasy denizen Helen Morgan, attempting to understand the hard-living singer’s allure…
Helen Morgan, circa 1930. (masterworksbroadway.com)
RIGHT AT HOME…Helen Morgan made the draped-over-the-piano look of a torch singer her signature style. (Pinterest.UK)LIGHTING UP BROADWAY…Helen Morgan (left) as Julie LaVerne in the original Broadway cast of Show Boat, 1927. It was her best-known role. At right, Morgan in Applause, 1929. (Pinterest/IMDB)
Seldes struggled to understand Morgan’s appeal, which seemed to draw from an assemblage of personas…
PLUMBING EMOTIONAL DEPTHS…Helen Morgan and Rudy Vallee in Sweet Music, 1935. (IMDB)
Seldes concluded that Morgan belonged with other artistic greats in her ability to create a sense of expectancy…
* * *
The Invention of Distracted Driving
Writing in his “Motors” column, Nicholas Trott noted the advent of the car radio, a “new complication” to an “already over-elaborate existence.” Note that Trott viewed the car radio as something to be listened to while parked — car radios were fairly controversial back then, akin to driving while texting today.
EASY TO INSTALL…New Yorker automotive critic Nicholas Trott observed that cars were now being wired to receive radio sets (you still had to buy one and install it yourself). The system above featured battery-powered vacuum tubes, a dash-mounted dial and mono speaker. (hemmings.com)
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From Our Advertisers
To the refined owner of a Pierce-Arrow, a car radio would have been a crass novelty. After all, your driver was there to drive, and listen to your orders…
…unlike the Pierce-Arrow, which took pride in its heritage, the folks at Chrysler were known for their forward-thinking in design and technical innovation…
…on to some of the back page ads, we find appeals to flee the oncoming winter and escape to the golden sands of Waikiki…note the second ad, and its rather democratic invitation…
…and then we have the ads that hoped to catch the eye of the grasping Francophile, with delicacies from Louis Sherry or mock bubbly from the makers of applesauce…the second ad is particularly heartbreaking, the copy writer trying his or her best to conjure the glamour of Champagne from a bottle of apple juice. Zut!…
…fake Champagne isn’t for you? Well Leonard Dove offered us a salesman doing his best to sell a bottle of mock gin…
…returning to the ads, here’s one more from the back pages that references Harold Ross’s original prospectus for his magazine: “The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.” The ad is for Billy Minsky’s National Winter Garden, where the art of burlesque got its start. Despite the cheapness of the ad and the implied salaciousness, uptown New Yorkers loved “slumming” at Minsky’s burlesque, including artists and writers (Hart Crane even wrote a poem called “National Winter Garden”). No doubt a few New Yorker staffers found their way inside as well…
Clockwise from top left, Billy Minsky’s National Winter Garden; a 1920’s burlesque performer; a ticket for two to the show. (New York Post/Amazon/Pinterest)
…on to the illustrators and cartoonists, a nice street scene by Reginald Marsh…
…John Held Jr. contributed one of his famed “woodcuts” to the Oct. 12 issue. Held was an old childhood friend of New Yorker founding editor Harold Ross. It was Ross who encouraged Held to deviate from his popular flapper caricatures — he recalled how his friend had produced clever woodcuts in high school, and wanted something similar for his magazine…
A John Held Jr. illustration for Life magazine, 1927. (Library of Congress)
…Peter Arno went behind the scenes at a posh nightclub (a familiar setting for Arno)…
…Helen Hokinson found confusion at the elections…
…Perry Barlow offered up this sweet slice of family life…
…and Denys Wortman illustrated the power of the pen…
The Hammerstein name looms large in the history of both stage and screen, an extended family of theater impresarios and composers descended from the German-born Oscar Hammerstein I (1846 – 1919).
Sept. 14, 1929 cover by Rea Irvin.
It was Oscar’s son, Arthur Hammerstein (1872 – 1955), who would bring the nostalgic musical Sweet Adeline to the Broadway stage, with music by Jerome Kern. Arthur’s nephew, Reginald Hammerstein, directed, and Reginald’s brother, Oscar Hammerstein II, provided the lyrics (and would later collaborate on such Broadway hits as Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music). Sweet Adeline opened on Sept. 3, 1929 at Arthur’s Hammerstein Theatre (known today as Ed Sullivan Theater), and the New Yorker’sRobert Benchley was on hand for opening night…
The title of the musical was a pun on the famous barbershop quartet song first published in 1903 — a time that seemed quaint to Jazz Agers. To get a sense of how rapidly American society had changed in the 1920s, in the paragraph above, Benchley referred to the musical’s setting (1898) as “old-time.” I’m not sure we would refer to 1987 as “old-time,” but who knows? Benchley continued…
OLD-FASHIONED FUN…Clockwise, from top left, the famed 1920s torch singer Helen Morgan (pictured on sheet music for one of her songs from the musical) starred as “Addie” in 1929’s Sweet Adeline;Arthur Hammerstein in undated photo; stage and screen actress and vaudeville comedian Irene Franklin portrayed a burlesque queen in the musical, while comedic actor Charles Butterworth played the part of a “young rounder.” (YouTube/findagrave.com/Wikipedia/lbarsanti.wordpress.com)
As for the performances by Helen Morgan (who more or less invented the torch singer’s boozy, draped-over-the-piano style), Benchley noted that her personality was “almost oppressively lush at times”…
A note regarding Helen Morgan: She began her career singing in Chicago speakeasies before moving to New York in the mid-1920s, where she continued to sing in nightclubs (including one attached to her name, Chez Morgan) while also performing on Broadway. Morgan became a heavy drinker, and was often drunk during performances (hence Benchley’s comment regarding her “lush personality”). Cirrhosis of the liver would claim Morgan’s life in 1941. The same disease would claim Benchley four years later.
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While we are the topic of Broadway, the Sept. 14 “Talk of the Town” featured a brief profile of John Murray Anderson, (1886 – 1954) who was celebrating the success of his own Broadway musical revue Almanac…
HE WORE MANY HATS…John Murray Anderson made his Broadway debut in 1919 as writer, director, and producer of The Greenwich Village Follies, which had a five-year run. At left, a cover for sheet music from a 1920 production. At right, postcard image of the Follies from 1922. (Pinterest)
In this excerpt, “Talk” recounted how Anderson finally hit it big in 1919 with his Greenwich Village Follies. It noted that he had a “genius”…
Clockwise from top left, Almanac featured comedians Roy Atwell and Jimmy Savo; singer and comedian Trixie Friganza; and actress Eleanor Shaler. (royatwell.net/American Vaudeville Museum/secondhandsongs.com/Pinterest)
…and a bit more about Anderson…
In Michael Maslin’s terrific book, Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker’s Greatest Cartoonist,Maslin notes that Arno “was whisked onto the Manhattan theater scene by Murray Anderson, whose twenty-nine scene Almanac opened to excellent reviews at the two-year-old Erlanger Theater, just off Times Square.” Maslin cites the famed New York columnist O.O. McIntyre, who wrote “Arno was one of several ‘conspirators’ responsible for Broadway backdrops whose ‘exaggerated whimsicalities…in black and white…when unfolded usually get what Variety calls a belly laugh.'”
At left, Peter Arno contributed this advertisement for Camel cigarettes in the Playbill edition for Almanac; top right, John Murray Anderson at work; cover for sheet music from the revue. (attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com / Wikipedia)
And in the following issue of The New Yorker (Sept. 21), Peter Arno contributed this drawing for the theater review section (it doesn’t entirely look like an Arno, but then again his style at this time seemed to fluctuate almost weekly)…
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Flapper Joan
No stranger to Broadway herself, the young actress Joan Crawford was making a name for herself in Hollywood and garnering consistently positive reviews from the New Yorker’s film critic John Mosher, who found that the 25-year-old actress— who portrayed a fun-loving flapper in Modern Maidens — could shine even in the midst of an average screenplay:
THEY’RE NOT ACTING…At top, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Crawford in MGM’s Our Modern Maidens (1929). The film led to a widely publicized romance and marriage between the co-stars; below, publicity photo for the film, with (from left) Josephine Dunn, Crawford, and Anita Page. (IMDB/joancrawfordbest.com)
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Silence is Golden
Cultural critic Gilbert Seldes contributed a casual titled “In a Loud Voice With the Tongues of Angels,” joining the chorus of voices at The New Yorker skeptical of (but resigned to) the advent of sound motion pictures. Excerpts:
SOMETHING HAS COME BETWEEN US…a microphone moves in close on Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis in a scene from 1932’s 20,000 Years In Sing Sing. (cinecollage.net)
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Das Speedboat
“The Talk of the Town” reported on the fuss created by the German passenger liner Bremen after it completed its maiden voyage to New York. It set a new world record in the process — four days, 17 hours, and 42 minutes later —and captured the westbound “Blue Riband” from the famed Mauretania with an average speed of 27.83 knots (the Blue Riband was an unofficial honor bestowed on the fastest passenger liners crossing the Atlantic)…
LOWRIDER…Top, the low, streamlined profile of the Bremen against the backdrop of the New York skyline. Center and below, among its many unique features, the Bremen had a catapult on the upper deck between the two funnels that launched a small seaplane, which facilitated faster mail service ahead of the ship’s arrival. (YouTube/nnapprentice.com)(Ebay community post)
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Up In Smoke
Another “Talk” item explored the decline of cigar and pipe smokers thanks to the rise of cigarette advertising (and women smokers) in the 1920s…
…as an aside, it appeared golfer Walter Egan was still a pipe smoker, as this illustration by Johan Bull for the issue’s “Tee and Green” column attested…
…”Talk” laid the blame (or the credit) on Lucky Strike’s successful ad campaigns that that particularly made a “big impression” on women…
…and to begin our advertising section, a Lucky Strike ad from the same issue:
…the Liggett & Myers tobacco company, on the other hand, promoted their Fatima brand as a higher quality, and slightly more expensive, alternative…
…in this ad for The Shelton Looms we find the elongated style popular in fashion ads of the era…the illustration is by LeBrun, but also evokes the style of Carl “Eric” Erickson, known for his Camel ad illustrations of the same period…
…and now a couple of ads from the back pages: the ad at left promoted a “country style” supper club near Washington Square. I haven’t found a record (yet) for the County Fair, but it was one of the themed restaurants Don Dickerman operated around Greenwich Village before the Depression (Dickerman, an illustrator, also provided the art for the ad)…the ad on the right—for Odorono deodorant— appeared regularly in the back pages of The New Yorker, illustrated by the magazine’s own Julian De Miskey. The ads featured vignettes of unfortunate young women whose B.O. was so bad that it caused all potential suitors to flee…
…on to our cartoons, Al Frueh (artist of the first two cartoons in The New Yorker’s first issue)…contributed another of his familiar multi-panel “silent” cartoons…
…I like the modern feel of this cartoon by William Crawford Galbraith…
…and we close with a couple of cartoons under the moonlight, by Bruce Bairnsfather…
During the Roaring Twenties New Yorkers took a wrecking ball to much of their past, and at a breathtaking pace that left many residents little time to ponder what was lost.
March 30, 1929 cover by Julian de Miskey.
Writer and cultural critic Gilbert Seldes succinctly summed up this spirit of the times in a tongue-in-cheek “reminiscence” of the “old” New York—that is, how the city appeared the previous fall before he left to spend the winter in Bermuda:
NOW WHERE WILL I GET A WALDORF SALAD? Writer Gilbert Seldes (top left) ticked off some of the many changes to his city while he was away for the winter, including (clockwise, from top right), the murder of racketeer Arnold Rothstein; the planned demolition of the Waldorf Astoria to make room for the Empire State Building (photo of the partially demolished hotel); and perhaps the first song to be overplayed on the radio ad nauseum–Al Jolson’s “Sonny Boy.” (Wikipedia, Daily News, New York Public Library, musicals101.com)
A member of the intellectual elite but also a strong advocate for cultural democracy, Seldes began writing for the New Yorker inlate 1925 and would be a frequent contributor through 1936. In 1937 he would join CBS as its first director of television programs, and would also become one of television’s first critics thanks to his 1937 Atlantic Monthly article, “The ‘Errors’ of Television.” (Note: There were only 50 experimental TV sets in the New York area in 1937, and the first commercially available sets weren’t sold until 1939). In 1958—when there would be 42 million U.S. households with a television—Seldes would serve as the host of NBC’s The Subject is Jazz.
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Peggy Bacon Did It All
Another early contributor to the New Yorker was Peggy Bacon, who displayed her sharp wit in her nearly 50 articles and poems for the magazine from 1926 to 1950. But Bacon was also well-known for displaying her talent and wit in the many paintings and illustrations she created throughout her long career. The New Yorker’s art critic Murdock Pemberton sang her praises in the March 30, 1929 issue after visiting her show at the Weyhe Gallery.
A FEW IDEASwas the title of this 1927 drypoint work featured in Peggy Bacon’s Weyhe Gallery show. At right, Bacon, circa 1920s. (artnet.com/wikipedia)A sampling of Peggy Bacon drypoint works from the 1920s, clockwise, from top: Frenzied Effort, 1925; Vanity, 1929; Penguin Island, 1926. (Brooklyn Museum/Artnet/1stdibs.com)
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The March 30 profile featured aviation innovator Giuseppe Mario Bellanca, who in 1922 designed the first enclosed-cabin monoplane in the U.S. Perhaps even more significant, his design in 1913 of a plane with a propeller in front, a wing in the middle and tail at the end set the standard for all aircraft built since. (Before 1913 many planes were propelled from the rear, with the “tail” projected in front of the craft). The profile writer, William Weimer (with art by Hugo Gellert) admired Bellanca’s ability to stand toe-to-toe with the mighty du Pont family:
Bellanca founded the Roos-Bellanca Aircraft Company in Omaha in 1927, and was featured on the cover of Time. In 1929 he created the Delaware-based Bellanca Aircraft Corporation of America in a financial partnership with the du Ponts.
AVIATION PIONEER Giuseppe Mario Bellanca (center) at the new Bellanca Airfield in New Castle, Delaware, 1928. Bellanca’s planes would establish numerous records for altitude, endurance, and speed. (Delaware Public Archives)
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Showing Some Restraint
In his “Sky Line” column, the New Yorker architecture critic George S. Chappell (aka “T-Square”) praised an award-winning 1928 apartment at 3 East 84th Street for its contemporary charm and “fine restraint.” Designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, the 9-story building was commissioned by Joseph Medill Patterson, owner of the New York Daily News. The design would be influential in Hood’s much more ambitious projects two years later—the Daily News Building (1930) and Rockefeller Center (1931).
The Raymond Hood– and John Mead Howells-designed 3 East 84th Street. Top right, the front entrance; and bottom right, ceiling’s silver leaf squares. (Susan DeMark–mindfulwalker.com)
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Advertisers in the March 30 issue offered various garments for the gentleman, including this sports-country ensemble at left from Finchley and a custom lounging robe from Macy’s…
…and for fashionable, amusingly mischievous woman there was the new “Scalawag” hat by Knox (ad illustrated by the great Carl Erickson)…
…Blue Moon’s blonde fairy girl was one of the Jazz Age’s most recognizable labels…here she is matched with an Art Deco-inspired spectrum of stocking colors…
…Ligget & Myers Tobacco Company joined the ranks of sophisticated advertisers who touted a product—in this case Fatima cigarettes—without actually showing the product…
…on the other hand, American Tobacco Company, the makers of Lucky Strike, made doubly sure you wouldn’t forget that bright red bullseye, or Rosalie Adele Nelson, “The Original Lucky Poster Girl”…
Nelson’s image for Lucky Strike was almost as ubiquitous as the fairy in the Blue Moon ads. Apparently she was also a member the Nelson family of circus acrobats and performed her own signature act with baby elephants:
Rosalie Adele Nelson with her baby elephant act, 1929 (eBay)
Philip Morris took an entirely different (and unusual) approach to selling its relatively new brand of Marlboro cigarettes by touting the achievements of Gretchen Colnik, winner of the “1928 Marlboro Contest for Distinguished Handwriting….”
Like Rosalie Adele Nelson, Gretchen Colnik would go on to minor fame of her own. She was managing editor of the Great Neck, NY, newspaper before returning to her hometown—Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From 1952 to 1966 Gretchen was the Martha Stewart of Milwaukee, hosting a TV show that provided advice on interior design, food and crafts. “The Gretchen Colnik Show” was sponsored by Mrs. Karl’s Bread.
Our cartoon is by Leonard Dove, who looks in on an architect at work:
The Cruelest Month
The film reviews for the April 6, 1929 issue found the New Yorker once again at odds with Hollywood and favoring cinematic products from the Old World.
April 6, 1929 cover by Rea Irvin.
In the case it was a French film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, which even today is regarded as a cinematic landmark.
A LOT AT STAKE…American poster for The Passion of Joan of Arc; at right, Maria Falconetti in the title role. (Wikipedia/Film Forum)
The New Yorker review praised the film as “one of the few of the year which merit serious attention”…
On the other hand, there were the latest products from Hollywood, which stood on the other side of a “vast abyss” from the French film:
HO HUM FOR HOLLYWOOD…At left, Mary Dugan (Norma Shearer) with her conniving lawyer, Edward West (Lewis Stone) in The Trial of Mary Dugan; Lewis Stone was a apparently a busy man in the late 1920s—here he is again (center image), this time portraying John Sterling, a tea plantation investor lacking the mojo to keep up with his much younger wife, Lillie (Greta Garbo) in Wild Orchids; and at right, Janet Gaynor as a little Dutch girl in Christina, a film now considered lost. Click image to enlarge (normashearer.com/pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
The April 6 issue found Charlie Chaplin getting in on the action of Old Gold cigarette endorsements…
…while Curtiss Flying Service thought it might interest some of the more well-heeled New Yorker readers in the purchase of an airplane…
…a couple weeks later, in the April 20 issue, the New Yorker would make this observation about the ad in “The Talk of the Town”…
…and finally, our cartoon by R. Van Buren, looking in on yet another sugar daddy and his much younger companion on a night out…
A New Yorker State of Mind 