Helen Hokinson – Page 15 – A New Yorker State of Mind

Summer in the City

The July 1927 issues of the New Yorker were filled with news of yacht races, polo matches and golf tournaments as the city settled into the heart of the summer. The artist for the July 9 cover, Julian de Miskey, was in the summertime mood with this lively portrayal of Jazz Age bathers:

21b6fac0e9233b827d578cf6175dd79d — July 9, 1927 cover by **Julian de Miskey**. Born in Hungary in 1898, de Miskey emigrated to the United States in 1914.

Although Julian de Miskey (1898–1976) was was one of the most prolific of the first wave of New Yorker artists, his work seems to be little known or appreciated. But more than forty years after his death his influence is still felt in the magazine, particularly in the spot illustrations and overall decorative style that grace the pages of “The Talk of the Town.”

Here is a sampling of de Miskey’s spot illustrations for “Talk” in the July 9 and July 16, 1927 issues…

…and here are examples of spot illustrations for some recent (Aug-Sept. 2016) New Yorker “Talk” sections, as rendered by Antony Huchette (which also reference Otto Soglow’s spot work for The New Yorker)…

De Miskey did it all–spots, cartoons, and dozens of covers. A member of the Woodstock Art Association, de Miskey was well known in the New York art circles of his day, rubbing elbows in the Whitney Studio Club in Manhattan with artists including Edward Hopper, Guy Pene du Bois, Mabel Dwight and Leon Kroll. De Miskey also illustrated and designed covers for a number of books, studied sculpture and created stage sets and costume designs.

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-11-18-07-am — PROLIFIC…**Julian de Miskey** illustrated a number of children’s books, including *Chúcaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa* (1958-Newbery winner); *The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear* (1960); and *Piccolo* (1968) which was both written and illustrated by de Miskey.

The June 9 issue also featured this cartoon by de Miskey:

* * *

President Calvin Coolidge fled the bugs and heat of Washington, D.C. for cooler climes in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The New Yorker regularly mocked Coolidge’s dispatches from the Dakotas, including this item in “Of All Things”…

02-calvin-coolidge-cowboy_69085_600x450 — VAPID CITY…President **Calvin Coolidge** wears a cowboy hat and Western garb while on a two-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1927. (Library of Congress)

The magazine’s July 16 issue added this observation in “The Talk of the Town”…

Closer to home, M. Bohanan offered an urban sophisticate’s take on nature:

For those who couldn’t flee the city, respite was sought in Central Park, as illustrated by Constantin Alajalov for “The Talk of the Town…”

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-10-14-08-am — ***click to enlarge***

Summer themes continued with the July 16 issue, which featured a cover by Helen Hokinson depicting one of her favorite subjects–the plump society woman:

1f64e9e51d307bb03097744ebbb681f6 — July 16, 1927 cover by **Helen Hokinson.**

From 1918 to 1966, thousands of New Yorkers attended summer open-air concerts at Lewisohn Stadium, an amphitheater and athletic facility on the campus of the City College of New York. For many years Willem Van Hoogstraten conducted the nightly concerts, including the summer of 1927 when George Gershwin played his Rhapsody in Blue to adoring crowds.

summer-conerts — Performance at Lewisohn Stadium, located at 136th Street and Convent Avenue. (nyc-architecture.com)

Program for the 1925 Stadium Concerts series. (archives.nyphil.org) **Click to enlarge**

serpico-1973 — FINAL BOW…A still from the 1973 film *Serpico,* showing actors **Al Pacino** and Tony Roberts walking through the abandoned Lewisohn Stadium just before it was demolished. (YouTube)

110927-gon039-01 — UGH…The Lewisohn Stadium site is now occupied by a City College of New York building with the inspiring name, “North Academic Center.” (nyc-architecture.com)

And finally, another illustration in the “Talk of the Town” of summer in the city, this a teeming Coney Island beach courtesy of Reginald Marsh…

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-10-24-00-am — **click to enlarge**

However, if you wanted to avoid the rabble at the beach, you could fly over them–in style, of course…

Next Time: Picking on Charlie Chaplin…

Those Jaunty Jalopies

The January 8, 1927 issue of the New Yorker was all over the 27th Annual Motor Show at the Grand Central Palace, both in its lengthy review of the show and the many automobile ads throughout its pages.

02a20a11df95c233092dc64bfc8f2b3c — January 8, 1927 (Issue # 99) cover by Ilonka Karasz.

Auto manufacturers discovered early on that cars didn’t need to advance technologically from year to year as long as there were superficial changes–trimmings and such–to dazzle the consumer:

Screen Shot 2016-06-02 at 3.29.13 PM — **Helen Hokinson** added this touch to the issue devoted to the auto show.

1927_Roadster_Model-90 — A 1927 Gardner Model 90 Roadster on display at the 27th Annual New York Motor Show at Grand Central Palace. (gardnermotorcars.com)

Advertisements in the New Yorker ranged from snobbish appeals to Francophiles…

…to those who might be concerned about safety. Although cars weren’t very fast, they were fast enough to kill, and their plentiful numbers often overwhelmed a city with rudimentary traffic control.

In his book, One Summer: America, 1927, Bill Bryson writes that New York in 1927 was the most congested city on earth. It contained more cars than the whole country of Germany, while at the same 50,000 horses (and wagons) still clogged the streets. More than a thousand people died in traffic accidents in the city in 1927, four times the number today.

slowupbrooklyn — THE DEATH-O-METER … was a 20-foot sign installed near Grand Army Plaza in 1927. It tallied traffic accidents and fatalities in the borough and reminded motorists to slow down at the traffic circle. (*Ephemeral New York*)

Traffic control was still in its infancy in the 1920s. Seven ornate bronze towers, 23 feet high, were placed at intersections along Fifth Avenue from 14th to 57th Streets starting in 1922. By 1927 smaller, simpler lights were mounted on street corners and the system of green, yellow and red was generally adopted.

491px-62646_253114161496208_2059581299_n_zpsf6a62b6c — Bronze traffic signal tower designed by **Joseph H. Freedlander** at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, 1922. (*stuffnobodycaresabout.com)*

Keeping with the motorcar theme, the issue also featured a profile (written by Lurton Blassingame) of Walter P. Chrysler, founder of the new car company that bore his name (Chrysler founded his company in June 1925 after acquiring and reorganizing the old Maxwell Motor Company). In just three years a famous New York City landmark bearing his name would pierce the skyline.

I recently noted that the fall 1926 editions of the New Yorker barely mentioned baseball, even though the Yankees made it to the World Series that year. No doubt the Black Sox scandal of 1919 still lingered in the minds of many fans. Morris Markey’s “Reporter at Large” column in the Jan. 8, 1927 issue suggested that the game, “no more important than the circus,” was still dishonest, thanks in part to its collusion with the newspapers:

Baseball might have been down and out, but actress Pola Negri still maintained her place in the spotlight with her latest film, Hotel Imperial.

zoom_1418768545_hotel_imperial@2x — Actress **Pola Negri** consults on a script with director **Mauritz Stiller** (left) on the set of *Hotel Imperial.* (MOMA)

Next Time: Bad Hootch…

The Last Impressionist

The death of artist Claude Monet prompted the editors of the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” to speculate on the true origins of the “Impressionist” movement of the late 19th century.

586fbe11df96b63350793a3341bc3dcf — December 18, 1926 cover by **Ottar Gaul**. Once again, the theme of the doddering sugar daddy out on the town with his young mistress.

Note how the “Talk” editors lightly regarded the artist’s late period, during which he painted his famous “Water Lilies” series:

The editors also used the occasion to clear up the confusion (in the lay mind) between Édouard Manet and Monet, identifying them not only as two distinct persons but also crediting the former with the founding of the Impressionism technique while giving Claude his due for actually giving it a name:

Claude_Monet,_Water_Lilies,_ca._1915-1926 — *Water Lilies*, a late period painting by **Claude Monet**, circa 1915-26. (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)

Monet_in_Garden,_New_York_Times,_1922 — Monet, right, in his garden at Giverny, 1922. (*New York Times*)

Another much younger notable of the age, Ernest Hemingway, was the talk of literary society on both sides of the Atlantic with the publication of his latest novel, The Sun Also Rises. According to the New Yorker’s Paris correspondent Janet “Genêt” Flanner, the novel was creating a buzz in Montparnasse over the origins of the book’s colorful characters:

Keeping in mind that the Christmas shopping season was still in full swing, Frigidaire thought it the perfect time for New Yorker readers to buy a newfangled electric refrigerator:

And we ring out the year with the final issue of 1926:

a891b86b245caf69b30eda2d09544bba — December 25, 1926 cover by **Rea Irvin.**

It was a tough year for New Yorker film critic “OC”, who summed up his disappointment with the movies by offering a Top Ten list that included only two films:

Variety_(1925_film) — The 1925 German film Variety (released in the U.S. in 1926) was one of only two films worth watching in 1926, according to the *New Yorker’s* film critic. (Wikipedia)

And to close, this cartoon by Helen Hokinson, which in the original magazine filled all of page 14 and therefore had to be printed sideways:

Next Time: 1927-A Year to Remember…

Holiday Shopping

Photo above via themindcircle.com

With Christmas fast approaching, The New Yorker was getting into the spirit of holidays, especially with all of the advertising revenue it gained from merchants who targeted its well-heeled readership.

8912823cfdc5626785b13a431ae590de — November 27, 1926—**Peter Arno’s** first cover for the *New Yorker.* He would do 98 more.

Lois Long continued to write both of her weekly columns for the magazine–her observations on fashion along with ideas for Christmas shoppers in “On and Off the Avenue” (“Saks’ toy department has some of the loveliest French notepaper for tiny children…”) and her musings on nightlife in “Tables for Two.”

In contrast to her rather light mood expressed in the fashion column, Long was feeling far from jolly in her “Tables” observations of New York’s nightlife:

As you might recall, in a previous column Long tossed a “ho-hum” in the direction of the famed Cotton Club. Perhaps Prohibition was taking its toll on the hard-partying columnist.

Nevertheless, the holiday spirit was upon with The New Yorker, in the cartoons (this one by Helen Hokinson)…

…and in various advertisements.

Note this advertisement (below) from Russeks. The comics in The New Yorker famously poked fun at the comic pairings of rich old men and their young mistresses, but this ad seemed to glorify such a pairing while suggesting that an older man of means must invest in fine furs if he is going to hang on to his trophy wife or mistress, in this case a young woman who appears to be nearly eight feet tall…

I liked this ad from Nat Lewis for the simple line drawing…

…but the ads for Elizabeth Arden, which for years featured this “Vienna Youth Mask” image, always creep me out.

The mask was made of papier-mâché lined with tinfoil. Although not pictured in the ad, it was also fitted to the client’s face. The Vienna Youth Mask used diathermy to warm up the facial tissues and stimulate blood circulation.

1937-arden-vienna — SLEEP TIGHT…The full “Youth Mask” applied to an Elizabeth Arden client in the mid 1930s. (cosmeticsandskin.com)

In a 1930 advertisement, Elizabeth Arden claimed that “The Vienna Youth Mask stimulates the circulation, producing health as Nature herself does, through a constantly renewed blood supply. The amazing value of this treatment lies in the depth to which it penetrates, causing the blood to flow in a rich purifying stream to underlying tissues and muscles…charging them with new youth and vigor. It stirs the circulation as no external friction or massage can possible do.”

I don’t believe this claim was backed up by medical research, but as we all know, Elizabeth Arden made a bundle from these treatments and the various creams and potions that came with it.

Next Time: Race Matters…

What to Drink During Prohibition

The Roaring Twenties were a strange confluence of the Puritan and libertine, perhaps best represented by Prohibition and the speakeasy night life it inspired. Many if not most of The New Yorker readers of the late 1920s were familiar with these establishments as well as with reliable bootleggers and rum runners. And for those of you following this blog we all know that “Tables for Two” columnist Lois Long was the voice of speakeasy and New York nightlife.

Screen Shot 2015-12-17 at 1.51.20 PM — May 29, 1926 cover by **Stanley W. Reynolds**.

Prohibition did not make consumption of alcohol illegal. The 18th Amendment prohibited the commercial manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages, but it did not prohibit their use.

So if you had a connection to a smuggler bringing whisky from Scotland via Canada, for example, you could enjoy a Scotch at home without too much trouble, although the prices could be high. “The Talk of the Town” editors regularly reported black market wine and liquor prices (I include an adjoining Julian de Miskey cartoon):

Note the mention of pocket flasks, which were an important item in a purse or vest pocket when one went to a nightclub or restaurant, where White Rock or some other sparkling water was sold as a mixer for whatever you happened to bring with you. You see a lot of this type of advertisement in the Prohibition-era New Yorker:

I’ll bet those grinning golfers have something in their bags besides clubs.

And then there were ads like these, which I find quite sad:

“The Talk of the Town” also commented on the recent visit of British writer Aldous Huxley, who told his New York hosts that he admired American writers Willa Cather and Sherwood Anderson, and he also had praise for writer and critic H.L. Mencken, whom he likened to a farmer “of the better type:”

**Aldous Huxley** in the 1920s. (Biography.com)

Other odds and ends from this issue…a clever drawing by Al Frueh for the “Profile” feature on New York Governor Al Smith:

A photo of Al Smith for comparison:

And this bit from “Of All Things,” complete with bad pun/racial slur:

New Yorker readers in 1926 had little reason to believe that in a decade Benito Mussolini would try to make good on his statement and join Adolf Hitler in the next world war.

Here’s a couple more ads from the issue that are signs of those times. Note the listing of Florida locations for those New Yorkers who were flocking to that new winter vacation destination:

And this ad for an electric refrigerator…for those who could afford such newfangled things. The ice man was still plenty busy in 1926, but his days were numbered.

And finally, a nod to springtime, and this excerpt of an illustration by Helen Hokinson for the “Talk” section:

Next Time: After a Fashion…

The Circus Comes to Town

The Ringling Brothers Circus was in town, and The New Yorker marked the occasion with a profile of the surviving Ringlings, John and Charles. Writer Helena Huntington Smith noted that the brothers used a lowbrow profession to become multimillionaires, real estate kings (“They own “most of the west coast of Florida”) and even occasional patrons of the arts.

Speaking of lowbrow, circus freaks remained a big attraction in 1920s New York. Here is an image of the Ringling Brothers “Congress of Freaks” lineup from two years earlier, in 1924:

Congress of Freaks 1924 — Photograph by **Edward Kelty**, who took photos of the “Congress of Freaks” every year from 1924 to the mid 1930s. (artblart.com)

The 1926 show at Madison Square Garden also featured elephants “dancing” the Charleston. One wonders how much these poor beasts were abused:

7341-1 Dansende olifant 1926 — (Vintage Everyday)

And from the “Remember it’s 1926 Department,” we have this New Yorker obituary for famed Ringling circus freak Zip the Pinhead. Note that Zip was “owned” by a Captain O.K. White:

Zip’s real name was William Henry Johnson. Thought to have been born with microcephaly (those with the condition were commonly called “pinheads), he might have merely possessed an oddly shaped head.

Audiences were often told that he was a wild man, or a missing link, and although it was assumed he was mentally deficient (the New Yorker article above suggested he had the mentality of a two-year-old child), Johnson’s sister said he could “converse like the average person, and with fair reasoning power.” She claimed his last words (he died at age 83) were, “Well, we fooled ’em for a long time, didn’t we?”

The New Yorker editors continued to marvel at the heights of new buildings, the latest being the Ritz Tower, which was to be the tallest residential building in the city:

Here’s a postcard image of the Ritz Tower from the late 1920s. Note the airplane at left, added to emphasize the building’s height:

new-york-ritz-tower-granger — (geographicguide.com)

At 41 stories and 541 feet, the Ritz was city’s tallest residential tower at the time. The tallest residential tower in NYC today is 432 Park Avenue. The 96-story tower is just shy of 1,400 feet:

432PA_NW-View_copyright-dbox-for-CIM-Group-Macklowe-Properties-1024x682 — (Forbes)

Even taller residential towers are in the works.

Now, to end on a lighter note, a Whoops Sisters cartoon by Peter Arno—this is the first in which their trademark “Whoops” is uttered.

and this “generation gap” observation by Helen Hokinson:

Next Time: Batter Up

Top Dog

Screen Shot 2015-10-23 at 11.29.29 AM — Feb. 20, 1926 cover by **Rea Irvin.**

Now that I have your attention (at least the dog lovers anyway; and yes, there is a dog-related item if you read on), it is worth mentioning that the Feb. 20, 1926 issue of The New Yorker marked the first anniversary of the magazine, and in what would become an annual tradition, the magazine reprinted the original Rea Irvin cover from its first issue.

The magazine nearly went belly up during the summer of 1925, but a new marketing campaign, along with noticeably better content, put the magazine firmly in the black as it looked to its second year.

In “The Talk of the Town,” the editors couldn’t help but boast about their prosperity, albeit in a winking manner:

Jimmy the Ink (James Daugherty) marked the anniversary with this drawing…

…and Corey Ford, who contributed more than twenty satirical house ads for the magazine under the title, “The Making of the Magazine,” returned to form in this issue with a recollection of the magazine’s imagined past (a device The Onion employs to great effect):

The magazine’s prosperity was evident not only in its talented stable of writers and illustrators, but also in its pages crammed with advertising. As I’ve noted before, much of the advertising is directed at the Anglo- and Franco-phile tastes of the magazine’s readers. For example, this ad from Studebaker suggesting a connection to British royalty:

Continuing on the theme of royalty, none other than Her Royal Highness, “La Princesse Genevieve” gave her nod to Produits Bertie skin cream (joining the ranks of other royal and society women who hawked moisturizers, cold creams and even cigarettes in those days…)

Royal endorsements were not limited to France and England, as none other than the Maharajah de Kapurthala put his seal of approval on Melachrino cigarettes in an ad featured on the inside back cover…

The issue was filled with car ads, appearing in the wake of January’s 26th Annual National Automobile Show at the Grand Central Palace. But the latest spectacle was the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at the new Madison Square Garden, with the Terrier Group once again taking the top prize. The “Talk” editors offered this observation on Westminster:

901cd377df88b8559aa31f2564fdcea2 — BEST IN SHOW 1926…Signal Circuit of Halleston was a Wire Fox Terrier and winner of the the 50th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in 1926. The fourth Fox Terrier to win best in show, Signal Circuit was one of 200 Fox Terriers present at the 1926 Westminster show. He was handled by **Percy Roberts,** who had imported the dog from England and had just stepped off the boat before the show. The dog was described as having “phenominal length of head and sound movement.” (WKC)

Screen Shot 2015-10-26 at 4.47.31 PM — *The New Yorker’s* **Helen Hokinson** offered this illustration to mark the event.

An advertisement from Bonwit Teller even got into the spirit of the thing…

From my How Times Have Changed department, this ad from Guaranty Trust:

And finally, a detail from a center-page illustration by Rea Irvin depicting the result of a blizzard that blanketed the city in February 1926:

Next Time: A Fine Mess…

Ben Hur Bric-à-brac

Screen Shot 2015-09-25 at 9.48.36 AM — Jan. 9, 1925 cover by **Hans Stengel**.

MGM spent nearly $5 million (about $70 million today) to make the silent epic Ben-Hur, filming the movie on location in Egypt, Italy and the United States. The New Yorker’s film critic Theodore Shane was not impressed.

Shane wrote that $4,999,999.95 had been spent “on massive effects and the remaining $.05 on drama.”

He noted, however, that the original story, an 1880 novel by Lew Wallace (who was a Union general in the Civil War, among other things), was pretty lacking in drama to begin with, just a “piece of bric-à-brac romance (that was) nothing more than a super Rover Boys story touched up with a Biblical background.” Here’s Shane’s entire review of the film, which was released by MGM on December 30, 1925:

00239 — A Nickel’s Worth of Drama…**Ramon Novarro** (left) and **Francis X. Bushman** mix it up in *Ben-Hur* (1925) (Virtual History)

This was actually the second Ben Hur film. The first was made in 1907, a 15-minute silent costing $500 (and it really was made on the cheap; the producers stole some shots of a mock chariot race at a fireworks show at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and then added some interior shots to complete the picture).

For the 1925 Ben Hur, filming on location proved difficult from the start. Italy’s new leader, Benito Mussolini, was in an anti-American mood when production began, and labor disputes often delayed filming. By all accounts, conditions were miserable. Kevin Hagopian, in an essay for the New York State Writers Institute, observed “The worst agonies were reserved for the film’s climax, the chariot race. Legendary second unit director B. Reeves Eason’s nickname “Breezy” was certainly not earned by his work on the Ben-Hur set, for his merciless pace cost the lives of over a hundred horses. As [actor Francis X.] Bushman said sadly, “If it limped, they shot it.” A stunt man was killed in a chariot crash, and [actor Ramon] Navarro himself only narrowly escaped death.”

The troubled Italian set was eventually torn down and a new one built in Culver City, California. The crowd scenes and master shots for the race were done in a single day, with forty-two cameras covering the action.

The famed chariot race staged in Culver City, California, was shot with 42 cameras.

In “Profiles” Esther Carples looked at the life of Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was widely considered one of the great pianists of his day, and as a composer represented the last vestiges of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Carples painted a portrait of a brooding genius, a man with aristocratic bearing who lived in lonely exile from his native Russia.

Sergei_Rachmaninoff_cph.3a40575 — **Sergei Rachmaninoff** in 1921. (Library of Congress)

In 1921, Rachmaninoff bought a house on 33 Riverside Drive in New York City, where he lived until 1925. There he consciously recreated the atmosphere of Ivanovka (his beloved Russian summer house) entertaining Russian guests, employing Russian servants, and observing old Russian customs.

*****

Screen Shot 2015-09-28 at 4.33.35 PM — Jan. 16, 1926 cover by **S.W. Reynolds**.

Let’s move on to the next issue, Jan. 16, 1926. “The Talk of the Town” noted another loss of a Fifth Avenue landmark with the Savoy Hotel was falling to the wrecking ball.

The Savoy, built in 1891-92, was slated to be replaced by The Savoy Plaza Hotel, which itself would be demolished in 1965-66 (amid significant public outcry and protest) to make way for the eastern headquarters building of General Motors.

It was observed that the new year would see a boon in construction of huge new buildings along the Avenue, and buildings only five years old (such as Heckscher Building) would be dwarfed by the new towers.

Hotel-Savoy-hres — Another One Bites The Dust…The Savoy Hotel (stuffnobodycaresabout.com)

The New Yorker continued to have fun with actress Gloria Swanson‘s pretensions to royalty (she was married to the Marquis de La Coudraye at the time). This time it came from the pen of Jimmie the Ink (James Daugherty), part of his series of drawings that coupled famous people of the day in comic situations:

The issue also featured Helen Hokinson with a cartoon that seemed more in Barbara Shermund’s wheelhouse…

…a Julian de Miskey drawing for the theatre section…

…and a Peter Arno illustration…

To close, two ads from the Jan. 16 issue, this one appealing to Anglophilic, aristocratic aspirations of certain readers…

And this one from Elizabeth Arden, who will become a mainstay in the magazine with these ads featuring women with ghostly stares, usually with their heads wrapped tightly to combat sagging skin. Thanks to Hollywood, it was the age of the close-up, so wrinkles and blemishes be gone!

Next Time: Lois Long Talks Cars…

Fun in the Sun

Screen Shot 2015-09-09 at 12.47.57 PM — Cover of Jan. 2, 1926 issue by **Rea Irvin.**

As we begin a new year of The New Yorker, it strikes me how little things have changed in 90 years, at least when it comes to human nature–wars and rumors of wars, celebrity gossip, the latest fads in music and fashion, fights over politics and religion. It’s all still with us. And yet, a person from 2015 would be seem like an extraterrestrial in 1926.

January 1926 was still a year and a half away from Charles Lindbergh’s Atlantic flight. Today we think so little of jumping on a plane that soars seven miles above the earth and whisks us anywhere in a matter of hours.

Fokker F7 cabin KLM — The Fokker F7. If you could even afford to fly in the mid-1920s, this is your ride. Buckle up! (Top, aviation history.com; bottom, dutchaviation.nl)

People in 1926 lived very differently, with far fewer distractions. No TV, only sporadic music on mono-tinny radios (or from mostly scratchy, hand-cranked records). Electric lights, but only if you lived in a city or town. The metropolis was noisy, but there was also silence. No cellphones or earphones, no CNN or ESPN blaring from every vertical surface. Your health? Forget it. Going to the dentist, regardless of your station in life, was a chamber of horrors. Ditto the doctor. Ever look at an antique doctor’s bag? Just some brown bottles, weird clamps and a saw. Penicillin wouldn’t be discovered until 1928, and for some reason lots of people died back then of peritonitis. It would claim both Rudolph Valentino and Harry Houdini in 1926. Finally, if you lived in 1926 you probably thought The War to End All Wars was just that. Only a few of the very sage saw the annihilation yet to come.

Anyway…

I titled this edition “Fun in the Sun” because the Jan. 2 issue opens with back-to-back ads enticing freezing New Yorkers to go south for the winter:

These were boom years for places like Miami Beach, formerly a quiet backwater but fast becoming a popular vacation getaway for New Yorkers and other Northeasterners. During the 1920s many wealthy industrialists from the north and Midwest also built their winter homes there.

Japanese tea garden at the Flamingo Hotel in 1923 – Miami Beach (State Archives of Florida, *Florida Memory*)

In other items, the “Reporter at Large” Morris Markey commented on the death of Frank Munsey, American newspaper and magazine publisher. Munsey had a reputation for extreme frugality and was widely disliked by employees who blamed him for their “shoddy recompense.” Munsey is credited with the idea of using new high-speed printing presses to print cheap, ragged pulp magazines, especially for working-class readers. Magazines such as Munsey and Argosy were filled with various genres of action and adventure fiction.

munsey_192501 — *Munsey’s Magazine* January 1925 (philsp.com)

Markey wrote that Munsey would fire people on a whim for reasons that included being left-handed, too old, too young, or too fat. During his ownership of the New York Sun, Munsey gave “a peremptory order that all fat men, being inefficient and probably lazy, be expelled from the Sun staff.” Markey was no fan of Munsey as is clear in this excerpt:

Theodore Shane continued to be disappointed with films coming out of Hollywood. He described Norma Shearer’s latest picture His Secretary as “poor.”

His Secretary - Hobart Henley - 1925 — A stenographer, and a vamp! **Norma Shearer** in *His Secretary*, 1925 (silent beauties)

The film was about a humble stenographer who suddenly transforms into a ravishing sex symbol, a “Cinderella theme” that Shane believed had been thoroughly worn out by the actress. He was also underwhelmed by the return to the screen of William S. Hart, once a big star of the early silents.

TUMBLEWEEDS_Silent_Western_Lobby_Card_1_William_S._Hart-600x471 — The old cowboy isn’t done yet, durn it! (silenthollywood.com)

I have written several entries about the changing face of Fifth Avenue (the old mansions being destroyed, that is). Here is Robert Benchley’s take on the subject:

To close, an illustrated feature by Helen Hokinson, once again showing us how a college student of the 1920s looks (to my eyes anyway) as ancient and remote as a mastodon:

Next time: Ben Hur Bric-à-brac

Beloved Aunt Helen

Screen Shot 2015-08-13 at 1.28.18 PM — Dec. 12, 1925 cover by **Rea Irvin**

Last time we looked at one of The New Yorker’s most prolific artists, Peter Arno. Equally prolific was Helen E. Hokinson, who preceded Arno at the magazine by several months as one of the magazine’s first regular artists.

Hokinson’s signature cartoons of often plump society women engaged in their various activities–clubs, shopping, dining out and gardening–were hugely influential in giving The New Yorker a distinct look and style.

In all she contributed 68 covers to the magazine and more than 1,800 cartoons (including the one that heads this blog entry). So strong was Hokinson’s identity with the magazine, a number of her cartoons were published after her death in 1949.

38159549.HelenHokinson — **Helen Hokinson** (pbase.com)

New Yorker artist Richard Merkin later wrote (The New Yorker, Feb. 14, 1994) that Hokinson was “something of a stay-at-home, preferring the rewards and routines of her work and of an apartment near Gramercy Park and a cottage in Connecticut.” He observed that it was a “dismal irony” when this homebody died in a plane crash en route to a speaking engagement in Washington, D.C.

But let us remember the joys she brought to so many through her work. Merkin wrote that Hokinson was “a beloved aunt among the family of New Yorker artists…(she) created a type that will forever bear her name–the Hokinson Woman.” Here is Hokinson’s contribution to the Dec. 12, 1925 issue:

The reluctant debutante Ellin Mackay was back for the Dec. 12 issue with a follow-up piece, “The Declining Function: A Post-Debutante Rejoices.” It would be her final word on the topic. As I reported earlier, Mackay went on to marry famed songwriter Irving Berlin, but would continue writing, most notably a number of short stories for the Saturday Evening Post and other publications.

889666834-ellin-mackay-irving-berlin-atlantic-city-honeymoon-with-modern-concept-and-atlantic-city-honeymoon — FREE AT LAST…Newlyweds **Ellin Mackay** and **Irving Berlin** on their honeymoon in Atlantic City. They were married on Jan. 4, 1926. (www.kuaike.co)

In this her second and final New Yorker piece, Mackay drove the final nail into her past debutante life, writing that balls and other society events were “no longer a recognition of any kind of distinction.” She concluded:

People are bored, at least for a while, with being sheep; they are weary of filling their hours of ease with tiresome duties; they have learned to go where they want to go, not where they want to be seen.

* * *

“The Talk of the Town “ reported on George Gershwin’s latest work of “ambitious jazz,” his Concerto in F, which premiered at Carnegie Hall with Walter Damrosch conducting.

1101250720_400 — **George Gershwin** on the cover of the July 20, 1925, issue of *Time* magazine. (Time.com)

It was noted that Gershwin’s new work had the “beat of the Charleston stirring it.” Later in the “Critique” section, the work was applauded as an “advance on Rhapsody in Blue” and “sharply effective.”

“Profiles” featured Tex Rickard, proprietor of the new Madison Square Garden. The profile’s writer, W. O. McGeehan, suggested that Rickard had assumed the mantle of P. T. Barnum, and although he had given up his saloon-dealing days (promoting gambling and boxing) and now feigned “respectability and elegance,” his primary talent remained in rounding up the gullible masses for popular entertainments:

He will promote anything that will gather a sufficient number of Rubes for profit or for prestige…Behind his guileless exterior, there is a deep guile that is half benevolent and half Satanic…

1024px-Tex_Rickard — **Tex Rickard** (Library of Congress)

The following year (1926) Rickard would be awarded an NHL franchise to compete with the (now defunct) New York Americans hockey team. Rickard’s team would immediately be nicknamed ‘Tex’s Rangers,” a moniker that remains to this day.

Daybreak_by_Parrish_(1922) — **Maxfield Parrish’s** *Daybreak* (1922) is regarded as the most popular art print of the 20th century, based on number of prints made: one for every four American homes. The original sold in 2010 for $5.2 million. (artsycraftsy.com)

In “Art,” Murdock Pemberton wrote a dismissive critique of the young Maxfield Parrish’s work, which was on display at Scott & Fowles gallery. It was Parrish’s first exhibition. Pemberton took pains to point out that although the work had technical merit, it was by an artist largely glorified in American advertising and not in serious art circles:

The Dec. 12 issue was filled with Christmas advertisements, including this one that suggests even “sophisticated” readers of the magazine had a taste for kitsch:

Included in the back pages was an extensive list of “Christmas Shopping Suggestions” compiled by Lois Long (who noted that the list was “not compiled for the benefit of the Old Lady from Dubuque”), while in “Tables for Two” she confessed something akin to horror that she had not yet visited Harlem in the fall season. Among her observations:

And in the spirit of the season, the “Old Lady from Dubuque” made an appearance in the magazine courtesy of cartoonist Ralph Barton:

Next Time: Social Errors…