Tag: Helen Hokinson

College Days

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

Sept. 23, 1933 cover by Abner Dean.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…discover the perils of historical research with Barbara Shermund…

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

…Helen Hokinson found a Red among the blue bloods…

…and a wee conundrum in the hat department…

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

…on to the Sept. 30, 1933 issue…

Sept. 30, 1933 cover by William Cotton.

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

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

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Mexican Morass

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

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

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Dreaming in Color

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

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

This YouTube video offers some idea of the effect:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next Time: As Thousands Cheer…

Rumors of War

Above: Scores of German tanks lined up at a harvest festival near Hanover, produced in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany began rapidly rearming shortly after Hitler came to power in January 1933.

The year 1933 marked a shift in the political winds, starting with Adolf Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship of Germany in 1933. By October he withdrew from the League of Nations and the Geneva Peace Conference, all the while clandestinely building up his war machine.

Sept. 16, 1933 cover by Harry Brown. The scene depicts the West Side’s infamous “Death Avenue,” where New York Central Railroad freight trains mixed with a jumble of automobiles, wagons and pedestrians amid factories and warehouses. Beginning in the 1850s “West Side Cowboys” rode in front of trains as a safety precaution. Still, there were hundreds of casualties until the rail was elevated in 1934—today’s High Line.

While some sounded alarms, most people, along with their nations, turned inward, focusing on domestic issues—FDR was busy with his New Deal agenda, Britain was dealing with its own economic woes, and Germany, Italy and Japan were keeping their populations in line by stoking the flames of nationalism. Few paid much attention to a 420-page book titled What Would Be the Character of a New War?, which accurately predicted the nature of the war to come. New Yorker critic Clifton Fadiman offered this sobering assessment (wryly titled “To the Gentler Reader”) of the work:

The book’s prescient warnings could be attributed in part to the experiences of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s 19 authors—nearly half of them soldiers from Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and France, the others mostly scientists along with a statesman or two. In her Oct. 22, 1933, New York Times Book Review article, Florence Finch Kelly noted the authors’ general agreement as to the “utter uselessness” of international peace agreements. “This book is a sign-post that blazons in unmistakable language the distance the world has traveled—backward—during the last dozen years,” she wrote, concluding “the world very greatly needs this book…For it is the most ghastly, the most horrifying book about war that has ever been written.”

In my previous post we saw how H.G. Wells envisioned the next war, with destruction raining from the sky. So too was the conclusion of Inter-Parliamentary Union. Fadiman observed:

I LOVE A PARADE…Clockwise from top left: Adolf Hitler is cheered as he rides through the streets of Munich on Nov. 9, 1933; Hideki Tojo would be promoted to major general in 1933 and would go on to become minister of war and prime minister of Japan; the technologically advanced Heinkel He 111 was secretly produced as part of the clandestine German rearmament in the early 1930s; when he wasn’t busy murdering his own people, Josef Stalin (pictured here on Nov. 7, 1933) was implementing his Five-Year Plan. (The Atlantic via AP/Wikipedia)

The rumblings heard in Germany were also on the mind of Howard Brubaker, who made these observations in his column, “Of All Things.”

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Dining For Success

The Society for the Advancement of Better Living offered its own New Deal for Depression America—you could eat your way to better life. E.B. White noted the non-ideological nature of this new movement, where commies and capitalists could break bread together…

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER?…Hearty appetites make strange bedfellows, according to E.B. White. Clockwise, from top left, Helena Rubinstein, Dr. Royal Copeland, Robert Morss Lovett, C. Hartley Grattan, Suzanne La Follette, and Henry Goddard Leach. (Vanity Fair/Wikipedia/U of Nebraska)

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Bread & Circuses

“The Talk of the Town” looked in on the game of college football, which some college presidents annually decried for becoming a “great spectacle.” If they could have only known what was to come…

THE HOME TEAM…Clockwise, from top left: Columbia University’s Baker Stadium in the 1920s; Columbia’s president in 1933, Nicholas Murray Butler, considered something of a blowhard in his day; Columbia’s Hall of Fame coach Lou Little in 1930; Columbia taking on archival Cornell in 1930. The Columbia Lions were a power in the 1930s—in 1933 the Lions won the Rose Bowl, beating Stanford 7–0. (Columbia University)

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The fine folks at Martini & Rossi were doing their part to get Americans ready for the end of Prohibition…

…meanwhile, the makers of Her Majesty’s perfume summoned the old and the new while also showing support for the New Deal (the NRA logo)…this image, however, doesn’t conjure up visions of “Tomorrow’s World”…

…and frankly neither does this tire, here linked to the wonders on display at Chicago’s Century of Progress…

…on to our cartoons, we have two by James Thurber, beginning with this cryptic drawing…

…and later in the issue, a more familiar Thurber at play…

…Helen Hokinson’s “girls” surmised a scandal aboard an incoming liner…

…Henry Anton gave us a kindly pawn shop owner with a money back guarantee…on a pair of brass knuckles…

…Izzy Klein conjured up a ghost who’d found a use for an executive’s wire recorder…

…and we close with Alan Dunn, and the perils of interior design…

Next Time: Music and Murder…

The Shape of Things to Come

Above: Maurice Passworthy (Kenneth Villiers) and Catherine Cabel (Pearl Argyle) prepare for a trip to the moon in Things to Come.

In his 1933 science fiction novel The Shape of Things to Come, H.G. Wells foresaw how an international economic depression could eventually lead to world war.

Sept. 2, 1933 cover by William Steig.

The book also predicted that such a war would feature whole cities destroyed by aerial bombing and the eventual development of weapons of mass destruction. However, New Yorker book critic Clifton Fadiman found Wells’ other predictions to be fanciful, “scientific-romantic” notions, such as a post-war Utopia (headquartered in Basra, Iraq, of all places) ruled by super-talents that would advance scientific learning in a world without nation-states or religion. And naturally everyone would speak English.

YOU MAY SAY I’M A DREAMER…H.G. Wells envisioned a world of war, pestilence and economic collapse that would eventually give way to an English-speaking Utopia free of nation-states and religion. (Wikipedia)

Three years later Wells would adapt his book to the screen in 1936’s Things to Come, produced by Alexander Korda and starring Raymond Massey as a heroic RAF pilot John Cabal and Ralph Richardson as “The Boss,” a man who stands in the way of Cabal’s utopian dreams.

FUTURE TENSE…Clockwise, from top left, H.G. Wells visits with actors Pearl Argyle and Raymond Massey on the set of Things to Come—Swiss designer René Hubert created the futuristic costumes; in the year 1970 RAF pilot John Cabal (Massey) lands his sleek monoplane in Everytown, England, proclaiming a new civilization run by a band of enlightened mechanics and engineers; city of the future as depicted in Things to Come; poster for the film’s release. (IMDB)

An afternote: A 1979 Canadian science fiction film titled The Shape of Things to Come was supposedly based on Wells’ novel but bore little resemblance to the book. The film is a considered a turkey, lovingly mocked by the same audiences that gave Plan 9 from Outer Space a second life.

WE MEAN YOU NO HARM…Actor Jack Palance—wearing what appears to be a jug from a water cooler— headed a cast that included Barry Morse and Carol Lynley in 1979’s The Shape of Things to Come. 

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Fine Dining

Director George Cukor turned a hit Ferber-Kaufman Broadway play into a hit movie by the same title when Dinner at Eight premiered in September 1933. While the film received high marks from leading critics, New Yorker film reviewer John Mosher found it a bit routine, if well-crafted:

BLONDE ON BLONDE…Judith Wood (left) portrayed the character Kitty Packard in the 1932 stage production of Dinner at Eight; Jean Harlow took on the role for the 1933 film version. (IMDB)

Mosher, however, continued to admire the acting chops of veteran Marie Dressler…

FUNNY LADIES…Clockwise, from top left: Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler square off in Dinner at Eight; movie poster highlights the “Blonde Bombshell” Harlow along with a star-studded cast; a scene with Harlow, Wallace Beery and Edmund Lowe; to avoid wrinkling her gown between takes, Harlow reviewed her lines in a special stand-up chair. (IMDB/pre-code.com)

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Madame Secretary

Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was the first woman in the U.S. to serve as a cabinet secretary, but she was a lot more that—she was the driving force behind FDR’s New Deal. Here are excerpts from a two-part profile written by Russell Lord, with illustration by Hugo Gellert.

TRIAL BY FIRE…Frances Perkins watched in horror as young women leapt to their deaths in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—146 perished on that day Perkins recalled as the moment the New Deal was born her mind. In the wake of the fire Perkins, an established expert on worker health and safety, was named executive secretary of the NYC Committee on Safety. (trianglememorial.org/francesperkinscenter.org)

Even if some men couldn’t come around to a woman moving through the circles of power, Perkins had many admirers including prominent Tammany Hall leader “Big Tim” Sullivan.

Perkins’ appointment to FDR’s cabinet made the Aug. 14, 1933 cover of TIME magazine. (TIME/thoughtco.com)

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Even the staid executives at Packard were getting into the modern advertising game, where sometimes the product itself was not even pictured…

…our cartoonists include Robert Day…

…George Price…

…and baring it all, Peter Arno…

…on to Sept. 9, and what I believe is Alice Harvey’s first New Yorker cover…

Sept. 9, 1933 cover by Alice Harvey.

…and where “The Talk of the Town” paid a visit to the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, a favorite haunt of those magnificent men and women and their flying machines:

SHIFTING SANDS…Opened in 1927 to attract upscale crowds to Coney Island away from the rabble of the Midway, the elegant Half Moon Hotel started strong but teetered on the doorstep of bankruptcy during the Depression; it gained notoriety in 1941 when mob turncoat Abe Reles fell to his death from a sixth floor window while under police protection. The hotel was demolished in 1996. (Pinterest)

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Huey In The News

In his column “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker offered this brief take on Huey Long’s visit to a Long Island party, where one guest apparently socked the controversial “Kingfish,” giving the former Louisiana governor (and then senator) a shiner.

A CHIP ON HIS SHOULDER?…Controversy followed Huey Long wherever he went. At left is a New York Times account of Long’s alleged black eye incident on Long Island. He would be assassinated two years later at the Louisiana State Capitol; Long circa 1933. (NYT/Wikipedia)

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As a follow-up from the previous issue’s Packard ad, this two-page spread showed us what those 1200 men were gawking at…check out that 12-cylinder model on the left, which appears to be better than 20 feet long…

…according to this ad, you could thank Camel cigarettes for getting the mail through the gloom of night…

…if you needed a cigarette to steady your nerves, you also needed fresh coffee to avoid being ostracized by your friends…

…summer-stock barn theatres were popular across America in the 1930s…this ad (illustrated by Wallace Morgan) hailed the end of the summer season and the return of “Winter Broadway”…

…on to our cartoons, out in the countryside we also find William Crawford Galbraith, here continuing to ply one of his favorite themes, namely pairing shapely seductresses and showgirls with clueless suitors…

…Helen Hokinson gave us one woman who believed “what happens in the Riviera, stays in the Riviera”…

…and we close with Gardner Rea, and a scout troop on a mission…

Next Time: Rumors of War…

The Flying Season

New Yorkers witnessed flying milestones and mishaps in the summer of 1933—after Wiley Post landed at Bennett Field, he became the first person to fly solo around the world, and famed Italian aviator Italo Balbo would bring a squadron of 24 Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boats across the Atlantic and triumphantly land them on the Hudson River. So before we get to the Aug. 5 issue…

Aug. 5, 1933 cover by Julian de Miskey.

…let’s look in on Morris Markey, who described all of the skyward thrills in his “A Reporter at Large” column in the August 12 issue. Markey also offered a “bold prophecy” that the ticker-tape parades and “hysterical cheers” could not go on forever.

ROUND AND ROUND HE GOES…Clockwise, from top left, Wiley Post under the wing of the famed Lockheed Vega monoplane Winnie Mae in 1933; Post next to the Winnie Mae in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 1934, his achievements recorded on the fuselage; miners from Flat, Alaska, bring the Winnie Mae upright for repairs—the plane nosed over after hitting a patch of mining tailings; Post climbs out of the Winnie Mae at Floyd Bennett Field, Long Island, after completing the first solo flight around the world. Post set a new record of 15,596 miles (25,099 kilometers) in 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes. (NASM/Oklahoma Historical Society/U of Alaska-Fairbanks/AP)

Markey wrote admiringly of the Italians and their oddly beautiful flying boats as they descended, 24 in all, on the Hudson River. Things did not go so well for Scottish aviator James Mollison and his wife, Amy Johnson, who had set many flying records in the 1930s.

DESCENDED LIKE FLIES…Twenty-four Savoia-Marchetti flying boats left Italy in 1933 to fly in formation to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and back, with stops along the way including New York. The squadron was led by Italo Balbo, who has featured on the cover of Time, 26 June 1933. (Wikipedia)
GOING IN STYLE, Clockwise, from top left, twenty-four Italian Savoia-Marchetti S.55X flying boats left the west coast of Italy to fly in formation to the Chicago World’s Fair, with a stop on the Hudson River (top right). The Italians were famed for sleek designs, including the Macchi-Castoldi 72, pictured here circa 1931. It was then the fastest plane in the world; James Mollison and his wife, Amy Johnson recover from their injuries after a nonstop flight from Wales to the U.S. Unable to locate the Bridgeport (Conn.) Municipal Airport—which he circled five times— he ultimately crash- landed into a field. Both were thrown from the aircraft but survived—they were later congratulated by New York society with a parade on Wall Street. (warbirdsnews.com/Wikimedia)

Markey’s “bold prophecy” would sadly come to pass; after all of the parades and hoopla, these wonderful airplanes would soon take on more sinister roles as machines of death. Italo Balbo, seen as a possible successor to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, would die in 1940, shot down by Italian anti-aircraft batteries that mistook his plane for a British fighter. Amy Johnson would die months later in a crash near the mouth of the Thames (possibly by friendly fire). Two years after his record-breaking flight, Wiley Post and American humorist Will Rogers would perish in a 1935 crash near Point Barrow, Alaska.

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Depression Diversions

New Yorkers could escape Depression woes and the summer heat with a visit to the cinema. These listings in the Aug. 5 issue were headed by the Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza Gold Diggers of 1933… 

DEPRESSION’S FEVER DREAM…Choreographer Busby Berkeley chased those Depression blues away with his lavish musicals, including Gold Diggers of 1933, featuring Ginger Rogers among a bevy of stars. (IMDB)

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Fledgling airlines including  Eastern Air Transport and American Airways (forerunners of Eastern Air Lines and American Airlines) were giving passenger trains a bit of competition with relatively quick flights to destinations including Washington D.C. and Atlantic City—the D.C. round trip cost $20, roughly equivalent to $455 today…

…introduced in 1933, the Curtiss YC-30, called the Condor in civilian use, could seat 15. It could also be fitted out as 12-passenger luxury night sleeper…

YOU COULD REST EASY on the Curtiss Condor in 1933. (U.S. Air Force)

…Packard and Cadillac both produced premium automobiles, but where Packard emphasized durability and longevity…

…the folks at Cadillac went for pure sob appeal…

…I wonder how many people still wore pince-nez in 1933, especially while drinking beer…

…the makers of Hoffman ginger ale weren’t waiting for the official end of Prohibition to tout their popular mixer…

…with the launch of FDR’s New Deal, advertisers were quick to jump on the bandwagon…

…as did one of our cartoonists, Otto Soglow…

…and now on to the Aug 12 issue…

Aug. 12, 1933 cover by Helen Hokinson.

…which featured another installment of James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times—”The Night the Ghost Got In”…

James Thurber’s illustration for “The Night the Ghost Got In” that appeared in his book My Life and Hard Times. The scene depicts his brother Herman, and his fear of ghosts. The caption read: “He always half suspected that something would get him.”

Meanwhile, Thurber’s colleague, film critic John Mosher, was finding joy through Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies…

DELIGHTFUL DIVERSION…Critic John Mosher was “one exalted” over Walt Disney’s latest Silly Symphony, titled Old King Cole.

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This giant two-page spread from the makers of Dodge sought to prove you could have both durability and affordability in their six-cylinder model (the cheapest Packard listed at $2,150—you could almost buy four Dodges for that price)…

…another Chrysler corporation product, the family-friendly Plymouth, could be had for even less—$445—it was apparently just the kind of car a penny-pinching ingenue needed for getting to her casting calls…

…Ann Lee Doran (1911–2000) went on to a long career as a character actress, perhaps best known for portraying James Dean’s mother in Rebel Without a Cause…

Anne Lee Doran (at far right) in 1941’s Penny Serenade. Also pictured, from left, are Edmund Elton, Edgar Buchanan, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. (IMDB)

…when you finished brushing your teeth, you could put this other Pepsodent product on your face…

…on to our cartoons, we begin with this two-page spread by Gardner Rea…

…Gluyas Williams referenced the Camel cigarette ads from 1933 that revealed the secrets of popular magic tricks…

…an example from the June 3, 1933 issue of the New Yorker…

…Eli Garson paid a visit to the optometrist…

…in the wake of the scandal-ridden mess left behind by deposed Mayor Jimmy Walker, the upcoming November election was bound up by three candidates, none of whom seemed poised to get a majority vote…Robert Day offered up this scenario…

…Carl Rose discovered that even in the boonies, everyone’s a critic…

…and we close with Peter Arno, and another classic…

Next Time: Tugboat Annie…

Keeping Their Cool

The heat came early to New York in June 1933, so folks flocked to air-conditioned cinemas or sought the cooling breezes of rooftop cafes and dance floors. And thanks to FDR, there was legal beer to be quaffed at various beer gardens popping up all over town.

June 24, 1933 cover by Rea Irvin. Providing a bookend to Constantin Alajalov’s June bride cover (May 27), Irvin gave us the newlyweds now contemplating a fixer-upper.

Lois Long kept her cool on the beach or at home with a cold Planters’ Punch, but one gets restless, and Ethel Waters was at the Cotton Club, so Long headed out into the night; an excerpt from her column “Tables for Two”…

STORMY WEATHER AHEAD…Ethel Waters was “tops” during a June 1933 performance at the Cotton Club, according to nightlife correspondent Lois Long. Left, Waters circa 1930. At right, the Cotton Club in the early 1930s. (IMDB/Britannica)
SHOWER THE PEOPLE…Children gather around a center stand sprinkler (connected to a fire hydrant) on a Harlem street in 1933.
POP-UP PLAYGROUND…Play street and street shower alongside the Queensboro Bridge, June 22, 1934. (NYC Municipal Archives)

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Legal beer and hot summer days combined to bring some much-needed advertising revenue to The New Yorker…

…here we have dear old dad telling the young ‘uns (all in formal wear, mind you) about the good old days before Prohibition took away his favorite tipple…

…notable about the magazine’s first beer ads was the target market…this is akin to the cigarette manufacturers, who were also targeting women as a new growth market for their products…curious how this PBR ad is illustrated…is she getting ready to drink the beer, or serve it?…

…also joining the party were the folks who made mixers like White Rock mineral water…note the reference at bottom right to the anticipated repeal of the 18th Amendment…

…the purveyors of Hoffman’s ginger ale were less subtle, encouraging drinkers to mix those highballs right now…

…you could enjoy that cool one while sitting in front of a Klenzair electric fan, which was probably nothing like riding a dolphin—a strange metaphor, but then again perhaps something else is being suggested here besides electric fans…

…no doubt Lois Long took in one of these breezy performances on the rooftop of the Hotel Pennsylvania…

…an evening with Rudy Vallée would have been a lot cheaper than one of these “compact” air conditioners, available to only the very wealthy…

…but you didn’t need to be J.P. Morgan to own a Lektrolite lighter, which was kind of clever…this flameless lighter contained a platinum filament that would glow hot after being lowered into reactive chemicals in the lighter’s base…

…another ad from the Architects’ Emergency Committee, which looked like something an architect would design…

…our final June 24 ad told readers about the miracle of Sanforizing, which was basically a pre-shrinking technique, like pre-washed jeans…

…we kick off our cartoons with George Price at the ball game…

…Alan Dunn was in William Steig’s “Small Fry” territory with this precocious pair…

…James Thurber brought us back to his delightfully strange world…

…and Whitney Darrow Jr gave us a trio at a nudist colony dressing a man with their eyes…

…we move along to July 1, 1933…

July 1, 1933 cover by Helen Hokinson.

Where in this issue we find the Nazis not keeping their cool. In an article titled “Unter Dem Hakenkreuz” (“Under the Swastika”) American journalist and activist Mary Heaton Vorse commented on the changes taking place in Berlin, where the vice, decadence and other freedoms of the Weimar years had been swept away, including women’s rights…an excerpt:

SIT UP STRAIGHT AND PROCREATE…Swastika flags hang from a Berlin building in the 1930s. In Hitler’s Germany, women of child-bearing age were expected to produce lots of babies and not much else. (collections.ushmm.org)

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Some Strings Attached

Back in the states, Alvin Johnston published the first installment of a two-part profile on John P. O’Brien (1873–1951) who served as mayor of New York from January to December 1933, the second of two short-term mayors to serve between the disgraced and deposed Jimmy Walker and the reformer Fiorello LaGuardia. Considered the last of the mayoral puppets of Tammany Hall, he was known for his brief, heartless, and clueless reign during one of the worst years of the Depression; while unemployment was at 25 percent, O’Brien was doling out relief funds to Tammany cronies. A brief excerpt (with Abe Birnbaum illustration):

A PIOUS, LABORIOUS DULLARD and “a hack given to malapropisms” is how writer George Lankevich describes John P. O’Brien. According to Lankevich, to a crowd in Harlem O’Brien proudly proclaimed, “I may be white but my heart is as black as yours.” (TIME)

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That Pepsodent Smile

The author James Norman Hall (1887–1951), known for the trilogy of novels that included Mutiny on the Bounty, offered these sobering thoughts about a famed actor he spotted on a South Pacific holiday:

IT ISN’T EASY BEING ME…Fifty-year-old Douglas Fairbanks Sr, teeth and all, was apparently looking worse for the wear when he was spotted by writer James Norman Hall in Tahiti. His glory days of the Silent Era behind him, Fairbanks would die in 1939 at age 56. (fineartamerica.com)

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More cool ones for those hot summer days courtesy of Schaefer…

…and Rheingold, here served by a sheepish-looking woman who doubtless wished that the tray supported champagne or cocktail glasses…and leave it to the Dutch to be one of the first countries to get their foot into the import market…when I was in college this was as good as it got, beer-wise…

…Dr. Seuss again for Flit, and even though this is a cartoon, it demonstrates how in those days no one really cared if you sprayed pesticides near your breakfast, or pets, or kids…

…here’s one of just four cartoons contributed to The New Yorker in the early 1930s by Walter Schmidt…

…Otto Soglow’s Little King found an opportunity to stop and smell the flowers…

…Mary Petty gave us two examples of fashion-conscious women…

…James Thurber explored the nuances of parenting…

…and we close with George Price, master of oddities…

Next Time: The Night the Bed Fell…

Making Hays

The name Will Hays will always be linked to the Motion Picture Production Code, a set of guidelines for self-censorship that studios adopted to avoid government intervention.

June 10, 1933 cover by Harry Brown.

Hays, however, played both sides in the culture wars. A Republican politician, Hays (1879–1954) managed the 1920 election of Warren G. Harding before moving on to Postmaster General and then chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. During the so-called pre-Code era, roughly 1930 to 1934, the Production Code was barely enforced, giving filmmakers the freedom to explore themes ranging from prostitution to gangster violence. When Alva Johnston wrote a two-part profile on Hays for The New Yorker, pressure from Catholic Church and other morality groups was building for Hays to strictly enforce the Code, or else. An excerpt:

CLEAN IT UP, JOAN…Will Hays (top left) felt pressure in 1933 to start seriously enforcing the Production Code, and scenes such as the one at top right from Blonde Crazy (1931) with Joan Blondell would probably not pass muster after 1934; the Hays Code would also lengthen the animated Betty Boop’s skirts, and tone down gratuitous violence (James Cagney and Edward Woods in 1931’s Public Enemy). (Wikimedia/pre-code.com/Warner Brothers)

 * * *

The Trouble With Money

In their investigation of the probable causes of the 1929 market crash, the Senate Banking and Currency Committee summoned J.P. Morgan Jr (1867–1943) on June 1, 1933, to testify on questionable banking practices. Committee counsel Ferdinand Pecora (1882–1971) set out to prove, among other things, that Morgan sold stock below market price to some of his cronies. Pecora also learned that Morgan and many of his partners paid no income tax in 1931 and 1932, big news to Americans still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression. E.B. White made these observations:

Although not mentioned by White, the hearing began with an odd little sideshow. Writing for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society blog, Joanna Hallac notes that because the hearings were slow to get started, newspaper reporters grew desperate to get something for the evening papers. Then one enterprising reporter, Ray Tucker, spotted circus dwarf Lya Graf with her agent, Charles Leef, outside of the hearing room (the Barnum & Bailey Circus was in town) and suggested Graf meet the famed banker. Hallac writes: “Although he was initially startled, Morgan was genial and rose and shook her hand. Naturally, the photographers were stepping all over each other to get a picture of the exchange. Leef, seeing a perfect press opportunity for himself and the circus, waited for Morgan to sit down and then scooped up Graf and placed her in J.P. Morgan’s lap. Morgan apparently laughed and had a brief exchange with the demure lady, in which he told her he had a grandchild bigger than her.”

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF FINANCE…Before being grilled by Senate counsel Ferdinand Pecora at a June 1, 1933 banking hearing,  J.P. Morgan Jr was paid a surprise visit by Lya Graf, a Barnum & Bailey circus dwarf. At right, Pecora, circa 1933. Sadly, Graf, who was German, perished in a concentration camp after she returned to her homeland in 1935. She was condemned to death in 1937 for being half Jewish and “abnormal.” (NY Magazine/Wikipedia)

 * * *

Single Member Plurality

Among other attributes, E.B. White was known for his use of the first person plural, the editorial or clinical “we.” White himself offered this insight:

I, ME, MINE…E.B. White at work in 1945. (Britannica.com)

 * * *

Uncle Tom, Revived

Plays based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin were wildly popular throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but by the 1930s the story seemed antiquated and no longer relevant. That didn’t stop the Players (a Gramercy park actors club) from mounting a 1933 Broadway revival that proved popular with audiences and a New Yorker stage critic, namely E.B. White, sitting in for Robert Benchley…an excerpt…

SAY UNCLE…Otis Skinner (1858–1942), a beloved broadway actor, portrayed Uncle Tom in the 1933 Broadway revival. The all-white cast performed in blackface.

…on the other hand, White found the Frank Faye/Barbara Stanwyck play Tattle Tales tedious, a thin veneer over the stars’ crumbling marriage off-stage…

THAT’S ALL, FOLKS…Publicity photo of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Faye for the Broadway production of Tattle Tales at the Broadhurst Theatre. The co-stars’ real-life marriage supposedly inspired the 1937 film A Star is Born (as well as subsequent remakes). As Stanwyck’s star rose, Faye’s faded—his heavy drinking and abuse led to their 1935 divorce. The play itself closed after 28 performances. (ibdb)

 * * *

Frothy Air

E.B. White (via “The Talk of the Town”) took a stroll through Coney Island and found the place somewhat revived, perhaps thanks to the return of legal beer and Bavarian-style beer gardens…

RECALLING THE GOOD OLD DAYS…Feltman’s Restaurant on Coney Island operated this popular Bavarian Beer Garden in 1890s. (Westland.net)

 * * *

Peace, He Said

Adolf Hitler was talking peace, but the French weren’t buying it according to The New Yorker’s Paris correspondent Janet Flanner—in just seven years her beloved City of Light would fall to the Nazis…

IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE…Adolf Hitler makes his first radio broadcast as German Chancellor, February 1933. Hitler spoke of peace in Europe while preparing his country for war. (The Guardian)

…speaking of Janet Flanner, apparently her “Paris Letter” implied that the author Edna Ferber had married. Ferber offered this correction, in good humor:

 * * *

From Our Advertisers

Class anxieties were (and still are) gold to Madison Avenue—look at this poor woman, pondering her very existence, lacking as she did the horsepower to lay some rubber at a green light…

…or this woman, who thought ahead and made sure she had some hair lotion to ward off cackles from the beach harpies…

…on the other hand, this cyclist seems to care less about appearances as she races toward us with a crazed smile, half-human, half-illustration…

…and then there’s this fellow, playing it cool in a white linen suit, which for a sawbuck seems like a bargain, even in 1933…

…the last two pages of the magazine featured friends racing to some swell destination…the lads at left are being propelled to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair thanks to the wonders of leaded gasoline, while the women at right seem to be doing at least eighty…note neither car has a windshield, so you wonder how many bugs they will pick out of their teeth…

…an apt segue to our cartoons, where Peter Arno showed us a couple going nowhere fast…

…Otto Soglow’s Little King had his own marital situation to ponder after a visit from a sultan…

…a very unusual cartoon from Helen Hokinson, who rarely delved into serious socio-political issues (although her captions were often provided by others at The New Yorker)…this cartoon referred to a cause célèbre of the 1930s, the case of the prejudicial sentences of the Scottsboro boys that recalled the Tom Mooney frame-up two decades earlier…

…on to lighter topics, Robert Day checked in on the progress at Mt. Rushmore…

…George Price also went aloft for a challenge…

…and Carl Rose found this dichotomy in the conquest of nature…

…on to June 17, 1933…

June 17, 1933 cover by Perry Barlow.

…where Frank Curtis reported on the military-style schedule that put young men to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps…excerpts:

MARCHING ORDERS…CCC reforestation recruits in Virginia in 1933. (New York Times)

…just one ad from this issue, another Flit entry from Dr. Seuss, who wouldn’t publish his first book until 1937…

…our cartoons are courtesy Otto Soglow, with some bedside manner…

…Kemp Starrett set up what should prove to be an interesting evening…

…Gluyas Williams considered the woes of J.P. Morgan Jr…

…and we close with another from George Price, doing some tidying up…

Next Time: Home Sweet Home…

Headline News

The news of the day in May 1933 included a visit to the U.S. by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, a controversial Diego Rivera mural at Rockefeller Center, the abandonment of the Gold Standard, and the continuing saga of legal beer.

May 13, 1933 cover by Adolph K. Kronengold.

Writing under the pseudonym Guy Fawkes, Robert Benchley opined on the state of the print media in “The Wayward Press”…an excerpt:

NEWSMAKERS CIRCA 1933 included George Bernard Shaw (left), here being escorted by actors Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies from a Hollywood luncheon hosted by Davies in March 1933; other headlines touted the return of free beer and the suspension of the gold standard by the Roosevelt administration—everyone was required to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve by May 1 for the set price of $20.67 per ounce. Pictured are guards stocking returned gold in New Jersey bank vaults, 1933. (Pinterest/history.com)

 * * *

Selling the Pitch

Babe Ruth was something of a freak of nature, becoming the “Sultan of Swat” despite a life of heavy drinking, poor eating habits and erratic attention to training regimens. Nevertheless, as Ruth neared the end of his career at age 38 he could still put on a show. In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White was hoping for just that sort of thing:

STILL GOT IT…E.B. White would get his wish for some “real showmanship” at the end of the 1933 season, when famed Yankee slugger Babe Ruth—in his 20th year in the majors—volunteered to pitch against the Red Sox in the final game of the season at Yankee Stadium. Not only did Ruth pitch a complete game, he also hit his 34th homer of the season in the Yankees’ 6–5 victory. (ballnine.com)

 * * *

From Our Advertisers

I wonder what it was like to cruise on the Dnieper River for fourteen days through “Colorful Ukrainia” during the Great Famine that Stalin imposed on that land, killing as many as five million people…

…more ads from the back pages touting various libations including Trommer’s “White Label” beer, a drink made from conch juice called “Konktail,” and an ad illustrated by William Steig promoting “imitation gin and other flavors” made by Red Lion…none of these products exist today…

…however you can still buy canned spaghetti, if that is your thing, but not “Force” breakfast cereal…

…still more selections from the back pages…on the left, an ad for Pear’s Soap that introduced us to “wise parents” whose children “are well-bred—the ‘nice people’ of tomorrow”…on the right, the lifeless gaze of a woman who pondered how life could be better in Tudor City…and in the middle, an unlikely one-column ad from luxury car maker Pierce Arrow…the automaker was America’s answer to Rolls Royce, but the Depression would take it down by 1938…

…I’m guessing the Velveeta is the mild one…

…technology was transforming beachwear, including this “Swagger Boy” outfit spun from Dupont’s latest synthetic, Acele…

…B. Altman, on the other hand, went full-color to promote their exclusive, imported fabric under the trade name Meadowbrook…

…and who ever thought a tire could look so posh, here dominating a gathering of the smart set…

…and look at this swell, sporting top hat and walking stick, but he also knows a good value when it comes to his tires…

…we move on to our cartoons with James Thurber and a lot of people apparently going nowhere…

…Helen Hokinson’s girls were all ears at the latest club gathering…

…Otto Soglow’s Little King got in on the excitement of legal beer…

…and we continue to the issue of May 20, 1933, with a cover by Arnold Hall, who did at least eight covers for The New Yorker during the 1930s…

May 20, 1933 cover by Arnold Hall.

The big news in this issue was Mexican artist Diego Rivera and his controversial mural at Rockefeller Center. Rivera’s New Yorker profile was written by Geoffrey Hellman (1907–1977), who beginning in 1929 served as the magazine’s principal writer for “The Talk of the Town.” Here’s an excerpt, with illustration by Al Frueh:

What got Rivera in hot water with John D. Rockefeller Jr. and family was a mural that departed somewhat from the artist’s earlier study sketches—Rivera had been hired to depict “man at the crossroads,” looking to the future with uncertainty but also with hope for a better world.

According to a 2014 story by NPR’s Allison Keyes, leftist organizations and various communist groups in New York criticized Rivera for agreeing to work with capitalist paragons like the Rockefellers. In response, Rivera sent assistants to find a picture of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. “If you want communism, I will paint communism,” he apparently said.

The subsequent inclusion of Lenin in the mural led to protests by the Rockefeller family, the press and the public. Rivera was ultimately asked to leave the country, losing yet another commission for the Chicago World’s Fair. Rivera got paid for his Rockefeller Center mural, but the work itself was demolished.

After returning to Mexico Rivera recreated the mural, adding some vengeful references (see below) to his 1934 work, Man, Controller of the Universe.

Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo, had accompanied him to New York, and during their time in the states (1930-34) she produced a number of now-famous paintings. However in 1933 she was not recognized as a serious artist. Indeed when she visited with the Detroit News in 1932, the headline read, “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art.” In the same vein, Hellman perceived Kahlo as nothing more than a pretty helpmeet.

MORE THAN A PRETTY FACE…At left, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo attending an art exhibition in New York, 1933; at right, Kahlo and Rivera before the controversial mural at Rockefeller Center. Although an unknown in the art world in 1933, Kahlo would one day eclipse her husband’s fame. (SFGate/Pinterest)
MISCONCEPTION…Clockwise, from top, an early sketch of the Diego Rivera’s mural differed from what he ultimately painted in Rockefeller Center. After the mural was destroyed in 1934, Rivera recreated the work under the title Man, Controller of the Universe, now on display at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. A detail of that work shows Vladimir Lenin holding hands with workers of different races. Below, juxtaposed with the image of Lenin in that painting was another famous face, that of John D. Rockefeller Jr., depicted drinking martinis with a prostitute. Touché!
(Museo Frida Kahlo)

Rivera’s Rockefeller Center mural was eventually replaced in 1937 by American Progress, painted by the Spanish artist José Maria Sert:

(Flickr)

The irony of the Rivera controversy was not lost on E.B. White, who offered this ballad in response:

 * * *

Keep it in Your Pocket

E.B. White again, this time opening his column with thoughts on the anti-Hitler parade that was held in New York.

White refers to his “swastika watchfob”…before the Nazis came to power, the swastika was known to many cultures as a symbol of prosperity and good luck.

IT’S THE REAL THING…In 1925 Coca Cola made a lucky brass watch fob in the shape of a swastika. At that time the swastika was still a symbol of good luck. (Reddit)
SHOW OF UNITY…Anti-Hitler parade in New York protested the May 10, 1933 book burnings across Nazi Germany. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)

In his weekly column Howard Brubaker added this observation regarding life in Nazi Germany…

Back home, folks could still enjoy a taste of Germany that wasn’t associated with violence and hate…an excerpt from “The Talk of the Town”…

GEMÜTLICH…Lüchow’s opened in 1882 when Union Square was still New York’s theater and music hall district, and featured seven dining rooms and a beer garden. The restaurant closed in 1982 and was demolished in 1995 to make way for an NYU dormitory. (Pinterest/MCNY)

 * * *

From Our Advertisers

The architecture profession fell on hard times during the Depression. In 1931 the Architects’ Emergency Committee began promoting the talents of unemployed architects who were willing to work for less than half their ordinary fee, limiting charges to materials, a small amount of cash, and a place to sleep…this is an example of a series of ads that ran in The New Yorker in the spring of 1933…

…one profession not feeling the hard times?—the makers of tobacco products, and specifically cigarettes…

…speaking of hard times, we turn to our cartoons and Gardner Rea…

…and we close on a bright note, otherwise known as Peter Arno…

Next Time: Rebirth of a Nation?

Not Worth a Dime

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

April 22, 1933 cover by Helen Hokinson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 * * *

Look Ma, No Net!

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

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

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

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

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

 * * *

Safer Entertainments

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

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

 * * *

From Our Advertisers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…Peter Arno served up a proud patriarch…

…and William Steig explored the perils of somnambulism…

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

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

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

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

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

 * * *

From Our Advertisers

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

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

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

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

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

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

…and another by newcomers Whitney Darrow Jr. …

…and E. Simms Campbell…

…Barbara Shermund continued to rollick with her modern women…

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

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

Photo by Brigitte Lacombe, for The New Yorker.

Next Time: Bohemian Rhapsody…

 

 

One Perfect Night

Once again The New Yorker marked its anniversary — the eighth — with a repeat of its very first cover, a tradition that would last until 1993. Unlike previous years, E.B. White made no special mention of the occasion in his “Notes and Comment,” no doubt feeling confident about the magazine’s prospects despite the challenges of the Depression. In 1933 The New Yorker could count on nearly 117,000 readers.

Feb. 18, 1933 cover by Rea Irvin.

And so we look to another of the magazine’s star contributors, humorist and stage critic Robert Benchley, who was rarely impressed with Broadway’s middlebrow fare. It was in such an environment that Benchley found himself separating the wheat from the chaff, listing a selection of scenes from various plays that together might represent a “perfect night” of entertainment:

A BROADWAY BUFFET…Clockwise, from top left, Robert Benchley recommended Jack Haley’s bedroom scene and Ethel Merman’s rendition of “Eadie Was a Lady” in Take a Chance as worthy of a look; he also found George M. Cohan’s telephone call to police HQ in Pigeons and People memorable, and Beatrice Lillie was apparently a delight in the dressing room scene from Walk a Little Faster. (playbill.com)
TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC in Cole Porter’s musical Gay Divorce were Claire Luce and Fred Astaire, dancing to the hit song “Night and Day.” It was Astaire’s last Broadway show before he headed to Hollywood for even greater stardom; Jack Pearl and Barbara Newberry in Pardon My English; Eva Le Gallienne as the White Queen and Josephine Hutchinson as Alice in the 1932-33 production of Alice in Wonderland at Le Gallienne’s own Civic Repertory Theatre; Alice (Hutchinson) encounters Tweedledee (Burgess Meredith) and Tweedledum (Landon Herrick) in Alice in Wonderland. (Pinterest/gershwin.com/blog.mcny.org)

 *  *  *

Spring Cleaning

While passing by the Vanderbilts’ “Triple Palace” on 51st and Fifth Avenue, E.B. White (“Notes and Comment”) noted signs of neglect at the famed mansion:

HOME  SWEET HOME…At top, Alva Vanderbilt engaged Richard Morris Hunt to build a “Petite Chateau” on the northwest corner of 52nd Street; below, the drawing room. The Triple Palace was demolished in 1947-49. (mcny.org/Wikimedia Commons)

The Triple Palace site today:

(daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)

*  *  *

Going Round and Round

No one was landing quad flips at New York’s Ice House in 1933, but for ice skating enthusiasts it was the place to be for both figure skating competitors as well as for those just interested in a leisurely skate to the strains of a live orchestra. “The Talk of the Town” explains in this excerpt:

CHILLING SIGHT…Top and below, the Ice House was located on the top floor of a four-story building attached to Madison Square Garden. (Pinterest)

In both Europe and America ice skating in the 19th and early 20th century was something of an elaborate ritual in urban areas; skating rinks included tea rooms as well as places to dance or ice skate to the gentle rhythms of a live orchestra…

TEA COSY…The Biltmore Hotel Ice Gardens offered guests a warm place to watch the cold weather fun of the hotel’s outdoor ice skating rink, circa 1915. (mcny.org)

*  *  *

The Jig Is Up

Jigsaw puzzles have been around since the late 1700s (they were handmade then), but their popularity really took off in the 20th century with advancements in manufacturing and especially during the Depression when folks sought affordable forms of entertainment they could enjoy at home. The 1930s also saw jigsaw puzzles become more complex. “The Talk of the Town” observed:

In 1933 the Long Island City-based puzzle manufacturer Einson-Freeman introduced a line of puzzles that included clues to solving mysteries described in an accompanying novelette…

(worth point.com)

*  *  *

Small But Deadly

Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column, which ran from 1925 to 1951, was a series of brief, satirical comments on the events of the day, including some that to modern eyes point to the catastrophic events that awaited Brubaker’s world (reader Frank W. notes that “the ‘aged piano-player’ was Ignacy Paderewski, who had served as Prime Minister in the immediate aftermath of WWI, and who was the nearest thing the Poles had to a national-unity figure”):

*  *  *

Her Protégé

When Mae West adapted her 1928 Broadway play Diamond Lil into the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong, the puritanical backers of the Hays Code (which would be enforced in 1934) demanded that the film make no reference to the “scandalous” play. But because it was still the pre-Code era, West’s film featured many double entendres and her famous (and famously misquoted) quip, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” That line was spoken to Cary Grant — whom West would later claim as her discovery even though Grant had drawn considerable attention in the previous year for his work opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus. For the record, Grant, who would be paired again with West in 1933’s I’m No Angel, would later credit West, and She Done Him Wrong, for giving his career a major boost. New Yorker critic John Mosher lauded the film for the much-needed laughs it provided to Depression-weary audiences.

SHOWING HIM THE ROPES…The nearly forty-year-old Mae West was 11 years older than Hollywood newcomer Cary Grant when they appeared together in 1933’s She Done Him Wrong. The film was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Picture), and in 1996 was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. (filmreference.com)

*  *  *

From Our Advertisers

The folks at Packard took a new advertising tack by demonstrating the durability of their luxury automobile…

…hopefully the Packard was riding on “Double Eagle” tires by Goodyear…however, this is an odd illustration to emphasize a child’s safety, when the kid’s posh mum seems more concerned about her appearance than anything else…also, does she plan to drive home with the windshield down?…

…Log Cabin continued its series of ads featuring New Yorker cartoonists…here Peter Arno lends one of his dirty old walruses to the cause of syrupy waffles and pancakes…

…on to our cartoonists, we have Arno again, keeping up appearances among high society…

…Gluyas Willams demonstrated his knack for illustrating the foibles of his fellow citizens…

…Helen Hokinson looked in on a man aspiring to become the next T.S. Eliot…

…the growing popularity of the gangster film knew no bounds, according to Perry Barlow…

…and we close with James Thurber, and a speakeasy standoff…

Next Time: Deskey’s Deco…

Role Reversal

James Cagney began his entertainment career singing and dancing in various vaudeville and Broadway acts, but when he was cast in his first film as a tough guy, the die was cast…at least for one New Yorker critic.

Feb. 11, 1933 cover by Constantin Alajalov.

Cagney’s first film role came after he starred along with Joan Blondell in Broadway’s Penny Arcade. However when the play was made into the 1930 movie Sinners’ Holiday, execs at Warner Brothers opted to put Grant Withers and Evalyn Knapp into the lead roles, believing they were destined for stardom; Cagney and Blondell were relegated to supporting parts. As fate often has it, Withers and Knapp ended up in B-movie obscurity, while Cagney and Blondell went on to become two of the biggest stars of the 1930s. The pair would appear in six more films together, including the gangster film The Public Enemy (1931) and the musical Footlight Parade (1933).

TWO-FACED…James Cagney would be paired with Joan Blondell in seven films during the 1930s including the gangster film The Public Enemy (1931, left) and the musical Footlight Parade (1933, also with Ruby Keeler). (IMDB)
THE ONE I USED TO KNOW…Top, Cagney mashes a grapefruit half into Mae Clarke’s face in a famous scene from Cagney’s breakthrough film, 1931’s The Public Enemy; below, Cagney gets acquainted with a bartender (Lee Phelps) in The Public Enemy. (IMDB)

New Yorker film critic John Mosher preferred the tough guy Cagney to the toe-tapping version, and was anticipating Cagney’s return to pictures after a contact dispute with Warner in which he threatened to quit the business and follow his brothers into the medical profession…

When Cagney finally announced his return in Hard to Handle, Mosher found he had taken on the guise of actor Lee Tracy, who was best known for his comic portrayals of wisecracking salesmen and reporters…

MY SOFTER SIDE…James Cagney and Mae Clark (top) in 1933’s pre-Code comedy Hard to Handle — Cagney played a clowning con artist who organizes a dance marathon. Below, critic John Mosher thought Cagney was channelling the comic actor Lee Tracy, seen here with Jean Harlow in 1933’s Blonde Bombshell. (IMDB)

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Slippery Slope

Located on Lexington between 102nd and 103rd streets, Duffy’s Hill was once famous for being the steepest hill in Manhattan and the scourge of street cars that had to quickly accelerate and decelerate at that point, leading to numerous accidents. An excerpt from “The Talk of the Town”…

LOOK OUT BELOW…Duffy’s hill played merry hell with New York’s streetcars more than a century ago. (New York Social Diary via Facebook)

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Getting High

George Spitz Jr was an AAU high jump champion when he participated in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In 1933 he made a personal best leap of  6 feet, 8¼ inches using scissors-style leap with elements of the Western roll. “The Talk of the Town” marveled at Spitz’s feat, giving him an extra quarter inch for his record leap:

MILLION-DOLLAR LEGS…In 1933 George Spitz Jr made his personal best leap of 6 feet, 8¼ inches using a scissors-style jump with elements of the Western roll. With the introduction of the Fosbury Flop in 1968, today’s men’s record stands at 8 feet, ¼ inches. The current women’s record is 6 feet, 10¼ inches. (Olympedia)

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Ugh, This Guy Again

As we move into the 1930s we will be seeing more references to Adolf Hitler, who seized power in Germany on January 30, 1933. At this point “The Talk of the Town” wasn’t taking him seriously…

…and neither was Howard Brubaker in his regular column of short quips…

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From Our Advertisers

Hitler aside, the German-owned Hamburg-American Line was still serving peaceful purposes when it advertised the comfort of its “stabilized ships” on transatlantic voyages…these sisters ships of the Hamburg-American Line were all destroyed during World War II…the SS New York and the SS Deutschland were both sunk by the British RAF in 1945…The SS Albert Ballin and the SS Hamburg sank after hitting Allied mines…

THE BIG BANG…the RAF sent the S.S. Deutschland to the bottom of the Bay of Lübeck  on May 3, 1945. (Wikipedia)

…if travel wasn’t your thing, when you escape the winter blahs in the comfort of your home thanks to the GE Mazda Sunlight Lamp…

…and Dad, when you were her age you called these things “horseless carriages”…

…the folks at luxury carmaker Packard answered the splashy color ad from Cadillac in the Jan. 7 issue…

…with a colorful show-stopper of their own…

…if the Packard was too pricy, you could have checked out this lower-priced Cadillac, marketed as the LaSalle…

…no, New York did not say “Rockne, you’re the car!”, even if it was juxtaposed with a giant, attractive woman…the car was named for famed football coach Knute Rockne, and the Depression was not a good time to promote a new car line…it was produced from 1932 to 1933, when Studebaker pulled the plug and sold the remaining inventory (about 90 cars, packaged in kits) to a Norwegian railroad car manufacturer…

…a couple of posts ago (“Life With Father”) we were accosted by a 3-page Camel ad featuring a Q&A stating the facts about its product…here they are back with two more pages of irrefutable evidence…

…what I read in their eyes is that none of them, including the woman, gives a damn about the others…if anything, the fellow at left is checking out the other guy…

…this ad from Sonotone Corporation promoted a new hearing aid developed by Hugo Lieber…this revolutionary bone conduction receiver enabled the deaf to hear through bones in their head…

…a 1939 Sonotone catalog demonstrated how the hearing aid could be worn inconspicuously…

(abebooks.com)

…on to our cartoonists, Al Frueh illustrated the drama on board Broadway’s Twentieth Century Limited…note vaudevillian William Frawley’s caricature in the bottom right hand corner…although he appeared in more than 100 films, Frawley is best known today for his role as Fred Mertz on TV’s I Love Lucy…

…here’s a great caricature by Rea Irvin of New York’s new mayor John P. O’Brien, using his new broom to sweep away the corruption of the deposed Jimmy Walker and his Tammany Hall cronies…

…here’s another early work by George Price, who would be a cartoonist at The New Yorker for nearly six decades…

…and here we have the other Price…Garrett Price gave us a fellow who made some changes in his life à la Paul Gauguin…

…I like this Perry Barlow cartoon because it reminds me of the patient-in-traction trope commonly seen in comedy of the 1960s and 70s…

…such as this Paul Coker Jr. illustration from the June 1970 issue of MAD magazine…

…and Terry-Thomas and Spencer Tracy in 1963’s It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World…

…William Steig assured readers there was nothing sweet about his “Small Fry”…

…once again Helen Hokinson offered her impressions of the annual Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Garden…

…Peter Arno’s Lake Placid would never be the same for his mustachioed millionaire “walruses” after the previous year’s Winter Olympic Games…

Next Time: One Perfect Night…