Helen Moore Sewell – A New Yorker State of Mind

Above: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne headed the cast of Idiot's Delight, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play by Robert E. Sherwood. The anti-war play premiered at Broadway's Shubert Theatre on March 24, 1936, and ran for three hundred performances. (latimes.com)

Set against the backdrop of impending war in Europe, Robert Sherwood’s Idiot’s Delight was a timely exploration of how individuals might respond to a major upheaval. The play’s themes about the futility of war resonate as much today as they did in 1936.

April 4, 1936 cover by **Harry Brown.** Although he created some distinctive, whimsical covers for *The New Yorker* (including today’s), there is very little biographical information available on the artist. Brown created eighteen covers for the magazine from 1931 to 1937.

Presented at Shubert Theatre, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play was set at a hotel in the Italian Alps, where the guests—among them a military captain, a German scientist, a radical socialist, and a honeymooning couple—find themselves trapped by the sudden onset of world war. The cast was led by Alfred Lunt, who played a small-time American entertainer accompanied by a troupe of chorines, and Lynn Fontanne, who portrayed a mysterious Russian woman who was traveling with an arms dealer.

The Pulitzer jury called the play first-rate, full of dramatic invention and “Molierian richness.” Critic Robert Benchley heartily agreed:

FRIVOLITY AMID THE CHAOS OF WAR…Clockwise, from top left, souvenir program for Idiot’s Delight; **Alfred Lunt** and **Lynn Fontanne** in a scene from the play; playwright **Robert E. Sherwood**; Lunt with a chorus line in *Idiot’s Delight. The New York Times* critic **Brooks Atkinson** wrote that the play “demonstrates Mr. Sherwood’s taste for exuberance and jovial skulduggery.”*(eBay.com/nypl.org/imdb.com)*

Benchley concluded that the play was at once entertaining and edifying:

FORGET ABOUT IT…In Idiot’s Delight, **Sydney Greenstreet** (left) portrayed a doctor who, in the face of senseless war deaths, gives up on his life-saving research; at right, **Jean MacIntyre** (left) portrayed Mrs. Cherry, part of a young English honeymooning couple stranded at a hotel due to the sudden closing of the border. With her in the scene are Fontanne and Lunt. (radioclassics.com/Public Domain)

Sherwood adapted the play into a 1939 film of the same name, starring Norma Shearer and Clark Gable.

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Earth Gazing

In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White mused about plans at the Hayden Planetarium for a program that would give visitors some idea of how earth would appear from a point in space. Earthlings would have to wait until 1968 to actually see a clear, color image of their planet.

THE WONDER OF IT ALL…Clockwise, from top left, the cosmosarium at the Hayden Planetarium, circa 1935; **Howard Russell Butler’s** attempt at an accurate portrayal of the earth for the American Museum of Natural History, circa 1920s; in 1966, Lunar Orbiter I sent back this image of Earth from the vicinity of the Moon; *Earthrise* is a famous photograph of Earth taken from lunar orbit by astronaut **William Anders** on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. *(facebook.com/pinterest.com/NASA)*

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From Russia With Love

Journalist and literary critic Edmund Wilson Jr (1895–1972) traveled in Russia from May to October 1935, and later filed a couple of articles in The New Yorker detailing his travels. Writing for the column “A Reporter at Large,” Wilson described his journey by boat from London to Leningrad, finding an unexpected kinship with his Soviet cabin mates. Excerpts:

DESTINATION…Leningrad’s Nevsky Prospect 1930s; **Edmund Wilson Jr** in 1936. (pinterest.com/Wikipedia)

Wilson found that he preferred the company of the Soviets to a stuffy English couple who were his dining companions. He concluded:

It should be noted that Wilson, despite his Marxist sympathies, would soon become disillusioned with the Soviet experiment; his travels concluded just before the onset of Josef Stalin’s “Great Purge,” which featured the notorious Moscow Show Trials that sent millions of innocent Soviet citizens to labor camps or to their deaths in prisons.

DOOMED…During the Great Terror, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin’s former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. This image from 1936 shows defendants dressed in prison clothing during one of the Moscow Show Trials. (umkc.edu)

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At the Movies

Film critic John Mosher observed that moviegoers mostly needed “thrills and nonsense” at the cinema. Thrills were not to be found, but Harold Lloyd provided the nonsense.

PUNCH LINES…**Harold Lloyd (**left), portrayed an unlikely middleweight boxer in *The Milky Way*. Above is a scene with **Adolphe Menjou** (center) and **Lionel Stander.** (obscurehollywood.net)

The “thriller” of the week was Moonlight Murder, which Mosher suggested audiences could “dismiss at once.”

DISMISSED…**Katharine Alexander, Leo Carrillo** and Benita Hume in *Moonlight Murder.* (rotten tomatoes.com)

Mosher also offered tepid reviews of Everybody’s Old Man and Sutter’s Gold, despite these films featuring a popular humorist and a respected character actor, respectively.

SAY SOMETHING FUNNY…**Rochelle Hudson, Irvin S. Cobb** and **Warren Hymer** in *Everybody’s Old Man.* (imdb.com)

WHO AM I?…A vague narrative left critic **John Mosher** wondering if Edward Arnold’s character was supposed to be a “hero, villain, scamp, or fool” in *Sutter’s Gold.* Above, Arnold in a scene with **Binnie Barnes**. (film booster.com)

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