Henry Anton – A New Yorker State of Mind

The Power Broker

Above: Robert Moses in 1939 with a model of his proposed Battery Bridge Park Reconstruction; at right, 1934 Bryant Park renovation, view to the south on 6th Avenue from 42nd Street. (Wikipedia/NYC Parks Department)

The title for this entry comes from Robert Caro’s landmark 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, which questioned the benefit of Moses’s monumental projects.

Like him or not, few unelected officials have wielded more power than Moses, who through various appointed positions, including New York City Parks Commissioner, he was able to impose his will on mayors, legislators, congressmen, wealthy burghers, and even, on occasion, The White House. In turn he imposed his will on the city itself, clearing whole neighborhoods to lay down new roads that extended from Manhattan to the tip of Long Island, where neither farmer nor landed gentry could stand in his way. A profile written by Milton MacKaye examined what made Moses tick. An excerpt:

DON’T YOU DARE PUT ME ON HOLD…Relentless doesn’t begin to describe **Robert Moses’s** pursuit of power. Clockwise, from top left, Moses circa 1930; one of the swimming pools at the west bathhouse at Long Island’s Jones Beach, a project that helped launch Moses’s road to power; Long Island Expressway, which transformed Long Island from farm country (and a retreat for the rich) into a land of bedroom communities and public parks; the east parking field at Jones Beach. (Britannica/Library of Congress/U.S. National Archives)

In another excerpt, MacKaye noted that Moses had been named a member of the Triborough Bridge Authority; Moses would ultimately become chairman, and through this position would possess enormous, unchecked power and influence. Moses was skilled at creating legal structures that would favor his ambitions, burying language into legislative bills and other documents that would make him impervious to influence from mayors, legislators, governors and other elected officials.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PLAYGROUND…Moses intensely disliked former New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, who used the Central Park Casino (top left) as his personal playground. Moses exacted his vengeance by having the historic casino razed in 1935 and replaced with the Rumsey Playground; at right, the 1936 Triborough Bridge (**Berenice Abbot** photo), a cluster of three separate spans connecting the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens. It was developed through Moses’s Triborough Bridge Authority, which was impervious to influence from mayors, legislators and governors. While the city and state were strapped for funds, Moses reaped millions from tolls, which financed his other ambitions; bottom left, Moses in 1938. (Wikipedia/transalt.org/Library of Congress)

Final note, I highly recommend Caro’s The Power Broker—it’s a doorstop of a book, but also one of the best biographies of the 20th century and a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand how present-day New York came to be, and how it really works.

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Let’s Talk About the Weather

Robert Benchley, writing under the pseudonym Guy Fawkes, took a turn at “The Wayward Press” column, commenting on the sensationalistic coverage of the weather by the local press. In all fairness to the press, New York City had endured a blizzard as well as the coldest temperature ever recorded for the city: 15 below zero (Fahrenheit) on Feb. 9, 1934. (According to newspaper accounts, it was 14.3 below).

Benchley also commented on journalist Ernest Gruening (1887–1974), who was the editor of the New York Post for only four months in 1934, but during those four months he really shook things up.

EASY BOSS…**Ernest Gruening** was editor of the *New York Post* for only four months in 1934, but during that time he made life better for his newsroom employees by implementing an unheard of 40-hour work week. Gruening went on to serve as the governor of the Alaska Territory from 1939 until 1953, and as a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1959 until 1969. (Photo from 1935 via Wikipedia)

Robert Benchley thought the press made too much of the city’s snowy weather, but these newsreels tell a different story:

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Punch Drunk

Critic John Mosher found slim pickings at the local movie houses, opting for Jimmy Durante’s Palooka as the best of crop:

RIBALDRY AT RINGSIDE…Clockwise from top left, Knobby Walsh (**Jimmy Durante**) tries to press his advantage during the weigh-in of boxer Al McSwatt (portrayed by **William Cagney,** the look-alike younger brother of **James Cagney**) in 1934’s Palooka; Durante thinks he’s found a winning fighter in Joe Palooka (**Stuart Erwin**); Joe’s father, Pete Palooka (**Robert Armstrong**) demonstrates why he’s nicknamed “Goodtime” with the help of Trixie (**Thelma Todd**); Durante with **Lupe Vélez**, who portrayed glamorous cabaret singer and fortune hunter Nina Madero. (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

We start with a couple ads from the back pages…the promoters of Chicago’s famed Stevens Hotel offered a unique perspective as they appealed to New Yorkers to come check out the “Century of Progress” World’s Fair, which proved so popular that it planned to reopen in May for a second year…at right, The Gotham catered to the ladies with a special cocktail bar that only allowed men in the company of a woman…

NICE DIGS…At left, The Stevens Hotel (now Hilton Chicago) and, at right, The Gotham (now The Peninsula) are happily still with us today. (Wikipedia)

…cigarette manufacturers continued to work on their biggest growth market with ads like this one from the Lorillard Tobacco Company…here a perceptive woman chooses to ignore the “brazen claims” of other tobacco companies and makes an informed decision to inhale an Old Gold…

…Liggett & Myers, on the other hand, stuck with this subservient pose, suggesting both are happy with their cigarette, and their station in life…

…another colorful ad from the makers of Schlitz beer…following the end of Prohibition Schlitz quickly became the world’s top-selling brewery, a position it would hold into the 1960s until it switched to cheaper brewing methods…

…the makers of Fisher car bodies (owned by General Motors) continued their lavish two-page spreads touting the homey comforts of their interiors…

…and no more staid ads from luxury carmaker Packard, who ran this full-color, full-bleed spot…

…it’s almost springtime for Hitler, and Germany welcomed American tourists with promises of “Dreaming Villages” (whatever those are), charming health spas and places of romance and beauty…hmmm, no mention of swastika flags hanging from every building, or parades of goose-stepping thugs…

…this public service ad promoted the effectiveness of the National Recovery Act, offering the uptick in underwear sales as a sure sign of economic growth…

…on to our cartoonists, we begin with Helen Hokinson experiencing the results of the recent blizzard…

…as did Henry Anton, with a befuddled meteorologist…

…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) gave us this wordless gem…

…while Garrett Price presented a sculptor’s greatest challenge…

…Alan Dunn gave us two women who expected more pizzazz from a recent funeral…

…Peter Arno contended with some Peeping Toms…

…and James Thurber looked in on recent maneuvers in his war between the sexes…

Next Time: Art of the Machine…

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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From Our Advertisers

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…

Tugboat Annie

New Yorkers were enduring the dog days of August, and those who couldn’t escape the heat by fleeing to the country or the beach could find cool respite at the movies.

August 19, 1933 cover by **Gardner Rea.**

It was doubtless in an air-conditioned theatre where critic John Mosher enjoyed the craft of older actors, in this case Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler in Tugboat Annie. Although the film didn’t quite live up to Beery and Dressler’s 1930 smash hit, Min and Bill, Mosher found Beery to be a “beautiful foil” to Dressler, who thankfully wasn’t just another “fluffy little pink young thing.”

ON GOLDEN POND…**Wallace Beery** and **Marie Dressler** portrayed a comically quarrelsome older couple who operate a tugboat in MGM’s *Tugboat Annie*. It would be one Dressler’s last film roles—she would die the following year; at right, a young **Robert Young** with Dressler in a scene from the film—Young would go on to television fame playing two beloved characters: the father in *Father Knows Best* (1954-60) with fellow film star **Jane Wyatt**, and the kindly, avuncular doctor on Marcus Welby M.D. (1969–76). (IMDB)

Another seasoned performer Mosher admired was Mary Boland, although her latest film, Three Cornered Moon, was crowded with “too many young people”…

BRAT PACK…**Mary Boland** (left) with **Wallace Ford, Claudette Colbert**, and **Hardie Albright** in *Three Cornered Moon* (IMDB)

…and then there was Buster Crabbe’s lackluster Tarzan the Fearless to consider—it was Crabbe’s only screen appearance as the Ape-Man…

MONKEYING AROUND…A self-described “King of the Serials,” **Buster Crabbe’s** career included nine sound serials, including Flash Gordon and *Buck Rogers* (1936-40). In *Tarzan the Fearless* Crabbe’s sole appearance as Tarzan was played opposite **Jacqueline Wells** (aka **Julie Bishop**). The media at the time made hay of a so-called rivalry between Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller, who defined the Tarzan role in twelve films from 1932 to 1948. Both men were Olympic athletes: Crabbe won the 1932 Olympic 400-meter freestyle swimming championship, while Weissmuller was the undefeated winner of five Olympic gold medals. (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

The folks at Hoffman Beverages continued to offer up ways to enjoy an adult refreshment, including a tongue-in-cheek “code” to be used until the repeal of Prohbition…

…with the return of legal (3.2) beer, brewers were aggressively targeting women as a new growth market…

…a selection of one-column ads from the back pages touted imported beers and an old “Pennsylvania Dutch” quaff, intermixed with apartment ads and a women’s deodorant called SHUN…

…Otto Soglow, who would become rich and famous with his The Little King strip, also did well as an illustrator for various products, including Rheingold beer…

…another way to stay cool was to dine at Longchamps, thanks to their “scientific air-conditioning system”…

…on the subject of keeping cool, back in the day you had to regularly top off the radiator on hot days, and if you added lead to your gasoline you could also get rid of those annoying hot engine knocks…

…It would be four years before Dr. Seuss would publish his first children’s book, so he continued to pay the bills with illustrated ads for Flit insecticide…ah the good days when spraying poison above a child’s head seemed perfectly reasonable…

…another one-column ad from the back pages says a lot about how advertisers perceived a New Yorker reader—even dog food demanded snob appeal…

…on to our cartoons we return to Otto Soglow and his take on the old William Tell trope…

…Peter Arno delivered some surprising news to dear old mom…

…Henry Anton gave us a sign man unconvinced that sex sells…

…Gluyas Williams gave us his latest take on “Fellow Citizens” (this originally appeared sideways on p. 17)…

…and Garrett Price shared this observation, from the mouth of babes…

…on to Aug. 26…

Aug. 26, 1933 cover by **Perry Barlow.**

…where we find Ring Lardner, who since March had been injecting humor into the “Over the Waves” radio column.

In this installment, Lardner outlined his ideal radio program. An excerpt:

UP TO OLD GAGS?**…Ring Lardner** gave the comedy duo Jack Pearl (right) and **Cliff Hall** a generous four minutes in his fantasy radio show—if they did their old routines. (Wikimedia)

Lardner concluded his dream program:

Sadly, Ring Lardner would be gone in less than a month—he died of a heart attack on Sept. 25, 1933, at the tender age of 48.

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On Second Thought

Previously, film critic John Mosher had been lukewarm to the up-and-coming Katharine Hepburn. No more. Her appearance in Morning Glory drew praise from all over, including the Academy, which gave the young star her first Oscar.

A STAR IS BORN…**Katharine Hepburn** with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (left) and **Adolphe Menjou** in *Morning Glory* (1933). Hepburn would win the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the first of four she would receive in that category—a record for any performer. (IMDB)

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Life With Clarence

Following “The Talk of the Town” section was this illustrated contribution by Clarence Day…

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More From Our Advertisers

While folks were cooling down at the movies Barbara Stanwyck did her best to heat up the screen…

…the frank discussion of sex in Baby Face made it one of the most notorious films of the year and no doubt hastened the implementation of the Hays Code…

LIGHT MY FIRE…**Barbara Stanwyck** in *Baby Face*.

…in case anyone had forgotten during Prohibition, Budweiser reminded them who was the king of beers with this inside front cover ad…

…Irvin S. Cobb was back on behalf of Hupmobile, the struggling carmaker hoping that a bit of humor would boost sales…

…this ad from Reo not only lacked humor, it lacked the car itself…

…too bad, because the 1933 Reo Royale was a beauty…

…more color ads from our cigarette manufacturers Camel…

…and Chesterfield…

…why, it’s Barbara Stanwyck again, this time in color, thanks to the folks at Powers Reproduction…

…and Otto Soglow again for Rheingold beer…

…and on to the cartoons, with Soglow’s Little King…

…Carl Rose demonstrated the perils of attending theatre in a barn…

…Robert Day found a Hebrew lifeguard at Coney Island…

…and we end with another by Day, with a twist on America’s Pastime and a subtle plug for the National Recovery Administration…

Next Time: The Shape of Things to Come…

Gas Tanks & Towers

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) is best known as a critic of art, architecture and urban design, but he was unique — especially for his time — in how he approached these subjects, going far beyond aesthetics to consider how things aligned, or mis-aligned, with necessary human qualities ranging from comfort and scale to the quality of our air, water and even diet.

Returning home from a trip to Europe, Mumford pondered the New York skyline as his ship approached the harbor, contrasting his city’s approach to architecture with what he had seen abroad. He was not pleased:

NOT JUST ANOTHER PRETTY FACE…**Lewis Mumford** praised the sense of “space, clarity and order” he found in the buildings of Rotterdam — perhaps he was referring in part to **Leendert van der Vlugt’s** 1931 Van Nelle Factory (top) and **H.F. Mertens’** 1931 Unilever office building. (metalocus.es/Wikimedia)

WELCOME BACK, LEWIS…Manhattan skyline with gas tank, 1932. (nycurbanism.com)

Mumford was among the few in 1931 who saw a bright side to the Depression, since a pause in building would afford American architects an opportunity to reflect on their past transgressions…

Mumford, among others, was regarded as a visionary in urban planning, anticipating the “New Urbanism” of the late 20th century which was proposed as an antidote to the dehumanizing free-market development Mumford rightly feared would degrade the quality of urban life, not to mention its deleterious effects on the natural environment.

Inspired by the Garden City movement in the U.K., Robert D. Kohn (mentioned above) founded the Regional Planning Association of America, which led to the development of some of the first modern zoning standards in the U.S.

MAVERICKS…**Robert D. Kohn** (seated in light-colored suit) was president of AIA when the association held their convention in San Antonio in 1931. Seated at left is **Dr. Aureliano Urrutia**, a prominent San Antonio physician who established the famed Miraflores gardens (mostly gone, sadly) in that city. (sanantonioreport.org)

Along with Mumford and Kohn, **Henry Wright** (left) and **Frederick Ackerman** were strong advocates for zoning laws unsullied by free market forces. Wright (1878–1936) was the brainchild behind the Hillside Group Housing model (described by Mumford below) and he also co-designed Radburn (pictured below) among other projects. Ackerman (1878–1950) became the first Technical Director of New York City Housing in 1934.(sunnysidegardens.us)

Mumford praised the work of architect and planner Henry Wright (1878–1936), who had co-created a “Garden City” plan for Radburn, N.J. (with Clarence Stein) and had recently produced a proposal for “Hillside Group Housing”…

NICE PLACE, THIS…Apartments around a courtyard in Radburn, a community designed by **Henry Wright** and **Clarence Stein**. Stein was an early supporter of bicycle paths. (thepolisblog.org)

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Shining Some Light

Now I’d like to offer a tribute of sorts to the almost-forgotten Maddy Vegtel, a writer known in 1920s and 30s for her Vanity Fair profiles (she penned “Blonde Venus and Swedish Sphinx” — about Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo in the June 1934 issue of VF) and articles about her European roots (Holland) in the New Yorker from 1926 to 1956. She particularly enjoyed skewering smug upper middle-class types. Here is her short piece, “Paris.”

…and for the record, the opening spread of Vegtel’s 1934 Vanity Fair piece on Garbo and Dietrich…

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Play It Again

Robert Benchley was back to writing stage reviews, this time taking in the drama I Loved You Wednesday (at the Sam Harris Theatre) featuring Frances Fuller and Humphrey Bogart — Bogie appeared in a number of stage productions before becoming the familiar hardboiled antihero of Hollywood’s golden age.

Bogart began his stage career in 1921, delivering one line (as a Japanese butler!) in the play Drifting. He would go on to appear in 17 Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935, and would make his screen debut in 1930 in A Devil With Women.

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID…**Francis Fuller** and Humphrey Bogart in a 1932 stage production of I Loved You Wednesday. It ran for 63 performances at the Sam Harris Theatre. (Pinterest)

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Off-white Christmas

In the midst of wading through poetry submissions to the New Yorker, E.B. White allowed his thoughts to drift toward the coming winter…

…and what would likely be his winter scene in Manhattan…actually this is a screenshot from the 1945 comedy Christmas in Connecticut, and this was the view through writer Elizabeth Lane’s (Barbara Stanwyck) window, which was actually part of a Hollywood sound stage…

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Seeing Red

Along with the poetry submissions, E.B. White also received a letter from the local Communists urging the New Yorker to join hands with the oppressed classes. White, however, found that class divisions weren’t always what they seemed…

FREEDOM AND FREE STUFF, PLEASE…About 10,000 Communists and unemployed march on New York’s City Hall in 1932. (NY Daily News)

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From Our Advertisers

While the Communists marched for jobs and free milk, another class of New Yorkers pondered this ad for a V-16 Cadillac…

…in my last post we saw how RCA’s mascot “Nipper” enjoyed the newfangled “bi-acoustic” radio…

…and so General Electric answered in the Oct. 22 issue with a two-legged expert, who perhaps didn’t have the same range of hearing as a terrier mix, but was nevertheless blessed with “keenly discriminating ears”…

…Samuel Lionel “Roxy” Rothafel’s greatest achievement was the Roxy Theatre, which opened March 11, 1927. He was also behind the opening of Radio City Music Hall, home of the Roxyettes (later renamed The Rockettes). Rothafel (1882–1936) is also the great-grandfather of actress Amanda Peet…

**S.L. “Roxy” Rothafel** greets wife **Rosa Freedman** (right) and daughter **Beta Rothafel** after their return from abroad aboard the *S.S. Paris*, Sept. 19, 1932. (AP)

…and we continue in the back pages, which included signature ads for various entertainments and an ad for American Airways, which depicted a jaunty young man announcing his plans for “week-ending in Los Angeles”…now read the fine print…in order to “breeze into Los Angeles on Saturday morning,” this fellow would need to depart on Thursday evening, and no doubt experience some bumps along the way…

…here’s a couple of ads featuring New Yorker talent, cartoonists Peter Arno and Helen Hokinson…

…Mori was an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village (144 Bleecker Street) that managed to survive Prohibition and most of the Depression before closing in 1937…the building is still there, sans the charm…