Howard Baer – A New Yorker State of Mind

What’s in a Name?

Above: H.L. Mencken at the Baltimore Sun, circa 1930. From April 1934 to September 1949, Mencken contributed more than fifty articles to The New Yorker.

The American journalist Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) was well-known as a biting satirist and cultural critic, but he was also a noted scholar of the English language and its various quirks.

May 11, 1935, Mother’s Day cover by **William Cotton.**

One of those quirks was explored in Mencken’s essay, “The Advance of Nomenclatural Eugenics In the Republic,” for the column “Onward & Upward With The Arts.” Broadly defined, eugenics refers to the discredited belief that selective breeding could be used to improve the human race. Mencken used the term satirically to describe the anglicization of immigrant names, either to conform to English spellings or, in many cases, to avoid racial and ethnic discrimination. An excerpt:

A PERFECT PAIRING, for **H. L. Mencken**, was a beer and a cigar. Here he is accepting “his first public glass of post-Prohibition beer” at the Rennert Hotel in Baltimore on April 7, 1933. In 1924 Mencken wrote: “Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists.” (digitalmaryland.org)

Many Jewish immigrants also abandoned their surnames, seeking to blend in and avoid discrimination. Historian and author Kirsten Fermaglich (A Rosenberg by Any Other Name, 2016) found that persons with Jewish-sounding last names made up 65 percent of all name change requests in New York in the first quarter of the 20th century. Mencken observed:

MEET BERNARD, BETTY, ISSUR AND MARGARITA…Some more famous examples of name changes in the first half of the 20th century. From left, actors (and New Yorkers) **Tony Curtis** (Bernard Schwartz), **Lauren Bacall** (Betty Joan Perske), **Kirk Douglas** (Issur Danielovitch Demsky), and **Rita Hayworth** (Margarita Carmen Cansino). (Wikipedia)

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Canada Dry

In his column, “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker noted the “well-merited spanking” FDR gave to military leaders who were talking about fortifying the border with Canada. Brubaker agreed with FDR’s action, observing how Canadians came to the aid of thirsty Americans during Prohibition.

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Air France

Paris correspondent Janet Flanner considered the state of French aviation as well as signs of war preparation. She also noted the birthday of German dictator Adolf Hitler, the birth of French television, and the streamlined taxis that had suddenly appeared on the streets of Paris. Excerpts:

SOME ICE CREAM WITH YOUR SLICE OF HATE?…Clockwise, from top left, bakers carefully carry **Adolf Hitler’s** birthday cake in April 1935; the French, meanwhile, were ramping up war production including the manufacture of the M210 bomber; airplane factory workers fashion sheet metal in a factory in Châteauroux-Déols; streamlined Peugeot 401 taxis hit the Paris streets in 1935. (reddit.com/dassault-aviation.com/imcdc.org)

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Vamps and Vampires

John Mosher offered mixed reviews of Hollywood’s latest fare, finding Marlene Dietrich’s latest vehicle “fun,” and the singing and dancing of husband/wife Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler “uninspired,” a term he also applied to Bela Lugosi’s latest vampire flick.

TAKE YOUR PICK…Critic **John Mosher** sampled some very different films including, left, **Marlene Dietrich** and Lionel Atwill in *The Devil Is a Woman*; top, **Ruby Keeler** with her then-husband **Al Jolson** in *Go Into Your Dance*; and **Bela Lugosi** did his vampire schtick with the help of **Carroll Borland** (who played Dracula’s daughter) in *Mark of the Vampire*. (MoMA/Pinterest/Instagram)

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From Our Advertisers

We start off with a bang from Goodyear…tire blowouts were common in the 1930s as tire technology could not keep pace with the increasing speed of automobiles, nor the poor condition of many roads…

…after many weeks, the back cover went to something other than cigarette manufacturers…

…let’s take a look at some of the one-column ads from the back pages…many of them highlighted the various nighttime entertainments, from the rooftop of Hotel Pierre to the air-conditioned lounge at the Savoy-Plaza (plus that weird ad that suggested Corn Flakes as a nightcap)…

…interior designer Elsie de Wolfe rolled out “Iron with Tape” chairs, which might be the first example of what would become the ubiquitous webbed lawn chair…also advertised were apartments in the former Pulitzer mansion…

…the Pulitzer apartments were one happy outcome of the Great Depression, which foiled the plans of investors to demolish the house in 1934 and erect an apartment building…

The Pulitzer mansion still stands today, now divided into high-class coops. (daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)

…here’s something new from the Jay Thorpe shop, “noted for unusual sportswear”…

…perhaps inspired by Hollywood…

**Ruby Keeler** in 1935’s *Shipmates Forever.* (Reddit)

…illustrator Lyse Darcy created many of these distinctive ads for Guerlain products from the 1930s through the 1950s…

…on to our cartoonists, we begin with spot art from James Thurber…

…and Thurber again…

…and we have two from George Price…

…Otto Soglow continued with his multi-panel tricks…

…Howard Baer did some eavesdropping on the rails…

…while Barbara Shermund checked in on her modern women…

…Alan Dunn gave us a mother who took care of herself on Mother’s Day…

…Peter Arno found some kindly advice in the crowded city…

…Al Frueh put the “tennis” back into table tennis…

…and we close with Charles Addams, who had become a regular contributor but was still more than three years away from launching his “Addams Family” cartoons…

Next Time: Settling Down, In a Way…

A Decade of Delights

With this post (No. 413), we mark the tenth anniversary of The New Yorker. Since I began A New Yorker State of Mind in March 2015, I’ve attempted to give you at least a sense of what the magazine was like in those first years, as well as the historical events that often informed its editorial content as well as its famed cartoons. Those times also informed the advertisements; indeed, in some cases the ads give us a better idea of who was reading the magazine, as well as their changing tastes and buying power as we moved from the Roaring Twenties to the Depression, and from Prohibition into Repeal.

I have also chosen this time to go on hiatus, and hopefully resume this blog when The New Yorker celebrates its centennial next February (this site will remain active and available, and I will continue to monitor comments and messages). Let us hope that the editors use the original Rea Irvin cover for that occasion, and restore his masthead above “The Talk of the Town” section. Perhaps some enterprising soul could start a petition.

Moving on to the tenth anniversary issue, we find E.B. White recalling the world of The New Yorker’s first days. Given the massive economic and societal shifts that occurred from 1925 to 1935, those first days seemed distant to White, who felt old, “not in years but events.”

DAYS OF YORE…**E.B. White** noted the many changes that had taken place during *The New Yorker’s* first ten years, including, clockwise from top left, the passing of 1920s notables such as **President Calvin Coolidge** and two very different theatre impresarios—**David Belasco** and Flo Ziegfeld; White also recalled the much-publicized 1925 wedding of **Abby Rockefeller** to **David Milton,** the throngs of women who took to smoking in public in the 1920s and the drinkers who took their activities behind closed doors; and one of the early magazine’s beloved contributors, **Ralph Barton,** who offered his whimsical take on the news in “The Graphic Section” as well as in other illustrated features. (Wikipedia/Wikitree/Ephemeral New York)

White also noted a new craze that had originated around the same time as the birth of The New Yorker…

TWO ACROSS…**Max Schuster** and Richard Simon of Simon & Schuster, with their first crossword book, 1924. (americanbusinesshistory.org)

White concluded with these parting words, tinged with world-weariness, writing “More seems likely to happen.” One wonders if he imagined The New Yorker at 100, which in our day is just around the corner. Like White, many us have grown weary of this angry world, where indeed more seems likely to happen. Let us hope it is for the best.

Now, some unfinished business. We need to look at the previous issue, Feb. 9, 1935, before we close out the decade.

Feb. 9, 1935 cover by **William Cotton.**

We stay on the lighter side, joining critic John Mosher at the local cinema to appreciate Leslie Howard’s dashing performance in The Scarlet Pimpernel…

WORKING OVERTIME…**Leslie Howard** and **Merle Oberon** in *The Scarlet Pimpernel.* Howard portrayed an aristocrat who leads a double life, publicly appearing as a dandy while secretly rescuing French nobles from Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. (PBS)

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From Our Advertisers

Cigarette manufacturers employed every angle from sex to health claims to move their product…not to be left out of any niche market, Chesterfield even went after the little old ladies…

…by contrast, the makers of Old Gold cigarettes featured a clueless sugar daddy and his leggy mistress in a series of ads drawn by famed pin-up artist George Petty…

…Otto Soglow would do well with advertisers during his career, promoting everything from whiskey to Pepsi and Shredded Wheat to department stores…in this case Bloomingdale’s…after William Randolph Hearst’s King Features Syndicate wrested The Little King away from The New Yorker in September 1934, this was the only way you would see the harmless potentate in the magazine…

…another New Yorker artist earning some ad dollars on the side was Constantin Alajalov, here adding a stylish flair for Coty…

…and then there’s James Thurber, who continued to contribute his talents on behalf of the Theatre Guild…

…and we move along to the Feb. 9 cartoons, with Thurber again…

…the issue also featured two by George Price…

…and Howard Baer supplied some life to this little party…

…now let’s return to the Feb. 15, 1935 issue…

…where John Mosher was back at the cinema, this time enjoying the story of a “beautiful stenographer”…

POPCORNY…**Fred MacMurray** and **Claudette Colbert** meet cute over popcorn in the romantic comedy *The Gilded Lily.* It was MacMurray’s second credited screen role, and it was the first of seven films in which Colbert and MacMurray would star together. (Wikipedia)

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More From Our Advertisers

In its bid for survival during the Depression, the luxury brand Packard introduced its first car under $1000, the 120. Sales more than tripled in 1935 and doubled again in 1936…

…meanwhile, Hudson was hanging in there with innovations such as the “Electric Hand”…it was not a true automatic transmission, but it did allow drivers to shift gears near the steering wheel…

…as demonstrated here…

…whatever you were driving, Goodyear claimed it would keep you the safest with their “Double Eagles”…

…I include this ad for Taylor Instruments because it features an illustration by Ervine Metzl, who would become known for his posters and postage stamp designs…

…Metzl’s design of a three-cent stamp commemorating the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year…

…on to our cartoonists, we begin with this Deco-inspired artwork by an unidentified illustrator…

…one of Helen Hokinson’s “girls” was going about her daily rounds…

…Garrett Price gave us a gatekeeper not quite up to his task…

…Gilbert Bundy was seeing stripes rather than stars…

…while James Thurber’s medium was getting in touch with an equine spirit…

…scientific inquiry knew no bounds in Robert Day’s world….

…and in the world of Alain (aka Daniel Brustlein), old habits died hard…

…and we close with Peter Arno, at his risqué best…

Thanks for reading The New Yorker State of Mind!

Rocky’s Cover-Up

On April 28, 1933, just two days before the RCA Building was to open to new tenants, artist Diego Rivera added a portrait of Vladimir Lenin to the mural he was painting in the building’s lobby.

Feb. 24, 1934 cover by **Garrett Price.**

When Nelson Rockefeller asked Rivera to replace Lenin with a portrait of an “everyman,” Rivera refused, stating that he would prefer to see the whole mural destroyed than to alter it. Two weeks later Rivera was paid and dismissed from the job; carpenters immediately covered the mural in a white cloth. Fast forward to Saturday, February 10, 1934, when workers showed up late in the evening and began chipping away at the plaster bearing the mural, reducing Rivera’s artwork to dust. E.B. White, in his “Notes and Comment,” had this to say about that fateful night:

DUST TO DUST…**Diego Rivera** working on his mural, *Man at the Crossroads*, in the RCA Building lobby in 1933. At right, workers quickly covered up the mural after Rivera was dismissed from the job. One of Rivera’s artist assistants, **Lucienne Bloch**, clandestinely took the photo before she was escorted from the building. (Wikipedia/6sqft.com)

ARTEM INTERRUPTUS…Mexican artist **Diego Rivera** stands with a copy of the mural he painted at Rockefeller Center that was eventually destroyed. (A. Estrada /Courtesy of Museo Frida Kalho)

Rea Irvin shared his own thoughts on the issue with this illustration below, which referenced the hateful rhetoric of Charles Coughlin, a Canadian-American Catholic priest and populist leader and one of the first public figures to make effective use of the airwaves to spew his invective.

FAMILIAR RING…**Charles Coughlin**, a Catholic priest and populist leader, promoted antisemitic and pro-fascist views while also acting as a champion to the poor and a foe of big business. In the midst of the Depression he spoke to the hopes and fears of lower-middle class Americans throughout the U.S. One supporter recalled: “When he spoke it was a thrill like Hitler. And the magnetism was uncanny. It was so intoxicating, there’s no use saying what he talked about…” (BBC/NPR)

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Dog Days

E.B. White also chimed in about boorish behavior he witnessed at the Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Garden. Terriers had dominated Westminster; the fox terrier that ultimately won the 1934 competition represented the 21st terrier of any type to win Best of Show since that category was introduced in 1907.

YOU AGAIN? Ch Flornell Spicy Bit of Halleston, a Wire Fox Terrier, took Best of Show at Madison Square Garden in 1934. (westminsterkennelclub.org)

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Anybody Home?

After the wealthy owner of the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer, died in 1911, his family moved out of his lavish East 73rd Street mansion, which was designed by Stanford White to resemble an Italian palazzo. The building sat empty until 1930, when investors planned to knock it down and replace it with an apartment building. The Depression foiled their plans, and another attempt to raze the mansion in the 1950s also miraculously failed, and the building was eventually converted into a co-op with sixteen apartments. Writing in “The Talk of the Town,” James Thurber pondered the Pulitzer mansion’s expected fate. An excerpt:

THEN AND NOW…With so many buildings reduced to dust these days in NYC, it’s good to see the Pulitzer mansion still standing. You can buy one of its sixteen apartments for roughly $6 million, if and when they become available. (ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com)

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From Our Advertisers

The makers of Camel cigarettes combined three previous ads into one, featuring endorsements from society matrons in Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York…

…while Fanny Brice and the cast of the 1934 Ziegfeld Follies offered a chorus of endorsements for Lux detergent in this two-page spread…

…the Graham-Paige Motors Corporation is long gone, but in the early 1930s the company was still going strong, introducing many innovations (described in the ad below) that would be copied by other carmakers…

…in the 1930s an exiled Russian noble, Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky, was known for his streamlined automobile designs…he influenced the look of the 1934 Nash Ambassador Eight, which was touted here as the choice of the budget-minded toff…note how the illustrator exaggerated the car’s length in this ad…

…as compared to an actual model of a Nash Eight…

A restored 1934 Nash Ambassador Eight. (classiccars.com)

…on to our cartoonists, Alan Dunn floated above the “Goings On About Town” section…

…William Steig gave us a tactless grocer…

…Howard Baer offered up some finer points from Madison Avenue…

…Gardner Rea illustrated a very special delivery…

…and James Thurber’s war continued to be waged on a snowy battlefield…

…on to our March 3, 1934 issue…

…which featured a profile of singer Kate Smith (1907–1986), written by none other than Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996), who began his career at The New Yorker in 1933. Smith was an American contralto often referred to as “The First Lady of Radio,” well known for her renditions of When the Moon Comes over the Mountain and Dream a Little Dream of Me. She was enormously popular during World War II for her rendition of God Bless America among other patriotic tunes.

Smith got her start in New York in 1926 when she appeared on Broadway in Honeymoon Lane. That year also saw the emergence of countless humiliating wisecracks about her weight that would dog her long career. A reviewer in The New York Times (Oct. 31, 1926) wrote, “A 19-year-old girl, weighing in the immediate neighborhood of 200 pounds, is one of the discoveries of the season…” In 1930, when Smith appeared in George White’s Flying High, she served as the butt of Bert Lahr’s often cruel jokes about her size.

An excerpt from the opening lines of Mitchell’s profile:

RISING STAR…At left, **Kate Smith** performing in the 1932 Paramount Pictures musical, *Hello Everybody!*; at right, on the cover of the October 1934 issue of *Radio Mirror.* (medium.com)

Toward the conclusion of the profile Mitchell suggested that Smith’s future was “doubtful.” She would prove that prediction wrong, however…

…23 years after her death her rendition of God Bless America would be discontinued pretty much everywhere when it was revealed that in the early 1930s she recorded such songs as That’s Why Darkies Were Born and Pickaninny Heaven (which was featured in Hello, Everybody!).

CANCELLED STAR…Since the late 1960s a rendition of *God Bless America* by Kate Smith served as a good luck charm for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team. “The team began to win on nights the song was played,” *The New York Times* wrote in Smith’s 1986 obituary. Smith sang the tune live during game six of the 1974 Stanley Cup finals, which the Flyers went on to win against the Boston Bruins. When Smith’s racist songs were rediscovered in 2019, a statue of the singer that stood outside the Flyers’ arena was covered and ultimately removed. (Daily Mail)

A note on Joseph Mitchell, whose first credited piece in The New Yorker was a Nov. 11, 1933 “A Reporter at Large” column titled “They Got Married in Elkton.” The article described a small Maryland border town that became known for discrete “quicky” marriages. Mitchell would become known for his finely crafted character studies and expressive stories found in commonplace settings. His 1943 McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon is a prime example.

MAN ABOUT TOWN…At left, **Joseph Mitchell** circa 1930, wearing a brown fedora he was rarely seen without; at right, Mitchell in Lower Manhattan near the old Fulton Fish Market, as photographed by his wife, **Therese Mitchell**, circa 1950. (Estate of Joseph Mitchell)

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Acquired Taste

Occasionally New Yorker film critic John Mosher found himself at odds with other reviewers, and such was the case when Mosher sat down to watch Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. While he described the 1934 pre-Code romantic comedy as “nonsense” and “dreary,” other critics found it generally enjoyable, and although it took audiences awhile to catch on, the film eventually became a smash hit.

In all fairness to Mosher, even the film’s co-star, Claudette Colbert, complained to a friend after the film wrapped, “I just finished the worst picture in the world.” As it turned out, It Happened One Night became the first of only three films to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It is now widely considered one of the best films ever made. Go figure.

Back to Mosher, who thought so little of the film he didn’t even lead his column with the picture’s review:

PRE-CODE AND TOPLESS…An heiress (**Claudette Colbert**) and a reporter (**Clark Gable**) find themselves hitchhiking (and sharing a motel room) after their bus breaks down in *It Happened One Night*. The film famously featured a scene in which co-star Gable undresses for bed and takes off his shirt to reveal that he is bare-chested. An urban legend claims that, as a result, sales of men’s undershirts declined noticeably. (IMDB)

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More From Our Advertisers

If you wanted luxury with the price, you could buy a Nash Ambassador Eight for $1,800 (about thousand less than other luxury models) or opt for Studebaker’s Berline Limousine, practically a steal at $1,295…

…or you could opt for this fancy-looking Buick with “Knee-Action wheels”…Knee Action was a GM marketing term for independent front suspension, which made for a smoother ride…

…always colorful, the makers of Cinzano vermouth made their splash in The New Yorker…

…the folks at Lucky Strike continued their theme of colorful ads featuring attractive women enjoying their cigs…

…on to our cartoonists, Leonard Dove illustrated a domestic spat…

…Mary Petty captured a romantic interlude on the dance floor…

…and James Thurber introduced a new twist—espionage—into his “war”…

Next Time: The Power Broker…

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:

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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)

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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)

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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 (or strap, as it is called).

…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)

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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…

Wits of the Round Table

Two big voices from the famed Algonquin Round Table were prominently featured in the Oct. 1 and Oct. 8, 1927 issues of the New Yorker–journalist and champion of the underdog Heywood Broun wrote his own “Profile” under the title, “The Rabbit That Bit the Bulldog,” and Dorothy Parker served up biting satire in “Arrangement in Black and White,” a clever exposé of racism among the fashionably “open-minded” upper classes.

488a50459a792547010d30e8bfe5ddf4 — October 1, 1927 cover by **Gardner Rea**.

The Rabbit That Bit the Bulldog

Hiding under the signature “R.A.”, Heywood Broun (1888–1939) was merciless as his own profiler, describing himself as a coward, hypochondriac, and a slob (there is truth to the latter, however, as friends often likened him to “an unmade bed”).

Broun cut his teeth in journalism as a sportswriter and war correspondent. In 1921 he went to work for the New York World, where he penned his popular syndicated column “It Seems to Me.” Broun’s New Yorker “Profile” was written after he was fired from the World following a disagreement with his editor over his critical commentary on the sentencing of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Broun would move on to The Nation, where he would write a regular column, “It Seems to Heywood Broun,” that would offer criticism on a number of topics including his former employer, the World.

**Heywood Broun.** (Denver Newspaper Guild)

The New Yorker profile included this caricature by Peter Arno…

…a portrayal Broun claimed was inaccurate due to his “habitual stoop,” among other faults…

…and he mused about his future with the Nation, and how that august publication would square with his various foibles…

…and as for his personal appearance and habits, Broun weighed in thusly…

Broun married social activist Ruth Hale in 1917. A son born the following year, Heywood Hale Broun, would have a long and successful career as an author, sportswriter, commentator and actor.

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The Long Count

Oddly, The New Yorker had little to say about the famous Chicago rematch between heavyweight boxers Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey, which Tunney won after the controversial “long count.” The fight took place under new rules that gave a fallen fighter ten seconds to rise to his feet, but the count would not begin until his opponent moved to a neutral corner.

tumblr_mti3g257h11rnxl9do1_500 — DAZED AND CONFUSED…Referee **Dave Barry** motions Jack Dempsey to a neutral corner before he begins his count. **Gene Tunney** got back up and went on to win the fight. (*Chicago Tribune* archive photo)

Although Tunney dominated the fight, Dempsey unleashed a flurry in the seventh round that knocked Tunney to the canvas–it was the first time in Tunney’s career that he’d been knocked down. Instead of going immediately to a neutral corner, Dempsey just stood and observed his opponent for several seconds until finally retreating. Those extra seconds proved just enough time to allow Tunney to return to his feet and eventually win the bout. To one observer quoted in “The Talk of Town,” those extra seconds really dragged…

From the Ad Department

We feature this Julian de Miskey-illustrated advertisement for Faultless Nobelt Pajamas. Apparently these special PJs had some sort of newfangled rubber elastic band…

…and this cartoon from the Oct. 1 issue featured Helen Hokinson’s ditsy society women at New York’s Fashion Week…

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Dorothy Takes On the Snobs

In the Oct. 8 issue, our other Round Table wit, Dorothy Parker, took aim at the less savory aspects of society women in her short fiction piece, “Arrangement in Black and White.”

f19964a9d1e1b6179fe2715bb3b1aa72 — October 8, 1927 cover by **Rea Irvin**.

Parker began her piece by introducing us to a woman who enters a party wearing a wreath of “pink velvet poppies” in her golden hair. In short order she asks the party’s host to “pretty please” introduce her to the party’s guest of honor, an African American singer named Walter Williams.

The woman with the pink velvet poppies goes on to tell her host that she came to the party alone because her husband, Burton, preferred not to socialize with “colored people”–but she however was “simply crazy” about some of them. “They’re just like children–just as easy-going, and always singing and laughing and everything.” Before she met the singer she observed to the host:

screen-shot-2016-12-06-at-1-16-57-pm — The woman with the pink velvet poppies meets the singer Walter Williams, as illustrated by **Peter Arno**.

Then the woman with the pink velvet poppies meets Walter Williams:

She continues to patronize the guest of honor, then notices a stage actress at the party:

Finally, the host guides the woman with the pink velvet poppies away from Walter Williams…

05325779fdf286303013d76dc9e89388 — BITING WIT…**Dorothy Parker** in the 1920s.

We will see more of Dorothy Parker in issues to come as she continues to take aim at the pretentious, hypocritical, self-absorbed snobs of the Jazz Age and beyond.

Baseball’s Lament

The Oct. 1 and 8 issues covered yacht racing, polo, tennis, golf and college football, but still no baseball. The 1927 New York Yankees would be one of the greatest teams of all time, but as the World Series commenced all we got from The New Yorker was a personality profile of Yankees manager Miller Huggins in the Oct. 8 issue (with a drawing by Reginald Marsh)…

…and this advertisement for “Sport Glasses” for those attending the World Series…

Perhaps The New Yorker had no one on staff who could competently write about baseball. The strangest reference to the game was this article about polo, but for some reason it was illustrated with baseball images. Perhaps the editors felt sheepish about their lack of baseball coverage, and offered these illustrations by Howard Baer as a token acknowledgement…

At any rate, we end with this cartoon by Julien de Miskey, who like his colleagues explored the comic richness of wealthy old men paired with their young mistresses…

Next Time: The Ephemeral City…