It’s hard to beat Chicago as a source for hardboiled storytelling, and two of its best newspaper reporters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, would draw on their rough and tumble newsroom experiences to create one of Broadway’s most-beloved plays.
March 28, 1931 cover by Ruth Cairns.
Although they were Chicago boys, the New Yorker crowd viewed Hecht and MacArthur as adopted (or perhaps naturalized) Manhattanites. So when John Mosher wrote his glowing review of the film adaption of The Front Page, he was writing about the work of a pair well known to the Algonquin Round Table set.
WE ❤ NY…Chicagoans Ben Hecht, left, and Charles MacArthur were familiar faces with the Algonquin Round Table crowd. (Chicago Tribune/Amazon)NEWSIES…Editor Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou) sizes up his reporter Hildy Johnson (Pat O’Brien) and Hildy’s fiance Peggy Grant (Mary Brian) in The Front Page. (IMDB)
MacArthur (1895-1956) was especially close to the Algonquin group, having shared an apartment with Robert Benchley and a bed with Dorothy Parker in the early 1920s. In 1928 MacArthur would marry one of Broadway’s most beloved stars, Helen Hayes.
For his part, Hecht (1893-1964) contributed short fiction pieces to the New Yorker during its lean first years, 1925-1928. After the success of The Front Page, Hecht would go on to become one of Hollywood’s greatest screenwriters.
Here’s Mosher’s review:
Playwright and essayist James Harvey observes that The Front Page was “Hecht and MacArthur’s Chicago…(and) that counts most deeply in the imagination of Hollywood. And their play, the first of the great newspaper comedies, did more to define the tone and style, the look and the sound of Hollywood comedy than any other work of its time.”
DESK JOB…Hildy Johnson (Pat O’Brien) and Molly Malloy (Mae Clarke) hide escaped murderer Earl Williams (George E. Stone) in a rolltop desk in 1931’s The Front Page. (Everett)TRIUMPHANT TRIUMVIRATE… Following up on the success of his famously over-budget war film Hell’s Angels (1930), Howard Hughes (left) had another hit on his hands as co-producer of The Front Page; at the Fourth Academy Awards the film was nominated for Best Picture, Lewis Milestone (center) for Best Director, and Adolphe Menjou (right) for Best Actor. (Wikipedia/IMDB)
A footnote: Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur were close throughout their careers, and remain so even in death: they are buried near each other on a hilltop in Oak Hills Cemetery, Nyack, NY.
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From Our Advertisers
In the late 1920s and early 1930s several illustrators drew inspiration from the style Carl “Eric” Erickson made famous with his elegant series of ads for Camel cigarettes…I’m not sure if this ad (part of a series promoting “The New Chevrolet Six”) is by Erickson or an imitator, but it seems the artists were likely inspired by the actress Greta Garbo and her signature beret…
…and for comparison, an Erickson Camel ad from the March 21, 1931 issue…
…and our inspiration, Greta Garbo circa 1930…
…those Chevy buyers might have considered investing in Velmo mohair upholstery to boost the resale value of their auto…
…among other technological wonders of the age — furniture crafted from aluminum, soon to become ubiquitous in workplaces across the country…
…and then there was the electric refrigerator, still new to a lot of households in 1931 as icemen began to hang up their tongs and head for the sunset…
…if you were a modern man or woman of means, you could ditch the auto altogether and get yourself a Pitcairn autogiro…
…in the 1920s and 30s the autogiro was considered by many to be the transportation of the future, a flying machine as easy to operate as driving a car…
HEY DAD, CAN I HAVE THE KEYS TO THE AUTOGIRO?…Above, a Pitcairn PCA-2. In the 1920s and 30s, many future-forward designers imagined the autogiro as the flying car of tomorrow. (Wikipedia)
…for those who preferred to be passenger rather than pilot, they could relax in the comfort of an airplane cabin and enjoy some…hmmm…beef broth! From what I understand, passenger flight was not this cosy in 1931…this was long before pressurized cabins, when you had to mostly fly in the weather, and not above it, and you probably had to fight to keep from upchucking that Torex all over the lovely flight attendant…
…while we are on the subject of flight, we turn to our cartoons, beginning with Garrett Price…
…meanwhile, William Steig explored the trials of young love…
…a rare two-pager from Ralph Barton…
…Leonard Dove adopted an alias for a cartoon that seems inspired by a recent trip to Persia…
…Otto Soglow illustrated one man’s dilemma at a bus stop…
…Gardner Rea found offense in an unlikely setting…
…Barbara Shermund defined pathetic in this sugar daddy’s boast…
…while on the other end of the spectrum, I. Klein illustrated the burdens of life as a Milquetoast…
…and we sign off with Mary Petty, and one woman’s terms of endearment…
Like E.B. White, James Thurber and Dorothy Parker who came before him, S. J. Perelman was one of those New Yorker writers whose name would become synonymous with the magazine.
Jan. 24, 1931 cover by William Crawford Galbraith.
Perelman’s first New Yorker article, “Ten Cents in Stamps,” appeared in the Jan. 24, 1931 issue, his subject a collection of self-help and “how to” books he introduced with this Editor’s Note: “Upsetting as it may seem, all the books reviewed in the following article are genuine.”
FOR THE BIRDS…S. J. Perelman sampled Canary Breeding for Beginners among other titles in his first humorous short for the New Yorker. The above 1935 photograph was made by Ralph Steiner, who recalled “when I made this photograph I said ‘this is a foolish thing for two grown men to be doing with their time,’ Perelman answered: ‘We may be the only two men in the world at this moment not doing harm to anyone.'”(amazon/akronartmuseum.org)
Without further ado, some excerpts…
…Perelman offered us a taste of Martini’s poetic gifts…
MARTINI WITH A TWIST…S.J. Perelman wanted “a little tighter thinking” from Martini, The Palmist, in his book, How to Read Eyes. (Etsy/johnesimpson.com)
…and also sampled the wisdom of Jacob Penn, who wrote a book titled How to Get a Job Through Help Wanted Advertisements. Perelman zeroed in on the book’s appendix, which contained “Successful Model Letters”…
* * *
Dorothy Returns
After a long absence, Dorothy Parker returned to her immensely popular “Reading and Writing” column. Parker had been at an alpine sanitorium in Switzerland, providing moral support for her friends Gerald and Sara Murphy while their young son was treated for tuberculosis. Parker had originally fled to Europe (France, specifically) to write her “Great American Novel,” only to end up on the Swiss mountaintop, where she composed a long letter just recently published (2014) under the title Alpine Giggle Week. Back in New York, she returned to her typewriter and released her wit on Charles Noel Douglas, editor of Forty Thousand Sublime and Beautiful Thoughts.
A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS?…Charles Noel Douglas had 40,000 of them, Dorothy Parker discovered.(amazon/britannica.com)
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A ‘Tables’ Reprise
Lois Long was also back, in a way, reviving her “Tables for Two” column for on a one-off on the city’s Broadway hot-spots…
AFTER THE CURTAIN FALLS on Broadway there were plenty of nighttime diversions to keep theater crowds entertained into the wee hours.Clockwise, from top left, singer-dancer Frances Williams worked wonders with Harry Richman and his orchestra at the Club Richman; Bobby Dolan wielded a smart baton at Barney’s; and crooner Morton Downey (pictured with wife and actress Barbara Bennett)… lent his golden tenor to adoring crowds at Club Delmonico. The couple spawned the combative star of 1980s “Trash TV” Morton Downey Jr. (Pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with a full page of ads for various Broadway shows…
…and if you wanted to get tickets to one of those shows, here is 1931’s version of StubHub…
…and we are reminded that it is indeed 1931 with overtly racist ads such as this…
…back home, the help isn’t treated much better. “Cook” can suffer as long as the food remains fresh in the gleaming Frigidaire…
…meanwhile, our stylish Camel smokers (illustrated by Carl “Eric” Erickson) are keeping cool on the slopes…
…and perhaps this is the one and only time a painting by Thomas Gainsborough is compared to a tire…
…on to our illustrators and cartoons, the editors tossed in this old spot illustration by H.O. Hofman to fill space on the events page…
…an then we have this spot (sorry, I can’t identify the artist) that imagines disastrous consequences for the Empire State Building’s “mooring mast” (which was never used as such)…
…and after a long absence Ralph Barton returned to lend his artistry to the theater review section…
…for our cartoons, we begin with Sewell Johnson’s lone contribution to the New Yorker…
…Carl Rose was at the movies…
…Izzy Klein warmed things up in this parlor scene…
…Alan Dunn justified the existence of thriller author Edgar Wallace…
...John Reehill gave us a look at an unlikely radio act (however, from 1936 to 1956 ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, would be hugely popular radio stars)…
…Rea Irvin paid a visit to the diner in this full-page cartoon…
…and another full-pager from Peter Arno, who looked in on an intimate moment…
The New Yorker entered its sixth year in 1931, and despite the deepening Depression managed to stay afloat and even gain new subscribers. Perhaps more than ever folks needed that weekly dose of levity the magazine ably supplied.
Rea Irvin rang out the old and welcomed the new with back-to-back covers for the Dec. 27, 1930 and Jan. 3, 1931 issues. The second cover commemorated the New York Auto Salon, mentioned later in this blog entry.
That isn’t to say the magazine’s contributors donned rose-colored glasses. Rather, they commiserated with their fellow Americans:
CRANKY COUPLETS…Ogden Nash lent his droll verse to the nation’s economic woes. In 1931, while working as an editor at Doubleday, Nash submitted a number of poems to the New Yorker and spent three months working on the magazine’s editorial staff. (poeticous.com)
Over the course of 1930 many Americans, including Ogden Nash, woke to the fact that their business and political leaders were ill-suited to lift them out of the economic mess, and were likely responsible for it in the first place. At the top of the list was President Herbert Hoover, who was profiled in the New Yorker in three installments beginning with the Dec. 27 issue. This brief excerpt gives you a glimpse into a very different White House 89 years ago:
The first installment of the profile was accompanied by a Cyrus Baldridge portrait of the president (left), but the final two installments featured a less-than-flattering Abe Birnbaum rendering that first appeared in the New Yorker in the March 2, 1929 issue:
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Vorse Was a Force
Social critic, labor activist and novelist Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966) was no fan of Herbert Hoover or wealthy business tycoons, and in the first decades of the 20th century joined with Lincoln Steffens and other muckraking journalists in advocating for social reform. Vorse, however, also had a background in fiction writing and in observational pieces like the one below (excerpts) in which she commented on the rustic old ladies she found everywhere in the city:
FOR THE CAUSE…Mary Heaton Vorse (left) with fellow activists preparing to leave on a relief expedition to aid striking Kentucky miners, 1932. At right, a 1925 drawing of Vorse by Hugo Gellert. (nysut.org/Smithsonian)
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The Mystic
Before the Beatles made the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi a famed Transcendental Meditation guru in the 1960s, there was George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a Russian/Greek/Armenian spiritual teacher of the “Fourth Way,” which promised a path to a higher state of consciousness and full human potential. Gurdjieff also enjoyed living in a French chateau and taking trips to New York to share his wisdom with eager Americans, including famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. “The Talk of the Town” had these observations on the visiting mystic:
HE COULD SEE THINGS…George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, in an undated photo.
* * *
Sunny Days
Forget about financial woes or spiritual dilemmas. What are you going to wear next summer? Fashion writer Lois Long (“On and Off the Avenue”) asked the question and looked to the south for some answers:
…numerous ads peppered the Dec. 27 issue urging Manhattan’s snowbirds to dress appropriately for the warmer climes…
…and operators of “PlaneTrains” promised to get them there as quickly as possible…
…and if you were headed to Cuba you could stay at the brand new National Hotel…
…here’s what it looked like three years ago when I was in Havana…I can guarantee you the hotel service was WAY better in 1931…
…whether home or abroad, New Yorkers were celebrating the New Year by “dancing to the melodies of Old Vienna” and smoking like chimneys…
…a popular New Year’s Eve destination was the The Roosevelt Hotel, where Guy Lombardo’s orchestra helped ring in the New Year from 1929 (radio’s first nationwide New Year’s Eve broadcast) to 1959…
I stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel in late December, and found Lombardo still presiding over the bar…
…we also find New Year’s revelry in the cartoons, with Mary Petty…
…Izzy Klein…
…Otto Soglow...
…and Leonard Dove…
…and for those who stayed home, we have this scene of domestic bliss from Don Herold…
* * *
On to the Jan. 3, 1931 issue, we have Howard Brubaker (“Of All Things”) waxing sour on the state of the economy…
…so what a better way to cheer up than to look at shiny new cars, especially the ones almost no one could afford? The New Yorker paid another visit to the New York Automobile Salon at the Grand Central Palace…
…according to the article, 1931 was “a streamline year,” and leading the way was the REO motor car company, which despite its innovative ways would drop its car line altogether in 1936 — a casualty of the Depression…
FLOWING FENDERS…The 1931 REO Royale was a trendsetter, introducing streamlining designs. The Great Depression would cause REO to abandon the manufacture of automobiles in 1936. (historicvehicle.org)
…over at the Chrysler Building, which served as that corporation’s headquarters from 1930 until the mid-1950s, new cars were on display on the building’s first two floors…
CATHEDRAL OF CARS…The first two floors of the Chrysler Building served as an auto showroom during the building’s first decade. (Wikipedia/thewelcomeblog.com)
…we segue to our advertisements, many from car companies touting their displays at the New York Automobile Salon. Like REO, Marmon was noted for various innovations, including the introduction of the rear-view mirror. It also manufactured a stunning 16-cylinder automobile that was on display at the 1931 Salon. But also like REO, the Depression proved too much for Marmon, and it was defunct by 1933…
SLEEK…The 1931 Marmon Sixteen. (RM Auctions)
…another car company that would fall to the Depression was the luxury brand Pierce Arrow. Without a lower-priced car in its lineup to provide cash flow, the company ceased operation by 1938…
…by contrast, the Chrysler Corporation had several low-priced models to help it survive the lean years and enable it to produce its luxury model, the Imperial…
ANOTHER FIRST…Chrysler was also known for its innovative ways. A custom version of the Chrysler Imperial Eight included a dictaphone. (hemmings.com)
…the Hudson Motor Car Company is long gone, but in 1930 it was the third largest carmaker after Ford and Chevrolet, and instead of luxury it touted the affordability of its cars, especially its low-priced Essex line, priced $1,000 less than its predecessor from ten years earlier. The $595 Essex would be comparable to a $9,000 to $10,000 car today (by comparison, the 1931 Marmon or Imperial would set you back somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000, roughly equivalent to a $46,000 – $78,000 range today)…
…so let’s say the Depression has wiped you out and you can’t even afford an Essex…well you could try to “smoke your way back to normalcy”…
…or be like this pair, who seem content with their Chesterfields…
…of course the movies were another means of escape from the cruel world, and Paramount’s Publix Theatres promised plenty of sex to ease troubled minds…
PRE-CODE WORLD…During a brief period of the early sound era, many films used both sex and violence to attract audiences to theaters. The Publix Theatres ad above implied that these three films had plenty of sex, or “it” — clockwise, from top left, Fredric March ran around in his skivvies in The Royal Family of Broadway (1930); Mary Brian and Ina Claire portrayed acting sisters Gwen and Julie Cavendish in The Royal Family of Broadway; David Manners and Ruth Chatterton shared an embrace in The Right to Love (1930); and Marlene Dietrich lured a schoolmaster into a life of madness and despair in The Blue Angel (1929-30).
…and we close with our cartoonists…Reginald Marsh heralded the new year with this two-page spread depicting the heavens glorifying dental hygiene…
…Leonard Dove inked two cartoons featuring table talk…
…E. McNerney continued the New Yorker tradition of cartoons featuring rich old men and their gold diggers…
…Gardner Rea pondered the value of kitsch in a regal setting…
…A.S. Foster looked in on a crowd of John Does at a speakeasy…
…and Lillian Reed took us shopping with a very specific request…
The German actor Emil Jannings was well-known to American audiences when The Blue Angel(Der blaue Engel) premiered at New York’s Rialto Theatre. Although the film was created as a vehicle for the Academy Award-winning Jannings (he won the Academy’s first-ever best actor award in 1929), it was the little-known Marlene Dietrich who stole the show and made it her ticket to international stardom.
Dec. 13, 1930 cover by Ralph Barton, surprisingly his only cover for the New Yorker. The illustration sadly belies Barton’s state of mind at the time; he would take his own life the following spring.
New Yorker film critics, including John Mosher, generally found foreign films, particularly those of German or Russian origin, to be superior to the treacle produced in Hollywood, and Jannings was a particular favorite, delivering often heart-wrenching performances in such silent dramas as The Last Laugh (1924) and The Way of All Flesh (1927). In those films he depicted once-proud men who fell on hard times, and such was the storyline for The Blue Angel, in which a respectable professor falls for a cabaret singer and descends into madness.
NO CONTEST…Emil Jannings had star billing for the English language version of Josef von Sternberg’sThe Blue Angel, but it was Marlene Dietrich’s portrayal of cabaret singer Lola Lola that stole the show. (IMDB)
I was surprised by Mosher’s somewhat tepid review of this landmark film, which was shot simultaneously in German and English (with different supporting casts in each version). He referenced “bum dialogue,” which was doubtless the result of German actors struggling with English pronunciations. Filmed in 1929, it is considered to be Germany’s first “talkie.”
PRIDE BEFORE THE FALL…A proud and stern schoolmaster named Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) falls for cabaret singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich), and from there his life unravels; he loses the respect of his pupils, then resigns his post to marry Lola. To make ends meet, Rath tries to sell racy photos of his wife, and then becomes a clown in her troupe and is regularly humiliated on stage. Destitute, he dies at the end of the film. (IMDB)
* * *
All Wet
Sergei Tretyakov’s avant-garde play Roar China made an impression on the New Yorker for the striking realism of its set, which featured an 18,000-gallon tank of water onstage at the Martin Beck Theatre. “The Talk of the Town” described some of the demands of the production:
STAYING AFLOAT…The elaborate set for Roar China featured a model battleship in 18,000 gallons of water.ROAR CHINA! was an anti-imperialist play depicting the Wanhsien Incident during the Chinese Civil War. Many in the Chinese cast members were non-professional actors. (New York Public Library)
* * *
By Any Other Name
Like many college football teams in first decades of the 20th century, Notre Dame was referred to by a number of nicknames, including the “Fighting Irish.” In this “Talk of the Town” item, however, the team was known as the “Ramblers.” According to the University of Notre Dame, this nickname (along with “The Rovers”) was considered something of an insult: “(Knute) Rockne’s teams were often called the Rovers or the Ramblers because they traveled far and wide, an uncommon practice before the advent of commercial airplanes. These names were also an insult to the school, meant to suggest it was more focused on football than academics.”
RAMBLERS NO MORE…The 1930 National Champion Notre Dame football team. (nd.edu)
* * *
The Wright Stuff
Eric Hodgins penned a profile of aviation pioneer Orville Wright, who just 27 years earlier made a historic “first flight” with his brother, Wilbur, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. An excerpt:
DRESSED FOR SUCCESS: Aviation pioneer Orville Wright (1871 – 1958) sits in one of his biplanes dressed in a three-piece suit and a cap, Dayton, Ohio, 1909. (ge.com)
* * *
No Love Parade, This
French singer and actor Maurice Chevalier made his Hollywood debut in 1928 and quickly soared to stardom in America. French audiences, however, were not so easily swayed, especially the elite patrons Chevalier faced, alone on the stage, at the cavernous Théâtre du Châtelet. Janet Flanner explained in this dispatch from Paris:
THEY LIKE ME IN TINSELTOWN…Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade (1929). (IMDB)GULP…Maurice Chevalier faced a tough crowd — his compatriots — at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet. (en.parisinfo.com)
* * *
Man’s Best Friend
The New Yorker’s book section recommended the latest from Rudyard Kipling,Thy Servant a Dog…
WOOF…Illustrations for Rudyard Kipling’sThy Servant a Dog, by Marguerite Kirmse. (Etsy)
* * *
Fun and Games
As an extension to her fashion column, Lois Long shared some recommendations for holiday cocktail-party games:
KEEPING THINGS MERRY…Pokerette and Gee-Wiz were popular cocktail party diversions during the Christmas season of 1930. (Worthpoint/Invaluable)
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From Our Advertisers
We start with this ad from Horace Liveright promoting Peter Arno’s third cartoon collection, Hullaballoo, featuring one of Arno’s leering old “Walruses”…
…Doubleday Doran offered a few selections for last-minute Christmas shoppers, led by the Third New Yorker Album…
…The UK’s Harold Searles Thorton invented the table top game we now call “foosball” in 1921 and had it patented in 1923. Below is possibly the game’s first appearance in the U.S. — an ad for a “new” game called “Kikit.” Foosball would be slow to catch on, but would rapidly gain popularity in Europe in the 1950s and in the U.S. in the 1970s…
Early foosball players circa 1930. (foosball.org)
…Horace Heidt and his Californians were doing their best to make the season bright at the Hotel New Yorker…
…Peck & Peck tried to make the most of Prohibition by stuffing scarves and other wares into empty Champagne bottles…
…and Franklin Simon reminded readers that it would be a “Pajama-Negligee Christmas,” whatever that meant…
…pajamas and negligees were doubtless preferable, and more romantic, than this array of kitchen appliances…
…whatever the holiday revelry, the makers of Milk of Magnesia had our backs…
…on to our cartoonists, Julian De Miskey and Constantin Alajalov contributed spot drawings to mark the season…
…A.S. Foster contributed two cartoons to the issue…
…Gardner Rea, a full-pager…
…Leonard Dove, possibly having some fun with playwright Marc Connelly…
…I. Klein demonstrated the fun to be had with a kiddie scooter, before they had motors…
…and we close with John Reynolds, and some bad table manners…
For this installment we look at two issues, Nov. 15 and 22, both featuring covers by Theodore Haupt that celebrated two autumn rituals: football and Thanksgiving.
Let’s begin with the Nov. 22 issue, which climbed to the highest place in Manhattan — no, not the Chrysler Building, but the nearby Empire State Building — with E.B. White admiring the commanding view:
Before the Empire State Building could go up, the old Waldorf-Astoria hotel had to come down. As White observed, the old hotel was built so soundly that it was too costly to deconstruct and salvage. Most of it ended up on the bottom of the ocean.
DOWN IN DAVY JONES’ LOCKER lie the remains of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which stood for just 36 years before it was razed to make room for the Empire State Building. At right, one of the hotel’s lobbies, and the Grand Ballroom. (nyc-architecture.com/Pinterest)UPSTART…Left, in this image from November 1930, scaffolding embraces the Empire State Building’s “mooring mast,” which promoters claimed would allow dirigibles to load and unload passengers atop the tallest building in the world. Top right, although not yet complete, the actual height of the Empire State Building exceeded the Chrysler Building by October 1930. It would officially claim the crown as the world’s tallest on May 1, 1931. Bottom right, a steelworker’s view of the Chrysler Building from atop the Empire State Building, taken by photographer Lewis Hine. (Fine Art America/MCNY/Wikipedia)A LOT OF HOT AIR…Top images: The fabled “mooring mast,” described by E.B. White in his New Yorker brief, as imagined in composite images (old-time Photoshop). In reality, the morning mast never worked; bottom right, a cutaway view of the mast featured in Popular Mechanics; bottom left, New York Times photo from March 22, 1931, announcing the completion of the Empire State Building, just 17 months after the Waldorf-Astoria began coming down. (Reddit, Pinterest, NYT)SURVEYING THEIR KINGDOM…Most visitors to the Empire State Building can only go as high as the 86th floor observation deck. However, if you are a VIP like Serena Williams or Taylor Swift, you can get your picture snapped on the 103rd. (Empire State Building/Evan Bindelglass, CBSNewYork)
* * *
Sore Winner
Sinclair Lewis famously declined the Pulitizer Prize for his 1925 novel Arrowsmith, upset that his 1920 novel Main Street had not previously won the prize. But when the Swedish Academy came calling with a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, he happily accepted. According to “The Talk of the Town,” this award also seemed a bit tardy, since Lewis’s small town booster archetype, George F. Babbitt, did not fit the dour days of the Great Depression. But it turned out that the 1922 novel Babbitt was ultimately what swayed the Nobel jury:
BOOST FROM A BOOSTER…George F. Babbitt helped make Sinclair Lewis famous, and landed him a Nobel. (NYT, NOVEMBER 6, 1930)
* * *
Not So Sweet
Those of a certain age might remember Helen Hayes as a sweet old lady who appeared on a number of TV shows in the 1970s and 80s, or as the mother in real life of James MacArthur, Disney teen star and later the portrayer of Danny “Book ’em Danno” Williams on the original Hawaii 5-0 TV series. Hayes was married to playwright Charles MacArthur, and “The Talk of the Town” takes it from there…
CREATIVE TYPES…The engaged couple Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes posed for photographer Edward Steichen for this Jan. 1, 1929 image featured in Vanity Fair magazine. (Condé Nast)
* * *
Ain’t It Grand
Grand Hotel opened at the National Theatre on Nov. 13, 1930 to strong reviews, including the one below by Robert Benchley that he filed for the New Yorker. The play, adapted from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Austrian writer Vicki Baum, would prove to be a smash on Broadway and again on the silver screen in a star-studded 1932 film featuring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, and Joan Crawford.
THE STARS ALIGN…Left, promotional photograph of the original Broadway production of Grand Hotel. At right, Eugenie Leontovich portrayed fading Russian ballerina Grusinskaya in the play. The role would go to Greta Garbo in the 1932 film adaptation. (Theatre Magazine, February 1931/Wikipedia)
…and while we are on the subject of Broadway, the theater review section also featured this Al Frueh illustration promoting a noted production of Twelfth Night at the Maxine Elliott…
Program for the production featuring Jane Cowl. (Playbill)
* * *
There were also big doings at the Met, where Spanish lyric soprano Lucrezia Bori (1887-1960) wowed audiences with her portrayal of Violetta in La Traviata.
SHE HAD SOME PIPES…right, lyric soprano Lucrezia Bori on the cover of the June 30, 1930 edition of Time magazine. At right, promotional photo of Bori circa 1930. (Time/Wikipedia)
* * *
Bounty of Blessings
Humorist W. E. Farbstein gave readers plenty to be thankful for in this tribute to the Thanksgiving holiday…
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Occasionally advertisements acknowledged the reality of the Great Depression, including this one from the Saturday Evening Post that offered encouraging words to prospective readers…
…County Fair, a Greenwich Village country-themed nightclub, offered the diversion of Moffatt and Bowman to take audiences’ minds off of hard times…
…and for all the supposed sophistication of New Yorker readers, there were still plenty of back page ads offering nostrums laced with superstition…
…some of the more colorful, spritely ads from the era were offered up by the producers of Texaco Motor Oil…
…our cartoons are by Gardner Rea…
…Barbara Shermund…
…William Crawford Galbraith…
…and Perry Barlow…
…and for another reminder of reality in the city, this sketch that ran along the bottom of “The Talk of the Town,” by Reginald Marsh…
…and now we step back to the Nov. 15 issue, where E.B. White offered a less somber take on the Great Depression…
…White also noted a change on the faces of storefront mannequins…
YIN AND YANG…The worldly pose of a Roaring Twenties mannequin, and a more wholesome look for the leaner times in the 1930s. (Pinterest)
* * *
Playing Telephone
Long, long before cell phones, telephones were heavy stationary devices that required a certain amount of planning before installation, as E.B. White explains:
On to our Nov. 15 ads, we have this announcement for The Third New Yorker Album…with illustration by Otto Soglow…
…here is what the album looked like…
…and a couple of inside pages…
(Etsy)
…one of the contributors to the album was Rea Irvin, founding illustrator for the New Yorker and Murad cigarettes…also another Flit insecticide ad by Dr. Seuss…
…Christmas ads began appearing in the magazine, including this one for Hanson scales…pity the poor chap (and his wife) who actually thought this might be a suitable present for Christmas, or any occasion for that matter…
…and with Prohibition still in force, advertisers found other uses to promote their products…
…on to our cartoons, Leonard Dove illustrated a couple who didn’t get away with the ruse…
… Alan Dunn depicted what was considered typical office behavior in the 1930s…
...Peter Arno visited the Harvard Club…
…Alice Harvey also explored the college scene…
…some parlor games with Barbara Shermund…
……Bruce Bairnsfather, and some existentialist chat at tea time…
…and we close with Izzy Klein, and the world of corporate competition…
…and a Happy Thanksgiving, from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade 89 years ago, Nov. 27, 1930…
Among the films in 1930 that marked a new era in motion pictures was Howard Hughes’s epic war film Hell’s Angels.
August 23 cover by Gardner Rea.
Originally shot as a silent, Hughes (1905-1976) retooled the film, and over a period of three years (1927-30) poured much of his own money into making what many consider to be Hollywood’s first sound action movie. The film also introduced audiences to 19-year-old Jean Harlow (1911-1937), handpicked by Hughes to replace Norwegian actress Greta Nissen in the lead role (Nissen’s accent posed a problem for the talkies). The film would make Harlow an instant star, propelling her to worldwide fame as the “Platinum Blonde” sex symbol of the 1930s.
Beset by delays due to Hughes’s incessant tinkering, the movie was famously expensive. For example, a total 137 pilots were used in just one flying scene at the end of the film. In addition to monetary costs, the filming also claimed the lives of three pilots and a mechanic, and Hughes himself would fracture his skull during a stunt flying attempt.
PRE-CODE…Before Will Hays imposed his moral code on Hollywood, films in the early thirties were frank with sexual references, as the image at left attests. When Howard Hughes switched the filming of Hell’s Angels to sound, he replaced Norwegian actress Greta Nissen with 19-year-old Jean Harlow (seen with co-star Ben Lyon). Harlow’s first major film appearance would make her an overnight star; at right, Frank Clarke and Roy Wilson flying an S.E.5A (front) and a Fokker D.VII (back, note camera) in the filming of Hell’s Angels. (Wikipedia)
The New Yorker’sJohn Mosher found the action scenes enticing, but the acting left something to be desired…
COSTLY VENTURE …This Sikorsky S-29A (left), repainted to represent a German Gotha bomber, would crash into the California hills during filming (right), killing mechanic Phil Jones, who failed to bail out along with the pilot. (Northrop Grumman)GEE WHIZ…The media often reported on the progress of the film, such as in this May 1930 article in Modern Mechanics that detailed a $1 million sequence in which a fighter dives his plane into the top of a Zeppelin, causing it to explode and crash to earth. (Modern Mechanix)
We skip ahead briefly to the Aug. 30 issue, in which “The Talk of Town” featured a mini profile of Howard Hughes and his film. Note how Hughes’s extravagance is described through his frequent use of long-distance telephone calls:
A STAR IS BORN…19-year-old Jean Harlow and Ben Lyon in Hell’s Angels (1930); at right, Harlow and Howard Hughes at the premiere of the film. (IMDB/Pinterest)
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A Whale of a Movie
Critic John Mosher also took in a film adaptation of Herman Melville’sMoby Dick, a very loose adaptation that excluded the novel’s central character, Ishmael, and invented a love story for the maniacal Capt. Ahab…
HAVE A LITTLE FAITH…From left, Noble Johnson as Queequeg, John Barrymore as Ahab, and Walter Long as Stubbs in 1930’s Moby Dick. At right, top, the whale puts the hurt on a boat; bottom, John Bennett as Faith, a contrived love interest for the old salt. (IMDB)
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Daily Dazzle
“The Talk of the Town” gushed over the lobby of the new Daily News Building, likening it to the glitz of a Broadway revue:
A HOME FOR CLARK KENT…The Daily News Building served as the model for the headquarters of the fictional Daily Planet, the building where Superman worked as mild-mannered Clark Kent; at right, an image from 1941 of the lobby, dominated by the world’s largest indoor globe.A LOBBY FOR LEARNING…The lobby includes an array of clocks, top left, that give the time in various global destinations. (aatlasobscura.com)
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A Busboy’s Dream
Charles Pierre Casalasco left his life as a busboy in Corsica and studied haute cuisine in Paris before arriving at the shores of Manhattan in the early 1900s. He became a renowned headwaiter who by 1929 garnered enough financial backing from New York’s most powerful families to construct the exclusive Hotel Pierre. Writing under her pseudonym, “Penthouse,” New Yorker columnist Marcia Davenport described the building’s apartments to eager readers:
FUN WHILE IT LASTED…The 41-story, 714-room Hotel Pierre officially opened in October 1930 to great fanfare. The party would be short-lived, as the deepening Depression would force the hotel into bankruptcy just two years later. At right, photo of the Rotunda, before a 2017 remodeling. (New York Public Library)
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So Much For Title IX
Then as now, women athletes were held to a separate set of standards, not only judged for their athletic abilities, but also for their “sex appeal,” as John Tunis suggests more than a few times in his profile of English tennis champion Betty Nuthall (1911-1983). Excerpts:
HOW’S THAT BACKHAND?…Betty Nuthall greets American tennis star Bill Tilden in September 1930; on the cover of Time after winning the 1930 U.S. Open. (Digital Commonwealth/Time)
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Free Expression
Robert Myron Coates (1897 – 1973) was a writer of experimental, expressionistic novels who later became a longtime art critic for the New Yorker (he is credited with coining the term “abstract expressionism” in 1946). In the Aug. 23 issue he contributed the first installment of “Dada City,” here describing street life in Harlem. Excerpts:
STREET LIFE…Scenes around Harlem’s 125th Street, clockwise from top left: the Apollo Theatre marquee punctuates a busy street scene in 1935; NW corner of 125th and Broadway, 1930; Regal Shoes storefront, 1940s, photo by Weegee; 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue in 1934. (Skyscraper City/Museum of the City of New York)AMERICAN ORIGINAL…Robert M. Coates’sThe Eater of Darkness (1926) has been called the first surrealist novel in English. (Goodreads)
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From Our Advertisers
New Yorkers who were still enduring the brutal summer of 1930 could find relief, if they could afford it, on a New York Airways flight…
…or if you had the means, you could take your yacht out to sea, like this chap in a coat and tie who calmly steers with one hand while offering a box of chocolates to his guests with the other…
…our sailor wasn’t the only one dressed to nines…here are two ads offering suggestions to young folks returning to college or prep school…
…for comparison, this is how a group of college students at Columbia University dress today…
(Columbia University)
…Dr. Seuss continued to crank out drawings on behalf of Flit insecticide…
…and on to cartoons, yet another rerun (the sixth) of this Peter Arno drawing with a new caption (Dorothy Dix was a popular advice columnist)…
…and another look at country life courtesy Rea Irvin (originally printed sideways on a full page)…
…and another country scene, this time among the toffs, thanks to Garrett Price…
…back in the city, some parlor room chatter as depicted by Barbara Shermund…
…downtown, I. Klein looked at the economic challenges of peep shows…
…and we close with this reflection on city life, by Reginald Marsh…
From the late I.M. Pei to Frank Gehry, America has its share of “starchitects,” but only one architect in the history of the profession could claim to be a true household name: Frank Lloyd Wright.
July 19, 1930 cover by Peter Arno.
In a profile titled “The Prodigal Father,” Alexander Woollcott wrote about Wright’s “return” to American acceptance after nearly two decades of scandal and tragedy. Woollcott took great pains to defend Wright’s reputation, marred by his extramarital affair with Mamah Cheney, her murder in 1914 along with six others (including her children) at Wright’s Wisconsin home, Taliesin, and his subsequent remarriage, divorce, and remarriage that followed.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN…Clockwise, from top left, Reginald Marsh illustration for the profile; Frank Lloyd Wright, circa 1930; Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel, completed in 1923. Designed in the Maya Revival Style Wright favored throughout the 1920s, it was damaged by the 1923 Great Tokyo Earthquake just months after opening. It was demolished in 1967, however the iconic central lobby wing and the reflecting pool were disassembled and rebuilt near Nagoya. (Library of Congress/dezeen.com)
Woollcott also wrote of his visit to Taliesin (the third version of the house, after the first two were destroyed by fires). It’s a shame these two headstrong fellows never met — it would have been a lively conversation, no doubt. One thing that does stand out about this profile is that it is a rare hagiography from a man renowned for his savage wit.
AN ADMIRER…Alexander Woollcott praised the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright in his profile. He doesn’t mention actually meeting Wright. It would have been fascinating to see these headstrong individuals match wits.MAYA OH MAYA…Clockwise, from top left, Frank Lloyd Wright favored the Maya Revival Style in the 1920s, which is evident in the Alice Millard House in Pasadena (1923) and the Hollyhock House in Los Angeles (1919-21). At bottom, the third version of Taliesin (built in 1925) that Woollcott would have visited. (Wikipedia/Taliesin Preservation)
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No Surprise Endings, Please
Although sometimes confused with Alexander Woollcott because of his first name, the timid, taciturn Wolcott Gibbs was a force at the New Yorker in his own right, perhaps even more so as he served the magazine from 1927 to 1958 as a jack-of-all-trades: copy editor, feature writer, theater critic, and overall wordsmith. So when the editors of The Writer’s Digest posed a question regarding the New Yorker’s policy for submissions, it was Gibbs who was tapped to compose a response, which was a particular challenge given the magazine didn’t have a clear set of editorial requirements. So Gibbs conjured up an “Answers-To-Hard-Questions Department,” and signed it “Mr. Winterbottom.” Some excerpts:
IN HIS ELEMENT…Wolcott Gibbs, left, relaxes at the Algonquin Hotel in 1937. At right is his New Yorker colleague Dorothy Parker. (Time)
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Munitions of Bremen
The German Ocean liner SS Bremen was one of the most technologically advanced ocean liners of its day, known for its speed and luxury. Author Eric Hodgins climbed aboard to file a report for the New Yorker, and in the excerpt below marveled at the “mechanical perfection” of the ship’s engine room:
PLOUGHSHARES INTO SWORDS…More than the length of three football fields, the streamlined SS Bremen, launched in 1928, was designed to have a cruising speed of 27.5 knots (50.9 km/h). After a 1941 fire, the ship was largely dismantled, its steel used to manufacture war munitions. (Wikipedia/greatoceanliners.com)
You can get some idea of the ship in this clip from the 1936 German comedy Spiel an Bord (Game on Board). Location shooting took place in Bremerhaven, New York, and on the Atlantic crossing of the SS Bremen (at about :53 there is an image of a Nazi flag salute that I don’t believe was in the original film, but that flag undoubtedly flew on this ship in 1936)…
In 1941, while docked in Bremerhaven, a disgruntled crew member set fire to the ship, completely gutting its luxurious interior. During the war the ship was stripped of its steel for use in munitions, and in 1946 what remained was destroyed by explosives.
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From Our Advertisers
In my readings of recent issues I’ve noted numerous references to hot weather, and for good reason. The summer of 1930 would see record high temperatures and diminished rainfall that would usher in the “Dust Bowl” era of the 1930s. The Wallach Brothers adjusted by offering this “Dixie Weave Suit”…
…the hot weather also called for a tall glass of sparkling soda (mixed with your favorite bootleg beverage, of course)…
…smokers could keep cool by puffing on a Spud, the first menthol cigarette…
…or you could stick with your Luckies, endorsed by none other than this generic, genial doctor and some bogus survey…
…on to our cartoons…I. Klein showed us a downside of Edison’s invention…
…and Leonard Dove gave us two gentlemen on the skids, a frequent sight in Depression-era New York…
…after a long absence, we see suddenly see a flurry of activity from the pen of Ralph Barton, including this rare sequential cartoon…
…and with the hot summer New Yorkers took to the waters, at Coney Island with Denys Wortman…
In 1930s America there were few if any opportunities for black actors to perform in mainstream stage or screen productions unless they conformed to racial stereotypes. An exception was Paul Robeson.
June 21, 1930 cover by Gardner Rea.
In 1930 Robeson (1898-1976) won rave reviews for his performance in Shakespeare’s Othello. That performance, however, took place in London, not New York, which London correspondent Anthony Gibbs took pains to point out in his dispatch for the June 21, 1930 New Yorker.
English actress Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona and Paul Robeson as Othello in London’s Savoy Theatre production of Othello in 1930. Although only 22 at the time, Ashcroft was an established Shakespearean actress. The 32-year-old Robeson was already famous as both an athlete and actor. He was twice named a consensus All-American in football (Rutgers) and was the class valedictorian. He also received a law degree from Columbia while playing in the NFL. In 1930 he was already known to London audiences, having previously appeared in a 1928 London production of the American musical Show Boat. (theshakespeareblog.com)CENTER STAGE…Left to right: Maurice Browne (Iago), Paul Robeson (Othello) and Peggy Ashcroft (Desdemona) in Othello at the Savoy Theatre, 1930. Maurice Browne was also the play’s producer; his over-the-top portrayal of Iago and his wife’s incompetent stage direction hurt the production, but Robeson nevertheless received high praise for his performance. (britishstageandscreen.tumblr.com)
Although the performance was a triumph for Robeson, the production itself was a mess. The play’s producer, Maurice Browne, enlisted his wife, Ellen van Volkenburg, to direct (Peggy Ashcroft later called her “a pretentious dud”). Writing in The Guardian (Sept. 3, 2003), Samantha Ellis observes: “Recognising that his Othello transcended the ropey production, the audience gave Robeson 20 curtain calls. He reprised the role all over the world and never lost his pleasure in it. For Robeson, it was more than just a part: it was, as he once said, “killing two birds with one stone. I’m acting and I’m talking for the negroes in the way only Shakespeare can.”
Robeson’s Othello would not make it to New York until 1943. It would run for almost 300 performances, setting an all-time record run for a Shakespearean play on Broadway.
* * *
Restoring Order
In the aftermath of Grover Whalen’s disastrous (and sometimes violent) run as New York City Police Commissioner, E.B. White and his fellow New Yorkers welcomed the steady hand of Edward P. Mulrooney (1874-1960) to the helm:
THE COMMISH…Edward P. Mulrooney in a 1930s portrait by Edward Steichen. (Conde Nast)
* * *
The Commander
American author and lecturer Virgilia Peterson Ross profiled Evangeline Cory Booth (1865 – 1950), who would become the fourth General of the Salvation Army in 1934. She was the first woman to hold that post. An excerpt:
…Ralph Barton returned to provide this caricature for the profile, one of the last works he would create for the New Yorker before his untimely death…
HEIRESS TO A LEGACY…William Booth, an English Methodist preacher who founded The Salvation Army and became its first General, poses with his grand-daughter Evangeline Cory Booth in this 1908 postcard image. (National Portrait Gallery)
* * *
Home of the Dome
Architecture critic George “T-Square” Chappell was gladdened by the sight of scaffolding atop St. Bartholomew’s Church, which would finally get its dome to complete architect Bertram Goodhue’s vision…
NOW YOU SEE IT…Clockwise, from top left, St. Bartholomew’s Church at 325 Park Avenue, sans dome, in 1928; the church with dome in the 1950s; interior and exterior views of dome. (nyago.com/bostonvalley.com)
…Chappell also commented on the emergence of the Chrysler Building’s blindingly shiny dome and interior appointments…
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT…The Chrysler Building’s gleaming spire emerged in all its glory in June 1930. At right, an elevator in the building’s lobby. (Wikipedia)
* * *
Below the Belt
It wasn’t Dempsey-Tunney, but the bout between Max Schmeling (1905-2005) and Jack Sharkey (1902-1994) was the next best thing for boxing fans. The World Heavyweight Championship had been vacant since Gene Tunney’s retirement in 1928, and Sharkey and Schmeling had emerged as the sport’s No. 1 and 2 contenders.
The bout ended in a controversial decision: Although Sharkey won the first three rounds, he was disqualified after he landed a punch below the belt late in the fourth round. Schmeling became the first boxer to win the World Heavyweight Championship on a foul. The New Yorker’sNiven Busch Jr. (with illustration by Johan Bull) offered these thoughts on the fight’s disappointing outcome:
LOW BLOW…Although Jack Sharkey (far right) led after three rounds, a low blow in the fourth delivered the World Heavyweight Championship to German boxer Max Schmeling (left). Sharkey would claim the title two years later in a rematch with Schmeling. Although boxing isn’t the healthiest pursuit, both men lived into their 90s; Schmeling died in 2005 just shy of his 100th birthday. (Wikipedia/boxrec.com/thefightcity.com)
* * *
One Of Ours
The New Yorker included this brief review of a collection of short fiction pieces by Dorothy Parker, herself a literary critic of some renown at the New Yorker…
DOROTHY’S LAMENTATIONS…The New Yorker’sDorothy Parker published this collection of short fiction in 1930.
…and on to our advertisers, this ad appeared on the opposite page of the review…
…speaking of ads, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes continued to sponsor gimmicky penmanship and writing contests to promote their deadly product…
…while promoters of the Empire State Building (still under construction) continued to draw on the historical significance of the building’s Midtown location…
…on to our cartoons, Garrett Price pondered the very real challenge of guiding a massive Zeppelin to the planned mooring mast atop the Empire State…
…a portent of what would happen to the Hindenburg just seven years later…
…the New Yorker made clever use of typesetting for this I. Klein entry…
…John Murray Anderson found humor in contrasting the grand with the mundane…
…Kindl eavesdropped on the small talk of a couple of ash haulers…
…and William Crawford Galbraith found humor at the public pool…
* * *
On to the June 28 issue, with a cover featuring a satirical kakemono-style illustration by Rea Irvin, who was fond of Japanese scroll art…
June 28, 1930 cover by Rea Irvin.
Film critic John Mosher checked out the new documentary on Admiral Richard Byrd’s expedition to the South Pole…
A BYRD WITH WINGS…A Paramount Pictures movie poster promoting the 1930 documentary With Byrd at the South Pole; still images from the film at right. (Wikipedia/YouTube)
…if you’d like to see the actual film, here it is on YouTube…
“The Talk of the Town” also made note of the Byrd’s expedition and homecoming, contrasting his upcoming book, Little America, with the four-volume historical work planned by popular historian Will Durant.
In collaboration with his wife, Ariel, Durant would end up publishing an eleven-volume history of civilization (four million words across nearly 10,000 pages), written between 1935 and 1975. Will Durant was at work on a twelfth volume when he died in 1981 at age 96.
Admiral Richard Byrd’s Little America, left, and the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant.
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American Lenin
The June 28 profile, written by Alva Johnston, featured radical American labor organizer and Marxist politician William Z. Foster. Despite Johnston’s portrayal of Foster as something of a genial pinko, in reality Foster was a strong supporter of Joseph Stalin and a dedicated and loyal ally of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party until his death in 1961. The Soviets even gave him a state funeral, with Nikita Khrushchev personally heading an honor guard in Red Square. An excerpt of Johnston’s profile:
RED AS A ROSE…Left, a campaign photo of William Z. Foster when he headed the Communist Party ticket in the 1928 U.S. presidential election; at right, illustration of Foster for the profile, by Abe Birnbaum.
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And to close…a colorful advertisement in the June 28 issue from Rex Cole…from the signature it appears to be the work of Mario Cooper, but this doesn’t look at all like his other work…
…and a two-page Rea Irvin cartoon, which demonstrates his visual storytelling skills…
Like his New Yorker colleague Reginald Marsh, Otto Soglow trained in the “Ashcan School” of American art, and his early illustrations favored its gritty urban realism. He had his own life experience to draw upon, being born to modest means in the Yorkville district of Manhattan.
We look at two issues this week. At left, cover of March 31 issue by Peter Arno; at right, June 7 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
But Soglow (1900-1975) would soon abandon the gritty style in the work he contributed to the New Yorker…
RAGS TO RICHES…At left, Otto Soglow’s first cartoon in the New Yorker, Nov. 14, 1925, was rendered in the Ashcan style ; at right, an example of the sparer style he later adopted, one of his manhole series cartoons from March 2, 1929.
…and in the June 7, 1930 issue, Soglow would publish his first Little King strip, which would soon launch the 29-year-old into fame and fortune…
Did Soglow know he was on to something big with that first Little King cartoon? Well Harold Ross (New Yorker founding editor) liked what he saw, and asked Soglow to produce more. After building up an inventory over nearly 10 months, Ross finally published a second Little King strip on March 14, 1931. It soon became a hit, catching the attention of William Randolph Hearst, who wanted the strip for his King Features Syndicate.
KING OF COMEDY…Otto Soglow working on an illustration for The Ambassador, a short-lived comic strip he created in 1933 for King Features Syndicate. The strip was replaced by The Little King in 1934 after Soglow fulfilled his contractual obligation to the New Yorker. (comicartfans.com)
After Soglow fulfilled his contractural obligation to the New Yorker, The Little King made its move to King Features on Sept. 9, 1934, and the strip ran until Soglow’s death in 1975. After his move to King Features, Soglow continued to contribute cartoons to the New Yorker, but with other themes.
Left, Soglow cartoon from the book Wasn’t the Depression Terrible? (1934); at right, King Features strip from Nov. 19, 1967. (Wikipedia/tcj.com)
During the summer of 1925, a young writer at Vanity Fair named Lois Long would take over the New Yorker’s nightlife column, “When Nights Are Bold,” rename it “Tables For Two,” and set about giving a voice to the fledgling magazine as well as chronicling the city’s Jazz Age nightlife. There were accounts of Broadway actors mingling with flappers and millionaires at nightclubs and speakeasies, but Long also spoke out on issues such as Prohibition, taking the city’s leaders to task for raids on speakeasies and other heavy-handed tactics contrary to the spirit of the times. “Tables For Two” would expire with the June 7, 1930 issue, and appropriately so, as the deepening Depression gave the the city a decidedly different vibe. In her final column Long would write about the Club Abbey, a gay speakeasy operated by mobster Dutch Schultz…
PARTIED OUT…In her final nightlife column, Lois Long wrote about the new Club Abbey in the basement of the Hotel Harding (left), which was operated by mobster Dutch Schultz (inset). The club’s emcee was Gene Malin (right), Broadway’s first openly gay drag performer. The club was short-lived (as were Schultz and Malin), closing in January 1931 following a mob brawl. (infamousnewyork.com/Pinterest)
…and she would update her readers on “Queen of the Night Clubs” Texas Guinan, whose Club Intime was sold to Dutch Schultz and replaced by his Club Abbey…
FINAL ACT…Clockwise, from top left, Texas Guinan at Lynbrook, circa 1930; Joseph Urban murals on the rooftop of the St. Regis Hotel; Duke Ellington and his orchestra at the Cotton Club, circa 1930s.
Long’s final nightlife column would signal a definitive end to whatever remained of the Roaring Twenties. It would also signal the end to some of those associated with those heady times. Texas Guinan’s Lynbrook plans would flop, and Gene Malin’s Club Abbey would close in less than a year. Both would both be dead by 1933. As for Dutch Schultz, he would be gunned down in 1935.
Lois Long, however, would continue to write for the New Yorker for another 40 years, and would prove to be as innovative in her fashion column, “On and Off the Avenue,” as she was as a nightlife correspondent.
* * *
Gone to the Dogs
In another installment of his pet advice column (June 7), James Thurber gave us one of his classic dogs…a disinterested bloodhound…
…while Thurber’s buddy and office mate E.B. White commented (in the March 31 issue) on a recent poll conducted among students at Princeton, discovering among other things that New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno was preferred over the old masters…
FAN FAVORITES…The Princeton Class of 1930 named (from left) Rudyard Kipling, Lynn Fontanne and Peter Arno as favorite poet, actress and artist respectively in a student poll. (YouTube/Wikipedia/giam.typepad.com)
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We Like It Fine, Thank You
The New Yorker dedicated a full page of the March 31 issue to a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal directed at the New York Evening Journal, which had reprinted one of Peter Arno’s cartoons to illustrate the moral cost of Prohibition. I believe the author of the rebuttal is E.B. White (note how he refers to Arno as “Mr. Aloe”).
…also in the May 31 issue, Rea Irvin changed things up, at least temporarily, with some new artwork for the “Goings On About Town” section. The entries themselves were often clever, such as this listing for a radio broadcast: PRESIDENT HOOVER—Gettysburg speech. Similar to Lincoln’s but less timely…
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From Our Advertisers
New Yorker cartoonists can be found throughout the advertisements — from left, Julian De Miskey, Rea Irvin and John Held, Jr…
…and in the June 7 issue we find an unusual ad for a used car…a sign of the times, no doubt…
…before it was associated with Germany’s Nazi Party (especially after it seized power in 1933), for thousands of years the swastika had been widely used as a religious or good luck symbol…
…Actress Clara Bow was famously pictured sporting a “good luck” swastika as a fashion statement in this press photo from June 1928, unaware that in a few years the symbol would become universally associated with hate, death and war…
From an unidentified publication dated June 6, 1928. (@JoHedwig/Twitter)
…on to our cartoons, I. Klein illustrated a cultural exchange…
…Garrett Price gauged the pain of a plutocrat…
…Alan Dunn eavesdropped on some just desserts…
…Helen Hokinson found humor in the mouths of babes…
…as did Alice Harvey…
…Leonard Dove examined one woman’s dilemma at a passport office…
…and Peter Arno, who found some cattiness at ringside…
Still considered one of the greatest anti-war films ever made, All Quiet on the Western Front opened in New York on April 29, 1930 to strong reviews. Based on a Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name, the film’s depictions of the horrors of war were so realistic and harrowing that it was banned in a number of countries outside of the U.S.
May 10, 1930 cover by Theodore Haupt.
Banned, that is, by nations gearing up for war. In Germany, Nazi brownshirts disrupted viewings during its brief run in that country, tossing smoke bombs into cinemas among other acts of mayhem. Back in the U.S., the New Yorker’sJohn Mosher attended a screening at a “packed” Central Theatre:
WAR IS HELL…Clockwise, from top left, movie poster for 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front; German soldier Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres), falls into a shell crater with a French soldier and draws his knife; in one of the most moving scenes in cinema, Bäumer is forced to spend the night in the crater, where he vainly tries to safe the life of the Frenchman he has mortally wounded; a German soldier crawls through the mud in a German training camp. (IMDB/Universal).
Mosher found the film’s adaption from the novel wanting in places, but overall praised the acting and the quality of the picture…
…and just in case some audiences were put off by the blood and guts, Universal promoted other themes on its lobby cards…
(IMDB)
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More Than a Stunt
In her profile of aviator Elinor Smith (1911-2010), writer Helena Huntington Smith took great pains to distinguish Elinor from other “lady fliers” who were little more than passengers in various flying exploits. Like Amelia Earhart, Elinor Smith had the bona fides of a true aviator: in 1927 Smith become the youngest licensed pilot in the world at age 16, learning stunt flying at an early age. At age 17, she smashed the women’s flying endurance record by soloing 26½ hours, and in the following month set a woman’s world speed record of 190.8 miles per hour. In March 1930 she set a women’s world altitude record of 27,419 feet (8,357 m), breaking that record in 1931 with a flight reaching 32,576 feet. Smith would continue to fly well into old age. In 2000 she flew NASA’s Space Shuttle vertical motion simulator and became the oldest pilot to succeed in a simulated shuttle landing. In 2001 (at age 89) she would pilot an experimental flight at Langley AFB. An excerpt from the profile:
HEAD IN THE CLOUDS…Elinor Smith’s flying career would extend from age 16 and into her 90s. At left, Smith poses in Long Island with the Bellanca monoplane she used to beat the solo flight record in 1929. Right, portrait of Smith circa 1930s. (findagrave.com)
* * *
I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia
Theatre critic Robert Benchley was over the moon regarding a performance of Lysistrata staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Association. Benchley suggested the Philadelphians had “put New York to shame” in staging such a “festival of beauty and bawdiness…never seen on an American stage before.”
NO MORE HANKY PANKY…Left, actress Miriam Hopkins in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, as photographed by Edward Steichen; at right, Sydney Greenstreet with unidentified actress from the 1930 Philadelphia production of Lysistrata. (timeline.com)
Benchley praised the seemingly advanced tastes of Philadelphia audiences as he continued to the lament the fact that the City of Brotherly Love had beaten New York to the punch with the staging of the play. He needn’t have worried much longer; the play would open on Broadway on June 5, 1930, at the 44th Street Theatre.
LOVER COME BACK…Production photograph for Norman-Bel Geddes’s staging for Lysistrata, titled “the women of Greece return to their men.” (hrc.utexas.edu)
While we are on the subject of theater, Constantin Alajálov provided this lovely illustration of Anton Chekhov’sUncle Vanya for the New Yorker’s theater review section…
* * *
Make ‘Em Dance, Boys
The author Robert Wilder contributed this interesting casual about the appearance of gangster Al Capone at a Chicago nightclub. Excerpts:
LIGHT ON HIS FEET…Al Capone in 1930. (Wikipedia)
* * *
You Say You Want a Revolution?
Alva Johnston offered his thoughts on how America could stage its own “Red Revolution,” given that Russia and several European countries had already experienced communist uprisings of their own, and also given that New York Police Commissioner Grover Whalen, always in search of problems that didn’t exist, had announced a new “Red Scare” in his fight against communism.
Tongue firmly in cheek, Johnston suggested how American know-how could be brought to bear in inciting a Red Terror. An excerpt:
YANKEE INGENUITY…Alva Johnston, left, offered some innovative ideas for a uniquely American “Red Revolution.” At right, soldiers stand behind a barricade during Germany’s communist Spartacist uprising of January 1919. (Wikipedia)
* * *
Speaking of Revolutionaries
Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello is one of America’s most-visited historical sites, but in 1930 it was still something of a regional curiosity, having only been acquired in 1923 for the purposes of turning it into a public museum. Although Jefferson is well known today for his various inventions at Monticello, E.B. White was just learning about this side of the president in his weekly “Notes and Comment” dispatch:
THIS OLD HOUSE…Left, a combination of neglect and Civil War vandalism left Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello enmeshed in weeds and in a state of near collapse by the 1870s. At right, students of the University of Virginia pose outside Monticello in 1930. (UVA/Hulton Archive)
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Play Ball?
We are well into the spring of 1930, yet the New Yorker stood firm in its complete lack of baseball coverage. As I’ve noted before, the magazine covered virtually every sport from horse racing to rowing to badminton, and even lowered itself to regular features on college football and professional hockey, but not a line on baseball, save for an occasional note about the antics of Babe Ruth or the homespun goodness of Lou Gehrig. There were signs, however, that baseball was being played in a city blessed with three major league teams; we do find game times in the “Goings On About Town” section, as well as occasional baseball-themed filler art, and a comic panel in the May 10 issue by Leonard Dove:
From Our Advertisers
We begin with an endorsement for Chase & Sanborn coffee by the soprano Alma Gluck, wife of famed violinist and composer Efrem Zimbalist Sr. Originally I thought she was enjoying coffee with a sister in law named “Mrs. Zimbalist,” but as reader Frank Wilhoit astutely points out, the “Alma Gluck” (celebrity) and “Mrs. Zimbalist” (housewife) are alternate personae of the same individual. And now that I look at the ad again, the clothes and hair styles are identical. I will try to locate a clearer image of the ad…
…and from the makers of White Rock we have a group of swells and their airborne friends enjoying some bubbles that are doubtless mixed with illegal hootch…
…Dr. Seuss continued to offer his artistry on behalf of Flit insecticide…
…and on to our comics, Peter Arno illustrated the hazards of the road…
…while Leonard Dove explored the hazards high above the streets of Manhattan…
…Constantin Alajálov explored an odd encounter in a park…
…I Klein mused on the tricks of mass transit…
…and two from Barbara Shermund, who looked in on one tourist’s plans for a trip to Mussolini’s Italy…
Playwright and essayist James Harvey observes that The Front Page was “Hecht and MacArthur’s Chicago…(and) that counts most deeply in the imagination of Hollywood. And their play, the first of the great newspaper comedies, did more to define the tone and style, the look and the sound of Hollywood comedy than any other work of its time.”
A New Yorker State of Mind 