Tag: Isadore Klein

The Age of Giants

Otto Klemperer rehearsing at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1937. (Los Angeles Philharmonic)

The 20th century was an age of big personalities in classical music, among them Otto Klemperer (1885-1973), a German-born protégé of the composer and conductor Gustav Mahler. Klemperer was already an established conductor in opera houses around Germany when the rise of the Nazis prompted the maestro to emigrate with his family in 1933. He was soon appointed chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Oct. 13, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.

Klemperer also guest conducted a number of orchestras in the U.S., including the New York Philharmonic, where his larger than life presence caught the attention of “The Talk of the Town.” Excerpts:

MAESTRO…Top left, Otto Klemperer with Czech composer Leoš Janáček in 1927; at right, with Austrian-American classical pianist and composer Artur Schnabel in 1933; bottom photo, with wife Johanna Geisler, son Werner and daughter Lotte in Los Angeles, 1936. (operaplus.cz/Otto Klemperer Film Foundation/ottoklemperer.nl)

Lauded internationally as a great orchestral commander, in 1939 Klemperer would begin experiencing balance issues. After a tumor the size of a small orange was removed from his brain, he would be left partially paralyzed on his right side; bouts of depression and a manic phase would later land him in a mental hospital. However, by 1946 he would recover his health enough to return to conducting in a career that would last until 1971.

The conductor’s daughter, Lotte Klemperer (1923–2003), would serve as her father’s secretary, negotiator and administrator until his death in 1973. Otto’s son, Werner Klemperer (1920–2000), would become a stage, screen and television actor, most notably portraying Colonel Klink in the 1960s comedy Hogan’s Heroes. Although the role would garner Werner two Emmys, his father never fully understood the series or even the concept of a sitcom. Reluctant to pursue a musical career while his father was alive, Werner would later join the Metropolitan Opera Company in the 1970s, appear in Broadway musicals, and serve as a narrator with a number of American symphony orchestras.

TO THEM HE WAS DAD…At left, daughter Lotte Klemperer with her famous father in 1954. She would serve as his caretaker and business partner after her mother’s death in 1956. At right, son Werner Klemperer acted on Broadway and in films before taking on the role of the bumbling Colonel Klink in the 1960s comedy Hogan’s Heroes, which garnered the actor two Emmys. Although Werner Klemperer was musically inclined, he avoided work in music until the death of his father in 1973. (Otto Klemperer Film Foundation/CBS)

 * * *

Vanished in the Haze

In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White lamented what appeared to be the transformation of the familiar night club; high above Manhattan in the Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, the comforting haze of “cigarette smoke, talc, waiter’s venom” had been displaced by air conditioning, and to add to the horror, an organ had been installed that tinged the fox trot “with an odd piety.”

NOWHERE TO HIDE…E.B. White found the lack of haze in the new Rainbow Room disconcerting, not to mention the addition of a Wurlitzer organ, its wonders demonstrated here by organist Ray Bohr in 1934. (Library of Congress/nycago.org)

 * * *

There Oughta Be a Law

While E.B. White was mourning the demise of the smoky nightclub, art and design critic Lewis Mumford continued his tirade against the pretentious and mediocre buildings that were popping up all over the city, including the new Federal Court Building on Centre Street that was, in Mumford’s words, a supreme example of bad design and fake grandeur.

Cass Gilbert's The Federal Courthouse building (United States courthouse) in 1936 (the year of its completion). Located at 40 Centre Street (Foley Square), Manhattan, New York City. In 2001, it was designated as the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.Source: Wurts Brothers Photography Collection at the National Building Museum.
A CRIMINAL CASE…Cass Gilbert’s Federal Courthouse building (United States courthouse) was completed in 1936, two years after Gilbert’s death. In 2001 it was designated as the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse. Critic Lewis Mumford called the design, which combined “two unlovely and unrelated forms”…”nothing short of a major crime.” (Wurts Brothers Photography Collection, National Building Museum)

 * * *

Crime of the Century

That is what the press called the kidnap and murder of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow. In September 1934 a German immigrant carpenter named Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the crime, and a trial date was set for the following January. In his “A Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey examined the ransom money trail that led to Hauptmann’s ultimate arrest. Excerpts:

DON’T SAY “CHEESE”…Bruno Hauptmann sits for a mug shot following his arrest for the abduction and murder of the 20-month-old son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. (Leslie Jones, Boston Public Library)

 * * *

Should Have Stayed Lost

A film version of Willa Cather’s 1923 novel A Lost Lady was first made as a silent by Warner Brothers in 1924 (the film itself is lost) but in 1934 Warner had another go at the novel with a sound version starring starring Barbara Stanwyck, who was emerging as a major star. But Stanwyck’s talents could not overcome a script that critic John Mosher described as bleak, blank nonsense. Cather was so dismayed by the film that she refused to permit another adaptation of any of her novels during her lifetime.

LOST IN TRANSLATION…Barbara Stanwyck and Ricardo Cortez in A Lost Lady (1934). (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

We kick off our sponsors with this two-page center spread from Hiram Walker & Sons, who introduced their new line of playing card-inspired whiskies…

…the New Yorker’s Janet Flanner wrote in 1938 that Elsie de Wolfe invented interior design as a profession, so who was to argue with de Wolfe’s suggestion that the leisure class should linger in bed with the aid of a Wamsutta bed-rest…the small print beneath the logo indicated that the bed-rest was “hair-filled,” which I assume was horse hair, still used today in some luxury brands…

…if de Wolfe was queen of interior designers, then Hattie Carnegie was the “First Lady of Fashion,” or so this ad claimed…

…here are images of the two titans of fashion and good taste…

TASTEMAKERS…At left, Hattie Carnegie aka Henrietta Kanengeiser (1880-1956), and Elsie de Wolfe, aka Lady Mendl (1859–1950). (americacomesalive.com/bureauofinteriors.com)

…and speaking of fashion, here is a llama cloth coat from B. Altman, trimmed in silver raccoon, suitable for Yale football games…based on inflation, that coat today would set you back at least $2,000…

…this condescending ad offered merchants a way to reach the “hitherto strange and aloof women of New York” through daytime advertising…

…Plymouth enlisted the talents of Alan Dunn to tout their car’s ride and durability…

…and on to our cartoonists, another from Dunn, a bit of spot art featuring a not so subtle commentary on Lawrence Lee Bazley Angas’s book The Coming American Boom…

…and some spot art from Isadore Klein…

…Miguel Covarrubias contributed to the theater review section…

…James Thurber entertained a house guest…

…George Price was still up in the air…

…Helen Hokinson took a spin with a celebrity look-alike…

…and Barbara Shermund offered another glimpse into the life of a modern woman…

…on to Oct. 20, 1934…

Oct. 20, 1934 cover by Helen Hokinson.

…in which E.B. White offered up a new lament, namely the pervasiveness of nostalgia and sentiment in contemporary literature…

HARKING BACK TO THOSE DAYS OF YORE…E.B. White simply had no stomach for the nostalgic stylings of Mary Ellen Chase (left) or Henry Seidel Canby, seen here on the cover of the May 19, 1924 issue of Time. (U of Maine/Time Inc)

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Fifty Years Young

“The Talk of the Town” marked the Dakota’s 50th year at Central Park West, and made note of its loyal and prominent clientele…back in the day it served as a residence for actors such as Lillian Gish, Boris Karloff, and Teresa Wright, and in later years such luminaries as Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Rudolf Nureyev, and, of course, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

THE STORIES IT COULD TELL…At left, the facade and main entrance of the Dakota in the 1960s; at right, inside the main entrance. (Pinterest/Wikipedia)

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More From Our Advertisers

The Matson-Oceanic Line offered a “millionaire’s idea of a vacation” at an affordable price, and offered this sumptuous image as proof…

…E.B. White wasn’t crazy about the smokeless dazzle of the Rainbow Room, but it proved to be popular among the city’s elite…

…in case one was concerned about the provenance of one’s mink coat, Saks posted this helpful ad. Their high-end, natural-skin minks were priced at $8,000 (roughly $180,000 today); there was, however, a caveat regarding the cheaper models…

…Bergdorf Goodman offered up another ad featuring an impossibly attenuated model posed with a cigarette, her defiant gaze suggesting her modernity and individualism…

…Plymouth went back to the stable of New Yorker cartoonists, this time featuring the adventures of Helen Hokinson’s “girls”…

…and we segue to the rest of our cartoonists, including this spot by Constantin Alajalov…

…and this by George Price…

…who also gave us another update on the trials and tribulations of his floating man…

… James Thurber occasionally ignored scale in rendering his characters, which didn’t really matter in his strange world…

…Jack Markow had some bad news for two sign painters (the caption size is increased for readability)…

…and we close with Peter Arno, and the winner of most original Halloween costume…

…and before I go…this is being posted on Halloween, 2023, so here are a few images from 1934 to get you in the spirit, including a Saturday Evening Post cover, a 1934 party ideas magazine, and a page from Popular Mechanics featuring a smoking robot costume you could make yourself…in the 1930s, Popular Mechanics often featured Halloween party ideas that were downright lethal, usually involving electric shocks, pistols loaded with blanks, that sort of thing.

Happy Halloween!

Next Time: House & Home…

Men of Mystery

Photo above circa 1930 via mensfashionmagazine.com.

Lois Long took a break from reviewing the latest fashions to offer some thoughts on the relations between men and women, and more specifically, what was expected of women if they ever hoped to land the type of man who represented a “potential Future” for them.

August 4, 1934 cover by Otmar. Likely Otmar Gaul, sometimes spelled “Ottmar.”

Based on what we know about Long, this column has a strong “tongue-in-cheek” quality. It should also be noted that the 32-year-old Long had been divorced from cartoonist Peter Arno for three years, and was possibly contemplating the dating scene (she would marry newspaper ad man Donaldson Thorburn in 1938). In this excerpt, Long dispelled the notion that “the brutes” never notice a woman’s appearance:

THEY MIGHT BE BRUTES, but they notice the little things, according to Lois Long. (fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu)

SEEING RED…According to Long, discerning men preferred women in brimmed hats (actress Sylvia Sidney models above), but found red fingernails to be disturbing. (glamourdaze.com/vintagehairstyling.com)
SEEING RED in women’s clothes, however, wasn’t a problem, according to Long, who wrote that men liked to see women in bright, tropical colors. (clickamericana.com)

Long concluded that in the end, it didn’t matter what men thought about women’s clothes, but letting them “yap” about such things was a good way for them to blow off some steam.

Check out these patronizing examples from an illustrated guide for women published in 1938 by Click Parade magazine. It gives us some idea of what Long, and millions of other women, were up against…

(dailymail.co.uk)

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Fifth Avenue Remnant

The first years of The New Yorker coincided with some of the most transformational years in Manhattan’s urban fabric, including the replacement of Gilded Age mansions with upscale commercial buildings. One of the last remaining mansions was the Wendel house, featured in “The Talk of the Town.”

A ONCE GRAND MANSION becomes diminished as the city grows around it. At left, the Wendel mansion as it appeared circa 1901; at right, shorn of its balconies and shutters, the mansion shrinks in contrast to the city around it, circa 1930. (Wendel Family Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Drew University Library)
WHAT HO!…A “very British-looking” zinc-lined bathtub (with shower) was state-of-the-art when installed at the Wendel mansion. (New York Public Library)
BARELY A MEMORY….The glass-and-steel structure towering above the former Knox Hat Building sits on the site of the Wendel mansion. (Photo by Nicolson & Gallowy via Daytonian in Manhattan)

See Daytonian in Manhattan for more on the fascinating story of the Wendel mansion.

 * * *

Damned Lies

In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White noted the spurious nature of cinema newsreels, including one featuring the case of Thalia Massie, a navy wife stationed in Hawaii whose immature behavior and trail of lies would implicate five men in a crime they could not have committed (one would even be killed by vigilantes) and would cast Hawaii into a state of racial turmoil. (You can read more about it at the PBS site for American Experience.

FATAL FEMME…Thalie Massie, circa 1930. (Library of Congress)

 * * *

Blunders, Part II

Howard Brubaker commented on the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War. Today we call it World War I, and as we know, the blunders did not cease with the Armistice.

 * * *

RIP Madame Curie

Janet Flanner, Paris correspondent for The New Yorker, noted the passing of Marie Curie, a pioneer in field of radioactivity.

THE CURIE CURE…Marie Curie and daughter Irène, 1925. (Wikipedia)

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From Our Advertisers

The folks at Chrysler were trying every angle to get car buyers interested in the Airflow—although the car offered a number of advanced features, consumers just weren’t ready for its radical aerodynamic design…note how the ad downplays the car’s sweeping curves…

…and we have more deception from the cigarette industry, including claims that cigarettes gave you more energy and improved the performance of top athletes…

…the makers of Chesterfields gave us this sunny picture of health…indeed, there was sunshine in every pack…

…The Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company launched KOOL cigarettes in 1933 as the sole competitor to the other menthol brand, Spud, which was a big advertiser in the early New Yorker. Maybe it was the coupons, or the modern brand name, that helped KOOL knock Spud from the market by the 1940s. As for those coupons, it appears each pack contained only one of them…

…so you would have to smoke a ton of those things to get one of these swell prizes…

…early Budweiser ads often featured images of the Old South…here they conjured up the ghost of Mark Twain (who had been dead only 24 years), putting the great humorist and writer on par with their bottled beer…

…Canada Dry didn’t have Mark Twain, but what they did have was a beer (Hupfel’s) lacking “that queer yeasty taste that beer usually has”…

…a couple of ads from the back pages featured, at left, an ad for a pre-mixed Tom Collins, which must have been awful, and at right, a spot for Bacardi rum, which was actually made in Cuba before the revolution…

…on to our cartoons, we begin with Alain (Daniel Brustlein) and some not-so-intrepid mountain climbers…

…Otto Soglow’s Little King sought a glimpse of the street life…

…William Steig took a dip with his Small Fry…

…Isadore Klein gave us a glimpse of sensationalist radio reporting…

…and we close with Richard Decker, and a game of charades…

Next Time: Up in the Air…

Coney Summertime

Above: Wooden Horses(detail) by Reginald Marsh, 1936. Marsh was a frequent visitor to Coney Island, a place that inspired numerous sketches and paintings. (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

We officially kick off the summer with a visit to Coney Island, where “The Talk of the Town” took in the latest sights and amusements.

June 16, 1934 cover by Constantin Alajalov.

This excerpted “Talk” piece, attributed either to an “H. Beckett” or Francis Steegmuller, describes a post-Prohibition Coney Island with liquor to be had (although at only three locations) and new attractions including several imported from the 1933-34 Chicago’s World’s Fair (aka “The Century of Progress”). 

CLANKITY CLANK…The mechanical man referred to in the “Talk” piece was likely similar to the one pictured above in this October 1933 feature in Popular Mechanics. Like many “robots” of that era, they were often pictured smoking cigarettes. (Google books)
WET YOUR WHISTLE…Beer flowed up and down the boardwalk at Coney Island, but if you wanted something stronger you had to stop by the Half Moon Hotel or one of these establishments, Childs (left) or Feltmans’. (www.coneyislandhistory.org)
LEAVE SOME FOR ME…An estimated one million New Yorkers visited Coney Island on July 4, 1934 to get away from the heat of the city. (stuffnobodycaresabout.com)
DIFFERING INTERPRETATIONS…In his 1934 painting, Coney Island (left), artist Paul Cadmus portrayed beachgoers as ridiculous and uncouth rabble, while Cadmus’s friend and fellow artist Reginald Marsh took a somewhat kinder approach to the same subject in his 1936 Coney Island (right). (Jon F. Anderson, Estate of Paul Cadmus, licensed by VAGA, obtained via lacma.org / Syracuse University Art Collection)

Of course it wouldn’t be Coney Island without grisly wax museum scenes inspired by the latest sensational headlines…bank robber John Dillinger was still on the run, and “little June Robles” was finally free and apparently unharmed after being kidnapped and locked in a desert cage for 19 days…

THANKS WINDY CITY…At left, the Chicago World’s Fair inspired Coney Island to build a trackless, bobsled-style “flying turns” coaster in Steeplechase Park (the wooden ride was destroyed by fire after only five years of operation). At right, a postcard image of the Eden Musee wax museum. (riverviewparkchicago.com / New York Public Library)
ON THE BOARDWALK…Another Coney scene by Reginald Marsh, titled Pip and Flip, 1932. (Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago Daniel J. Terra Collection via artblart.com)

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Luck of the Irish

The Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake (more commonly known as the Irish Sweepstakes) was established in 1930 to raise funding for hospitals in Ireland. Although lotteries were generally illegal in the U.S., millions of tickets were sold in the States, many of them in New York and New England. In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White wondered what would become of the lottery’s newest American winners, including former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Alma Mamay, who won $152,000 in the Irish sweepstakes. White might have been pleased to know that Mamay moved to California, married a millionaire oil tycoon, and lived to the age of ninety-one.

CALIFORNY IS THE PLACE YOU OUGHTA BE..Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Alma Mamay took her Sweepstakes winnings and fled to California, where she married a millionaire oil tycoon. (ziegfeldfolliesgirls.com)

 * * *

Rugged Individual

Matthew Alexander Henson (1866–1955) was an African American explorer who accompanied Polar explorer Robert Peary to the Arctic seven times, participating in a 1908–1909 expedition that arguably made Henson the first explorer to reach the geographic North Pole. “The Talk of the Town” caught up with Henson on the feat’s 25th anniversary.

GO NORTH YOUNG MAN…At left, Matthew Henson circa 1910. At right, photograph of Henson and four Inuit guides on the last stretch of their 1908–09 expedition, taken by Robert Peary at what they believed to be the North Pole. Henson (center) planted the flag. (Wikipedia)

 * * *

POTUS Profiled

Pulitizer Prize-winning historian Henry F. Pringle published the first installment of a three-part profile of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this excerpt Pringle writes about FDR’s sense of humor (illustration by William Cotton):

 * * *

Mattress Campers

The “About the House” column featured the latest in home-cooling devices. Couldn’t afford the zillions it would cost to install a home air-conditioner? Well the folks at Crosley—an electronics company known for its radios—offered a more affordable solution: an air-conditioned tent that could be erected over one’s bed for $150 (about $3,500 in today’s dollars):

Here is a 1934 ad for the contraption I found at worldradiohistory.com:

…and we continue with more from our advertisers, including the Broadway magazine The Stage, which offered up this idyllic scene showing what folks did in the days before air-conditioning…

…you could also escape the heat by taking to the high seas aboard the Italian liner SS Rex…

…seen below arriving in New York in this 1932 photo, the 911-foot SS Rex was the largest ship built in Italy before World War II…it was destroyed by the British RAF in 1944…

(adventures-of-the-blackgang.tumblr.com)

…you could also cool off like these two old gents, sharing a toast and some Budweisers…

…or you could get yourself a jug of applejack brandy and mix it 1:1 with pineapple juice…not sure who or what is being “saved” here…

…long before there were Nikes or Adidas, golfers could hit the links in a pair of Sportocasins…

…Hupmobile was still hanging in there, enlisting the talents of illustrator Herbert Roese to extol the comforts and the beauty of its “air-line design”… it isn’t clear why it required five middle-aged men to take her on that beautiful ride…

…the real-life bellboy Johnny Roventini made his debut in the New Yorker as the spokesman for Phillip Morris cigarettes…

…Roventini (1910–1998), who stood less than four feet tall as an adult, was working as a bellboy at the New Yorker Hotel when he was discovered by an advertising executive in 1933. Apparently the exec had Roventini shout the line “Call for Philip Morris!” and learned the bellboy could repeatedly, and on cue, vocalize a perfect B-flat tone. Representing the company for more than forty years, he helped Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz with the initial success of I Love Lucy (Philip Morris was the show’s sponsor)…

WHAT’S HIS LINE?…TV producers Mark Goodson, left, and Bill Todman greet Johnny Roventini during a 1952 radio broadcast of their quiz show, What’s My Line? The program’s sponsor was Phillip Morris. Note Goodson and Todman both hold cigarettes. (Wikipedia)

…by the looks of it, Anne Gould (heiress daughter of Jay Gould II and Anne Douglas Graham Gould) didn’t need anyone to tell her what to smoke…

…on to our cartoons, we continue our birdwatching with Rea Irvin…and we also get…

…high-flying nuptials with Isadore Klein…

…a mismatch with George Price…

…the prospects for war with Otto Soglow…

…marital bliss with James Thurber…

…and a courtship scene, with an expiration date, from Mary Petty…

Next Time: A Ring Ding…

Model Citizens

Above: Modeling agency founder John Robert Powers poses with participants of a fashion queen contest at the 1939 New York World's Fair. (NYPL)

John Robert Powers was a household name in the 1930s, founder of one of the world’s first modeling agencies—he supplied countless advertisers with mostly female models, some moving on to Hollywood careers.

April 21, 1934 cover by Abner Dean.

Writing for “A Reporter at Large” under the title “Perfect 36,” frequent New Yorker short story contributor Nancy Hale (1908 –1988) looked into the mysteries behind the fabled “John Powers Book” and its collection of sophisticated models.

TYPING BOOK…John Robert Powers (1892–1977) wrote a bestselling 1941 book, The Powers Girls, that told “the story of models and modeling and the natural steps by which attractive girls are created,” organizing various models by type; at right, a page from the book featuring Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Gibbons—despite her Alabama roots, she was described by Powers as being “The Urban Type.” (Wikipedia/lastyeargirl.blogspot.com)

Hale was given a tour by a company representative who described the types of women the Powers company represented, noting the successes of women who landed in major cigarette ads or went on to become Hollywood stars:

SMOKE AND MIRRORS…Clockwise, from top left: Powers model Janice Jarratt (in a 1934 publicity photo from her only film, Kid Millions), who for a time was known as the “Lucky Strike Girl” as well as the “most photographed woman in the world”; Jarratt offering a Lucky to a nervous young man in a 1935 ad; Powers model Ethelyn Holt in a publicity photo for the Billy Rose Theatre; Holt in a 1933 ad for Camel cigarettes. (MGM/NPR/NYPL/propadv.com)

A number of Hollywood stars got their start or were discovered through their work with Powers, who himself was a sometime actor and the subject of a 1943 musical comedy, The Powers Girl.

POWER STARS…Former Powers models turned Hollywood stars included, from left, Norma Shearer, Frederic March and Kay Francis. (TCM/TMDB)

A note about the author, Nancy Hale: A brilliant short story writer, Hale published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1929 (when she was just 21) and would publish more than eighty stories in the magazine through 1969—she holds the record for the most stories in the magazine in a single year, publishing twelve between July 1954 and July 1955. New Yorker editor William Maxwell regarded Hale’s writing technique as “flawless.”

PROLIFIC…Nancy Hale published more than a hundred short stories in her lifetime, ten of which were recipients of an O. Henry Prize. Writer Joanne O’Leary (London Review of Books) notes that Hale also worked for Vogue (where she “pinch-hit as a model”) and became the first female news reporter at the New York Times. Above left, Hale in an undated photo; at right, Hale photographed in 1936 for Harper’s Bazaar. (Nancy Hale Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College)

* * *

Tat For Tat

Alva Johnston explored the world of “tattooed people” in his second installment of a three-part profile series titled “Sideshow People”…

MARKED FOR LIFE…Alva Johnston noted such celebrated tattooed ladies as Mae Vandermark (left, circa 1920s), and Lady Viola, pictured at right with tattoo artist Fred Clark, 1930s. (Vintage Everyday)
INKSLINGER…Charlie Wagner, a tattoo artist who lived from 1875 to 1953, is considered one of the kings of American tattooing. Practicing his art in New York’s Bowery, he not only developed an influential art style; he invented new machinery that helped spread the art of modern tattooing. (nyctattooshop.com)

 * * *

Bloody Satisfying

Film critic John Mosher declared David O. Selznick’s production Viva Villa! to be “thoroughly satisfying”—with a screenplay by Ben Hecht and starring actor Wallace Beery as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, the film was considered violent and bloody by 1934 standards.

REVOLUTIONARY…Clockwise, from top left, Pancho Villa (Wallace Beery) finds himself attracted to a benefactor’s sister (Fay Wray); MGM film poster; Beery with Katherine DeMille (who was Cecil B. DeMille’s adopted daughter) and Stuart Erwin; Beery striking a pose on the set of Viva Villa! (IMDB)

Mosher found some of the film’s violence to be startling. Being one the last Pre-Code films, censors would start clamping down on such scenes in the coming years.

MAKE SURE YOU GET MY GOOD SIDE…Pancho Villa (Wallace Beery) faces a firing squad before receiving a last-minute reprieve in Viva Villa! (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

MGM took out a full-page ad to tout the success of Viva Villa and other MGM “hits”…

…note the bottom left hand corner of the MGM ad—a cartoon by Otto Soglow promoting the upcoming film Hollywood Party, a star-studded comedy musical featuring Laurel & Hardy, Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez and Mickey Mouse…

…those looking for a different kind of entertainment could have been enticed by this lavish center-page spread from German ocean liner companies…they were inviting Americans to Oberammergau, Germany to witness the “only performances of the Passion Play until 1940″…the play was usually performed every ten years (years ending in the digit zero) but in 1934 a special performance was supported by the Nazi Party…incidentally, the 1940 play was cancelled due to World War II…

…the same German-American shipping companies also advertised an African cruise…with some racist imagery…

…perhaps you wanted to go to Europe on a ship with fewer Nazis on board…in that case you could grab a berth on a ship with the United States Lines, and hang out with these stiffs…

…the makers of Old Gold referenced a previous ad featuring Jimmy Durante with a new spot starring actor/comedian Eddie Cantor…both ads depicted impressionable young women admiring the smoking wisdom of older men…

…for reference, the creepy Durante ad…

…the famous “Call for Philip Morris” advertising campaign began during World War I, but in 1933 Johnny Roventini, a bellhop at the Hotel New Yorker, would become the living symbol of the cigarette brand…

…by contrast, Frankfort Distilleries showed us an image of man who would not represent them, namely Jed Clampett…

…Chevrolet continued its rebranding campaign, positioning itself as an affordable choice that was nevertheless favored by the posh set…

…who would rather be driving a Packard, here appealing to the nostalgic sensibilities of old-timers who had the means to afford one…

…on to our cartoons, and some “Small Fry” baseball from William Steig…

…an unusual captioned cartoon (from George Price) featured in the opening “Goings On About Town” section…

…Syd Hoff gave us an alarmed matron confronting the unthinkable…a doorman as a son-in-law…

…we haven’t seen Isadore Klein’s work in awhile—understandable, as he was busy in his career as an animator––in 1934 he worked on films for Van Beuren Studios (Rainbow Parade Cartoons) and in 1936 he would move to Disney’s Silly Symphonies…

…Paul Manship’s Prometheus at Rockefeller Center is iconic today, but when it was installed in 1934 it puzzled more than a few onlookers, including Robert Day…

…and we close with James Thurber, and a turn of events in his “war”…

Next Time: Lord of the Apes…

Rumors of War

Above: German Panzer tanks on parade in the early 1930s. (alternativefinland.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 * * *

Dining For Success

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

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

 * * *

Bread & Circuses

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

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

 * * *

From Our Advertisers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next Time: Music and Murder…

Cheers For Beers

Good cheer was in short supply during the worst year of the Depression, but as 1933 approached many New Yorkers could at least look forward to legal beer in the New Year.

Dec. 3, 1932 cover by Helen Hokinson.

But as with all things political, new rules and regulations would need to be hashed out before the taps could flow, and both brewers and beer drinkers would have to recalibrate a relationship that had been suspended for nearly 13 years. Alva Johnston gave this (excerpted) report in “A Reporter at Large”…

WHILE YOU WERE AWAY…Vaudeville star Rae Samuels holds what was purportedly the last bottle of beer (a Schlitz) distilled before Prohibition went into effect in Chicago on Dec. 29, 1930. The bottle was insured for $25,000. After Prohibition ended in late 1933, Schlitz reappeared with gusto and quickly became the world’s top-selling brewery. (vintag.es)

 *  *  *

National Treasure

Chester Dale (1883–1962) began his career in finance at age fifteen, working as a runner for the New York Stock Exchange. Just twelve years later he would marry painter and art critic Maud Murray Dale, and together they would amass an art collection that would include significant works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. In 1932 the Dales were well on their way to building a collection that would eventually end up in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “The Talk of the Town” featured the Dales in this except:

WAYS OF SEEING…Maud Dale was a staunch supporter of artist Amedeo Modigliani, whose 1919 painting Gypsy Woman with Baby (top left) was among 21 of his works collected by the Dales. Maud also commissioned a number of her own portraits, including (clockwise, from top center) ones rendered by George Bellows in 1919, by Jean-Gabriel Domergue in 1923, and by Fernand Léger in 1935. At bottom left is a 1945 portrait of Chester Dale by Diego Rivera. (National Gallery of Art)
SAINTED PATRONS…Clockwise, from top left, a 1943 photo of Chester Dale in the West Garden Court of the National Gallery of Art, which today holds the Chester Dale Collection of 240 paintings among other items; Maud Dale, c. 1926; Madame Picasso (1923) by Pablo Picasso on view in the Dale residence, c. 1935; a 1926 caricature of Chester by Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, a close friend of the Dales and early New Yorker contributor. (National Gallery of Art)

 *  *  *

Smoke Screen

E.B. White noted the historic meeting of outgoing U.S. President Herbert Hoover and his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. White speculated on at least one topic of discussion:

DO YOU INHALE?…Outgoing President Herbert Hoover (left) and President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt on their way to the inauguration ceremonies, 1933. (National Archives)

 *  *  *

No Longer “It”

Here is how IMDB describes the 1932 pre-Code drama Call Her Savage: “Sexy Texas gal storms her way through life, brawling and boozing until her luck runs out, forcing her to learn the errors of her ways.” The actress who portrayed that “Texas Gal,” Clara Bow, was getting sick of Hollywood and would make just one more film before retiring at age 28. Although in some circles the silent era’s “It Girl” sex symbol was finally beginning to earn some credit as an “artiste,” critic John Mosher was reserving judgment:

WHIP IT GOOD…Clara Bow brawls her way through life in her second-to-last film role, Call Her Savage. (IMDB)

 *  *  *

From Our Advertisers

Is this really how the smart set lived in 1932 Manhattan? Here we have an old toff dressed like Santa (in a top hat) sneaking presents onto the Christmas tree…and caught in the act by, I presume, his wife and a chambermaid?…

…in sharp contrast, here is an ad from the Golden Rule Foundation, which annually designated the second week in December as “Golden Rule Week”…the foundation raised funds to help needy children throughout the world…

…and here’s a bright, back cover ad from Caron Paris…apparently the face powder industry had been good to them in 1932…

…on to our cartoons, we start with a smoking tutorial from William Steig…

…some sunny optimism from one of Helen Hokinson’s “girls”…

…in this two-pager by Garrett Price, an artist asks his patron: All right then, what was your conception of the Awakening of Intelligence through Literature and Music?…

…Isadore Klein dedicated this cartoon to the much-anticipated launch of a new literary magazine, The American Spectator (not to be confused with today’s conservative political publication by the same name) and its illustrious line-up of joint editors…

…Crawford Young’s caption recalled the precocious child in Carl Rose’s 1928 cartoon caption, a collaboration with E.B. White — “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it”…

…and speaking of Carl Rose, this next cartoon by James Thurber has an interesting history…New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin explains in this Carl Rose Inkspill bio: In 1932, Rose submitted a drawing captioned, “Touche!” of two fencers, one of whom has just cut off the head of the other. Harold Ross (according to Thurber in The Years With Ross) thinking the Rose version “too bloody” suggested Thurber do the drawing because “Thurber’s people have no blood. You can put their heads back on and they’re as good as new”…

…as we close out December 2021 (which I am dutifully trying to do the same in 1932), we move on to the Dec. 10 issue…

Dec. 10, 1932 cover by William Steig.

…and Samuel N. Behrman’s profile (titled “Chutspo”) of comedian Eddie Cantor, who made his way from vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies to fame on the radio, in film and on early television. Theater great Katherine Cornell certainly appreciated Cantor’s gift for making his routine look easy: Here’s an excerpt:

AH, IT WAS NOTHIN’…Comedian Eddie Cantor was adored by millions of radio listeners as the “Apostle of Pep.” At right, caricature for the profile by Al Frueh. (bizarrela.com)

 *  *  *

Christmess

Lois Long’s “On and Off the Avenue” column was thus titled to reflect the annual challenge of buying that special something for that special someone. Here is the opening paragraph:

One of the items suggested in Long’s column was a game named for our friend Eddie Cantor called “Tell it to the Judge”…

…or you could select one of these gifts from A.G. Spaulding…my grandfather had one of those perpetual desk calendars…I would stave off boredom by endlessly flipping those numbers while the adults conversed in German…

…on to our cartoonists, James Thurber provided this nice bit of art for a two-page spread…

…Kemp Starrett gave us some biscuit (cookie) execs contemplating a new, streamlined design for their product…

…Norman Bel Geddes is perhaps best known for designing the “Futurama” display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair…here is Bel Geddes’ “Cobra Lamp”…

…George Price gave us a fellow peddling more than a simple top…

…and with Peter Arno, the party never ends…

…on to Dec. 17, 1932…

Dec. 17, 1932 cover by Harry Brown.

…and Arno’s ex Lois Long was back with another “Tables for Two,” still feigning the old spinster (see “shawl and slippers” reference in first graf) when in fact she was an attractive, 31-year-old divorcee who apparently still had plenty of fire for late night revelry…

According to the Jeremiah Moss blog Vanishing New York, Long was likely describing 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues that “began as a row of speakeasies, which turned into jazz clubs that then evolved into burlesque houses.” The speakeasies got their start when the city lifted residential restrictions on the brownstones and businesses moved in, including Tony’s, the Trocadero and later Place Pigalle…

(vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com via NYPL)

…it was at the new Place Pigalle that Long enjoyed the “knockout” after-midnight show featuring ballroom dancers Frank Veloz and Yolanda Casazza and the diminutive singer Reva Reyes…

AFTER HOURS entertainment at the Place Pigalle included Frank Veloz and Yolanda Casazza (left, in a 1930 portrait by Edward Steichen) and Mexican singer Reva Reyes. (Vanity Fair/El Paso Museum of History)

…and there was more entertainment to be had in Midtown with the upcoming opening (Dec. 27, 1932) of Radio City Music Hall, a dream project of Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel. Hugh Blake had the scoop for the New Yorker in the “A Reporter at Large” column…an excerpt:

AIN’T IT GRAND?..of Radio City Music Hall would open its doors on Dec. 27, 1932, fulfilling a dream of theater owner Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel. (nypap.org/Wikipedia/dobywood.com)

…Radio City Music Hall was built to host stage shows only, but within a year of its opening it was converted into a movie venue…and speaking of movies, we have film critic John Mosher finally finding a movie to his liking, and a novel-to-film adaptation to boot…

FAREWELL TO ALL OF THOSE ARMS…Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes and Adolphe Menjou in Paramount’s A Farewell to Arms, directed by Frank Borzage. The film received Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Sound. (buffalo.edu)

…and back to the stage, Al Frueh lent his artistry to the play Dinner At Eight, which opened October 22, 1932, at the Music Box Theatre, and would close May 6, 1933, after 232 performances. The popular play had revivals in 1933, 1966 and 2002 as well as a George Cukor film adaptation in 1933 with an all-star cast.

 *  *  *

From Our Advertisers

We begin with this helpful advice from the folks at the Lombardy…

…while we have a much less stuffy invitation from the French Line…

…the usually staid Brooks Brothers sprung for an all-color Christmas ad, featuring items that would suit any aspiring Bertie Wooster…

…and what would be the holidays without canned meat…

…and we end with James Thurber, who gets us into the proper mood for the New Year…

Next Time: Comrade Alex…

 

The Red House

From the 1930s until the 1950s, New York City was the one place where American communists almost became a mass movement.



Sept. 10, 1932 cover by Theodore Haupt.


Writing in The New York Times opinion section (Oct. 20, 2017), Maurice Isserman observed how in those days New York party members “could live in a milieu where co-workers, neighbors and the family dentist were fellow Communists; they bought life insurance policies from party-controlled fraternal organizations; they could even spend their evenings out in night clubs run by Communist sympathizers…” we skip to the Sept . 17 issue in which journalist Matthew Josephson penned a report on the movement for the “Reporter at Large” column titled “The Red House”…excerpts:




According to Isserman (a professor of history at Hamilton College), in 1938 the Communist Party of America counted 38,000 members in New York State alone, most of them living in New York City. A Communist candidate for president of the board of aldermen received nearly 100,000 votes that same year, with party members playing a central role in promoting trade unions.


BOSS’S DAY…Communists march at Union Square against “the boss class” at a 1930 rally in New York City.  (Oxford Research Encyclopedias)


PARTY INVITATION…William Z. Foster and James W. Ford were on the Communist ticket in the 1932 U.S. presidential elections. Ford (1893–1957) was also on the 1936 and 1940 tickets as a vice-presidential candidate. (peoplesworld.org)


Josephson commented on the candidates appearing on the Communist ticket in the 1932 U.S. presidential elections, finding James W. Ford to be “much more intellectual” than his running mate:




THE HQ…Communist Party of America headquarters, 13th St., New York City, 1934; a close-up view of the Workers’ Bookshop display window in 1942. (USC Libraries/Library of Congress)


A regular New Yorker contributor, journalist Matthew Josephson (1899–1978) popularized the term “robber baron” with the publication of his 1934 book, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists. (nationalbook.org)


Josephson concluded his article with observation of a party protest event, and one unmoved police officer…




Postscript: The Cold War in the 1950s and a renewed Red Scare spelled the end of the party’s heyday, as did Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 speech that denounced the murderous legacy of his predecessor, Josef Stalin.


*  *  *


Très Chic


For those with means, the idea of living in the same building with other non-family humans seemed unseemly, but in 1870 Rutherford Stuyvesant hired Richard Morris Hunt to design a five-story apartment building for middle-class folks that had a decidedly Parisian flair. The Sept. 10 “Talk of the Town” explained:







According to Ephemeral New York, the apartments were initially dubbed a “folly,” but the building’s 16 apartments and four artists’ studios—located near chic Union Square—were quickly snapped up, creating a demand for more apartments. The building remained fully occupied until it was demolished in 1958. According to another favorite blog—Daytonian in Manhattan—demolition of Morris Hunt’s soundly built, sound-proof building was a challenge.


IT DIDN’T GO QUIETLY…Stuyvesant Flats at 142 East 18th Street, 1935, in a photo by Berenice Abbott. It was demolished in 1958. (New York Public Library)


*  *  *


Some Characters


I include this brief snippet of the Sept. 10 “Profile” for the jolly illustration by Abe Birnbaum of Al Smith, Jimmy Hayes and the Prince of Wales…




*  *  *


Down In Front


E.B. White was always on the lookout for the newfangled in the world of transportation, but this latest development by the Long Island Railroad was not a breath of fresh air…




STACK ‘EM UP…A woman wears a bemused expression (left) as she takes in her surroundings on one of the Long Island Railroad’s new double-decked cars in 1932. (trainsarefun.com)


White also looked in on the latest news from the world of genetics—with hindsight we can read about these developments with a degree of alarm, since Hitler was months away from taking control of Germany…




*  *  *


Showing His Colors


On to lighter matters, critic John Mosher enjoyed an eight-minute animated Walt Disney short, Flowers and Trees—the first commercially released film made in full-color Technicolor…




SEEING GREEN…Walt Disney’s Flowers and Trees won the very first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1932. (intanibase.com)


…Mosher also took in light entertainment of the live-action variety with Marion Davies and Billie Dove providing some amusement in Blonde of the Follies, although the picture could have used a bit more Jimmy Durante, billed as a co-star but making an all-too-brief appearance…




WHERE’S THE DUDE WITH THE SCHNOZ?…Billie Dove (left) starred with headliner Marion Davies in Blondie of the Follies, but another co-star, comedian Jimmy Durante, was mostly absent from the picture. (IMDB)


*  *  *


From Our Advertisers


Lord & Taylor announced the return of Edwardian styles as the latest in fashion among the younger set, once again proving what goes around comes around, ad infinitum…




…except when it comes to “college styles”…I don’t see this look returning to our campuses anytime soon…




…the end of Prohibition was still a year away, but at least in New York it was all but over…I like the Hoffman ad and its winking line “with or without”…




…as a courtesy to readers (and to fill a blank space) the New Yorker    “presented” a full page of signature ads touting a variety of specialty schools and courses…the Carson Long Military Academy (right hand column) closed in 2018 after 182 years of “making men”…




…on to our cartoonists and illustrators, we begin with this Isadore Klein illustration in the opening pages…




…Rea Irvin gave us a nervous moment at the altar…




…and Richard Decker showed us one groovy grandma…




…on to the Sept. 17 issue (which we dipped into at the start)…and what a way to begin with this terrific cover by Peter Arno…


Sept. 17, 1932 cover by Peter Arno.


…in his “Notes and Comments,” E.B. White offered some parting words for the departing (and scandal-ridden) Mayor Jimmy Walker…




THAT’S ALL FOLKS…Deposed New York Mayor Jimmy Walker skipped town shortly after he left office and caught a boat to Europe. He is seen here at his wedding to Betty Compton in Cannes, April 1933. (Library of Congress)


…and Howard Brubaker added his two cents regarding Walker and his replacement, Joseph McKee, who served as acting mayor until Dec. 31, 1932…




*  *  *


Heady Role


The British actor Claude Rains earned his acting chops on the London Stage before coming to Broadway, where in 1932 he appeared in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head — E.B. White was subbing for regular critic Robert Benchley, and concluded that Rains should have used his own head before agreeing to appear in such silly stuff…




NO MORE HEAD JOKES, PLEASE…Although he got a late start on his Hollywood career, Claude Rains (1889—1967) became one of the silver screen’s great character stars. (Playbill)


…and speaking of the silver screen, we turn to critic John Mosher and his review of the 1931 German film 




WOMEN IN REVOLT…The New York Times (in 2020) describes 1931’s  “expression of anti-fascism and a lesbian coming-out story.” The film was a success throughout Europe, but was later banned as “decadent” by the Nazi regime. Above, Ellen Schwanneke, left, and Hertha Thiele in Mädchen in Uniform. (Kino Lorber)


Mädchen in Uniform was almost banned in the U.S., but Eleanor Roosevelt spoke highly of the film, resulting in a limited US release (albeit a heavily-cut version) in 1932–33.


*  *  *


From Our Advertisers


I’m featuring this detail from an Elizabeth Arden ad because the illustrator’s style is so distinct…if someone knows the identity of the artist, please let us know (on other drawings I’ve seen a signature that looks like “coco”)…




…invented in 1918, this “cheese food” made from milk, water, whey, milk protein concentrate, milkfat, whey protein concentrate and sodium phosphates—among other things—was acquired by Kraft in 1927 and marketed in the 1930s as a nutritious health food…I have to say I haven’t seen any Velveeta ads in The New Yorker as of late…




…”Pier 57, North River!” barks the successful-looking man to the admiring cabby who’s thinking “lucky dog!”…




…on the other hand, Peter Arno (kicking off our Sept. 17 cartoons) gave us a Milquetoast who wasn’t getting anywhere near the French Line, or First Base…




…and speaking of the mild-mannered, James Thurber offered up this fellow…




…Helen Hokinson’s “girls” were perhaps wondering if their driver was among the Commies at Union Square…




…John Held Jr. entertained with another “naughty” Victorian portrait…




…Robert Day, and wish unfulfilled at the zoo…




…and we close with Richard Decker, and trouble in the Yankee dugout…




Next Time: A Picture’s Worth…



	


	
	






	
	

		
	

		
Under the Boardwalk
	


	

		
Kay Boyle was thirty and still cutting her teeth as a writer and political activist when The New Yorker published her short story “Black Boy,” told through an unnamed narrator who recalls a childhood visit to the seaside.


May 14, 1930 cover by Bela Dankovsky.


The narrator remembers the days when she rode her horse along the beach while her grandfather watched from a rolling chair, pushed along the boardwalk by various young Black boys. In the following excerpts, the grandfather asks one of the boys for his name, but is it clear he doesn’t really want to get to know him, and through his teasing suggests he isn’t even worthy of an identity. Later in the story the girl befriends the boy, who dwells beneath the boardwalk and dreams of a better life. When the grandfather learns of this budding friendship, he warns about the possibility of harm coming from the boy (two excerpts):




THE LONG, CHAOTIC LIFE of writer and activist Kay Boyle (1902–1992) ranged from fights against racism and fascism in the 1930s to protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and against nuclear weapons into the 1990s. (1941 photograph by George Platt Lynes, courtesy The Kay Boyle Papers, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University)


The final paragraphs describe how the girl falls from her horse, and the shocking consequences of the boy coming to her aid.




SEPARATE AND NOT EQUAL…Kay Boyle employed a boardwalk setting in her 1932 short story “Black Boy” to underscore the stark divisions between races in American society. Clockwise, from top left, a 1914 postcard from Atlantic City; on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, circa 1905; sheet music for a popular 1905 song; a dour-looking group being pushed along the Atlantic City Boardwalk, circa 1905. (seesaw.typepad.com/bygonely.com/reddit.com)


 *  *  *


Potemkin Park


In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White questioned the need, and appropriateness, of a wood and plaster Federal Hall replica in Bryant Park, which at the time was a neglected patch of land behind the New York Public Library and a favorite spot for the city’s homeless, their numbers rapidly growing during one of the worst years of the Depression (unemployment hovered near 25 percent). Otto Soglow commented, via cartoon:




To add insult to injury, the area around the replica was fenced off and required an admission fee of 25 cents. White commented:




ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION…This flimsy Federal Hall replica erected in Bryant Park in 1932 symbolized some of the problems that beset New York City in one of the worst years of the Depression. Under Mayor Jimmy Walker, the committee in charge of the replica was filled with corrupt Tammany cronies who quickly depleted the committee’s funds. It is no surprise that the replica was unpopular, especially with its admission fee of 25 cents, roughly equivalent to $5 today (consider that sales clerks in 1932, if they were lucky to have a job, earned perhaps $15 a week). (Museum of the City of New York)


 *  *  *


Intermural Murals


Art critic Murdock Pemberton approached the Museum of Modern Art’s newest exhibition of American muralists with a bit of suspicion, although he was correct in surmising that the Rockefeller Center was shopping for muralists, but as we now know it was not an American, but a Mexican artist (Diego Rivera) who would enter that scene and stir things up.




Among other works, MoMA visitors viewed Ben Shahn’s study for a three-part composition titled “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti”…


(MoMA)


…and a work by The New Yorker’s own Reginald Marsh titled “Post-War America”…


(MoMA)


 *  *  *


Boop’s Boo-Boo


We return to E.B. White and his musings regarding actress and singer Helen Kane (1904–1966), who filed a $250,000 (equivalent to nearly $5 million in 2021) infringement lawsuit against cartoonist Max Fleischer and Paramount Studios, claiming that the popular Betty Boop character was based on Kane’s personality and image.




BOOP SCOOP…Comparison between Helen Kane and the cartoon star Betty Boop was published in Photoplay’s April 1932 issue, one month before Kane’s lawsuit was filed. The suit was settled two years later, the court finding insufficient evidence to support Kane’s claim. (Wikipedia)


 *  *  *


From Rags to Rackets


Lois Long lived at the center of the 1920s speakeasy scene, but while she partied she also kept a critical eye on her surroundings, and when she later moved on to fashion criticism (“On And Off The Avenue”) she maintained the same combination of enthusiasm and shrewdness as she took aim at the “lusty fellows of the fashion rackets”…




JUST BROWSING, THANKS…Lois Long kept a skeptical eye on the New York fashion “racket” in the 1930s. Above, an unidentified model sporting a red velvet ensemble during a fashion show in 1933. (New York Daily News)


 *  *  *


From Our Advertisers


We begin with yet another insecticide-themed cartoon from Dr. Seuss, this time using the experimental medium of television to get his point across…




…R.J. Reynolds continued to push their Camels on the growing market of women smokers, here mixing their product with a basket of fruit to suggest freshness and vitality…




…the folks at B. Altman touted their new outdoor furniture line, placing it in a setting available to a very select few New Yorkers…




…we kick off the cartoons with Peter Arno at his best…




…Alice Harvey gave voice to one woman’s thoughts on children…




…Leonard Dove found spirits dwelling among dusty bones…




…James Thurber gave us his take on the housewife eating bonbons trope…I’m not suggesting that Thurber was the first to illustrate this stereotype, but I’m not finding any references to housewives and bonbons predating the 1950s…something for a dissertation out there, if it hasn’t already been done…




…William Steig continued his exploration into the world of the Small Fry, offering up a rare image of baseball in the early New Yorker…




…and we close the May 14 issue with Isadore Klein, and one sidewalk salesman looking for a bonafide endorsement…




…on to May 21, 1932…


May 21, 1932 cover by Helen Hokinson.


…where we find E.B. White sharing his thoughts on the Lindbergh kidnapping and its tragic result…




BAD NEWS ON THE DOORSTEP…News of the death of Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s kidnapped baby transfixed the country in the spring of 1932. (New York Times)


 *  *  *


No Immaculate Conception, This


It must have been hard to be Lewis Mumford, so knowledgable in the arts, architecture and city planning, and yet rather helpless in encouraging thoughtful growth in a place that spouted buildings like mushrooms and paved roads (thanks to Robert Moses) almost as fast as cars could drive across them. These excerpts offer some of Mumford’s thoughts on the matter:




For Mumford’s second point, he soundly denounced a plan to place an obelisk in Battery Park. The 1929 proposal called for an 800-foot obelisk at the junction of Broadway and Greenwich Street:


OVER COMPENSATING, PERHAPS…Designed by architect Eric Gugler, the proposed granite obelisk for Battery Park would have been windowless, 80 feet square at its base and rising to a height of 800 feet. Thankfully it was never, ahem, “erected.” (NYC Urbanism @nycurbanism) 


Mumford also addressed the matter of the Central Park Zoo, and its proposed relocation:




Happily for Mumford, and for former Gov. Al Smith (see caption), the zoo would be revitalized and remain in Central Park.


MIRACLES OF MOSES…Although Lewis Mumford would often be at odds with the powerful park commissioner Robert Moses, it was Moses who ensured that the Central Park Zoo would remain in the park. The remodeled zoo opened with great fanfare on December 2, 1934, and Moses’ old friend and political mentor Al Smith was designated honorary zookeeper. Smith, who lived just across from the zoo at 820 Fifth Avenue, visited almost daily. Structured as a quadrangle with a sea lion pool at its center, the Central Park Zoo is pictured above in August 1942. (nycgovparks.org)


 *  *  *


From Our Advertisers


Many advertisers played to the Anglophilic tendencies of New Yorker readers, particular ones selling garments to the sporting gentry who aped their British cousins in such pursuits as polo and dressage…here we have “play clothes” from the menswear company Rogers Peet…




…and this swell get-up (below) from Henri Bendel…both Peet and Bendel were well-known in the 1930s. Cole Porter even referred to both companies in his songs…here is the refrain from “I Introduced” (from the 1919 show Hitchy-Koo):


…”I presented Mister Peet to Mister Rogers”…


and even more famously Porter wrote these lines in his 1934 song “You’re the Top”:


…”You’re a Bendel Bonnet / a Shakespeare Sonnet”…


…Rogers Peet closed its doors in the 1980s, and Bendel folded in 2019…




…even during the Depression, almost anyone could spring for a ten-cent bar of Lux soap, and over the years it was famous for its splashy ads (two-page spreads in The New Yorker were common) and dozens of celebrity endorsements…Lux isn’t as dominant in the U.S. today, but it remains a major international brand, now sold and marketed by the British multinational Unilever, especially in Asia…back to 1932, the Lux ad below featured Lupe Velez — known as “The Mexican Spitfire,” she was a big star in the 30s but is perhaps best known today for her sad, tragic death in 1944…the Lux ad also displayed the Aber Twins — a Ziegfeld act that featured Arlene and Charlene Aber who weren’t really twins but sisters born 18 months apart…




…if you lived in New York in the 1920s and early 30s you probably would have known about the sometime artist/designer Don Dickerman and his themed Greenwich Village restaurants — especially The Pirate’s Den — which inspired this line of highball glasses (yeah, Prohibition was still around, but who cared?)…sadly these glasses didn’t help save The Pirate’s Den, which thanks to the Depression went bankrupt in 1932…




…speaking of Prohibition, Anheuser-Busch took advantage of laws that allowed for the production of near-beer containing one-half percent alcohol…




…if you couldn’t drink you could still eat to your heart’s content, that is if you were this fat cat and not some starving fellow in a bread line…




…on to our cartoons, Helen Hokinson took us pet shopping…




…Garrett Price offered up a stereotype in a courtroom setting…




…and reminiscent of humor in the vein of Ralph Barton, Rea Irvin launched a series of the world’s “beauty spots”…




Next Time: A Visit to Minskyville…




 

	


	
	






	
	

		
	

		
Babylon Berlin
	


	

		
The name of this post comes from one of my favorite television series, Babylon Berlin, a lavishly produced German neo-noir drama that takes place during the final years of the Weimar Republic, or precisely where we are in the timeline of this blog.


Jan. 9, 1932 cover by Theodore Haupt.


The tumultuous Weimar years of the 1920s and early 30s represented Germany’s initial flirtation with democracy, an experimental age at once filled with post-war  angst and libertine ways, and this was especially true in Berlin where nearly every vice could be plied along its streets and alleyways and in countless clubs and cabarets. It was the setting for a decade of political turmoil, with communists (rival Bolsheviks and Trotskyites) to the left and national socialists (later Nazis) to the right, and in the middle a fledging democracy that ultimately could not hold the center. Janet Flanner, The New Yorker’s Paris correspondent, paid Berlin a visit just one year before Adolf Hitler would seize dictatorial power.


WORLDLY VIEW…Janet Flanner’s account of life in Berlin at the end of 1931 told of economic hardship and hinted at trouble to come, but it mostly depicted life as pictured at right at a Berlin tea dance. This was not a naive perspective, but rather one of a worldly mind not easily shocked by vice and upheaval. As The New Yorker’s longtime Paris correspondent, Flanner’s weekly letters during World War II would also make her a respected war correspondent. At left is an oft-reproduced portrait of Flanner, taken by Berenice Abbott in 1927. At right, a tea dance in the garden of the Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, 1928. (Clark Art Institute/ Süddeutsche Zeitung)


In this excerpt, Flanner saw life continuing at an oddly normal pace despite the hardships and the political tension that boiled behind the façade:




TRUNCATED VISION…Berlin looked to a Modernist future until Adolf Hitler put an end to the “un-German” Bauhaus style in 1933. Despite the economic collapse and political turmoil of 1931 Berlin, the city showcased remarkable technical progress, including a prototype high-speed train (left) that travelled at 230 km per hour (143 mph) from Hamburg to Berlin. At right, Berlin exhibition of Bauhaus-inspired buildings at the 1931 Deutsche Bauausstellung. The cavernous Hall 11, themed as “The Dwelling of Our Time,” was directed by Mies van der Rohe. It mostly displayed the output of his Bauhaus “Werkbund,” including a Mies-designed modern house. (Pinterest/Reichstarifvertrag)


THE OTHER BERLIN…at top, the Friedrichstrasse, Berlin’s “street of sin,” in the late 1920s; below right, prostitutes ply their trade in 1920s Berlin; and below left, buy cocaine capsules from a Berlin drug dealer, 1930. (ddr-postkarten-museum.de/Reddit/Wikipedia)


ANYTHING GOES…Clockwise, from top left, cabaret performance in Berlin that left little to the imagination; the Jockey bar mentioned by Flanner—it was frequented by A-listers such as Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide, Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich; the Eldorado gay night club in Berlin, 1932; performance of “A Slide on the Razor” at Berlin’s Haller Revue, 1923; the Europahaus, one of hundreds of cabarets in Weimar Berlin, 1931. (cabaret.berlin/Bundesarchiv/tribe.net/Wikipedia)


Toward the end of her article, Flanner noted that “Berliners are busy making a new race,” which is not a reference to Hitler’s “master race” (that would come later) but rather to a new generation overtaking the old. The final lines of this excerpt, however, suggest there might be trouble ahead…




NOT ALL FUN  AND GAMES: Weimer Berlin was also a place of political and economic struggle that at times turned violent. From left, a Nazi youth is wounded during Berlin street violence amid Reichstag elections in 1932; a Berlin bank damaged during violent clashes between police and demonstrators in June 1931; Communist youths in Berlin demonstrate on May Day 1931.  (Pinterest/Financial Times)


The party abruptly ended with Hitler’s takeover of the government in January 1933. The images below said it all:


NEW THEME, NEW OWNERSHIP…The Eldorado gay night club in Berlin before and after Nazi takeover of the German government. (lonesomereader.com)


 *  *  *


Masses’ Mass Media 


“The Talk of the Town” pondered the symbolism of the Daily News Building—from the inscription above its entrance to the place names on its massive lobby globe—which seemed to celebrate its readership, namely the common people.




CAN YOU FIND HOOTERVILLE?…the massive globe in the Daily News lobby (circa 1941), featured the names of small towns and cities along with major population centers; below, inscription “HE MADE SO MANY OF THEM” above the building’s entrance (atlasobscura.com)


 *  *  *


Dem Bones


Art critic Murdock Pemberton paid a visit to the Stieglitz Gallery to check out the latest works by Georgia O’Keeffe. He found that her themes were moving from the urban landscape of New York to the bleached simplicity of the Southwestern desert:




CHANGING HER TUNE…Georgia O’Keeffe’s Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931); O’Keeffe with one of her skull paintings, 1931. (metmuseum.org/CSU Archives)


 *  *  *


Hyde-bound


Film critic John Mosher found much to like about Frederic March’s performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and so did critics and Academy voters who bestowed a Best Actor award on the actor.




IDENTITY CRISIS…Bar singer Ivy Pierson (Miriam Hopkins) in a state of undress as she tries (unsuccessfully) to seduce Dr. Jekyll (Frederic March); when Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde, however, the tables are turned, much to Ivy’s distress. (IMDB)


Mosher found, however, that other pictures playing at the time left much to be desired…




BAD GIRLS…From left, Sylvia Sidney, Miriam Goldina and Esther Howard in 1931’s Ladies of the Big House. (IMDB)


*  *  *


Modern Methods


Early in his writing career Richard Lockridge penned a series of comic sketches for The New Yorker, many of them featuring the characters Mr. and Mrs. North, who would inspire a 26-book series of detective novels. The Norths had yet to make an appearance, but here Lockridge had some fun with the makers of Chevrolets, who used a new-fangled method to promote their product. Excerpts:




FREEBIE…Richard Lockridge thanked the folks from Chevrolet for the free phonograph record, but passed on the automobile. (Ebay)


 *  *  *


From Our Advertisers


The Annual National Automobile Show at Grand Central Palace kicked off the new year with a stunning lineup of new cars, but General Motors separated itself from the pack by exhibiting its wares at the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel…I believe this unsigned illustration is by Peter Arno (note “Walrus” in background)…




…The New Yorker’s advertising department reaped the benefits of the annual show, the Jan. 9 issue replete with ads from various companies…the makers of the Buffalo-based Pierce Arrow — a top-of-the-line luxury car — added a downscale version with a “New Eight” and deeply discounted their prices (which were still well above economy models offered by others)…




…the Depression would put an end to Pierce Arrow by 1938, but rival Lincoln would manage to hang on thanks to their own new “8” and the largess of parent Ford Motor Company…the Lincolns shown here are actually priced higher than the Pierce Arrows, $4300 for the 12 (vs $3185 for the PA 12) and $2900 for the 8 (vs. $2385 for the PA 8)…




…a bit more down the ladder we have venerable Oldsmobile, alas no longer with us (removed from GM’s lineup in 2014)…




…and a few more rungs down we have the DeSoto (a Chrysler product) and its “sleek” new radiator that was the talk of the auto show, and admired here by “Jimmy Flagg” (aka illustrator James Montgomery Flagg, perhaps best known for his 1917 Uncle Sam poster with the caption “I Want YOU for U.S. Army”)…the DeSoto was a real bargain, priced at under $700…




…and here are a few ads from companies long gone…like Pierce Arrow, Auburn (top left) struggled to sell its upscale cars during the Depression…however, the makers of another upscale brand, Packard (bottom right), were able to survive by favoring tried and true designs over gimmicky yearly changes…Hupmobile (top right) was known for its innovations, but a decision to build more expensive cars in the late 1920s put it into a bad position for the Depression-era market, and the company folded by 1939…when Hupmobile was on its last leg, it partnered with the ailing Graham-Paige Motor Company (bottom left), another company known for great designs, but combining two failing companies in this case yielded one larger failing company, and Hup and Graham went down together…




…the clever folks at Buick were way ahead of the others in marketing savvy, emphasizing an attractive, confident woman at the wheel of an unseen car, tapping into a previously untapped market (tobacco companies were busy doing the same)…




…as we see here from the folks who pushed the Chesterfield brand—in this ad aimed at the growing market of women smokers, you don’t see the carton, but what you do see are people waxing philosophical about smoking, quality smoking, that is, and it’s no mistake that the woman is sitting on the arm of the chair, receiving this “wisdom” from her husband…




…even when a man isn’t present, Chesterfield still perched the woman on the arm of the chair, as seen in this ponderous New Yorker ad from the previous year…




…and then you have Spud—the direct approach—yes dammit, do something, man!…your “mouth happiness” is at stake, so follow a schedule that keeps you puffing every waking minute…




…and we move on to the fashion world, where this new-fangled “Talon Slide Fastener” is keeping women’s corsets zipped up, except the vulgar, slang word “zipper”  hasn’t quite made it into the fashion lexicon as of 1932…




…and this other new invention—”Rayon”—is “becoming important to women who watch and are watched in classic correctness,” but believe me, no old money deb would ever allow anything artificial to touch her delicate hide…




…we continue into the cartoons in the fashion mode with one of Helen Hokinson’s “girls” getting a makeover…




…Mary Petty, on the other hand, is keeping an eye on the younger crowd…




…we move on to Barbara Shermund and the old money gang, wary of astrologer Evangeline Adams‘ thoughts on the ailing stock market…




…one of their fellows was having troubles of his own in those troubled times, per William Steig…




…and Denys Wortman took us to the other side of that window, and the dreams of a better life…




…urban realist Reginald Marsh gave us all a splash of cold water…




…Isadore Klein, on the other hand, presented a domestic scene with particular relevance these days…




…and another domestic scene from the brilliant James Thurber, in which the pistol once again makes a timely appearance…




Next Time: Dream Cars…



	


	
	






	
	

		
	

		
Some Comic Relief
	


	

		
From the Upper East Side and the vaudeville stage to the shining lights of Hollywood went the Marx Brothers in 1931, starring in their first movie written especially for screen rather than adapted from one of their stage shows.


Oct. 17, 1931 cover by Adolph K. Kronengold.


Monkey Business also their first film to be shot outside of New York. The brothers’ first two pictures—The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930)—were filmed at Paramount’s Astoria Studios in Queens. Film critic John Mosher found their latest movie to be a “particular prize” among the somewhat ordinary fare being cranked out of Hollywood. It featured the four as stowaways on an ocean liner bound for America, and that’s all you really need to know, because like most of their films it cut quickly to the chase…




Monkey Business was the first film to label the troupe the “Four Marx Brothers” (a billing that would continue through their Paramount years). A fifth brother, Gummo, left the team early and went on to launch a successful raincoat business.


NEVER A DULL MOMENT…The Marx Brothers were up to their usual antics in their first Hollywood-made film, Monkey Business. At top, Groucho performs an egg trick on a society couple; at bottom, he does a bit of hoofing with comedian Thelma Todd. (IMDB)


 *  *  *


Monkey’s Uncles


There was a New Yorker connection to Monkey Business — S. J. Perelman‚ a frequent contributor of humorous shorts to the magazine, was one of the screenwriters for the film. And it just so happens that one of Perelman’s shorts was in the Oct. 17 issue, and it was a doozy…




MAKE ‘EM LAUGH…Writer and cartoonist Will B. Johnstone (left) wrote the screenplay for Monkey Business with S. J. Perelman, right, in a 1935 portrait by Ralph Steiner. (Meg Farrell/Yale University)


A promotional cartoon for Monkey Business by Will B. Johnstone. He also created the cartoon character of The Tax Payer wearing only a barrel held up by suspenders. It was a regular feature in the New York World-Telegram. (Meg Farrell via travsd.wordpress.com)








 *  *  *


Office Chatter




E.B. White called out a couple of his New Yorker colleagues in “Notes and Comment” as he mused about “lady poets” and their disillusionment with the menfolk. The “Selma Robinson” he mentions was a young writer who had just published her first collection of poems titled City Child…












…White then moved on the subject of matrimony and advice columns, zeroing in on Dorothy Dix, the most widely read woman journalist of her time with an estimated 60 million readers turning daily to her syndicated column…




LIGHTEN UP ON THE LOVEBIRDS, DOROTHY, E.B. White seemed to suggest in his “Notes and Comment” item about syndicated advice columnist Dorothy Dix. (Associated Press/The New York Times)


 *  *  *


So Much for Prognosticators


The New Yorker ran an amusing two-page spread that contained the quotes of prominent writers, politicians, businessmen and economists—month by month since the October 1929 market crash—who predicted a swift end to the Depression and better times just around the corner. An except below (note the reprise of Otto Soglow’s manhole cartoon).




 *  *  *


It Pays to be Funny


Richard Lockridge (1898–1982) was a reporter for The New York Sun when he began submitting comic sketches to The New Yorker such the one excerpted below. Later sketches would include the characters Mr. and Mrs. North. In the late 1930s Lockridge would collaborate with his wife, Frances Louise Davis, on a detective novel, combining her plot with his Mr. and Mrs. North characters to launch a series of 26 novels that would be adapted for stage, film, radio and television.




PARTNERS IN CRIME…Richard and Frances Lockridge examine one of their mystery novels in this undated book jacket photo. At right, the cover of their second “North” book, with cover illustration by Helen Hokinson (note the similarities of the Mr. and Mrs. North characters to Richard and Frances).


 *  *  *


Land Barge


The “Motors” column featured the latest luxury offering from Germany, the massive 12-cylinder Maybach Zeppelin, which would set you back a cool $12,800 in 1931 (roughly $200,000 in today’s currency). Named for the company’s production of Zeppelin engines in the World War I era, the car weighed 6,600 pounds (3,000 kg).




THE 12-CYLINDER Maybach Zeppelin was not known for its economy. (Wikipedia/Alf van Beem)


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From Our Advertisers


The new Chevrolet Six was no Maybach, but the folks at GM nevertheless tried to suggest it was a car for the posh set…




…when Kleenex was first introduced to American consumers in 1924 it was marketed as a tissue for removing cold cream, and wasn’t sold as a disposable handkerchief until the 1930s…




…and contrary to the wisdom of the ages, the makers of Old Gold cigarettes tried to convince us that their cigarettes would not leave smokers with bad breath or yellowed teeth…




…Winnie-the-Pooh, or here referred to as “Winnie, The Pooh,” was only five years old when this ad was created for Macy’s, and even before Disney got his hands on him the bear was being turned into various consumer products including baby bowls, handkerchiefs and lamps…




…the color ads in the early New Yorker were quite striking, such as this full-pager for Martex towels…




…or this one for Arrow shirts, featuring a determined coach making an important point to his leatherheads before the big game…




…on to our cartoons, we have Otto Soglow’s Little King engaging in some sport of his own…




…Alan Dunn showed us a meter reader who probably needed to come up for some fresh air…




…William Crawford Galbraith gave us a sugar daddy without a clue…




…E. McNerney showed us another pair that begged the question “what comes next?”…




…this Mary Petty cartoon recalls Carl Rose’s famous “I say its spinach” cartoon—and Mamma has every right to say “the hell with it” in this case…




…in this William Stieg entry, a father teaches his young charge the art of rubbernecking…




…and Don Herold gave us a peek at what the little dears really talk about while their parents exchange the latest gossip…




…on to the Oct. 24, 1931 issue…


Oct. 24, 1931 cover by Rose Silver.


…where we find the latest edition of Frank Sullivan’s satirical newspaper, The Blotz, which occupied a two-page spread (excerpt below)…




…and featured this masthead of sorts (with James Thurber art)…




…and another Thurber contribution as The Blotz’s political cartoonist…




…more colorful ads to enjoy, including this nighthawk view of an apartment house…




…and this ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes, featuring 20-year-old Platinum Blonde star Jean Harlow (what is she leaning on?) who probably shouldn’t have smoked because her health was always a bit fragile—she would be dead in less than six years…




…ands then we have our latest high society shill for cold cream, Marchioness of Milford Haven, aka Nadejda Mikhailovna Mountbatten, aka Countess Nadejda de Torby, aka Princess George of Battenberg…she was probably best known for her part in the 1934 Gloria Vanderbilt custody trial, when a a former maid of Vanderbilt’s mother, Gloria Morgan, testified that the Marchioness had a lesbian relationship with Morgan…




…Helen Hokinson continued loaning one of her “girls” to Frigidaire to extol the wonders of their seemingly indestructible refrigerators…




…our Oct. 24 cartoons feature Garrett Price, who brought us the exciting world of the traveling salesman…




…A. S. Foster served up an Italian stereotype…




…Isadore Klein, on the other hand, turned a stereotype on its head…




…and we end with Rea Irvin, who gave us what I believe was a first in The New Yorker—a cartoon character breaking the fourth wall…




…by the way, M.F.H. stands for Master of Fox Hounds…I had to look it up.


Next Time: Through a Glass Darkly…