John Marin – A New Yorker State of Mind

The President’s Mystery

Above: President Franklin D. Roosevelt was credited as a writer on the film "The President's Mystery," although his role was more one of inspiration; at right, Betty Furness and Henry Wilcoxon starred in the film. (rottentomatoes.com)

Just one month before the 1936 general election, Republic Pictures released a film “conceived by Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

October 24, 1936 cover by **Constantin Alajalov.**

Yes, the president of the United States, standing for re-election in November (which he would win by a landslide), was actually credited as a writer for the film The President’s Mystery, although FDR’s actual role in the film was its concept. While visiting with Fulton Oursler, editor of Liberty magazine, Roosevelt posed the question: “How can a man disappear with five million dollars of his own money in negotiable form and not be traced?” Oursler, a close friend of the president’s, responded by enlisting several prominent authors to write a screenplay. New Yorker film critic John Mosher takes it from there:

The story behind the film was first featured in the Nov. 16, 1935 issue of Liberty magazine…

…and released as a movie on Sept. 28, 1936…

MAN OF MYSTERY…Clockwise, from top left, President **Franklin D. Roosevelt,** a fan of mysteries, conceived the idea for *The President’s Mystery*; **Henry Wilcoxon, Frank O’Connor**, an unidentified actor, and **Wade Boteler** featured on a lobby card promoting the film ; **Betty Furness, Si Jenks**, and **Henry Wilcoxon** in a promo shot for the film; poster for the film featured an image of FDR on the cover of Liberty magazine. *(instagram.com/imdb.com/themovieb.org)*

Mosher also had “pretty good fun” with the star-studded screwball comedy, Libeled Lady, which was acclaimed by critics and nominated for Best Picture:

LOVE QUADRANGLE…Lovers spats and romantic mix-ups were just part of the stew in the screwball comedy Libeled Lady. At left, **Myrna Loy** and **Spencer Tracy;** at right, **William Powell** and Jean Harlow. *(imdb.com/movie nation.com)*

There were still other films reviewed by Mosher, including The Devil is a Sissy, starring sixteen-year-old Mickey Rooney, still emerging as a star, as well as famed child actors Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew. There was also a film featuring Clark Gable as a prize fighter, and a movie titled The Longest Night, ironically the shortest feature ever produced by MGM—just 51 minutes.

STREET SMARTS…**Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper,** and Freddie Bartholomew in *The Devil is a Sissy*, a story about a posh kid who befriends a couple of ruffians; **Clark Gable** was down for the count in *Cain and Mabel,* co-starring **Marion Davies**; **Robert Young** teamed up with **Florence Rice** in the mystery-thriller, *The Longest Night*—Florence Rice was the only child of sportswriter **Grantland Rice**. (Wikipedia/mubi.com/tcm.com)

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A Second Life

E.B. White still wasn’t done with the new Life magazine—recall his “Notes and Comment” from Sept. 19, when he lamented a magazine that would “consist almost entirely of pictures” and would “do away with the last vestiges of privacy in America.” Here White notes the purchase of Life by Time, Inc., and compares it to the old Life.

ASKING FOR MERCY…**E.B. White** hoped the new *Life* magazine would have some of the mercy and grace of its predecessor. (sunrisepoint.com/time.com)

LIFELESS…Launched in 1883, *Life* was an American humor and general-interest magazine. Purchased and shut down in 1936 by Henry Luce, he replaced it with his new, and very different Life. The image above is the cover of the Feb. 2, 1922 issue of the old magazine. (Wikipedia)

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A Sensitive Hamlet

There are as many approaches to playing Hamlet as there are versions of the famous Shakespeare play, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In the case of actor John Gielgud, as reported in “The Talk of the Town,” Hamlet was quite sane, although he was “immensely sensitive.”

MOMMY DEAREST…At left, **Judith Anderson** as Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, and **John Gielgud** as Hamlet in Broadway’s 1936 production of the Shakespeare play; at right, **Carl Van Vechten** portrait of Gielgud during the actor’s time on Broadway, December 1936. Gielgud is widely regarded as one of the definitive Hamlets of the 20th century. *(newyorktheater.me/newworldencyclopedia.org)*

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Safety Last

Morris Markey was on hand for the Vanderbilt Cup Race (recently featured here), offering a track-side look at the pit crews. Notable in this excerpt is the complete lack of safety protocols, from gasoline poured out of wide-mouthed cans to smoking and drinking among drivers and pit crews. The race winner, Tazio Nuvolari (who refuses some brandy but puffs on a cigarette) would eventually have to retire by 1950 due to his total deafness and other health problems—he spent years racing in an open cockpit with the manifold ends right next to his ear. Those combustion gases—containing gasoline juiced with methanol, benzene, acetone, and nitrobenzene—easily penetrated Nuvolari’s ears and nose and were absorbed directly into his skin and bloodstream.

GUTS AND GLORY…Italian racing legend **Tazio Nuvolari** (1892–1953) with his Alfa Romeo before the start of the 1935 Nice Grand Prix in France. Nuvolari easily won the 1936 Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island. *(notenoughcylinders.com)*

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Color My World

The works of John Marin, considered one of America’s finest water-colorists, were featured in a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. In addition to a review by art critic Lewis Mumford, Marin was featured in this mini bio on the opening pages…caricature by William Auerbach-Levy…

MASTER WATER-COLORIST…**John Marin’s** *Movement No. 2, Related to Downtown New York (The Black Sun)*, 1926. Image reproduced from the 1936 MoMA exhibition catalog. (moma.org)

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From Our Advertisers

The Oct. 24 issue opened with this advertisement by the distillers of Old Taylor, who continued to compare their product to the work of “masters,” here the painter Frederic Remington…

…on the opposite page, this spare ad from Chrysler, a stark contrast to their previous week’s very wordy appeal…

…the promoters of Budweiser took a cue from the whiskey distillers, invoking the words of an historic personage to promote their product…

…predating modern thermostats by decades, the mechanical Chronotherm was one of the earliest automated room thermostats ever produced by the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company…it was often used to control coal or early heating systems by automatically adjusting dampers or furnaces on a schedule…

The Minneapolis-Honeywell Chronotherm retailed for about $41 in the 1930s (equivalent to roughly $970 today). It was considered a high-end luxury upgrade for the home. *(si.edu)*

…Martini & Rossi would have about six more months to serve their vermouth on the Hindenburg before it would go down in a fireball on May 6, 1937…

…the illustrations in this No-Mal ad mimicked the style of Otto Soglow to market a new patent medicine touted as a stimulant and hangover cure, among other things…these remedies often contained heavy doses of caffeine plus aspirin, mild laxatives, and antacids, while some also contained the amphetamine Benzedrine…

…model railroading for adults started to build up steam in the 1930s…here’s a back of the book ad aimed at those who couldn’t afford to travel but who could afford a Scale-Craft kit…

…here’s a page from the 1936 Scale-Craft catalog…

…and an example of what you could build from a kit…

…and there’s no guessing the target audience for this brand of cigarettes…

…on to our cartoonists, Al Frueh was back with illustrations for the theater review section…

…Alain found nothing humorous about being a Good Humor man…

…a couple of spots by Abe Birnbaum (left) and unidentified at right (signature looks like PHRANK)…

…a stray arrow found its way into this cartoon by Charles Addams…

…Whitney Darrow Jr illustrated the childish side of politics…

…we zoom in for a close-up…

…Darrow again, making a new friends…

…Ned Hilton drew up an outfit that clashed with the salad course…

…James Thurber greeted a group of dour birds (interesting background with sporting scenes…one wonders why)…

…Otto Soglow gave us some shattered dreams…

…Alan Dunn visited the fiction section, no questions asked…

…and Dunn again…with an around the world adventure stuck in traffic…

…Fortune magazine probed the mysteries of middle class life, per Carl Rose…

…and we close with Helen Hokinson, and the unease of an approaching winter…

Next Time: Far-Fetched Faulkner…

The Radio City

The NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza have wowed visitors and performers alike for nearly 90 years. Today we look back at the remarkable foresight of the studios’ designers, who created spaces that would one day accommodate a new medium called television, which was still in its experimental stages.

Nov. 4, 1933 cover by **Robert Day**, who contributed a total of eight covers to *The New Yorker.*

However, before we jump in, let’s look at Robert Day’s cover for the Nov. 4 issue, which featured a familiar character who made his first appearance on the cover of issue #12 (May 9, 1925), and returned four years later looking much older in the dog days of August…

Cover of issue #12 (May 9, 1925) by **Rea Irvin** introduced our street sweeper, who returned Aug. 3, 1929 by the hand of **Gardner Rea.**

Day’s cover, however, was also a nod to the annual gathering of autumn leaves—an occasional cover theme that began with Peter Arno’s contribution to the Nov. 27, 1926 issue (below, left) and most recently expressed in Adrian Tomine’s cover for the Nov. 7, 2022 issue (with timely pandemic reference)…

Back to Radio City, Morris Markey recounted the technological wonders of the new NBC studios in his “A Reporter at Large” column, “Marconi Started It.” Markey noted the “fabulous quality” of the facilities, wired for the day when television would arrive. Excerpts:

GEE WHIZ…**Morris Markey** could be assured that some folks would be “goggled-eyed” by NBC studios, including the technophiles at *Popular Mechanics.* (westmb.org)

WHERE HISTORY WAS MADE…Studio 8H was the world’s largest radio studio when it opened in 1933. It would be converted for television in 1950. (westmb.org)

Markey marveled at NBC Studios’ various design innovations, including a revolving control room dubbed the “Clover Leaf”…

Almost 90 years later, the studios continue to serve the broadcast needs of the 21st century, including Studio 8H…

LIVE FROM NEW YORK…Studio 8H was the world’s largest radio studio when it opened in 1933. Converted to television in 1950, it has been home to *Saturday Night Live* since 1975. Above, SNL stage manager **Gena Rositano,** in 2015. Below, longtime SNL director **Don Roy King** at the controls for Studio 8H, also in 2015. (Dana Edelson/NBC via Directors Guild of America)

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Leopold!

Conductor Leopold Stokowski was no stranger to Studio 8H. From 1941 to 1944 he led the NBC Symphony Orchestra in that venue. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, Stokowski (1882–1977) began his musical career in New York City in 1905 as the organist and choir director at St. Bartholomew’s Church, but by 1915 he was conducting the famed Philadelphia Orchestra. Robert Simon reported on Stokowski’s return to New York for a performance at Carnegie Hall. A brief excerpt:

Stokowski had the distinct honor of being satirized in a 1949 Looney Tunes cartoon, “Long-Haired Hare,” in which Bugs Bunny disguised himself as the conductor and entered the stage to the astonished whispers of the orchestra…Leopold! Leopold!…

MAESTRO…**Bugs Bunny** as Stokowski in “Long-Haired Hare.”

Stokowski was no stranger to animation. The conductor appeared in silhouette in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in the film’s score. He even shook hands with Mickey Mouse.

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Bigga Badda Wolfa

The New Yorker took a look at the popular records of the day, and in addition to tunes by Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallée there was yet another release of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”…Ethel Shutta was the latest of seemingly dozens of artists to cash in on the Disney hit…

I’LL HUFF AND I’LL PUFF…Those who couldn’t get enough of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” could turn to Ethel Shutta’s rendition of the hit song on Columbia records. (discogs.com)

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Page-Turner

Writer Kay Boyle wasn’t afraid of wolves or any other subject for that matter, according to book reviewer Clifton Fadiman…

TOSSING A SALACIOUS SALAD…**Kay Boyle,** photographed by George Platt Lynes, 1941. (The Kay Boyle Papers, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University)

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A Grapeful Nation

As New Yorkers counted the days until the end of Prohibition, The New Yorker did its part to get readers back up to speed by enlisting the talents of one of the world’s great wine experts, Frank Schoonmaker, who had the enviable job of filing a series of wine reports for the magazine. His first installment of “News From the Wine Country” featured the Champagne region. Excerpts:

THAT FIZZY FEELING…Bottling the good stuff in the Champagne region, circa 1930. (wineterroirs.com)

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From Our Advertisers

Christmas was just around the corner, and F.A.O. Schwarz was READY with its 64-page catalog…

…White Rock anticipated the end of Prohibition with an ad featuring a miniature colonel who apparently needed a stiff drink to prepare for his wife’s return from abroad…

…Mrs. Hamilton Fish Jr, aka Grace Chapin, was married to the New York congressman from 1920 until her death in 1960, apparently enjoying many Camels along the way…her husband would go on living another 31 years and take three more brides before expiring at age 102…

…another cautionary tale from Chase & Sanborne about the perils of undated coffee…

…and with the holidays approaching, a jolly ditty from Jones Dairy Farm, home to little piggies who merrily dash toward their inevitable slaughter…

…and we jump to another back-page ad, this from the stately Plaza, where you could get a single room for five bucks a night…

…turning to the cartoons, we find George Price hitting his stride with multiple cartoons in consecutive issues…

…and taking a look at the recent elections…

…on to James Thurber, and continuing struggles on the domestic front…

…and that brings us to our next issue…

Nov. 11, 1933 cover by **Constantin Alajalov.**

…in which E.B. White had a thing or two to say about the latest edition of the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden.

HORSE SENSE AND SENSIBILITY…The National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden was a major event on New York’s social calendar; top and bottom right, scenes from the 1936 show; bottom left, undated scene circa 1960. (Stills from YouTube)

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Versatile Verse

Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978) was the author of children’s books and poetry, the latter genre most notably for The New Yorker. However, she attracted a wide audience for her light verse in other publications ranging from Ladies Home Journal to The Saturday Review.

LIGHT TOUCH…**Phyllis McGinley** in an undated photo. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for her book *Times Three—*the first writer of light verse to receive the prize. (wnyc.org)

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Oil and Water

Art and architecture critic Lewis Mumford found two very different visions of America in the works of contemporaries John Marin and Edward Hopper. Marin’s watercolors were featured at An American Place, while Hopper’s oil paintings and etchings were shown down the street at the Museum of Modern Art.

SIDE BY SIDE…**Lewis Mumford** found different visions of New York and the world at An American Place and MoMA galleries. At left, **John Marin’s** watercolor *From the Bridge, N.Y.C.* (1933); at right, **Edward Hopper’s** *Room in New York,* also from 1933. (Artists Rights Society/Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery)

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More From Our Advertisers

Okay, so I’ll buy the part about PBR’s ability to soothe “jaded nerves,” but I doubt it gave this guy “fresh energy” and “a sound, healthy body”…

…After thirteen long years, winemakers emerged from their cellars to glimpse the light of a new day…

…and yes, after thirteen long years, some folks would be yearning for their DRY SACK Sherry…

…the name Elizabeth Hawes was synonymous with high fashion in the late 1920s and 1930s—she owned one of the most exclusive couture houses in New York…

…an outspoken advocate of dress reform, Hawes (1903–1971) was referred to by one historian as “the Dorothy Parker of fashion criticism.” After attacking the fashion industry with her 1938 book, Fashion Is Spinach (Hawes wrote: “I don’t know when the word fashion came into being, but it was an evil day…”), she closed her fashion house and in 1942 took a job as a machine operator at a wartime plant in New Jersey. She became a union organizer, a champion of gender equality, and a critic of American consumerism.

IN A LEAGUE OF HER OWN…**Elizabeth Hawes** — writer, fashion designer and political activist, poses for a photograph in 1941. (Mary Morris Lawrence)

…speaking of consumerism, ooooh look! A radio “you can slip in your pocket,” depending of course on the size of your pocket…

…transistors would not come along until the late 1950s, so the Kadette still depended on tubes, and you had to plug it in somewhere, so no running down the beach with headphones, at least for awhile…

…it must have been a rare treat to sail on a ship like the SS Santa Rosa—situated between the ship’s two funnels, the dining room had an atrium stretching up two-and-a-half decks and featured a retractable roof…

…on to more cartoons, and more George Price…

…moving along, we received some big news from one of Helen Hokinson’s “girls”…

…an aside I’ve been meaning to include…in 1952, just three years after Helen Hokinson’s untimely death, a cartoonist for The Cincinnati Enquirer, Franklin Folger, debuted a cartoon called “The Girls.” The cartoon was eventually syndicated and appeared in more than 150 newspapers worldwide before Folger retired it in 1977. Perhaps I am missing something, but I cannot find a single reference to Folger’s obvious appropriation of Hokinson’s “girls”…some examples of Folger’s work from the early 1960s and another from H.H. for comparison:

…and onward to Peter Arno, and the trials of portrait artists…

…and we close with two by Barbara Shermund…

…rendered in different styles…

Next Time: Coach Arno…

Noblesse Oblige

Just three years before she would enter the White House as First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt was familiar to some New Yorkers for her social work, but was known to most as the wife of the Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This week we look at two issues, March 29 and April 5, 1930, both with covers by **Rea Irvin.**

In a profile featured the April 5 New Yorker, Helena Huntington Smith looked at the life of a woman who was a niece to former President Theodore Roosevelt and a fifth cousin (once removed) to her husband Franklin. A somewhat reluctant mother (who nevertheless had six children) in a marriage that was mostly a political arrangement, Eleanor devoted considerable time and energy to social causes. Below is a brief excerpt, accompanied by an illustration of Eleanor by Cyrus Baldridge.

ALBANY DAYS…Clockwise, from top left: **Eleanor Roosevelt** in 1933; Gov. **Franklin Roosevelt**, Eleanor, and their youngest son, **John**, in Albany in 1930; FDR being sworn in as Governor of New York, January 1929. (Wikipedia/Albany Group Archive)

IN HER ELEMENT…**Eleanor Roosevelt** with boy and girl scout volunteers at the University of Kentucky, July 1934. (eleanorroosevelt.org)

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No Laughing Matter

In a surprising twist, James Thurber took a hand at writing the “A Reporter at Large” column (titled “Cop Into College Man”) in the March 29 issue, visiting a new “Police College” in New York City. In this engaging piece, Thurber seemed thoroughly engrossed in the operation…

…and particularly in the mugshots of some of the city’s most notorious criminals, including gangster Jim Flanagan, “debonair in a Bangkok hat”…

…and in the college’s museum, filled with all manner of deadly implements…

PREPPING FOR PERPS…The April 1930 edition of *Popular Science* featured the opening of New York’s new Police College. (Modern Mechanix)

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Pluto’s Salad Days

In was something of a sensation in February 1930 when Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997) discovered the then-planet Pluto at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Howard Brubaker in “Of All Things” (March 29) had this to say about the achievement:

JUST A SPECK…Clyde Tombaugh poses with the telescope through which he discovered the planet Pluto at the Lowell Observatory on Observatory Hill in Flagstaff, Ariz., 1931. At right, images of the planet (specks indicated by arrows) were all the proof Tombaugh needed to confirm his discovery. (AP/NASA)

Thanks to a 2015 flyby by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, we now have a better idea of what Pluto, now classified as a “dwarf planet,” actually looks like…

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Dandy Doodle Mayor

Fillmore Hyde, author (and four-time national amateur squash tennis champion), penned this ditty in the March 29 issue in tribute to New York City’s dandyish mayor…

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Back for More

Also for the March 29 issue art critic Murdock Pemberton was back at the Museum of Modern Art — a new institution he met with skepticism when it opened in late 1929, but a place that was definitely growing on him as a destination to revel in the work of some of the world’s top modern artists, including the American Max Weber (1881-1961), whose retrospective was supposed to the big draw of MoMA’s latest show, but Pemberton seemed more impressed by French artist Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) and particularly by the Swiss-German Paul Klee (1879-1940).

AMERICAN CUBIST…**Max Weber’s** *The Cellist,* 1917, oil on canvas, was featured in Weber’s 1930 retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art; at right, Weber seated in front of *Interior with Music* (1930). (Brooklyn Museum/Smithsonian)

**Aristide Maillol’s** *Crouching Woman,* bronze, 1930. (MoMA)

Pemberton wrote that Klee’s show gave you “quite a feeling”…

Catalogs from **Max Weber’s** retrospective and **Paul Klee’s** exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. (MoMA)

…and when he compared Klee’s work to that of the other artists, Pemberton saw something “more potent even than electricity…signposts toward a glorious future”…

A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE…From left, **Paul Klee’s** *Actor’s Mask*, 1924, oil on canvas mounted on board; **Josef Albers’** 1929 photographic portrait of Klee, 1929; Klee’s *In the Grass,* 1930, oil on canvas. (MoMA/Guggenheim.org)

A week later, writing for the April 5 issue, Pemberton penned this piece for “The Talk of Town” about the work habits of artist John Marin…

OLD MAN AND THE SEA…**John Marin** in 1921, in a photograph by **Alfred Stieglitz**; Marin’s *Bathers*, 1932, oil on canvas. (mfa.org/Dallas Museum of Art)

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Who Needs a Vet?

The April 5 issue featured James Thurber’s latest installment of “Our Pet Department…

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Spend It Quickly

April 5’s “Talk” also featured this item about Al Capone’s release from prison in Philadelphia, lavishing money and gifts on prison employees as he made his exit from Eastern Penitentiary…

…it was no wonder, because officials at the prison didn’t treat Capone like some ordinary prisoner…

SALUTARY CONFINEMENT…Arrested outside a Philadelphia movie theater for carrying a concealed, unlicensed .38 caliber revolver, **Al Capone** was sentenced to a year in Eastern State Penitentiary. His last seven months were served in a cell (right) with fine furniture, oriental rugs, paintings, and a console radio, among other frills. (easternstate.org)

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This Al Could Sing

Upon the DVD release of Al Jolson’s 1930 film, Mammy, Dave Kehr of The New York Times wrote that Jolson was “Simultaneously one of the most significant and most embarrassing show business figures of the 20th century.”

That was not view of most audiences 89 years ago, when Jolson reigned as one of America’s most famous entertainers. In his review of Mammy for the April 5, 1930 issue of The New Yorker, critic John Mosher admitted that he didn’t care for minstrel shows depicted in the film, but not for any of the reasons we would cite today…

UGH…Clockwise from top left, **Al Jolson** and **Lois Moran** in *Mammy;* a studio promotional poster; Jolson as a minstrel performer in the film. (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

We have more racial stereotypes, this time to sell Stetson shoes…

…Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) continued to pay the bills by illustrating ads for Flit insecticide…

…while professional golfer Walter Hagen picked up some extra cash by launching his own line of golf underwear…

…Walter has been gone for fifty years, but you can still get his branded clothing from Dick’s Sporting Goods…

…Julian De Miskey picked up some extra work illustrating this house ad for The New Yorker…

…and then we have this spot from the American Austin Car Company, which produced cars licensed from the British Austin Motor Company from 1930 through 1934…interestingly, the ad doesn’t feature the car itself…

…which looked like this…

…on to our cartoons, Alan Dunn looked in on a devoted listener of S. Parkes Cadman’s Sunday radio broadcast…Cadman (1864-1936) was a British-born clergyman whose NBC radio broadcasts reached millions of listeners across America…

…signs of spring were noted by Otto Soglow…

…Don Herold shared an observation on stage entertainments…

…William Crawford Galbraith found unrequited love at the circus…

…while Barbara Shermund found a more agreeable pairing at a Manhattan cocktail party…

…Garrett Price found humor in the growing numbers of the down and out…

…and Peter Arno turned in this epic two-pager that illustrated the challenges of filming in nature…(caption: “Well, we can’t start till we get that robin out of there.”)

Next Time: Hot Jazz in Stone and Steel…

Mutt & Jeff

We close out November 1927 by looking at a hugely popular comic strip—Mutt & Jeff—that made cartoonist Bud Fisher both famous and wealthy.

screen-shot-2017-01-26-at-10-05-52-am — Nov. 19 and Nov. 26, 1927 covers by **Rea Irvin.**

The editors of the Nov. 26, 1927 issue of The New Yorker thought Fisher interesting enough to feature in a lengthy “Profile,” written by Kelly Coombs. A brief excerpt:

According to John Adcock’s terrific Yesterday’s Papers blog, by 1916 Bud Fisher was the highest paid cartoonist on earth. The New Yorker suggested his annual income was $300,000 (roughly equivalent to more than $4 million today). In addition to the strips, created by Fisher and a team of ghost illustrators/writers, Mutt & Jeff were featured in vaudeville engagements, theatrical shows, animated cartoons, comic books and toys.

muttmagicdark1380 — DIE LAUGHING…*Mutt & Jeff* themed toys included this joke kit from Mysto Manufacturing. I don’t quite get the joke featured on the cover, depicting Jeff’s casually twisted approach to murdering poor Mutt. (*Copyright MEL BIRNKRANT via* melbirnkrant.com—a truly amazing collection)

m902d5g — IT’S A LIVING…**Harry Conway (Bud) Fisher,** drawing a likeness of the character “Jeff” at a *Chicago Daily News* event in 1915. (Chicago History Museum)

Fisher began his career as a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle and started his strip about “two mismatched tinhorns” in 1907. It went into syndication the following year. Mutt and Jeff, originally titled A. Mutt, is regarded as the first American newspaper cartoon published as a strip of panels, making it the first “comic strip.”

There was obviously a time when American readers thought Mutt & Jeff hilarious, but I don’t quite get its appeal. In this strip from 1926, Jeff gets a pie in the face. The giant question mark was frequently employed by Fisher, as were the dotted eye lines and explanatory arrows like the one in the last panel. No, Jeff didn’t get his brains blown out by Mutt. It is only a pie! Hah!

muttjeff052326b — *Click on image to enlarge*

Another visual cliché from comics of yore was the angry wife wielding a rolling pin. Apparently Jeff refers to Mutt’s wife as an “Old Buzzard” and assumes she is already in bed (sorry about the poor quality of the reproduction). Jeff subsequently gets whacked with the rolling pin, and Mutt takes it on the bean with a flatiron. That is quite a feat, throwing a grown man through a window while simultaneously hitting him on the head with a flatiron…

muttjeff112429a — *Click on image to enlarge* (Both strips courtesy University of Michigan)

The duo were also featured in more than 300 animated “half-reelers” produced between 1913 and 1926, including Mutt and Jeff: On Strike from 1920. The short film (which can be viewed here) even includes rare footage of Bud Fisher himself, since the story–sort of a film within a film–involves the penniless Mutt and Jeff going on strike after they see a movie featuring Fisher’s lavish home.

screen-shot-2017-01-26-at-12-50-34-pm — STRIKEBREAKER…Still images from the silent half-reeler, *Mutt and Jeff: On Strike*. **Bud Fisher** is shown at home discussing terms over the phone with his striking characters. They lose. (www.filmpreservation.org)

Coombs concluded the profile with these observations concerning Fisher’s personal habits:

Fisher employed a number of assistants on the strip, including George Herriman (Krazy Kat) and a high-school boy named Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are). When Fisher appeared to lose interest in the strip in the 1930s, assistant Al Smith took over and drew the strip for nearly fifty years (but Smith didn’t sign his own name on the strip until after Fisher’s death in 1954).

In Yesterday’s Papers, Adcock notes that Fisher “was the unlikeliest person you could think of to draw Mutt and Jeff…along with most of his contemporary cartoonist-journalists pals, (he) enjoyed fights, chorus girls, gambling, and saloons. Fisher liked to shoot up hotel rooms with his pistols, one of which was a gift from Pancho Villa, indoors when he was drunk.”

Heads in the Clouds

Thanks to the race to fly across the Atlantic, toy models of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis and other planes were in high demand for the Christmas season, according to this item in the Nov. 26, 1927, “Talk of the Town:”

screen-shot-2017-01-27-at-9-48-40-am — BUILT TO LAST…A Metalcraft model kit (box, upper image, contents below) from the late 1920s. It was all metal in the days before plastic model kits. (eBay)

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At a Loss For Words

Jumping back to the Nov. 19, 1927 issue, we go from the low art of Bud Fisher to the high art of John Marin featured in “The Art Galleries” section. Art critic Murdock Pemberton wrote:

screen-shot-2017-01-27-at-10-01-51-am — SAVAGE WORK…**John Marin,** *White Horses – Sea Movement off Deer Isle, Maine,* 1926. (Whitney Museum of American Art)

But perhaps “high art” is not an accurate description of Marin’s paintings, since Marin himself wasn’t into “highfalutin words” to describe his work…

12032401444_4bb042eb04_b — HAUNTING BEAUTY…**John Marin**, *Echo Lake Franconia Range White Mountain Country,* 1927 (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.)

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In the previous week’s issue (Nov. 12) the Marmon 8 was advertised as an ideal car for women. Not to be outdone, the folks at Buick shot back with this colorful ad in the Nov. 19 issue:

The Nov. 19 issue also featured this strange advertisement from the famed Wanamaker department store. Strange mainly because of the illustration, which features a fashionable woman departing a fanciful aircraft studded with mullioned windows(!) and a stairway that stretches to improbable depths…oh, and in case the reader might miss the snob appeal associated with French furs, the words Paris, Parisian or French are featured ten times…

And finally, the ubiquitous New Yorker cartoon featuring the humorous mismatch of rich old sugar daddy and ditzy young mistress, courtesy of Julian de Miskey…

Next Time: More Funny Business…