Lily Pons – A New Yorker State of Mind

Two Nights At The Opera

Above: Left image, coloratura soprano Lily Pons with Henry Fonda in I Dream Too Much;at right, Kitty Carlisle and Groucho Marx in A Night at the Opera. (rottentomatoes.com/IMDB)

The title of this post refers to two items below, which you’ll discover as we make our way through the December 7, 1935 issue of The New Yorker.

December 7, 1935 cover by **Robert Day.** A longtime contributor to *The New Yorker,* Day (1900-1985) contributed hundreds of cartoons as well as eight covers from 1931 to 1976.

**Robert Day** (photo from *This Week* anthology via Ink Spill.)

Our first night at the opera comes courtesy of RKO Pictures, which presented French-American coloratura soprano Lily Pons as the star of the musical rom-com I Dream Too Much. Critic John Mosher found the film enjoyable, singling out Pons for praise while chastising the screenwriters for interrupting the lively farce with some “social research.”

DREAM DATE…Clockwise, from top left: **Henry Fonda** in his third screen appearance as **Lily Pons’** love interest in RKO’s *I Dream Too Much;* movie poster and publicity photo of Pons from the film; **Lucille Ball** (seen here with actress **Esther Dale**), appeared in a bit part as a gawky American teenage tourist in Paris (which was actually an RKO studio lot)…little did Ball know that one day she would own that RKO studio lot with husband Desi Arnaz as home to their Desilu Productions facility. *(IMDB/Wikipedia/TCM)*

Mosher also said farewell to Will Rogers in his final film, In Old Kentucky, which he found to be a “minor affair.” He also reviewed The Land of Promise, a film about Palestine that indicated to Mosher that “life there is highly successful for all present.”

THIS IS GOODBYE…**Will Rogers** in a scene with **Dorothy Wilson** in Rogers’ final film appearance, *In Old Kentucky. (rotten tomatoes.com)*

ORIGIN STORY…According to the Israel Film Archive, **Judah Leman’s** *The Land of Promise* “laid the cinematic groundwork for all subsequent Zionist propaganda films that would follow.” *(IMDB)*

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E.B. White keeps us on the cinema trail with some thoughts on the film, Mutiny on the Bounty, namely a certain historical inaccuracy:

AHEAD OF HIS TIME…**E.B. White** noted that Roger Byam (**Franchot Tone**) would have to wait seventy years to learn about germ theory. In addition, the trailer for *Mutiny on the Bounty* (above) incorrectly referred to Tone’s character as an ensign, when in fact Tone’s role was as a midshipman. (Wikipedia)

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They Had It First

The swastika was among the more popular designs incorporated into southwestern tribal art during the American tourist era (roughly 1890 to the 1930s). For the Navajo, the symbol represented humanity and life, and was used in healing rituals (it was also widely used by tribal peoples across Europe and Asia). Tourism promoters (called “hotel men” here) encouraged the symbol’s use until the 1930s, when it was increasingly associated with Germany’s Nazi Party. E.B. White explained:

TOURIST FAVORITE…Navajo blankets such as this example, made from 1864 to 1910, were popular with tourists. (Wichita State University)

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Lois Long’s fashion column continued to be dominated by exhaustive Christmas shopping lists, in this issue stretching from pages 58 to 97…here are the first and last paragraphs of the column…

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A Woolly Read

Perhaps your special someone was hoping for a thousand-page book under the tree; then look no further than The Woollcott Reader, a collection of stories, essays and other literary gems by New Yorker personality and former “Shouts and Murmurs” columnist Alexander Woollcott. In this excerpt, book critic Clifton Fadiman noted that a signed copy could be had for $7.50.

MY GIFT TO THE WORLD…**Alexander Woollcott** in 1939, as photographed by **Carl Van Vechten**, and the $3 brown cloth edition. (Wikipedia/Abebooks.com)

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From Our Advertisers

Colorful advertisements brightened the 149 pages of the Dec. 7 issue…we begin with this colorful array from Martex…

…the women’s specialty shop Jane Engel commissioned one of the best-known commercial photographers of the day, Ruzzie Green, to capture this glamorous image…

…Caron Paris offered up this cheerful bouquet…

…the makers of White Rock were enjoying the fruits of post-Prohibition days…

…the publishers of Stage magazine highlighted Beatrice Lillie’s Broadway revue, At Home Abroad…

…the Capitol Theatre took out this full-page advertisement to tout the opening of the latest Marx Brothers film…

…here is a close-up of the ad’s “testimonials”…

…and what awaited audiences…

…the Lord & Thomas advertising firm imitated the New Yorker style in this full-page promotion…

…now who wouldn’t want a Philco “Radiobar” for the holidays?…

…found this one on 1stdibs.com…pretty cool…

…or you could get a little something for every one of your smoking friends (likely everyone)…

…and you could keep those holiday memories alive with a swell Kodak movie camera…

…Schrafft’s must have been something like an upscale Cracker Barrel…

…house ads from The New Yorker included this Otto Soglow-illustrated full pager…

…the magazine also touted books and poems by its contributors…

…and the Seventh New Yorker Album…

…more James Thurber here in this spot drawing for the “Books” section…

…and in this cartoon filled with holiday hijinks…

…Ilonka Karasz gave us a hockey goalie to open the calendar listings…

…George Price drew up this Depression-themed drawing at the bottom of the “Goings On” section…

…a great spot drawing by Aaron Sopher (1905–1972), who is perhaps best known for his depictions of everyday life in Baltimore…it was oddly placed amidst the “Christmas Gifts” section…

…according to Michael Maslin’s Ink Spill, Sopher contributed just two cartoons to the magazine, in the issues of June 15, 1929, and December 6, 1930 (pictured below)…

…back to the Dec. 7 issue, and at the Velodrome with Robert Day…

…who also visited an ill-suited Santa…

…Helen Hokinson pondered gift ideas…

…Carl Rose illustrated an unspeakable act at a progressive school…

…Mary Petty gave us a straightforward diagnosis…

…Alain asked us to ponder the fate of one man…

…Whitney Darrow Jr eavesdropped on some child philosophy…

…and we close with Peter Arno, and a groom’s surprise at the altar…

Next Time: Marxist Mayhem…

Dream Cars

Whether or not you could afford a new car in Depression-era New York, you could afford to take your mind off the hard times for a few hours and visit the annual National Automobile Show at Grand Central Palace.

The 1932 exhibition featured many familiar brands, and others that would not survive the decade. Bolstered in part by the largess of General Motors and its downscale LaSalles, Cadillac could offer a pricey edition of the Fleetwood (at $5,542, roughly equivalent to $100K today), but most car makers featured models with reduced prices and/or smaller engines, as well as new technologies and design features they hoped would attract buyers of modest means. Excerpts from The New Yorker’s “Motors” column:

CAN’T TOUCH THIS…The Cadillac V16 Fleetwood sat atop the American car world in 1932. (classicdriver.com)

LOOK, BUT DON’T BUY…*The* *New Yorker* noted the crowds gathered around the Studebaker –produced “Rockne” at the National Automobile Show. Named for the famed Notre Dame football coach **Knute Rockne** (who died in a 1931 plane crash), this 1932 model attracted plenty of gawkers at the show but few buyers. It was soon discontinued, and leftover Rocknes were disassembled and sent to Norway, where they were reassembled and sold to Scandinavian buyers. (conceptcarz.com)

DOUBLE VISION…The 1932 Oakland Roadster (left) marked the end of the Oakland Motorcar Company, which had been previously acquired by General Motors. That same year Oakland was reborn as the Pontiac division, and the Oakland Roadster was reimagined as the 1932 Pontiac Model 302 (right). (Hemmings/justamericanautomobiles.com)

PALACE OF DREAMS…Grand Central Palace (top right) sat at Lexington Ave. between 46th and 47th Streets. A favorite locale for manufacturers to display their latest wares, it was demolished in 1963; at left, images from the 1935 National Automobile Show; bottom right, 1932 copy of *The Wheel*, produced by Studebaker for distribution at auto shows. (freelibrary.org/chicagology.com)

Whether folks were able to shell out more than $5,000 for a Caddy or a mere $700 for Plymouth, many left the show with nothing more than dreams for better days. Howard Brubaker summed it up thusly in his “Of All Things” column:

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Darling Lily

Coloratura soprano Lily Pons (1898–1976) was not well-known in her native France when she took the Metropolitan Opera stage by storm in 1931—she would become the Met’s principal soprano and, in 1940, an American citizen. The singer was profiled by Janet Flanner in the Jan. 16 issue (caricature by Miguel Covarrubias). Excerpts:

FRENCH TOAST OF THE TOWN…Coloratura soprano **Lily Pons** was particularly associated with the title roles of *Lakmé* (pictured above, mid-1930s), and *Lucia di Lammermoor*. Pons was a principal soprano at New York’s Metropolitan Opera for 30 years, appearing 300 times from 1931 until 1960. (Pinterest/YouTube)

If you have a few minutes, check out Lily Pon’s 1935 performance of “The Bell Song” from the film I Dream Too Much, which co-starred Henry Fonda. Although the sound quality is not the greatest, you can still get a pretty good idea why Met audiences adored her.

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Fantasy Bridge

Satirist Ring Lardner found something rotten in the behavior of robber barons and politicians in the midst of the Depression, so he imagined a bridge game that brought together banker J.P. Morgan (Jr), John D. Rockefeller (then the richest person in America and perhaps the world), Sen. Reed Smoot of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (a catalyst for the Depression), and social worker Jane Addams. Excerpts:

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From Our Advertisers

If you were one of J.P. Morgan’s bankers, you might have considered hopping on a United flight instead of taking the train—within 20 years, airlines would make a serious dent into railroad’s corporate travel business…

…and if you were a successful banker, your daughter or granddaughter might have been an aspiring deb with some very specific needs…

…the Little King also had some specific fashion needs, as Otto Soglow brings us to the cartoon section…

…with the Auto Show in town, Helen Hokinson got her girls into the conversation…

…the “wizard control” they refer to was Buick’s gimmick to attract more women drivers to their product…here’s an ad from the Feb. 6 issue of the New Yorker:

…back to our cartoons with James Thurber, and the “war” that continued to brew between men and women (note artwork on the wall)…

…Al Freuh offered his perspective on meagre predictions for prosperity…

…as did one of William Steig’s precocious children…

…and Helen again with another privileged view of the downtrodden…

…Barbara Shermund showed us one woman’s interpretation of “belonging”…

…and Denys Wortman gave us one salesman who probably dreamed of some solitary drinking…

…on to our Jan. 23, 1932 issue…

…and this item in “The Talk of the Town,” which noted the challenges of publishing a book about Adolf Hitler…

…and a few pages later, we are treated to an E.B. White “song” written for delegates to the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments which was being convened in Geneva, Switzerland…

Delegates from sixty countries attended the Geneva conference. They were there to consider the German demand that other nations disarm to the same levels that had been imposed on them by the Treaty of Versailles. The conference deadlocked by the summer, and when it was reconvened in February 1933 Hitler had just assumed power in Germany. By fall 1933 Germany withdrew from both the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations, and the stage was set for another world war.

Here is a 1933 photo of the delegates to the Disarmament Conference before things went south:

A detail of the photo (below) reveals the identity of the tiny man seated at center: the representative from Germany—Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Just twelve years hence Goebbels would find himself trapped with Hitler and Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker as Soviet troops demolished the city above them. Goebbels and his wife, Magda, would poison their six children, and then themselves as the Third Reich crumbled to ashes.

A final note: The delegates weren’t alone in Geneva, as a number of peace organizations sent observers and demonstrators to the conference, many of them women:

APPEALS TO DEAF EARS…Women’s disarmament campaigner in Geneva, c.1932; right, a poster created by Dutch artist **Giele Roelofs** for the Northern Friends Peace Board and others. (London School of Economics/armingallsides.org.uk)

We’ll give the last word to Howard Brubaker in Jan. 30 “Of All Things” column:

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From Our Advertisers

With the National Automobile Show wrapping up, the Grand Central Palace prepared to welcome exhibitors for the annual Motor Boat Show…

…the woman in this next ad might have been better off in a boat than on the beach…I’m wondering if the artist had any idea that his or her illustration would be used to promote coffee…it’s hard to tell what is going on here…apparently a young woman has almost drowned and is receiving oxygen, or maybe she doesn’t really need it, and the perverted lifeguard and cop just want to ogle the poor beachgoer, who seems bored by the whole predicament…

…there is also something vaguely sexual going on in this ad for Vicks (what is he looking out for in panel four?)…the artist (the cartoon is signed “Len”) seems to be channeling one of Rea Irvin’s series cartoons…

…in the early 20th century it was fashionable to smoke imported luxury Egyptian cigarettes, or counterfeits like Ramses II, produced in the U.S. by the Stephano Brothers…

…the makers of Camel were among the most successful counterfeiters of Egyptian cigarettes — the camel, pyramids and palm tree motifs were no mistake, but by 1932 this established brand (launched in 1913) went less for snob appeal and more for the active, fresh-faced youths whose pink lungs were highly coveted by R.J. Reynolds…

…on to our cartoons, we begin with James Thurber and some more sexual tension…

…Garrett Price found a young hostess eager to to please…

…Perry Barlow introduced us to a young man who (almost) never forgets a face…

…William Crawford Galbraith dined with the uppers, not necessarily known for their literary sophistication…

…Barbara Shermund gave us a proud collector who managed to evade the Puritans in U.S. Customs…

…William Steig showed us pride of a different sort…

…and another by Steig displayed the antics of one of his “Small Fry”…

…and we end with Helen Hokinson, who found a local women’s club joining the debate raging far away at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva…

Next Time: Back in the USSR…

Rise of the Gangster Film

During the early years of the Depression and before censorship guidelines were imposed by the Hays Code, Hollywood cranked out a slew of “Pre-Code” films filled with sex and violence, including 1931’s Little Caesar, the first “talkie” gangster film that defined the genre for decades to come.