Tag: Lotte Lehmann

Late Summer Chatter

Above: E.B. White noted the sounds of late summer ranging from jackhammers (that sounded like cicadas) to the songs of katydids predicting an early frost. (pafa.org/Ellyn B/Flickr/nwf.org)

For roughly four decades E.B. White’s “Notes and Comment” set the tone for each issue of The New Yorker, offering observations on daily life that sometimes were compiled from his “disarranged notes.”

September 5, 1936 cover by Adolph K. Kronengold.

For the September 5 issue White offered brief comments on everything from the German military buildup to the romantic life of singer Bobby Arnst.

SHE WENT APE OVER TARZAN…Photo at left: Singer/dancer Bobbe Arnst shares a laugh with her first husband, Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller—apparently her second marriage to divorce attorney Robert Cavenaugh wasn’t so full of yuks; White also noted the cicada-like sounds of air drills tearing up old trolley car lines—at right is the 1936 painting “End of 14th Street Crosstown Line” by early New Yorker contributor Reginald Marsh. The urban realist Marsh juxtaposed workers tearing up tracks with picketers demonstrating against Ohrbach’s, which would not allow employees to unionize. (whosdatedwho.com/pafa.org)

White also cited Cosmopolitan magazine regarding “the age of accumulation” (twenty-five to thirty-five), and noted the average speed of rival ocean liners for “New Yorkers hastening to the Scottish moors for the grouse shooting…”

CONSUMER REPORT…White cited Cosmopolitan regarding “the age of accumulation,” and considered the average speeds of the world’s fastest ocean liners, France’s SS Normandie (top), and Great Britain’s RMS Queen Mary. (instagram.com/ucla.edu)

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Sounds of Music

Paris correspondent Janet Flanner moved on from the Nazi Olympics in Berlin to the foothills of the Alps for the Salzburg Music Festival, where German dramatic soprano Lotte Lehmann and Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini made music together.

DRAMATIC DUO…Dramatic soprano Lotte Lehmann and conductor Arturo Toscanini were the big draw at the 1936 Salzburg Music Festival, which also featured the debut of the Trapp Family Singers, who were encouraged by Lehmann to enter the Salzburg Festival contest. (taminoautographs.com via stolpersteine-salzburg.at/en)

In August 1936 Lehmann discovered the Trapp Family Singers (made famous in 1965’s The Sound of Music). While approaching a villa available to let, Lehmann overheard the Trapp children singing in their garden. Due to her fame, Lehmann was able to persuade Captain Georg Von Trapp to allow his children to perform at Salzburg Festival.

Flanner also marveled at the Austria’s Grossglockner High Alpine Road—with the highest pass in Europe—and noted the bitter struggle between Nazis and Social Democrats that was dividing Austrians less than two years before the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria.

GETTING HIGH…At left, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road (Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse); at right, the Hohensalzburg Fortress (Festung Hohensalzburg) a large medieval fortress that is a prominent landmark in the city of Salzburg, Austria. Flanner noted that unbeknownst to gawking tourists, the fortress contained political prisoners. (Wikipedia)

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At the Movies

John Mosher found Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at the top of their game in the musical comedy Swing Time, but lamented the stodgy and laborious plot that burdened the non-dancing scenes.

BUSTING SOME MOVES are Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Swing Time. The film was the sixth of ten films starring Astaire and Rogers. (goldenageofcinemasite.wordpress.com)

Mosher also had a look at Girl’s Dormitory, which introduced audiences to the young French actress Simone Simon, and also checked out the latest Myrna Loy flick.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM…Clockwise from top left: Set at a Swiss boarding school, Girl’s Dormitory is a story about a middle-aged school director (Herbert Marshall) who resists the attentions of a forty-something professor (Ruth Chatterton) and instead hooks up with a 19-year-old student (Simone Simon);1936 photo of Simon by George Hurrell—Simon is is perhaps best remembered for her role in the 1942 American horror film Cat People and its sequel; Claire Trevor, Warner Baxter, and Myrna Loy in To Mary—with Love; cover of Movie Parade, a book on movie history when the history of film was just three decades old. (imdb.com/facebook.com)

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From Our Advertisers

The magazine opened with another enticing photo from Grace Line depicting an ocean cruise before the days of water slides, buffet lines and norovirus…

…some one-column selections from the back of the book, including an ad from the Camel Pen Company introducing an innovative fountain pen that contained a dry ink pellet—the user added water to dissolve the pellet into a year’s supply of ink…

…these days most of us use ball-point pens, and we are also so accustomed to automatic doors that they no longer seem “magic” as they did in the 1930s…

WONDERS NEVER CEASE…In 1931, Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant in West Haven, Connecticut featured the first automatic doors in America, invented by Stanley. (cbsnews.com)

…New York artist Sheila Raleigh employed the desert island trope to sell some beer for Jacob Ruppert…

…the inside back cover popped with this ad for the streamlined V-12 Lincoln Zephyr…

…the “Talk of the Town” occasionally featured these illustrated mini-bios, here highlighting Jesse Owens’ record-setting performance at the 1936 Olympics (illustration by William Cotton)…

…a couple of spots by George Shellhase…

…and Richard Taylor…

…Helen Hokinson gave us frenemies at a dog show…

…James Thurber looked out for cockroaches…

…Otto Soglow found a new use for a bass case…

…Soglow again, demonstrating the wonders of radio advertising…

…Alain showed us a man with a cagey cane…

…Peter Arno illustrated the trials of working with extras…

…Rea Irvin continued to chronicle achievements in industry (Peruna was a well-known patent medicine sold from the late-19th to mid-20th century—with its high alcohol content, Americans drank large amounts of Peruna during Prohibition)…

…a beat cop receives an unlikely confession, per Whitney Darrow Jr…

…and we close with Alan Dunn, in a forgettable situation…

Next Time: Tanned and Fit….