Above image: Groucho Marx, Margaret Dumont, and Lillian Roth in the Marx Brothers second film, Animal Crackers, 1930
The Marx Brothers were famous for a string of hit films in the 1930s, but some of the comedy on which those films were based went all the way back to the days of vaudeville and 1920s Broadway.
Animal Crackers was their second film (the first was 1929’s The Cocoanuts), and the last to be adapted from one of their stage shows. It was also the last Marx Brothers movie to be filmed at Paramount’s Astoria Studio in Queens before the brothers headed for Hollywood.
The New Yorker’s John Mosher reviewed the film version, which was playing at the Rialto Theatre:
Always partial to European directors, Mosher found Ernst Lubitsch’s Monte Carlo among the better films playing in the late summer.
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Fox in the Hen House
“The Talk of the Town” made light of Mayor Jimmy Walker’s plan to “rid the city of graft.” Ironically, Jimmy himself would be drummed out of office two years later for accepting bribes…
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From Our Advertisers
We have another lovely illustration from Carl “Eric” Erickson promoting the joys of smoking unfiltered cigarettes…
…these small ads for apartments in the back pages of the magazine promoted the bucolic vistas in Westchester…
…and European-style living on East 44th Street…
…as for comics, Peter Arno continued this running gag…
…as did Rea Irvin in another tableaux (originally running sideways, full page) featuring the clash of country bumpkins and city elites…
…Garrett Price looked in on the burdens of the wealthy…
…and Barbara Shermund caught some small talk at a cafe…
…back to Peter Arno, and a heated game of table tennis…
…and Gardner Rea, witness to modern-day crime reporting…
On to the Sept. 13, 1930 issue…
As I’ve noted many times before, the early New Yorker covered every sport under the sun (and especially elite sports such as yacht racing, tennis and badminton, golf and polo) but to my knowledge never covered a major league baseball game in its then five-year existence. Here, E.B. White, in his “Notes and Comment,” complains about the high price of tickets to polo matches…
…White, a well-known dog lover (and all-around animal lover), offered a rather cruel solution to a problem cat in this feature:
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Oh Never Mind
At first glance I thought this might actually be an article about a baseball game, but alas, it was a column by Ring Lardner (titled “Br’er Rabbit Ball”) that showed little enthusiasm for the game (the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal apparently soured his love for baseball). Excerpts:
Speaking of sports, we move to the advertisements and the helpful folks from Lucky Strike, who wanted to help you get in shape with a smoke…
…and another ad for Flit insecticide by Dr. Seuss, featuring an elephant that looked a lot like the future Horton, and some unfortunate racist imagery…
…yet another Peter Arno repeat with a new caption (is the joke growing stale, folks?)…
…and another in a series of 1930’s images by Ralph Barton…
…a maritime dilemma, courtesy Garrett Price…
…and apartment shopping with Constantin Alajalov…
Next Time: The Flying Misanthrope…
A New Yorker State of Mind 