Notre Dame Ramblers – A New Yorker State of Mind

The German actor Emil Jannings was well-known to American audiences when The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel) premiered at New York’s Rialto Theatre. Although the film was created as a vehicle for the Academy Award-winning Jannings (he won the Academy’s first-ever best actor award in 1929), it was the little-known Marlene Dietrich who stole the show and made it her ticket to international stardom.

Dec. 13, 1930 cover by **Ralph Barton,** surprisingly his only cover for the *New Yorker.* The illustration sadly belies Barton’s state of mind at the time; he would take his own life the following spring.

New Yorker film critics, including John Mosher, generally found foreign films, particularly those of German or Russian origin, to be superior to the treacle produced in Hollywood, and Jannings was a particular favorite, delivering often heart-wrenching performances in such silent dramas as The Last Laugh (1924) and The Way of All Flesh (1927). In those films he depicted once-proud men who fell on hard times, and such was the storyline for The Blue Angel, in which a respectable professor falls for a cabaret singer and descends into madness.

NO CONTEST…**Emil Jannings** had star billing for the English language version of **Josef von Sternberg’s** *The Blue Angel,* but it was **Marlene Dietrich’s** portrayal of cabaret singer Lola Lola that stole the show. (IMDB)

I was surprised by Mosher’s somewhat tepid review of this landmark film, which was shot simultaneously in German and English (with different supporting casts in each version). He referenced “bum dialogue,” which was doubtless the result of German actors struggling with English pronunciations. Filmed in 1929, it is considered to be Germany’s first “talkie.”

PRIDE BEFORE THE FALL…A proud and stern schoolmaster named Immanuel Rath (**Emil Jannings)** falls for cabaret singer Lola Lola (**Marlene Dietrich**), and from there his life unravels; he loses the respect of his pupils, then resigns his post to marry Lola. To make ends meet, Rath tries to sell racy photos of his wife, and then becomes a clown in her troupe and is regularly humiliated on stage. Destitute, he dies at the end of the film. (IMDB)

* * *

All Wet

Sergei Tretyakov’s avant-garde play Roar China made an impression on the New Yorker for the striking realism of its set, which featured an 18,000-gallon tank of water onstage at the Martin Beck Theatre. “The Talk of the Town” described some of the demands of the production:

STAYING AFLOAT…The elaborate set for Roar China featured a model battleship in 18,000 gallons of water.

ROAR CHINA! was an anti-imperialist play depicting the Wanhsien Incident during the Chinese Civil War. Many in the Chinese cast members were non-professional actors. (New York Public Library)

* * *

By Any Other Name

Like many college football teams in first decades of the 20th century, Notre Dame was referred to by a number of nicknames, including the “Fighting Irish.” In this “Talk of the Town” item, however, the team was known as the “Ramblers.” According to the University of Notre Dame, this nickname (along with “The Rovers”) was considered something of an insult: “(Knute) Rockne’s teams were often called the Rovers or the Ramblers because they traveled far and wide, an uncommon practice before the advent of commercial airplanes. These names were also an insult to the school, meant to suggest it was more focused on football than academics.”

RAMBLERS NO MORE…The 1930 National Champion Notre Dame football team. (nd.edu)

* * *

The Wright Stuff

Eric Hodgins penned a profile of aviation pioneer Orville Wright, who just 27 years earlier made a historic “first flight” with his brother, Wilbur, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. An excerpt:

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS: Aviation pioneer **Orville Wright** (1871 – 1958) sits in one of his biplanes dressed in a three-piece suit and a cap, Dayton, Ohio, 1909. (ge.com)

* * *

No Love Parade, This

French singer and actor Maurice Chevalier made his Hollywood debut in 1928 and quickly soared to stardom in America. French audiences, however, were not so easily swayed, especially the elite patrons Chevalier faced, alone on the stage, at the cavernous Théâtre du Châtelet. Janet Flanner explained in this dispatch from Paris:

THEY LIKE ME IN TINSELTOWN…**Jeanette MacDonald** and **Maurice Chevalier** in *The Love Parade* (1929). (IMDB)

GULP…**Maurice Chevalier** faced a tough crowd — his compatriots — at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet. (en.parisinfo.com)

* * *

Man’s Best Friend

The New Yorker’s book section recommended the latest from Rudyard Kipling, Thy Servant a Dog…

WOOF…Illustrations for **Rudyard Kipling’s** *Thy Servant a Dog,* by **Marguerite Kirmse.** (Etsy)

* * *

Fun and Games

As an extension to her fashion column, Lois Long shared some recommendations for holiday cocktail-party games:

KEEPING THINGS MERRY…Pokerette and Gee-Wiz were popular cocktail party diversions during the Christmas season of 1930. (Worthpoint/Invaluable)

* * *

From Our Advertisers

We start with this ad from Horace Liveright promoting Peter Arno’s third cartoon collection, Hullaballoo, featuring one of Arno’s leering old “Walruses”…

…Doubleday Doran offered a few selections for last-minute Christmas shoppers, led by the Third New Yorker Album…

…The UK’s Harold Searles Thorton invented the table top game we now call “foosball” in 1921 and had it patented in 1923. Below is possibly the game’s first appearance in the U.S. — an ad for a “new” game called “Kikit.” Foosball would be slow to catch on, but would rapidly gain popularity in Europe in the 1950s and in the U.S. in the 1970s…