With this post (No. 413), we mark the tenth anniversary of The New Yorker. Since I began A New Yorker State of Mind in March 2015, I’ve attempted to give you at least a sense of what the magazine was like in those first years, as well as the historical events that often informed its editorial content as well as its famed cartoons. Those times also informed the advertisements; indeed, in some cases the ads give us a better idea of who was reading the magazine, as well as their changing tastes and buying power as we moved from the Roaring Twenties to the Depression, and from Prohibition into Repeal.
I have also chosen this time to go on hiatus, and hopefully resume this blog when The New Yorker celebrates its centennial next February (this site will remain active and available, and I will continue to monitor comments and messages). Let us hope that the editors use the original Rea Irvin cover for that occasion, and restore his masthead above “The Talk of the Town” section. Perhaps some enterprising soul could start a petition.
Feb. 16, 1935 cover by Rea Irvin.
Moving on to the tenth anniversary issue, we find E.B. White recalling the world of The New Yorker’s first days. Given the massive economic and societal shifts that occurred from 1925 to 1935, those first days seemed distant to White, who felt old, “not in years but events.”
DAYS OF YORE…E.B. White noted the many changes that had taken place during The New Yorker’s first ten years, including, clockwise from top left, the passing of 1920s notables such as President Calvin Coolidge and two very different theatre impresarios—David Belasco and Flo Ziegfeld; White also recalled the much-publicized 1925 wedding of Abby Rockefeller to David Milton, the throngs of women who took to smoking in public in the 1920s and the drinkers who took their activities behind closed doors; and one of the early magazine’s beloved contributors, Ralph Barton, who offered his whimsical take on the news in “The Graphic Section” as well as in other illustrated features. (Wikipedia/Wikitree/Ephemeral New York)
White also noted a new craze that had originated around the same time as the birth of The New Yorker…
TWO ACROSS…Max Schuster and Richard Simon of Simon & Schuster, with their first crossword book, 1924. (americanbusinesshistory.org)
White concluded with these parting words, tinged with world-weariness, writing “More seems likely to happen.” One wonders if he imagined The New Yorker at 100, which in our day is just around the corner. Like White, many us have grown weary of this angry world, where indeed more seems likely to happen. Let us hope it is for the best.
Now, some unfinished business. We need to look at the previous issue, Feb. 9, 1935, before we close out the decade.
Feb. 9, 1935 cover by William Cotton.
We stay on the lighter side, joining critic John Mosher at the local cinema to appreciate Leslie Howard’s dashing performance in The Scarlet Pimpernel…
WORKING OVERTIME…Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Howard portrayed an aristocrat who leads a double life, publicly appearing as a dandy while secretly rescuing French nobles from Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. (PBS)
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From Our Advertisers
Cigarette manufacturers employed every angle from sex to health claims to move their product…not to be left out of any niche market, Chesterfield even went after the little old ladies…
…by contrast, the makers of Old Gold cigarettes featured a clueless sugar daddy and his leggy mistress in a series of ads drawn by famed pin-up artist George Petty…
…Otto Soglow would do well with advertisers during his career, promoting everything from whiskey to Pepsi and Shredded Wheat to department stores…in this case Bloomingdale’s…after William Randolph Hearst’s King Features Syndicate wrested The Little King away from The New Yorker in September 1934, this was the only way you would see the harmless potentate in the magazine…
…another New Yorker artist earning some ad dollars on the side was Constantin Alajalov, here adding a stylish flair for Coty…
…and then there’s James Thurber, who continued to contribute his talents on behalf of the Theatre Guild…
…and we move along to the Feb. 9 cartoons, with Thurber again…
…the issue also featured two by George Price…
…and Howard Baer supplied some life to this little party…
…now let’s return to the Feb. 15, 1935 issue…
…where John Mosher was back at the cinema, this time enjoying the story of a “beautiful stenographer”…
POPCORNY…Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert meet cute over popcorn in the romantic comedy The Gilded Lily. It was MacMurray’s second credited screen role, and it was the first of seven films in which Colbert and MacMurray would star together. (Wikipedia)
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More From Our Advertisers
In its bid for survival during the Depression, the luxury brand Packard introduced its first car under $1000, the 120. Sales more than tripled in 1935 and doubled again in 1936…
…meanwhile, Hudson was hanging in there with innovations such as the “Electric Hand”…it was not a true automatic transmission, but it did allow drivers to shift gears near the steering wheel…
…as demonstrated here…
…whatever you were driving, Goodyear claimed it would keep you the safest with their “Double Eagles”…
…I include this ad for Taylor Instruments because it features an illustration by Ervine Metzl, who would become known for his posters and postage stamp designs…
…Metzl’s design of a three-cent stamp commemorating the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with this Deco-inspired artwork by an unidentified illustrator…
…one of Helen Hokinson’s “girls” was going about her daily rounds…
…Garrett Price gave us a gatekeeper not quite up to his task…
…Gilbert Bundy was seeing stripes rather than stars…
…while James Thurber’s medium was getting in touch with an equine spirit…
…scientific inquiry knew no bounds in Robert Day’s world….
…and in the world of Alain (aka Daniel Brustlein), old habits died hard…
…and we close with Peter Arno, at his risqué best…
Above: W.C. Fields was a well-known juggler and vaudeville performer decades before he became even more famous in the movies of the 1930s.
William Claude Dukenfield was a vaudeville juggler who distinguished himself from other “tramp acts” by adding sarcastic asides to his routines. Internationally known for his juggling skills, by the turn of the century the man who billed himself as “The Eccentric Juggler” would become much better known by another name: W.C. Fields.
Feb. 2, 1935 cover by Roger Duvoisin.
In the first of a three-part profile, Alva Johnston pondered the secret behind Fields’ genius, an “inborn nonchalance” that he considered “the rarest of gifts.” Johnston surmised that some of that genius derived from the volatile relationship Fields had with his father, and the street-smarts he gained as a runaway at age eleven. It is no surprise, however, that these childhood stories of hardship were significantly embellished by the great wit himself.
A STAR IS FORMED…Clockwise, from top left, W.C. Fields in his youth; Fields was an internationally known juggler, seen here in his vaudeville days in the early 1900s; Fields made his screen debut in 1915, seen here in his second film, Pool Sharks (1915); Fields with Carol Dempster in Sally of the Sawdust, a 1925 silent comedy film directed by D. W. Griffith. (Pinterest/YouTube)
Johnston also described Fields’ acting style and demeanor, noting that the actor’s asides were likely inspired by his mother, Kate Spangler Felton, who was known for her doorstep witticisms.
NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE WAS A GOOD YEAR for W.C. Fields, who starred in It’s a Gift (right), released the previous December, and in the 1935 screen adaptation of Charles Dickens’sDavid Copperfield, as the character Wilkins Micawber. (MGM/IMDB)
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Macabre Diversions
In the days before television and the internet, folks got their dose of the sensational and macabre from the tabloids, or, on occasion, in real life. Before crime or accident scene investigations became more sophisticated, it was not uncommon for crowds to mob grisly death scenes, including the car containing the bullet-riddled bodies of notorious bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Their Ford automobile, pocked with 112 bullet holes, became a popular traveling attraction at fairs, amusement parks, and, in February 1935, at a car dealer’s showroom in Missouri. E.B. White explained:
BEFORE THE INTERNET, folks got their ghoulish thrills by rubbernecking at famous crime scenes. At left, a crowd gathers around the bullet-riddled car belonging to Bonnie and Clyde. According to one account, at the scene of the police ambush on Louisiana State Highway 154, nearly everyone collected souvenirs including shell casings and bloody pieces of clothing from Bonnie and Clyde. One man even tried to collect Clyde’s left ear with a pocket knife; at right, unidentified man standing next to the “death car.” (KXAN/unt.edu)
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Saar Kraut
Janet Flanner mused on the recent plebiscite in the Saarland, which following World War I was seized from Germany and placed under the governance of a League of Nations commission. Much to the dismay of the French, the majority German population voted to return the Saar region to Germany, and its Nazi leadership.
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Over the Rainbow
In a previous column, Lois Long took aim at the Rockefeller Center’s new Rainbow Room, dismissing it as a tourist trap filled with interminable strains of organ music. In her latest column, Long retracted some of that vitriol, finding the entertainment (and, one supposes, the food) more to her liking.
THE ‘INCORRIGIBLE’ Beatrice Lillie (left) delighted Lois Long and audiences in the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center; at right, ballroom dancers Lydia and Joresco take to the floor in the then newly opened Rainbow Room, 1934. (Pinterest/#rainbowroomnyc)
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From Our Advertisers
As Lois Long mentioned in “Tables for Two,” British actress and singer Beatrice Lillie was appearing at in the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center; according to the ad below, also featured were ballroom dancers Lydia and Joresco and bandleader Jolly Corburn…
…at first I though this was Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne shilling for Luckies, but the resemblance isn’t quite there, plus I’m not aware of the Broadway legends ever endorsing any product, let alone cigarettes…
…the folks at Hormel continued to feature notable Frenchmen who were known to enjoy French onion soup, although this particular image doesn’t do much for one’s appetite…
…the Bermuda Trade Development Board continued to feature colorful ads that enticed New Yorkers away from the late winter blahs…
…this ad for Schaefer is a bit odd…I guess the artist wanted to suggest a handbill, and therefore tilted the image it at an angle, unsuccessfully, one might add…
…The Theatre Guild once again called upon the talents of James Thurber to advertise their latest production…
…which segues into our cartoons, with Thurber once more…
…Al Frueh did his part to promote the stage with this illustration for the theatre section…
…Otto Soglow offered his spin on pairs figure skating…
…Gardner Rea explored the world of art appreciation…
…Helen Hokinson aptly supplied this cartoon for Lois Long’s fashion column…
…Whitney Darrow Jr. showed us the consequences of classified advertising…
…Barbara Shermund clued us in on the latest gossip…
…and we close with Peter Arno, and one butcher’s cold greeting…
Above, left, a 1935 portrait of Gertrude Stein by Carl Van Vechten; right, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas arriving in New York aboard the French Line’s SS Champlain in 1934. (Library of Congress/AP)
Much of America’s literary world was abuzz about the arrival of Gertrude Stein in New York after her nearly three-decade absence from the States. Audiences were mostly receptive to Stein’s lectures, even if they were largely unintelligible, but The New Yorker would have none of it.
Nov. 17, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin.
Stein (1874–1946) visited the U.S. at the urging of friends who suggested that a lecture tour might help her gain an American audience for her work. She crisscrossed the country for 191 days, delivering seventy-four lectures in thirty-seven cities.
Writing for the Smithsonian Magazine (October 2011), Senior Editor Megan Gambino notes that publishing houses regarded Stein’s writing style as incomprehensible (Gambino writes that shortly after her arrival in the U.S., “psychiatrists speculated that Stein suffered from palilalia, a speech disorder that causes patients to stutter over words or phrases”), but in 1933 “she at last achieved the mass appeal she desired when she used a clearer, more direct voice” in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. However, Stein was still best known in the U.S. for her “insane” writings, as one New York Times reporter described Stein’s work upon the writer’s arrival in New York. Excerpts from the Oct. 25, 1934 edition of the Times:
Stein had also achieved success in America via her libretto to Virgil Thomson’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts. Prior to her visit, Stein was featured in a newsreel reading the “pigeon” passage from the libretto, which James Thurber satirized in this piece titled “There’s An Owl In My Room.” Excerpts.
Here is a YouTube clip of the newsreel satirized by Thurber. Stein begins her “pigeon” reading at the 30-second mark:
If Thurber found the libretto ridiculous, it was an opinion not necessarily shared by audiences who attended Four Saints in Three Acts, which premiered in Hartford, Connecticut, before making a six-week run on Broadway.
SAINTS AND PIGEONS…The original cast of Four Saints in Three Acts, onstage at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1934; at right, Gertrude Stein reviews the libretto for Four Saints with American composer Virgil Thomson, 1934. (Harold Swahn/Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)
Since Stein had never seen the opera performed, writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten convinced Stein and Toklas to fly on an airplane for the first time in order to be able to see the play in Chicago.
FLIGHT INSURANCE…Stein and Toklas were anxious about flying, so Van Vechten gave each a small Zuni fetish—a good luck charm as they prepared to board their plane at Newark. (Boatwright Memorial Library, The University of Richmond)
Thurber wasn’t the only New Yorker writer to throw shade on Stein’s visit. In his “Books” column, Clifton Fadiman described Stein as a “mamma of dada” and a “Keyserling in divided skirts” (Hermann Keyserling was a non-academic German philosopher known for his platitudinous, obscure writings). Excerpt:
Fadiman continued by excoriating Stein’s latest book, Portraits and Prayers, likening its “shrill, incantatory” quality to “the rituals of a small child at solitary play.”
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Over the Rainbow
We leave Gertrude Stein for the time being and check in with Lois Long, who was sampling the fall attractions of the New York nightclub scene in “Tables for Two.” In these excerpts, the 32-year-old Long continued her pose as a much older woman (“about to settle down with a gray shawl”) as she bemoaned the bourgeoisie excess of places like the Colony, once known for its boho, speakeasy atmosphere. And then there was the Rainbow Room, with its organ blaring full blast to the delight of gawking tourists.
LOST IN NEW YORK…Lois Long lamented the demise of cafe life in Manhattan; from left, the Colony, circa 1940, which went from boho to upscale; the 21 Club, a favorite Prohibition-era haunt of Long’s where she was suddenly a nobody; and high above the city, the Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, and its interminable organ music. (Pinterest/Alice Lum via Daytonian in Manhattan/nycago.org)
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From Our Advertisers
Just one ad from the Nov. 17 issue (more to come below)…the latest athlete to attest to the energizing effects of Camel cigarettes…Cliff Montgomery (1910–2005) was famed for a hidden ball trick play that led one of the greatest athletic upsets—Columbia’s 7-0 win over Stanford in the 1934 Rose Bowl. Montgomery would play one year with the NFL Brooklyn Dodgers, and would later earn a Silver Star for his heroism during World War II…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with Robert Day’s jolly illustration for the “Goings On About Town” section…
…Rea Irvin looked into fair play among the fox hunting set…
…Garrett Price gave us a tender moment among the bones at the American Museum of Natural History…
…and Peter Arno introduced two wrestlers to an unwelcoming hostess…
…on to Nov. 24, 1934 issue, and the perils of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as illustrated on the cover by William Cotton…
Nov. 24, 1934 cover by William Cotton.
…where we find still more scorn being heaped upon Gertrude Stein. “The Talk of the Town” offered this observation (excerpt):
…and E.B. White had the last word on Stein in his Dec. 1, 1934 “Notes and Comment” column:
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There Goes the Neighborhood
Returning to the Nov. 24 issue, Alberta Williams penned a lengthy “A Reporter at Large” column, titled “White-Collar Neighbors,” about the new Knickerbocker Village development in the Lower East Side. Real estate developer Fred French razed roughly one hundred buildings to build what has since been criticized as an example of early gentrification in Manhattan. Williams assessed the development after more than a year of construction, finding that despite federal funding, the leasing company had yet to rent any apartments “to Negroes or Orientals.” Although the development was meant to serve some of the families it displaced, the vast majority were forced to move back into slums due to escalating rents.
BREATHING ROOMS…Knickerbocker Village in 2019. To make way for the development, one hundred buildings were razed in the “Lung Block,” so named because of its high tuberculosis mortality rate. The development continues to be designated as affordable housing. (Wikipedia)
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Dollmaker
Raised in rural Nebraska, at an early age Rose O’Neill (1874–1944) demonstrated an artistic bent, and was already a published illustrator and writer when she drew her first images of “Kewpie” around the year 1908. A German doll manufacturer began producing a doll version of Kewpie in 1913, and they became an immediate hit, making O’Neill a millionaire and for a time the highest-paid female illustrator in the world. When Alexander King penned a profile of O’Neill, Kewpies were no longer the rage, but O’Neill was nevertheless determined to find success in a new doll line. Excerpts:
QP QUEEN…Clockwise from top left, Rose O’Neill circa 1910, just before her Kewpie dolls made it big; Kewpie doll in original box, undated; as the Kewpie craze faded in the 1930s, O’Neill tried to launch a new line called Little Ho Ho, a laughing baby Buddha, but before production plans were finalized the doll factory burned to the ground; a 1935 ad for a Rose O’Neill-branded “Scootles” doll, another attempt at a comeback. (Wikipedia/Pinterest/museumobscura.com)
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Last Call
Lois Long was back with another installment of “Tables for Two” and in these excerpts she found the Central Park Casino a welcome place to hang out, apparently unaware that Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had already served an eviction notice to the Casino’s owners (Moses would tear down the Casino in 1936, mostly to settle a personal vendetta). Long also found respite at the Place Piquale, which featured the musical stylings of Eve Symington.
BYE BYE…The Central Park Casino was not long for the world when Lois Long paid an enjoyable visit in November 1934. Long also found a good time at the Place Piquale, which featured the “startling,” deep voice of cabaret singer Eve Symington. (centralpark.org/Pinterest)
At the Place Piquale, Long was “grateful” to see that silent film star Louise Brooks was also a good dancer. An icon of Jazz Age flapper culture, Brooks loathed the Hollywood scene and the mediocre roles it offered, and after a stint making films in Europe she returned to the States, appearing in three more films before declaring bankruptcy in 1932. A former dancer for the Ziegfeld Follies, Brooks had turned back to dancing in nightclubs to make a living.
IT’S A LIVING…Promotional photo for the Place Piquale featuring Louise Brooks (sans her familiar flapper bob) and Dario in “Spectacular Interpretive Dances,” April 17, 1934. (books0977.tumblr.com)
…and dance remains a theme with John Mosher’s film review of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger musical The Gay Divorcee, which was based on the 1932 Broadway musical Gay Divorce starring Astaire and Claire Luce.
YOU WILL HAVE TO DANCE BACKWARD, IN HEELS…Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire trip the light fantastic in The Gay Divorcee. (precode.com)
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Using Her Heads
Clifton Fadiman praised Peggy Bacon’s collection of caricatures, Off With Their Heads!, which included drawings of fellow New Yorker contributors as well as various Algonquin Hotel acolytes. Excerpt:
HEAD HUNTER…Peggy Bacon offered up caricatures of forty celebrities in her new book, Off With Their Heads! Bacon (1895–1987) contributed cartoons as well as poetry and fiction to The New Yorker from 1927 to 1950. Clockwise, from top left, title page with Bacon’s self-portrait; undated photo of Bacon, likely circa 1930; caricatures of Dorothy Parker, Carl Sandburg and Heywood Broun. (villagepreservation.org/printmag.com/Wikipedia–Peter A. Juley & Son)
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More From Our Advertisers
“Beautiful Vanderbilts” Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt and Miss Frederica Vanderbilt Webb wowed one unnamed dermatologist who discovered that both had 20-year-old skin even though they were seven years apart! “Mrs. Reginald” was Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, who was thirty when this ad was produced (Miss Frederica was apparently twenty-three). We’ve met Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt before, shilling for Pond’s—she was the maternal grandmother of television journalist Anderson Cooper, and earned her “bad mom” rep from Vanderbilt vs. Whitney, one of America’s most sensational custody trials…
…we move from skin care to who cares…in this case how many Spud cigs you smoke…hell, smoke three packs a day if you like, the cooling menthol will always keep you feeling fresh even as your lungs gradually darken and shrivel up…
…and here’s a lesson from the makers of Inecto hair dye, no doubt a company solely run by men, who schooled wives with the advice that you’d better color that gray hair pronto or your hubby will kick you to the curb…
…the New York American was a Hearst broadsheet known for its sensationalism, however it did claim Damon Runyon, Alice Hughes, Robert Benchley and Frank Sullivan among its contributors…the morning American merged with the New York Evening Journal to form the American and Evening Journal in 1937. That paper folded in 1966…
…illustrator Stuart Hay drew up this full page ad for the makers of Beech-Nut candy and chewing gum…when I was a kid we used to call this “grandpa gum”…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with a Thanksgiving spot by Alain (Daniel Brustlein)…
…Barbara Shermund delivered another life of the party…
…George Price was finally bringing his floating man back to earth…
…Otto Soglow gave us an unlikely detour…
…Gardner Rea signaled the end to the 1933-34 Chicago World’s Fair…with a boom…
…Leonard Dove dialed up a familiar trope…
…and we close on a more pious note, with Mary Petty…
Above: Bill "Bojangles" Robinson demonstrating his famous stair dance, which involved a different rhythm and pitch for each step. At left, Robinson in Broadway's Blackbirds of 1928; at right, publicity photo circa 1920s. (Vandamm collection, New York Public Library/bet.com)
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1878–1949) is considered one of the greatest tap dancers of all time, introducing a style of remarkable lightness and complexity that was perhaps best represented by his famous stair dance.
Oct. 6, 1934 cover by Charles Alston. This was Alston’s only New Yorker cover. Active in the Harlem Renaissance, Alston was also a painter, sculptor and muralist (see more on Alston at the conclusion of this post).
St. Clair McElway wrote about the 57-year-old Robinson in a two-part profile that examined his personal life and habits, including his propensity for getting shot. Two brief excerpts:
The New Yorker profile coincided with Robinson’s rising career in films, including four he made with Shirley Temple. For the 1935 film The Little Colonel, Robinson taught the stair dance to the child star, modifying his routine to mimic her movements. Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history (however, the step dance scene was cut from the film shown to Southern audiences). Temple and Robinson, who became lifelong friends, also appeared together in 1935’s The Littlest Rebel, 1938’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and 1938’s Just Around the Corner.
DANCING WITH THE STAIRS…Bill Robinson was also known as Bojangles, a nickname from his childhood in Richmond, Virginia. Clockwise, from top left, with his second wife Fannie Clay in 1933; performing the stair dance with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel (1935); profile illustration by Peggy Bacon; Robinson with Temple in 1938’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. (blackpast.org/Wikipedia)
Robinson is remembered for his generous support of fellow dancers including Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr and Ann Miller, as well as his support for the career of 1936 Olympics star Jesse Owens.
FAST IN BOTH DIRECTIONS…Robinson befriended Jesse Owens (left) after the track & field great returned from the 1936 Olympics (where Owens won four golds). Known for his generosity to his friends, Robinson helped Owens establish a successful post-Olympics career. Robinson himself was also something of a runner, having set the world record for running backward in 1922 (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). (Public domain image)
Although Robinson was the highest paid black performer of his time, his generosity with friends as well as his gambling habits left him penniless at his death from heart failure in 1949. Longtime friend Ed Sullivan paid for Robinson’s funeral, and more than 30,000 filed past his casket to pay their respects.
I’VE STILL GOT IT…Bill Robinson with Lena Horne in 1943’s Stormy Weather, a film loosely based on Robinson’s own life. (MoMA)
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In a Romantic Mood
That is how St. Clair McKelway found Hollywood in two of its latest offerings, The Barretts of Wimple Street and Caravan. To his relief, he found the Hollywood version of Barretts quite “sensible”…
LET’S BE SENSIBLE…The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) starred Fredric March and Norma Shearer in the lead roles. (TCM)
…as for Caravan, McKelway wrote that he’d “never seen a picture with so much grinning in it.” He found the “peculiar, unreal gleam” of the actors’ teeth a real distraction in closeup shots.
THAT PEPSODENT SMILE…Charles Boyer and Loretta Young showed off their pearly whites in 1934’s Caravan. (IMDB/TCM)
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From Our Advertisers
The Oct. 6 issue opened with a study in contrasts: an image of two Civil War veterans swapping stories over whiskey on the inside front cover, paired with an illustration of a lithe model sheathed in the latest fashion from Bergdorf…
…the folks at Campbell’s continued to suggest that their canned soup was a delight of the elite…
…Heinz took a similar tack, showing the smart set having fun with their sandwich spreads…
…Lord & Taylor touted its “tomorrow look” in furniture…
…R.J. Reynolds continued its series of “distinguished women who preferred Camel’s “costlier tobaccos,” adding to their growing list a the “charming debutante” Evelyn Cameron Watts, who later became Evelyn Watts Fiske (1915–1976)…
…in contrast to Camel’s fashionable ads, the upstart menthol brand Kool offered a series of cheap, back-page ads featuring a smoking penguin, here in the Halloween spirit (detail)…
…another recurring back page ad was this weird spot from Satinmesh, a product that apparently helped close a woman’s “gaping pores”…those pores apparently prompted one man to ponder the eternal why…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with a two-page spot by Carl Rose…
…James Thurber spiced up a game of ping-pong…
…Mary Petty explored the miracle of birth…
…Peter Arno discovered you’re never too old to play with toys…
…Garrett Price offered a young man’s perspective on a father’s avocation…
…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) gave us a disappointed plutocrat on vacation in Mexico…
…George Price continued to mine the humor of his “floating man” series…
…and contributed a second cartoon that featured some office hijinks…
…and Otto Soglow returned without The Little King, offering in its stead the closest thing to royalty in America…
Before we sign off, a note on the Oct. 6 cover artist, Charles Henry Alston (1907–1977). A Harlem-based painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist and teacher, Alston was active in the Harlem Renaissance and was the first Black supervisor for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. In 1990, Alston’s bust of Martin Luther King Jr. became the first image of an African American displayed at the White House.
Clockwise, from top left, Charles Henry Alston’s 1970 bust of Martin Luther King Jr; Walking 1958; Andrew Herman photo of Alston, 1939; Midnight Vigil, 1936. (Smithsonian/Wikipedia/Columbia.edu)
Above: Newsreel cameramen perch on boards resting on a windowsill to get a birds-eye view of a passing parade, circa 1930. (Public Domain Image)
We marvel at, and sometimes decry, today’s instantaneous news coverage of wars, disasters and the like, but ninety years ago newsreel crews did a remarkable job of filming and delivering the latest news to thousands of theaters across the U.S. and around the world.
Sept. 22, 1934 cover by Harry Brown.
In his “A Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey penned a lengthy account of Fox Movietone’s coverage of the SS Morro Castle disaster. En route from Havana to New York City on Sept. 8, 1934, the luxury liner caught fire near the New Jersey coast. Due to the ship’s design and the ineptitude of the crew, the blaze claimed 137 lives. Markey described how newsreel crews—with their bulky cameras and sound equipment—went into action, including a cameraman who “goaded” a pilot into taking him aloft through vicious weather conditions.
GUTS AND INGENUITY took newsreel reporters to places high and low. Clockwise, from top left, title card from a 1935 Fox Movietone newsreel; Jack Lieb goes aloft to get capture newsreel footage in an undated photo—Lieb was a cameraman for Hearst’s News of the Day; a 1930s Fox Movietone camera; the SS Morro Castle ablaze off the New Jersey Coast on Sept. 8, 1934. (Wikipedia/Lieb photo Courtesy of Bette Marshall via unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov)
Somehow the cameraman aboard the airplane (which was forced down by weather three times) was able to get his footage to the Movietone office by noon, less than seven hours after the office first received word of the disaster. By three o’clock, five thousand feet of film from all sources was being developed.
UP NORTH AND DOWN UNDER…Movietone news had crews stationed around the world, including field staff in Sydney (top, from 1938), and in Toronto, circa 1930. (Nat’l Library of Australia/City of Toronto Archives)
Markey concluded with this observation about the “rugged” and persistent newsreel cameramen:
In the aftermath of the Morro Castle disaster, a scene of enormous tragedy was turned into a tourist attraction…
GAWKERS AND HAWKERS…The charred hulk of the SS Morro Castle came to rest on the shore near the Asbury Park boardwalk, which became a popular spot for souvenir salesmen and photo-ops. Tourists flocked to the site from September 1934 to March 1935, when the ship was finally towed away. Note the postcard (bottom) advertising homemade candy over an image of the charred ship. (ripleys.com/side-o-lamb.com)
Fox Movietone News produced sound newsreels from 1928 to 1963, and in the UK as British Movietone News…here is Movietone footage of the Morro Castle disaster, as presented by British Movietone in 1934:
* * *
Up In The Old Hotels
Last week “The Talk of the Town” looked in on one of Manhattan’s oldest saloons, McSorley’s. For the Sept. 22 “Talk” the subject was “Oldest Hotels,” two of which, The Cosmopolitan and The Grand, remarkably survive to this day.
HANGING IN THERE…The 1845 Brevoort House hotel at 15 Fifth Avenue (top left) was torn down in 1952, however the 1868 Grand Hotel (right) at 1232–1238 Broadway and the 1845 Cosmopolitan Hotel (below, left) at Chambers Street and West Broadway still stand today. (Museum of the City of New York / Chester Higgins Jr. for The New York Times)
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The Six-Million Dollar Road
The first roadway designed exclusively for automobile use was likely the Long Island Motor Parkway, privately built by William Kissam Vanderbilt II because he wanted a road suitable for auto racing. He established the Vanderbilt Cup races on local roads in 1904, but after two spectators were killed and many others injured, in 1908 he began building what would become a 45-mile (72 km) toll road from Queens to Lake Ronkonkoma. After two mechanics were killed in a 1910 race, the New York Legislature banned racing on the road, which the state took over in 1938.
ROAD WARRIOR…William Kissam Vanderbilt II (top right) staged his Vanderbilt Cup Races on his private road until a fatal accident put a stop to the fun in 1910; At bottom right, a surviving section of the road today. Most of the road in Queens is a bicycle trail, and other segments still serve as parts of a county road. (nyheritage.org/Wikipedia-Steve Nowotarski/ny1.com)
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From Our Advertisers
I have nothing against accordion music, despite years of exposure to Lawrence Welk during my youth, but I find it hard to believe that a Park Avenue socialite (identified here as Mrs. René Du Champ Bellinger) would contemplate tormenting her posh friends with a Hohner squeezebox…
…Esquire magazine was barely a year old when it posted this ad in The New Yorker…its appeal to men (and their anxieties) keeps it going today…
…it’s interesting how companies in the 19th century and on through the 1950s featured idealized, bird’s eye images of their factories in advertising, doubtless believing that consumers associated size (and smokestacks) with prosperity, and therefore a quality product…
…White Rock, however, has used the image of the Greek goddess Psyche for more than a century to promote the purity of its spring water…
…purity was also the main point of this ad from Daggett & Ramsdell, who hawked their wares to the Park Avenue set…after more than 130 years D&G is still in the beauty business…
…this next ad is almost unbelievable…single rooms starting at $5, double rooms $7, and a whole suite for $10…at the Plaza…okay, $10 is roughly equivalent to $225 today, but half of that could get you a single…
…and yet another unlikely claim from R.J. Reynolds regarding the energizing qualities of their Camel cigarettes…it seems the last thing you would need while climbing a mountain is smoke in your already over-taxed lungs…
…however, let’s give proper due to Georgia Engelhard (1906–1986), who scandalized the mountaineering world by ditching the Victorian climbing skirt in favor of a pair of climbing pants. Engelhard was the first female climber to ascend many of the peaks in the Rockies…
Georgia Engelhard in a 1922 photo attributed to her friend Alfred Stieglitz. (nga.gov)
…it seemed like nearly everyone smoked in the 1930s, even in ads that had nothing to do with tobacco companies (detail)…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with Richard Decker and some retail competition…
…George Price drew up a curiosity even Robert Ripley couldn’t believe…
…Robert Day examined advances in evolutionary science…
…E. Simms Campbell offered up this abbreviated love story…
…Peter Arno gave us a director with a god complex…
…and one from Ned Hilton, and a new perspective on flying…
…on to Sept. 29, 1934, with a cover by Arnold Hall, who produced at least twelve covers for The New Yorker between 1933 and 1939…
Sept. 29, 1934 cover by Arnold Hall.
…and we go straight to ads, beginning with this alarming image that greeted readers on the inside cover…why would this prompt anyone to purchase a can of onion soup?…
…the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center opened in 1934, and it quickly became a focal point for the city’s elite…
Above, the dining room at the Rainbow Room, 1934, and below, in 2004. (Library of Congress/Wikipedia)
…Lucky Strike continued its series of ads featuring fashionable women looking smart with their product…
…our cartoons include this spot illustration by Otto Soglow, who did spots for The New Yorker for many years…although Soglow’s Little King moved to the Hearst newspapers, he continued to contribute cartoons to The New Yorker until 1974…
…George Price continued to explore life as a levitating man…
…the enforcement of the Hays Code had this teen in a “fix,” per James Thurber…
…Gluyas Williams continued his exploration of various crises, this time in the music world…
…Alan Dunn gave us a glimpse of civilization via the pharaonic sculptures that were emerging on the face of Mt. Rushmore…
…and we close with the wonderful wit of Barbara Shermund…
Sigmund Gottfried Spaeth (1885–1965) sought to popularize classical music and improve the musical tastes of the masses by meeting the public wherever he could find them, from vaudeville halls to national radio broadcasts.
September 1, 1934 cover by William Steig.
Born in a line of three generations of Lutheran clergymen, Spaeth chose a different path and became a musicologist who sought to de-mystify classical music, often demonstrating how popular melodies had origins in earlier music. He also had strong opinions about lyrics in popular music, demonstrating his distaste for “the lyric school of self-pity” in this “Onward and Upward” column. Excerpts:
BRINGING MUSIC AND LIGHT…Sigmund Spaeth found much to dislike in the world of popular music, but he was never stuffy in his approach to music appreciation. At right, Spaeth appeared in vaudeville-style shows (and for many years on the radio) as “The Tune Detective,” wearing a deerstalker cap, cape, and checked tweeds in imitation of Sherlock Holmes. He hoped to demonstrate to a wide audience that all music was essentially based on a set of simple principles. (sinfonia.org/wnyc.org)HAVE NO FEAR…Spaeth wrote a popular syndicated newspaper column, “Music for Everybody,” and contributed articles to many periodicals during his career. With his first book in 1925, The Common Sense of Music, and others that followed, Spaeth sought to de-mystify music for a general audience. (Wikimedia Commons)OH LIGHTEN UP…Spaeth detected a cynical note in Bing Crosby’s (left) sob song, “I Cried for You,” and noted Irving Berlin’s latest contribution to the “sob symposium,” “I Never Had a Chance.” (Wikipedia/digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/britannica.com)
Spaeth noted that not all sad songs were dripping in artificial self-pity, citing Helen Morgan’s “Why Was I Born?” as an example of a song modeled on “the legitimate blues,” marked by “a sincerity of expression in everyday language”…
RIGHT AND WRONG…Spaeth acknowledged the “sincerity of expression” in Helen Morgan’s (left) torch songs, while at the other extreme he suggested that the authors of “Was That the Human Thing to Do?” (Sammy Fain and Joe Young) be boiled alive in their own tears. The song was popularized by The Boswell Sisters, a beloved New Orleans trio in the early 1930s. (findagrave.com/amazon.com/genius.com)
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Off to the Races
In his column, “Of All Things,” Howard Brubaker commented on the apparent competition and contrast between Alexander Woollcott’s book, While Rome Burns, and another with a rosier title, The Coming of the American Boom. It appears Woollcott’s book won out, at least in the long run, as I can find no trace of the Boom book, or its author.*
* One of our kind readers has identified the author: “The Coming American Boom” was written by Lawrence Lee Bazley Angas and published by Simon and Schuster in 1934. In 1939, Time noted that “Major Lawrence Lee Bazley (‘Boom’) Angas is a pink & white Britisher with a reputation for making daring predictions which have sometimes come true…. He won his nickname with a much-publicized booklet, The Coming American Boom, which heralded his arrival in the U.S. in 1934.”
Speaking of rosy outlooks, E.B. White offered some parting thoughts on Chicago’s World’s Fair, called “A Century of Progress.” Rather than focus on the grandiose exhibits, White wryly noted other signs of progress at the fair, as recounted from a letter he received from his nephew.
The Chicago World’s Fair featured all sorts of modern wonders “dedicated to the ideal of scientific advance”…
…but as with any World’s Fair, it also catered to the baser interests of the masses, with attractions such as Robert Ripley’sBelieve It Or Not “Odditorium,” which was essentially a P.T. Barnum-style freak show…
…Ripley’s syndicated newspaper feature included these Odditorium attractions…
…White made light of exhibitions displaying such signs of progress as how to brush your teeth, and more examples of human freakdom…
…White’s nephew wrote of a man who could pull a wagon (containing his wife) with his eyelids, an apparently arthritic fellow who was “turning to stone,” and a man who could support heavy weights with his pierced breasts…
(all images courtesy postcardy.blogspot.com)
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Letter From Paris
Paris correspondent Janet Flanner wrote that August 1934 was a “month of memories” as it marked the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War, which we now call World War I. Flanner wrote about a new attitude that had arisen in those two decades, “a new attitude not only toward the last war but toward the next (which, ironically enough, seems increasingly inevitable to France since the death of the enemy warrior, von Hindenburg).” She continued with these observations made by French journalist and historian Emmanuel Berl (1892–1976), who wrote that as a result of the Great War, the youth in both France and Germany held few heroic illusions about war, seeing it not as a sacrifice but rather “as a means of being annihilated.”
SO MUCH FOR THE HEROICS…A refugee family returning to Amiens, France, looking at the ruins of a house on Sept. 17, 1918. Top right, Janet Flanner in 1940; below, Emmanuel Berl. (iwm.org.uk/Flanner photo copyright Estate of George Platt Lynes/Berl photo courtesy Joël Chirol)
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From Our Advertisers
Clothing company Rogers Peet used the threat of humiliation to encourage young men to stock up on “authentic university fashions” before returning to campus…
…the Wanamaker department store took a different approach, offering up new styles with a heavy English accent (I say, didn’t we play tennis once at the Hon. Toppy Crew’s?)…
…the makers of Goodyear tires offered up this disturbing image to boost sales…
…this ad told us that “Mrs. Henry Field” collected fine art, loved to go to parties, and “always smoked Camel cigarettes”…I am unaware of the fate of Mrs. Henry Field, married to the grandnephew of Marshall Field, but this unseemly image suggests she was replaced by a wax figure before the photo was taken…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with spot illustrations from (clockwise, from top) Victor De Pauw, Abe Birnbaum, and an unidentified illustrator who offered this suggestion for beating the late summer heat…
…we move along to Alan Dunn and a record-seeking pooch…
…Peter Arno with a very Arno-esque take on the stranded island trope…
…James Thurber gave us a man who was done making decisions…
…Richard Decker offered up this living history demonstration…
…George Price gave us two tropes for the price of one…
…Barbara Shermund gave us another glimpse into the lives of modern women…
…Rea Irvin continued his exploration of Manhattan’s fauna…
…our next cartoon is by Henry Steig, who used the pseudonym Henry Anton to avoid being confused with his brother, William Steig (featured on this issue’s cover)…unlike his brother, Henry was also a jazz musician, a sculptor and painter, a photographer, and a novelist…that is before he became a noted jeweler…
…Henry Steig’s jewelry shop at 590 Lexington Avenue can be glimpsed in the background of the famous subway vent scene from 1955’s The Seven Year Itch featuring Marilyn Monroe…
…and we close with Otto Soglow, and the last appearance his “Little King” in The New Yorker...William Randolph Hearst had lured Soglow away for his King Features Syndicate, debuting The Little King in his newspapers on September 9, 1934, where it would run until Soglow’s death in 1975…Soglow, however, would continue contributing cartoons of other themes to The New Yorker until 1974…
Photo above circa 1930 via mensfashionmagazine.com.
Lois Long took a break from reviewing the latest fashions to offer some thoughts on the relations between men and women, and more specifically, what was expected of women if they ever hoped to land the type of man who represented a “potential Future” for them.
August 4, 1934 cover by Otmar. Likely Otmar Gaul, sometimes spelled “Ottmar.”
Based on what we know about Long, this column has a strong “tongue-in-cheek” quality. It should also be noted that the 32-year-old Long had been divorced from cartoonist Peter Arno for three years, and was possibly contemplating the dating scene (she would marry newspaper ad man Donaldson Thorburn in 1938). In this excerpt, Long dispelled the notion that “the brutes” never notice a woman’s appearance:
THEY MIGHT BE BRUTES, but they notice the little things, according to Lois Long. (fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu)
SEEING RED…According to Long, discerning men preferred women in brimmed hats (actress Sylvia Sidney models above), but found red fingernails to be disturbing. (glamourdaze.com/vintagehairstyling.com)SEEING RED in women’s clothes, however, wasn’t a problem, according to Long, who wrote that men liked to see women in bright, tropical colors. (clickamericana.com)
Long concluded that in the end, it didn’t matter what men thought about women’s clothes, but letting them “yap” about such things was a good way for them to blow off some steam.
Check out these patronizing examples from an illustrated guide for women published in 1938 by Click Parade magazine. It gives us some idea of what Long, and millions of other women, were up against…
(dailymail.co.uk)
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Fifth Avenue Remnant
The first years of The New Yorker coincided with some of the most transformational years in Manhattan’s urban fabric, including the replacement of Gilded Age mansions with upscale commercial buildings. One of the last remaining mansions was the Wendel house, featured in “The Talk of the Town.”
A ONCE GRAND MANSION becomes diminished as the city grows around it. At left, the Wendel mansion as it appeared circa 1901; at right, shorn of its balconies and shutters, the mansion shrinks in contrast to the city around it, circa 1930. (Wendel Family Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Drew University Library)WHAT HO!…A “very British-looking” zinc-lined bathtub (with shower) was state-of-the-art when installed at the Wendel mansion. (New York Public Library)BARELY A MEMORY….The glass-and-steel structure towering above the former Knox Hat Building sits on the site of the Wendel mansion. (Photo by Nicolson & Gallowy via Daytonian in Manhattan)
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White noted the spurious nature of cinema newsreels, including one featuring the case of Thalia Massie, a navy wife stationed in Hawaii whose immature behavior and trail of lies would implicate five men in a crime they could not have committed (one would even be killed by vigilantes) and would cast Hawaii into a state of racial turmoil. (You can read more about it at the PBS site for American Experience.
FATAL FEMME…Thalie Massie, circa 1930. (Library of Congress)
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Blunders, Part II
Howard Brubaker commented on the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War. Today we call it World War I, and as we know, the blunders did not cease with the Armistice.
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RIP Madame Curie
Janet Flanner, Paris correspondent for The New Yorker, noted the passing of Marie Curie, a pioneer in field of radioactivity.
THE CURIE CURE…Marie Curie and daughter Irène, 1925. (Wikipedia)
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From Our Advertisers
The folks at Chrysler were trying every angle to get car buyers interested in the Airflow—although the car offered a number of advanced features, consumers just weren’t ready for its radical aerodynamic design…note how the ad downplays the car’s sweeping curves…
…and we have more deception from the cigarette industry, including claims that cigarettes gave you more energy and improved the performance of top athletes…
…the makers of Chesterfields gave us this sunny picture of health…indeed, there was sunshine in every pack…
…The Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company launched KOOL cigarettes in 1933 as the sole competitor to the other menthol brand, Spud, which was a big advertiser in the early New Yorker. Maybe it was the coupons, or the modern brand name, that helped KOOL knock Spud from the market by the 1940s. As for those coupons, it appears each pack contained only one of them…
…so you would have to smoke a ton of those things to get one of these swell prizes…
…early Budweiser ads often featured images of the Old South…here they conjured up the ghost of Mark Twain (who had been dead only 24 years), putting the great humorist and writer on par with their bottled beer…
…Canada Dry didn’t have Mark Twain, but what they did have was a beer (Hupfel’s) lacking “that queer yeasty taste that beer usually has”…
…a couple of ads from the back pages featured, at left, an ad for a pre-mixed Tom Collins, which must have been awful, and at right, a spot for Bacardi rum, which was actually made in Cuba before the revolution…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with Alain (Daniel Brustlein) and some not-so-intrepid mountain climbers…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King sought a glimpse of the street life…
…William Steig took a dip with his Small Fry…
…Isadore Klein gave us a glimpse of sensationalist radio reporting…
…and we close with Richard Decker, and a game of charades…
Above: Wooden Horses(detail) by Reginald Marsh, 1936. Marsh was a frequent visitor to Coney Island, a place that inspired numerous sketches and paintings. (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)
We officially kick off the summer with a visit to Coney Island, where “The Talk of the Town” took in the latest sights and amusements.
June 16, 1934 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
This excerpted “Talk” piece, attributed either to an “H. Beckett” orFrancis Steegmuller, describes a post-Prohibition Coney Island with liquor to be had (although at only three locations) and new attractions including several imported from the 1933-34 Chicago’s World’s Fair (aka “The Century of Progress”).
CLANKITY CLANK…The mechanical man referred to in the “Talk” piece was likely similar to the one pictured above in this October 1933 feature in Popular Mechanics. Like many “robots” of that era, they were often pictured smoking cigarettes. (Google books)WET YOUR WHISTLE…Beer flowed up and down the boardwalk at Coney Island, but if you wanted something stronger you had to stop by the Half Moon Hotel or one of these establishments, Childs (left) or Feltmans’. (www.coneyislandhistory.org)LEAVE SOME FOR ME…An estimated one million New Yorkers visited Coney Island on July 4, 1934 to get away from the heat of the city. (stuffnobodycaresabout.com)DIFFERING INTERPRETATIONS…In his 1934 painting, Coney Island (left), artist Paul Cadmus portrayed beachgoers as ridiculous and uncouth rabble, while Cadmus’s friend and fellow artist Reginald Marsh took a somewhat kinder approach to the same subject in his 1936 Coney Island (right). (Jon F. Anderson, Estate of Paul Cadmus, licensed by VAGA, obtained via lacma.org / Syracuse University Art Collection)
Of course it wouldn’t be Coney Island without grisly wax museum scenes inspired by the latest sensational headlines…bank robber John Dillinger was still on the run, and “little June Robles” was finally free and apparently unharmed after being kidnapped and locked in a desert cage for 19 days…
THANKS WINDY CITY…At left, the Chicago World’s Fair inspired Coney Island to build a trackless, bobsled-style “flying turns” coaster in Steeplechase Park (the wooden ride was destroyed by fire after only five years of operation). At right, a postcard image of the Eden Musee wax museum. (riverviewparkchicago.com / New York Public Library)ON THE BOARDWALK…Another Coney scene by Reginald Marsh, titled Pip and Flip, 1932. (Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago Daniel J. Terra Collection via artblart.com)
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Luck of the Irish
The Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake (more commonly known as the Irish Sweepstakes) was established in 1930 to raise funding for hospitals in Ireland. Although lotteries were generally illegal in the U.S., millions of tickets were sold in the States, many of them in New York and New England. In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White wondered what would become of the lottery’s newest American winners, including former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Alma Mamay, who won $152,000 in the Irish sweepstakes. White might have been pleased to know that Mamay moved to California, married a millionaire oil tycoon, and lived to the age of ninety-one.
CALIFORNY IS THE PLACE YOU OUGHTA BE..Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Alma Mamay took her Sweepstakes winnings and fled to California, where she married a millionaire oil tycoon. (ziegfeldfolliesgirls.com)
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Rugged Individual
Matthew Alexander Henson (1866–1955) was an African American explorer who accompanied Polar explorer Robert Peary to the Arctic seven times, participating in a 1908–1909 expedition that arguably made Henson the first explorer to reach the geographic North Pole. “The Talk of the Town” caught up with Henson on the feat’s 25th anniversary.
GO NORTH YOUNG MAN…At left, Matthew Henson circa 1910. At right, photograph of Henson and four Inuit guides on the last stretch of their 1908–09 expedition, taken by Robert Peary at what they believed to be the North Pole. Henson (center) planted the flag. (Wikipedia)
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POTUS Profiled
Pulitizer Prize-winning historian Henry F. Pringle published the first installment of a three-part profile of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this excerpt Pringle writes about FDR’s sense of humor (illustration by William Cotton):
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Mattress Campers
The “About the House” column featured the latest in home-cooling devices. Couldn’t afford the zillions it would cost to install a home air-conditioner? Well the folks at Crosley—an electronics company known for its radios—offered a more affordable solution: an air-conditioned tent that could be erected over one’s bed for $150 (about $3,500 in today’s dollars):
Here is a 1934 ad for the contraption I found at worldradiohistory.com:
…and we continue with more from our advertisers, including the Broadway magazine The Stage, which offered up this idyllic scene showing what folks did in the days before air-conditioning…
…you could also escape the heat by taking to the high seas aboard the Italian liner SS Rex…
…seen below arriving in New York in this 1932 photo, the 911-foot SS Rex was the largest ship built in Italy before World War II…it was destroyed by the British RAF in 1944…
(adventures-of-the-blackgang.tumblr.com)
…you could also cool off like these two old gents, sharing a toast and some Budweisers…
…or you could get yourself a jug of applejack brandy and mix it 1:1 with pineapple juice…not sure who or what is being “saved” here…
…long before there were Nikes or Adidas, golfers could hit the links in a pair of Sportocasins…
…Hupmobile was still hanging in there, enlisting the talents of illustrator Herbert Roese to extol the comforts and the beauty of its “air-line design”… it isn’t clear why it required five middle-aged men to take her on that beautiful ride…
…the real-life bellboy Johnny Roventini made his debut in the New Yorker as the spokesman for Phillip Morris cigarettes…
…Roventini (1910–1998), who stood less than four feet tall as an adult, was working as a bellboy at the New Yorker Hotel when he was discovered by an advertising executive in 1933. Apparently the exec had Roventini shout the line “Call for Philip Morris!” and learned the bellboy could repeatedly, and on cue, vocalize a perfect B-flat tone. Representing the company for more than forty years, he helped Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz with the initial success of I Love Lucy (Philip Morris was the show’s sponsor)…
WHAT’S HIS LINE?…TV producers Mark Goodson, left, and Bill Todman greet Johnny Roventini during a 1952 radio broadcast of their quiz show, What’s My Line? The program’s sponsor was Phillip Morris. Note Goodson and Todman both hold cigarettes. (Wikipedia)
…by the looks of it, Anne Gould (heiress daughter of Jay Gould II and Anne Douglas Graham Gould) didn’t need anyone to tell her what to smoke…
…on to our cartoons, we continue our birdwatching with Rea Irvin…and we also get…
…high-flying nuptials with Isadore Klein…
…a mismatch with George Price…
…the prospects for war with Otto Soglow…
…marital bliss with James Thurber…
…and a courtship scene, with an expiration date, from Mary Petty…
Power broker Robert Moses always made sure he was few steps ahead of any possible opposition to his grand development plans in and around New York City. That included the yacht clubbers along the Hudson River, who were more or less erased from the scene by Moses in one fell swoop.
May 19, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
The Upper West Side’s Columbia Yacht Club probably thought it was just swell that the city was dumping waste and rock along the shores of the Hudson River, since it eventually created driveway access for members who previously had to access the club via a footbridge over the New York Central’s tracks. What hadn’t occurred to them was that nearly 25 years-worth of infill had also created a new strip of land that extended from 79th to 96th street, land that Moses envisioned as an expansion of Riverside Park (and the abrupt end of the West Side yacht club scene). “The Talk of the Town” explained:
LOCATION, LOCATION…Two views of the Columbia Yacht Club at West 86th Street, circa 1930. The club was razed to make room for Robert Moses’s expansion of Riverside Park. Moses’s ambitious project, which cost twice as much as Hoover Dam, put the train tracks underground and topped the park with the Henry Hudson Parkway. (newyorktoursbygary.blogspot.com/NYPL Digital Collections)HEADS UP…Elsie Henneman dives into the water near the Hudson River Yacht Club, circa 1930. Located at the foot of West 74th Street, the club moved onto a barge at 145th Street to escape Moses’s park expansion plans, but it was eventually banished from the West Side. (Reddit)
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Ode to the Road
We now shift gears to E.B. White, who was poetically inspired by an advertisement in the Herald Tribune that featured Prince Alexis A. Droutzkoy (a member of the exiled White Russian colony in New York) praising the “magic silence” of the new “Dodge Six” automobile:
SILENCE OF THE CAMS…The 1934 Dodge Six. (detail from a vintage ad)
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Führer’s Filmmaker
The ability (or inability) to separate art from an artist’s personal conduct or beliefs has been a particular topic of the last two decades, given the litany of stars who have been “cancelled” despite the quality or importance of their work. The work of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003), still debated nearly ninety years after her collaboration with Nazi leaders, demonstrates the fine line many a film historian or critic must walk when assessing the career of an innovative artist (for an American example, see filmmaker D. W. Griffith). Riefenstahl’s 1932 film, The Blue Light (Das blaue Licht), made prior to her Nazi collaborations, was praised for its beauty by American critics, including the New Yorker’sJohn Mosher, when it was released in the U.S. in 1934.
The Blue Light also captivated Adolf Hitler, who saw the attractive and athletic Riefenstahl as an ideal of Aryan womanhood. A subsequent meeting with Hitler would result in Riefenstahl’s controversial 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens). We will explore that film, and Riefenstahl’s role, in a later post.
CAREER MOVE…Clockwise, from top left, Leni Riefenstahl demonstrated her acting ability, athleticism and filmmaking talents in 1932’s The Blue Light (Das blaue Licht); Riefenstahl filming in Nuremberg during the 1934 Nazi Party congress—the footage was used in 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will; working at a film cutting table, 1935; with Adolf Hitler at Nuremberg, 1934. (IMDB/Library of Congress/UTK Cinema Studies/The Irish Times)HI HITLER…Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler pay a visit to Leni Riefenstahl at her Berlin estate, circa 1937. (Roger-Viollet)
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From Our Advertisers
We begin with more Carl “Eric” Erickson-inspired artwork, here promoting the bygone elegance of transatlantic travel…
…perhaps a bit less upscale but still pretty nice, the “Santa” line of ships operated by the Grace Line between New York and Latin America included air-conditioned interiors paneled with aluminum (a fireproofing measure) and spacious cabins with private baths that faced to outside…
…this ad must have been a happy sight to folks who had to endure more than a decade of bootleg Scotch during Prohibition…
…Smirnoff vodka had its origins in 1860s Russia, capturing two-thirds of the Moscow market by the mid-1880s…forced to leave Russia in 1904 after the Tsar nationalized the Russian vodka industry…Smirnoff relocated to Turkey, then Poland, and then Paris, each time with limited success…at the end of Prohibition the brand relocated once again to a distillery in Bethel, Connecticut, hence this advertisement…
…the habanero pepper has been used to infuse everything from tequila to vodka to whiskey…this particular product was marketed as something new that could be mixed with a variety of spirits or topped up with club soda or ginger ale…
…I include this ad from the maker of Spud cigarettes for its sheer audacity…it claims your mouth will feel dewdrop fresh after an entire day of smoking menthols…
…stunt driver Billy Arnold was one of the “Hell-Drivers” Chrysler employed to tout the safety of its low-priced Plymouths at promotional events…
…including Chicago’s “Century of Progress”…below, a crowd watches Arnold take his Plymouth for a roll and emerge unscathed…
…the folks at Redi-Spred employed a murder theme to promote their “Pâté de Foie”…which foie was used…duck, goose or lord knows what, is not specified…
…the signature is muddled, but this looks like another illustration by Herbert Roese, who never published a cartoon in the New Yorker but sure had its style down, especially Peter Arno’s…
…Harold Ross’s high school friend and cartoonist John Held Jr. was a frequent contributor to the New Yorker from 1925 to 1932 (he also contributed to Life, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar), but when demand for his Jazz Age cartoons and illustrations fell off in the 1930s, he turned to painting and illustrating children’s books. So it was a surprise to catch this glimpse of Held’s work in a one-column ad promoting a Held-drawn map of New England inns…
…speaking of elusive illustrators, I am often challenged to discover the identities of spot illustrators in the early issues…this one appears to be signed by “Maurice Dreco”…
…the signature on this one looks like “Saphire,” but again, it is not clear…
…but there is no doubt this little gem is by Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein…
…which leads us to Richard Decker, and a hostage situation gone flat…
…and Decker again, with a back-handed compliment…
…James Thurber was in his familiar world of dogs and battling sexes…
…Mary Petty found some good news on the dentistry front…
…Otto Soglow’s Little King believed more is merrier…
…and we close with William Crawford Galbraith, and a wedding day surprise…
In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs published the short story Tarzan of the Apes. Since then at least ninety books, 350 radio serials, three TV series and forty-five full-length films have told the story of the Lord of the Apes.
April 28, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Tarzan was the first pop culture icon to attain worldwide fame, paving the way for a host of comic-book superheroes that would follow. Recalling his youth in post-war Leningrad in the early 1950s, Joseph Brodsky wrote of the bootleg Tarzan movies he devoured at the local cinema, and the effect a “long-haired naked loner” had on the regimented, inhibited lives of Soviet youth: “The Tarzan (film) series alone, I daresay, did more for de-Stalinization than all of Khrushchev’s speeches.”
ME ELMO, YOU ENID…Elmo Lincoln as Tarzan and Enid Markey as Jane Porter in the 1918 silent film Tarzan of the Apes. The movie was released just six years after the publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ short story and subsequent book. (times-herald.com/Wikipedia)
Starting with Elmo Lincoln in 1918, four different silent film actors portrayed Tarzan before Johnny Weissmuller (1904–1984) swung onto the screen with co-star Maureen O’Sullivan. Other Tarzan portrayers would follow, but it was Weissmuller—winner of five gold medals as an Olympic swimmer—who defined the role over two decades, starring in twelve Tarzan films from 1932 to 1948, O’Sullivan playing Jane in the first six of those films. Critic John Mosher sensed that Weissmuller was in for the long haul in just his second outing:
FAUX JUNGLE…Critic John Mosher was impressed by the wild and forbidding jungle scenes portrayed in Tarzan and His Mate—actually locations around Los Angeles. At left, MGM poster proclaims “Johnny Weissmuller is back again,” a reference to the 1933 dud Tarzan the Fearless starring Buster Crabbe (his single turn at Tarzan); top, Indian elephants taken from MGM’s zoo had attachments fixed to their ears and tusks to suggest African elephants; bottom, Weissmuller rides a rhino (named Mary), imported from a German zoo to appear in the scene. (Wikipedia/IMDB/Reddit)NOTHING TO HIDE…Tarzan and His Mate has acquired cult status mainly due to Maureen O’Sullivan’s skimpy halter top and loincloth—in 1934 it was one of the most revealing costumes ever seen on the silver screen. Hays Code puritans had fits over scenes that showed O’Sullivan nude in silhouette and swimming sans bathing suit with Weissmuller (the swimming scene used a body double, Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim). On April 24, 1934, all prints of Tarzan and His Mate were ordered changed, the nude scenes removed—the original print was not restored until 1986. At bottom left, O’Sullivan on the set of Tarzan and His Mate, looking quite unperturbed. (IMDB/hotcorn.com/Twitter)
In 2003, the Library of Congress deemed Tarzan and His Mate “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
A note of trivia: Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan (1911–1998) was the mother of actress Mia Farrow and grandmother of journalist Ronan Farrow. She’s also the grandmother of Soon-Yi Previn, Mia’s adopted daughter and current wife of Mia’s ex-partner, Woody Allen.
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Spring Has Sprung
E.B. White began his weekly column with some thematic suggestions for the Maypole’s ceremonial ribbons. Excerpt:
A few of White’s references explained:
SPRING IS IN THE AIR, or in E.B. White’s case, horse manure, likely used to amend the soil in Bryant Park. In 1933 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had the park’s Federal Hall replica demolished (erected in 1932 to commemorate the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth) and embarked on an ambitious facelift that included elevating the park from street level and planting numerous trees and hedges. The bottom image shows a 1934 view of the reconstruction looking south on 6th Avenue from 42nd Street. (Untapped Cities/NYC Parks Dept.)
White also referenced the “Neo-Angle” bathtub, shown here in an ad from the same issue:
…James Thurber added this embellishment along the bottom of White’s column…
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Freaked Out
Alva Johnston contributed his third and final installment on the world of circus freaks, using descriptive language that would not pass muster today:
THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT…In his third installment of the world of circus freaks, Alva Johnston referenced the following performers, clockwise, from top left: circus giant Jack Earle; Lady Little, aka “Anita The Doll Lady,” on a 1918 postcard that described her as “26 inches high, 36 years old”; Artie Atherton, aka “Skeleton Dude,” weighing in at 38 pounds; Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus advertised “Geniune Ubangi Savages”—the word “Ubangi” was made up, plucked from a map of Africa because it sounded exotic. These “savages” were actually Congolese natives. (Pinterest/University of Sheffield/Worthpoint/Harry Ransom Center)
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Biding Its Time
“The Talk of the Town” took notice of a lighthouse that was mounted atop the Seamen’s Church Institute, which overlooked New York Harbor from Battery Park. A time ball above the lighthouse would drop down a pole to signal twelve noon to ships in the harbor. Installed on April 15, 1913—to mark one year after the sinking of the RMS Titanic—the lighthouse and time ball were relocated to the South Street Seaport Museum in 1968.
REFUGE BY THE SEA…The Seamen’s Church Institute at 25 South Street (left) could house up to 580 seafarers in dormitory-style rooms. The building also housed a shipping bureau, a restaurant, a postal service and a chapel. When the building was demolished in 1968, the lighthouse and time ball were salvaged and relocated to South Street Seaport Museum. (southstreetseaportmuseum.org)
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Gall of a Gaul
French writer Céline, aka Dr Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (1894–1961), is considered by some to be one of France’s greatest 20th century writers, influencing the likes of Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and Charles Bukowski. However Céline is also widely reviled as a Nazi sympathizer and anti-semite, but whatever one thinks of the writer, most agree that he hated pretty much everyone. Clifton Fadiman tried to make sense of the bilious Céline and his most celebrated novel, Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit). An excerpt:
DON’T STAND SO CLOSE TO ME…The French writer Céline in a 1932 photograph. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
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From Our Advertisers
There’s nothing hateful about these brightly colored blankets and throws if you were looking for something for Mother’s Day…
…it’s interesting how Fifth Avenue department stores such as Bonwit Teller embraced new-fangled synthetics made by Dupont—not exactly material favored by those to the manor born…
…however Lyda Roberti, the “Bright Particular Star” of the Broadway musical Roberta, seemed pleased to be sporting a gown spun from “Lastex,” formed from a combination of silk and rubber…
…more fashionable women, this time paired with Buick’s latest model displaying a bit of streamlined flair…
…the folks at General Tire touted the safety of their blowout-proof tires, but as with most things in the 1930s, the scene suggests little regard for safety in general…the boy driving the soapbox racer perilously close to the limo is not a supporter of the National Rifle Association—in the 1930s NRA stood for the New Deal’s National Recovery Act…
…recalling a style perfected by fashion illustrator Carl “Eric” Erickson, this lovely ad beckoned us to an outdoor cocktail party courtesy of Martini & Rossi…
…working the growing market of female smokers, the folks at Lucky Strike gave us this sophisticate caught in a pensive mood…
…of course advertisers also appealed to another female market, the majority of women stuck at home doing the cooking and cleaning…and so we have pandering ads like this one from Heinz (did people really read these things?)…
…another approach was to cast women as a nagging emasculators, here illustrated by James Thurber…
…however, in Thurber’s cartoon world, it was the men who got the upper hand in the final installment of his “war” series…
…Thurber was busy in this issue, also supplying this spot illustration…
…we switch to a more leisurely pace with Syd Hoff…
…and check in with Clarence Day, who in addition to his continuing “Life With Father” series occasionally contributed these illustrated poems…
…and we close with Otto Soglow, and an early bird who should have stayed in bed…
A New Yorker State of Mind 