One of Hollywood’s most famous motion pictures was a story about a giant ape that (literally) falls for a beautiful woman.
March 11, 1933 cover by Rea Irvin.
New Yorker film critic John Mosher found the premise of King Kong ridiculous, but he also found many of its scenes diverting, especially those featuring Kong and a number of prehistoric creatures (created by Marcel Delgado), miniature models brought to life through stop-motion animation techniques pioneered by Willis O’Brien and his assistant, Buzz Gibson. Mosher’s review:
THE TRIALS OF GIANT APEHOOD…King Kong battled nature and man in the eponymous 1933 film that featured a silly love story between actors Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray (lower right, with Robert Armstrong); this being a pre-Code film, Wray had trouble keeping on her blouse, although a scene depicting Kong undressing her and sniffing his fingers was cut, as were some of the more gruesome scenes featuring Kong stomping and chomping his way through Manhattan. (IMDB)
By today’s standards the film’s special effects are quite dated, but they astonished audiences in 1933 and again in a 1952 re-release.
NEW YORK OR BUST…A huge bust of King Kong’s head and torso was fashioned from wood, cloth, rubber and bearskin by Marcel Delgado, Buzz Gibson and Fred Reese. Three operators inside the bust used metal levers, hinges, and an air compressor to manipulate the mouth and facial expressions. In addition, two versions of the ape’s right arm were constructed of steel, rubber and bearskin — one was non-articulated, mounted on a crane, and the other had articulated fingers that allowed Kong to grasp Fay Wray in close-ups (below). A separate non-articulated leg was also mounted on a crane for scenes depicting Kong stomping on villagers. (reddit.com/Pinterest)
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Oh Baby
Before child labor laws were finally enforced in the late 1930s, children were routinely exploited for profit, most famously the Dionne quintuplets by Dr. Allan Roy Defoe, not to mention the many child stars fed into the Hollywood meat grinder. For a public seeking novelty as a distraction from the Depression, there were also numerous “baby orchestras” organized by one Karl Moldrem. “The Talk of the Town” commented:
NURSERY SONGS…One of Karl Moldrem’s baby orchestras assembled in Southern California, 1931. (digitallibrary.usc.edu)
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Edible Art
“The Talk of the Town” has always been a source for light anecdotes, including this brief account of a hungry Vanity Fair photographer:
Alexander Woollcott led his “Shouts and Murmurs” column with an account from a recent benefit performance, during which his friend Noël Coward decided to strike up a conversation regarding the survival of the stage in an era of talking films:
TALKING TALKIES… Noël Coward (left) voiced his concerns about the future of stage entertainment with Alexander Woollcott during a benefit performance likely held on behalf of the theatrical world. (npg.org)
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From Our Advertisers
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…the folks at Dorothy Gray presented a nameless woman (“slim and straight as a gallant boy, yet feminine to her finger tips”) who was ready to greet spring until she saw those “little lines under her eyes”…the horror indeed…
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…I include this ad solely for the terrific illustration by Mac Harshberger, famed for his elegant, simplified line…
…and a couple of back pagers…thanks to Sonotone, the deafened shall not only hear but will also be stricken by a sudden voiding of the bowels…and below, a surprising ad from the Plaza, one place I never thought would need to advertise…but those were tough times…
…and on to our cartoons, and this spot drawing from Peggy Bacon, whom we haven’t seen in awhile…
…Gilbert Bundy took us to a sanctuary of song…
…another day with our fellow citizens, and Gluyas Williams…
…one from E. Simms Campbell…
…who was the first Black cartoonist published in nationally distributed, “slick” magazines…
…and also the creator of Esky, the pop-eyed mascot of Esquire magazine…
…Carl Rose gave us a night at the opera in this two-page cartoon with the Depression-inspired caption: The artists will now pass among you. Anything you can give will be greatly appreciated….
…and James Thurber returned to the nudist colony for another look at the age-old struggle between the sexes…
During the Roaring Twenties New Yorkers took a wrecking ball to much of their past, and at a breathtaking pace that left many residents little time to ponder what was lost.
March 30, 1929 cover by Julian de Miskey.
Writer and cultural critic Gilbert Seldes succinctly summed up this spirit of the times in a tongue-in-cheek “reminiscence” of the “old” New York—that is, how the city appeared the previous fall before he left to spend the winter in Bermuda:
NOW WHERE WILL I GET A WALDORF SALAD? Writer Gilbert Seldes (top left) ticked off some of the many changes to his city while he was away for the winter, including (clockwise, from top right), the murder of racketeer Arnold Rothstein; the planned demolition of the Waldorf Astoria to make room for the Empire State Building (photo of the partially demolished hotel); and perhaps the first song to be overplayed on the radio ad nauseum–Al Jolson’s “Sonny Boy.” (Wikipedia, Daily News, New York Public Library, musicals101.com)
A member of the intellectual elite but also a strong advocate for cultural democracy, Seldes began writing for the New Yorker inlate 1925 and would be a frequent contributor through 1936. In 1937 he would join CBS as its first director of television programs, and would also become one of television’s first critics thanks to his 1937 Atlantic Monthly article, “The ‘Errors’ of Television.” (Note: There were only 50 experimental TV sets in the New York area in 1937, and the first commercially available sets weren’t sold until 1939). In 1958—when there would be 42 million U.S. households with a television—Seldes would serve as the host of NBC’s The Subject is Jazz.
THE SUBJECT IS JAZZ host Gilbert Seldes in 1958 visiting with the show’s producer, George Norford; at right, Seldes interviewing Duke Ellington. (Getty Images)
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Peggy Bacon Did It All
Another early contributor to the New Yorker was Peggy Bacon, who displayed her sharp wit in her nearly 50 articles and poems for the magazine from 1926 to 1950. But Bacon was also well-known for displaying her talent and wit in the many paintings and illustrations she created throughout her long career. The New Yorker’s art critic Murdock Pemberton sang her praises in the March 30, 1929 issue after visiting her show at the Weyhe Gallery.
A FEW IDEASwas the title of this 1927 drypoint work featured in Peggy Bacon’s Weyhe Gallery show. At right, Bacon, circa 1920s. (artnet.com/wikipedia)A sampling of Peggy Bacon drypoint works from the 1920s, clockwise, from top: Frenzied Effort, 1925; Vanity, 1929; Penguin Island, 1926. (Brooklyn Museum/Artnet/1stdibs.com)
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The March 30 profile featured aviation innovator Giuseppe Mario Bellanca, who in 1922 designed the first enclosed-cabin monoplane in the U.S. Perhaps even more significant, his design in 1913 of a plane with a propeller in front, a wing in the middle and tail at the end set the standard for all aircraft built since. (Before 1913 many planes were propelled from the rear, with the “tail” projected in front of the craft). The profile writer, William Weimer (with art by Hugo Gellert) admired Bellanca’s ability to stand toe-to-toe with the mighty du Pont family:
Bellanca founded the Roos-Bellanca Aircraft Company in Omaha in 1927, and was featured on the cover of Time. In 1929 he created the Delaware-based Bellanca Aircraft Corporation of America in a financial partnership with the du Ponts.
AVIATION PIONEER Giuseppe Mario Bellanca (center) at the new Bellanca Airfield in New Castle, Delaware, 1928. Bellanca’s planes would establish numerous records for altitude, endurance, and speed. (Delaware Public Archives)
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Showing Some Restraint
In his “Sky Line” column, the New Yorker architecture critic George S. Chappell (aka “T-Square”) praised an award-winning 1928 apartment at 3 East 84th Street for its contemporary charm and “fine restraint.” Designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, the 9-story building was commissioned by Joseph Medill Patterson, owner of the New York Daily News. The design would be influential in Hood’s much more ambitious projects two years later—the Daily News Building (1930) and Rockefeller Center (1931).
The Raymond Hood– and John Mead Howells-designed 3 East 84th Street. Top right, the front entrance; and bottom right, ceiling’s silver leaf squares. (Susan DeMark–mindfulwalker.com)
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Advertisers in the March 30 issue offered various garments for the gentleman, including this sports-country ensemble at left from Finchley and a custom lounging robe from Macy’s…
…and for fashionable, amusingly mischievous woman there was the new “Scalawag” hat by Knox (ad illustrated by the great Carl Erickson)…
…Blue Moon’s blonde fairy girl was one of the Jazz Age’s most recognizable labels…here she is matched with an Art Deco-inspired spectrum of stocking colors…
…Ligget & Myers Tobacco Company joined the ranks of sophisticated advertisers who touted a product—in this case Fatima cigarettes—without actually showing the product…
…on the other hand, American Tobacco Company, the makers of Lucky Strike, made doubly sure you wouldn’t forget that bright red bullseye, or Rosalie Adele Nelson, “The Original Lucky Poster Girl”…
Nelson’s image for Lucky Strike was almost as ubiquitous as the fairy in the Blue Moon ads. Apparently she was also a member the Nelson family of circus acrobats and performed her own signature act with baby elephants:
Rosalie Adele Nelson with her baby elephant act, 1929 (eBay)
Philip Morris took an entirely different (and unusual) approach to selling its relatively new brand of Marlboro cigarettes by touting the achievements of Gretchen Colnik, winner of the “1928 Marlboro Contest for Distinguished Handwriting….”
Like Rosalie Adele Nelson, Gretchen Colnik would go on to minor fame of her own. She was managing editor of the Great Neck, NY, newspaper before returning to her hometown—Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From 1952 to 1966 Gretchen was the Martha Stewart of Milwaukee, hosting a TV show that provided advice on interior design, food and crafts. “The Gretchen Colnik Show” was sponsored by Mrs. Karl’s Bread.
Our cartoon is by Leonard Dove, who looks in on an architect at work:
The Cruelest Month
The film reviews for the April 6, 1929 issue found the New Yorker once again at odds with Hollywood and favoring cinematic products from the Old World.
April 6, 1929 cover by Rea Irvin.
In the case it was a French film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, which even today is regarded as a cinematic landmark.
A LOT AT STAKE…American poster for The Passion of Joan of Arc; at right, Maria Falconetti in the title role. (Wikipedia/Film Forum)
The New Yorker review praised the film as “one of the few of the year which merit serious attention”…
On the other hand, there were the latest products from Hollywood, which stood on the other side of a “vast abyss” from the French film:
HO HUM FOR HOLLYWOOD…At left, Mary Dugan (Norma Shearer) with her conniving lawyer, Edward West (Lewis Stone) in The Trial of Mary Dugan; Lewis Stone was a apparently a busy man in the late 1920s—here he is again (center image), this time portraying John Sterling, a tea plantation investor lacking the mojo to keep up with his much younger wife, Lillie (Greta Garbo) in Wild Orchids; and at right, Janet Gaynor as a little Dutch girl in Christina, a film now considered lost. Click image to enlarge (normashearer.com/pinterest)
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From Our Advertisers
The April 6 issue found Charlie Chaplin getting in on the action of Old Gold cigarette endorsements…
…while Curtiss Flying Service thought it might interest some of the more well-heeled New Yorker readers in the purchase of an airplane…
…a couple weeks later, in the April 20 issue, the New Yorker would make this observation about the ad in “The Talk of the Town”…
…and finally, our cartoon by R. Van Buren, looking in on yet another sugar daddy and his much younger companion on a night out…
We close out The New Yorker’s first year with the magazine on firmer footing and many of its mainstay writers and artists firmly in place.
The Dec. 26, 1925 issue was the usual hodgepodge, but some writers did give a nod to the end of the year, including film critic Theodore Shane, who offered his list of the best ten moving pictures of 1925.
Shane’s favorite film by far was The Last Laugh, (the German title was Der letzte Mann, or The Last Man) a 1924 German film directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Emil Jannings (who would later win the first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929). Shane referred to it as “the greatest picture ever made.” Released in the U.S. in 1925, the film was about a proud doorman who loses his job and tries to hide the fact from his friends and family. Shane usually reserved his highest praise for German cinema in his columns.
Scene from The Last Laugh (1924) starring Emil Jannings.
Shane’s complete list of the ten best movies of 1925:
For the worst films of the year, Shane suggested a tie between Drusilla With a Million, Lord Jim, Joanna, the Million Dollar Girl or Stella Dallas.
The New Yorker also commented on the murder of the irrepressible boxer Louis Mbarick Fall, popularly known as “Battling Siki.”
“Battling Siki” in his heyday. (Wikipedia)
Born in Senegal, he was a light heavyweight boxer from 1912–1925, and briefly reigned as a light heavyweight champion. Known for his heavy drinking and carousing, on the night of Dec. 15, 1925, he was found dead near his 42nd Street apartment. He had been shot twice in the back at close range. He was 28.
In his column, “A Reporter at Large,” Morris Markey offered this observation on Battling Siki’s passing:
The cartoonist I. Klein, on the other hand, contributed this strange stand-alone illustration for “The Talk of the Town” section:
Also in “Talk” was this brief item about the United Fruit Company:
United Fruit would be no laughing matter three years later with the Banana Massacre, which would claim the lives of an unknown number of workers who were striking for better working conditions in Columbia.
Art critic Murdock Pemberton offered a glowing review of an exhibit at the Montross Galleries by frequent New Yorker contributor Peggy Bacon:
Peggy Bacon, The Whitney Studio Club, 1925. (Whitney Museum of American Art)Peggy Bacon (Smithsonian)
“Profiles” looked at Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr, “The Fifth Avenue Maverick.” William Boardman Knox wrote that the young Vanderbilt “is as alien to his blood as a marmoset to a gorilla.”
In the “The Theatre,” critic Herman J. Mankiewicz pulled no punches when he declared Gilbert Seldes’ play The Wise Crackers “the worst play of the season” (Seldes was himself a noted critic and sometime New Yorker contributor):
What’s more, the play was about a group of literate New Yorkers who gather to exchange witty barbs and sarcastically comment on the doings of the day. In other words, it was inspired by the Algonquin Round Table, which famously included Mankiewicz as a member.
Another Round Table notable was Robert Benchley, who contributed this piece for the last issue of the year:
Lois Long offered her regrets for ever bringing up the subject of “The Charleston:”
And just a few pages over, lessons were advertised for…The Charleston!
And to close, here’s a little fun with hotel inspectors, courtesy of Al Frueh:
A New Yorker State of Mind 