Rea Irvin – Page 9 – A New Yorker State of Mind

Rise of the Gangster Film

During the early years of the Depression and before censorship guidelines were imposed by the Hays Code, Hollywood cranked out a slew of “Pre-Code” films filled with sex and violence, including 1931’s Little Caesar, the first “talkie” gangster film that defined the genre for decades to come.

The Road to 1931

The New Yorker entered its sixth year in 1931, and despite the deepening Depression managed to stay afloat and even gain new subscribers. Perhaps more than ever folks needed that weekly dose of levity the magazine ably supplied.

**Rea Irvin** rang out the old and welcomed the new with back-to-back covers for the Dec. 27, 1930 and Jan. 3, 1931 issues. The second cover commemorated the New York Auto Salon, mentioned later in this blog entry.

That isn’t to say the magazine’s contributors donned rose-colored glasses. Rather, they commiserated with their fellow Americans:

CRANKY COUPLETS…**Ogden Nash** lent his droll verse to the nation’s economic woes. In 1931, while working as an editor at Doubleday, Nash submitted a number of poems to the *New Yorker* and spent three months working on the magazine’s editorial staff. (poeticous.com)

Over the course of 1930 many Americans, including Ogden Nash, woke to the fact that their business and political leaders were ill-suited to lift them out of the economic mess, and were likely responsible for it in the first place. At the top of the list was President Herbert Hoover, who was profiled in The New Yorker in three installments beginning with the Dec. 27 issue. This brief excerpt gives you a glimpse into a very different White House 89 years ago:

The first installment of the profile was accompanied by a Cyrus Baldridge portrait of the president (left), but the final two installments featured a less-than-flattering Abe Birnbaum rendering that first appeared in The New Yorker in the March 2, 1929 issue:

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Vorse Was a Force

Social critic, labor activist and novelist Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966) was no fan of Herbert Hoover or wealthy business tycoons, and in the first decades of the 20th century joined with Lincoln Steffens and other muckraking journalists in advocating for social reform. Vorse, however, also had a background in fiction writing and in observational pieces like the one below (excerpts) in which she commented on the rustic old ladies she found everywhere in the city:

FOR THE CAUSE…**Mary Heaton Vorse** (left) with fellow activists preparing to leave on a relief expedition to aid striking Kentucky miners, 1932. At right, a 1925 drawing of Vorse by **Hugo Gellert.** (nysut.org/Smithsonian)

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The Mystic

Before the Beatles made the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi a famed Transcendental Meditation guru in the 1960s, there was George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a Russian/Greek/Armenian spiritual teacher of the “Fourth Way,” which promised a path to a higher state of consciousness and full human potential. Gurdjieff also enjoyed living in a French chateau and taking trips to New York to share his wisdom with eager Americans, including famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. “The Talk of the Town” had these observations on the visiting mystic:

HE COULD SEE THINGS…**George Ivanovich Gurdjieff,** in an undated photo.

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Sunny Days

Forget about financial woes or spiritual dilemmas. What are you going to wear next summer? Fashion writer Lois Long (“On and Off the Avenue”) asked the question and looked to the south for some answers:

…numerous ads peppered the Dec. 27 issue urging Manhattan’s snowbirds to dress appropriately for the warmer climes…

…and operators of “PlaneTrains” promised to get them there as quickly as possible…

…and if you were headed to Cuba you could stay at the brand new National Hotel…

…here’s what it looked like three years ago when I was in Havana…I can guarantee you the hotel service was WAY better in 1931…

…whether home or abroad, New Yorkers were celebrating the New Year by “dancing to the melodies of Old Vienna” and smoking like chimneys…

…a popular New Year’s Eve destination was the The Roosevelt Hotel, where Guy Lombardo’s orchestra helped ring in the New Year from 1929 (radio’s first nationwide New Year’s Eve broadcast) to 1959…

I stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel in late December, and found Lombardo still presiding over the bar…

…we also find New Year’s revelry in the cartoons, with Mary Petty…

…Isadore Klein…

…Otto Soglow...

…and Leonard Dove…

…and for those who stayed home, we have this scene of domestic bliss from Don Herold…

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On to the Jan. 3, 1931 issue, we have Howard Brubaker (“Of All Things”) waxing sour on the state of the economy…

…so what a better way to cheer up than to look at shiny new cars, especially the ones almost no one could afford? The New Yorker paid another visit to the New York Automobile Salon at the Grand Central Palace…

…according to the article, 1931 was “a streamline year,” and leading the way was the REO motor car company, which despite its innovative ways would drop its car line altogether in 1936 — a casualty of the Depression…

FLOWING FENDERS…The 1931 REO Royale was a trendsetter, introducing streamlining designs. The Great Depression would cause REO to abandon the manufacture of automobiles in 1936. (historicvehicle.org)

…over at the Chrysler Building, which served as that corporation’s headquarters from 1930 until the mid-1950s, new cars were on display on the building’s first two floors…

CATHEDRAL OF CARS…The first two floors of the Chrysler Building served as an auto showroom during the building’s first decade. (Wikipedia/thewelcomeblog.com)

…we segue to our advertisements, many from car companies touting their displays at the New York Automobile Salon. Like REO, Marmon was noted for various innovations, including the introduction of the rear-view mirror. It also manufactured a stunning 16-cylinder automobile that was on display at the 1931 Salon. But also like REO, the Depression proved too much for Marmon, and it was defunct by 1933…

SLEEK…The 1931 Marmon Sixteen. (RM Auctions)

…another car company that would fall to the Depression was the luxury brand Pierce Arrow. Without a lower-priced car in its lineup to provide cash flow, the company ceased operation by 1938…

…by contrast, the Chrysler Corporation had several low-priced models to help it survive the lean years and enable it to produce its luxury model, the Imperial…

ANOTHER FIRST…Chrysler was also known for its innovative ways. A custom version of the Chrysler Imperial Eight included a dictaphone. (hemmings.com)

…the Hudson Motor Car Company is long gone, but in 1930 it was the third largest carmaker after Ford and Chevrolet, and instead of luxury it touted the affordability of its cars, especially its low-priced Essex line, priced $1,000 less than its predecessor from ten years earlier. The $595 Essex would be comparable to a $9,000 to $10,000 car today (by comparison, the 1931 Marmon or Imperial would set you back somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000, roughly equivalent to a $46,000 – $78,000 range today)…

…so let’s say the Depression has wiped you out and you can’t even afford an Essex…well you could try to “smoke your way back to normalcy”…

…or be like this pair, who seem content with their Chesterfields…

…of course the movies were another means of escape from the cruel world, and Paramount’s Publix Theatres promised plenty of sex to ease troubled minds…

PRE-CODE WORLD…During a brief period of the early sound era, many films used both sex and violence to attract audiences to theaters. The Publix Theatres ad above implied that these three films had plenty of sex, or “it” — clockwise, from top left, **Fredric March** ran around in his skivvies in *The Royal Family of Broadway* (1930); **Mary Brian** and **Ina Claire** portrayed acting sisters Gwen and Julie Cavendish in *The Royal Family of Broadway*; **David Manners** and **Ruth Chatterton** shared an embrace in *The Right to Love* (1930); and **Marlene Dietrich** lured a schoolmaster into a life of madness and despair in *The Blue Angel* (1929-30).

…and we close with our cartoonists…Reginald Marsh heralded the new year with this two-page spread depicting the heavens glorifying dental hygiene…

…Leonard Dove inked two cartoons featuring table talk…

…E. McNerney continued The New Yorker tradition of cartoons featuring sugar daddies and gold diggers…

…Gardner Rea pondered the value of kitsch in a regal setting…

…A.S. Foster looked in on a crowd of John Does at a speakeasy…

…and Lillian Reed took us shopping with a very specific request…

Next Time: Requiem For the Flapper…

Ziegfeld’s Folly

Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr knew how to pack a Broadway theater, and from 1907 to 1932 he staged a number of revues and plays (most notably Showboat) that featured lavish costumes and a bevy of chorus girls.

Dec. 6, 1930 cover by **Rea Irvin**, depicting a peephole view of a speakeasy during the holidays.

When his latest show, Smiles, hit the stage of the Ziegfeld Theatre on Nov. 18, 1930, it was greeted by an audience that had endured the first year of the Great Depression. Ziegfeld’s entertainments, on the other hand, were more associated with the high times of the Roaring Twenties. So even the popular brother-sister dance team from Omaha — Fred and Adele Astaire — seemed a bit old hat.

GO WITH THE FLO…Broadway impresario **Florenz “Flo” Ziegfeld Jr** with his *Follies* cast, 1931. *(Wall Street Journal)*

Or so it seemed to Robert Benchley, who observed in “The Wayward Press” that most of his readers could draw pictures of the Astaires from memory. But what really irked Benchley was the way William Randolph Hearst manipulated his mighty newspaper empire to promote Ziegfeld’s Smiles in a way that made the show appear to be the biggest hit of the year.

Ziegfeld Theatre was built with Hearst’s financial backing, so the media mogul was determined that the show would be a success, commanding his editors and writers to lavish praise on the tepid production, which would close in less than two months as a box office failure.

SAY CHEESE…Program for Smiles featuring **Fred Astaire, Marilyn Miller** and **Adele Astaire.** At right, publicity photo for *Smiles* featuring Fred and Marilyn. (Playbill/Pinterest)

For the Astaires, they were nearing the end of their 27-year collaboration — Adele would retire from the stage in 1932 to marry Lord Charles Cavendish, and in 1934 Fred would pair up with Ginger Rogers for the first of nine films they would make together for RKO. Marilyn Miller, one of the most popular Broadway stars of the 1920s and early 1930s, would also seek her fortune in films, but would only make three. Alcoholism and persistent sinus infections would cut her life short in 1936 — she would die at age 37 from complications following nasal surgery.

BRIEF CAREER…**Marilyn Miller** in 1931’s *Her Majesty, Love,* one of just three films she would make before her death in 1936. (IMDB)

Benchley revealed how some of Hearst’s reporters responded to the edict from their boss:

TWEAKING HIS NOSE…**Walter Winchell**, left, registered his protest against his boss, **William Randolph Hearst**, by laying it on thick in his column. (IMDB/BBC)

THE FOLLY OF FOLLIES…**Robert Benchley** (left) cried foul regarding Hearst’s attempt to prop up a lousy show; **Ogden Nash** (right) found humor in the “immorality” of Ziegfeld’s productions. (Wikipedia/Notable Biographies)

On a related note, Ogden Nash also zeroed in on Ziegfeld’s latest show, turning the tables on religious zealots who found the Follies immoral. An excerpt:

And finally, one more theater-related item: a drawing by Al Frueh highlighting the melodrama On The Spot, which ran from Oct. 29, 1930 through March 1931 at the Forrest Theatre.

BETTER THAN ZIEGFELD, THIS…At right, **Crane Wilbur** and **Anna May Wong** in the melodrama *On The Spot,* which opened Oct. 29, 1930 at the Forrest Theatre. (New Yorker/Pinterest)

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In the Dec. 6, 1930 “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White shared his observations on a new type of chair that doubled as a dog house…

…and he wasn’t making it up, because the chair he described was featured in this ad from the same issue…

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Drunk History

In the fall of 1930 Scribner’s magazine published a series of three articles titled “If Booth Had Missed Lincoln,” If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg,” and “If Napoleon Had Escaped to America.” The New Yorker’s James Thurber claimed to be the author of a fourth article, “If Grant Had Been Drinking At Appomattox.” An excerpt:

REVISIONIST…**James Thurber** circa 1930. (thurberhouse.org)

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From Our Advertisers

The rolling pin was often deployed as a prop — especially in the comics — to illustrate marital discord; the makers of Hoffman ginger ale used the common trope to sell their fizzy drink…

…for reference, Maggie gives it to Jiggs in this comic book cover from 1953…

…the issue was stuffed with ads for Christmas shoppers, ranging from colorful plastic tumblers…

…to “unforgettable” appliances…

…to a variety of accessories at Wanamaker’s…

…Macy’s offered this pajama and robe combination for (insufferable) little boys who “strive for sartorial effect”…

…while Burdine’s of Miami urged snowbirds to purchase multiple wardrobes to remain fashionable throughout the winter season…

…and in stark contrast, this ad appealed for donations to help the jobless…

…our cartoons are supplied by Art Young…

…the ever reliable Barbara Shermund…

…and equally reliable Peter Arno…

…and Helen Hokinson…

…and we close with this gem by Garrett Price…

Next Time: A Blue Angel…

The High Place

For this installment we look at two issues, Nov. 15 and 22, both featuring covers by Theodore Haupt that celebrated two autumn rituals: football and Thanksgiving.

Let’s begin with the Nov. 22 issue, which climbed to the highest place in Manhattan — no, not the Chrysler Building, but the nearby Empire State Building — with E.B. White admiring the commanding view:

Before the Empire State Building could go up, the old Waldorf-Astoria hotel had to come down. As White observed, the old hotel was built so soundly that it was too costly to deconstruct and salvage. Most of it ended up on the bottom of the ocean.

DOWN IN DAVY JONES’ LOCKER lie the remains of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which stood for just 36 years before it was razed to make room for the Empire State Building. At right, one of the hotel’s lobbies, and the Grand Ballroom. (nyc-architecture.com/Pinterest)

A LOT OF HOT AIR…Top images: The fabled “mooring mast,” described by **E.B. White** in his *New Yorker* brief, as imagined in composite images (old-time Photoshop). In reality, the morning mast never worked; bottom right, a cutaway view of the mast featured in *Popular Mechanics*; bottom left, *New York Times* photo from March 22, 1931, announcing the completion of the Empire State Building, just 17 months after the Waldorf-Astoria began coming down. (Keith de Lellis Gallery, rarehistoricalphotos.com/Google Books/The New York Times)

SURVEYING THEIR KINGDOM…Most visitors to the Empire State Building can only go as high as the 86th floor observation deck. However, if you are a VIP like Serena Williams or **Taylor Swift**, you can get your picture snapped on the 103rd. (Associated Press/Empire State Building/Evan Bindelglass, CBSNewYork)

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Sore Winner

Sinclair Lewis famously declined the Pulitzer Prize for his 1925 novel Arrowsmith, upset that his 1920 novel Main Street had not previously won the prize. But when the Swedish Academy came calling with a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, he happily accepted. According to “The Talk of the Town,” this award also seemed a bit tardy, since Lewis’s small town booster archetype, George F. Babbitt, did not fit the dour days of the Great Depression. But it turned out that the 1922 novel Babbitt was ultimately what swayed the Nobel jury:

BOOST FROM A BOOSTER…George F. Babbitt helped make **Sinclair Lewis** famous, and landed him a Nobel. (NYT, NOVEMBER 6, 1930)

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Not So Sweet

Those of a certain age might remember Helen Hayes as a sweet old lady who appeared on a number of TV shows in the 1970s and 80s, or as the mother in real life of James MacArthur, Disney teen star and later the portrayer of Danny “Book ’em Danno” Williams on the original Hawaii 5-0 TV series. Hayes was married to playwright Charles MacArthur, and “The Talk of the Town” takes it from there…

CREATIVE TYPES…The engaged couple **Charles MacArthur** and **Helen Hayes** posed for photographer Edward Steichen for this Jan. 1, 1929 image featured in Vanity Fair magazine. (Condé Nast)

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Ain’t It Grand

Grand Hotel opened at the National Theatre on Nov. 13, 1930 to strong reviews, including the one below by Robert Benchley that he filed for The New Yorker. The play, adapted from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Austrian writer Vicki Baum, would prove to be a smash on Broadway and again on the silver screen in a star-studded 1932 film featuring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, and Joan Crawford.

THE STARS ALIGN…Left, promotional photograph of the original Broadway production of *Grand Hotel.* At right, **Eugenie Leontovich** portrayed fading Russian ballerina Grusinskaya in the play. The role would go to **Greta Garbo** in the 1932 film adaptation. (Theatre Magazine, February 1931/Wikipedia)

…and while we are on the subject of Broadway, the theater review section also featured this Al Frueh illustration promoting a noted production of Twelfth Night at the Maxine Elliott…

Program for the production featuring **Jane Cowl**. (Playbill)

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There were also big doings at the Met, where Spanish lyric soprano Lucrezia Bori (1887-1960) wowed audiences with her portrayal of Violetta in La Traviata.

SHE HAD SOME PIPES…right, lyric soprano **Lucrezia Bori** on the cover of the June 30, 1930 edition of Time magazine. At right, promotional photo of Bori circa 1930. (Time/Wikipedia)

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Bounty of Blessings

Humorist W. E. Farbstein gave readers plenty to be thankful for in this tribute to the Thanksgiving holiday…

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From Our Advertisers

Occasionally advertisements acknowledged the reality of the Great Depression, including this one from The Saturday Evening Post that offered encouraging words to prospective readers…

…County Fair, a Greenwich Village country-themed nightclub, offered the diversion of Moffatt and Bowman to take audiences’ minds off of hard times…

…and for all the supposed sophistication of New Yorker readers, there were still plenty of back page ads offering nostrums laced with superstition…

…some of the more colorful, spritely ads from the era were offered up by the producers of Texaco Motor Oil…

…our cartoons are by Gardner Rea…

…Barbara Shermund…

…William Crawford Galbraith…

…and Perry Barlow…

…and for another reminder of reality in the city, this sketch that ran along the bottom of “The Talk of the Town,” by Reginald Marsh…

…and now we step back to the Nov. 15 issue, where E.B. White offered a less somber take on the Great Depression…

…White also noted a change on the faces of storefront mannequins…

YIN AND YANG…The worldly pose of a Roaring Twenties mannequin, and a more wholesome look for the leaner times in the 1930s. (Pinterest)

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Playing Telephone

Long, long before cell phones, telephones were heavy stationary devices that required a certain amount of planning before installation, as E.B. White explains:

On to our Nov. 15 ads, we have this announcement for The Third New Yorker Album…with illustration by Otto Soglow…

…here is what the album looked like…

…and a couple of inside pages…

…one of the contributors to the album was Rea Irvin, founding illustrator for The New Yorker, here doing some business with Murad cigarettes…also another Flit insecticide ad by Dr. Seuss…

…Christmas ads began appearing in the magazine, including this one for Hanson scales…pity the poor chap (and his wife) who actually thought this might be a suitable present for Christmas, or any occasion for that matter…

…and with Prohibition still in force, advertisers found other uses to promote their products…

…on to our cartoons, Leonard Dove illustrated a couple who didn’t get away with the ruse…

… Alan Dunn depicted what was considered typical office behavior in the 1930s…

...Peter Arno visited the Harvard Club…

…Alice Harvey also explored the college scene…

…some parlor games with Barbara Shermund…

……Bruce Bairnsfather, and some existentialist chat at tea time…

…and we close with Isadore Klein, and the world of corporate competition…

…and a Happy Thanksgiving, from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade 89 years ago, Nov. 27, 1930…

Next Time: The Future Was a Silly Place…

Risky Business

The Irish American gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond was often referred to as the “clay pigeon of the underworld” due to surviving several attempts on his life.

In his “Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey checked up on the fleet-footed bootlegger, adored by the public for his various brushes with the law and escapes from sure death. In his opening paragraph, Markey referred to one of the attempts on Diamond’s life: On October 12, 1930, he survived being shot five times at Manhattan’s Hotel Monticello:

Markey’s column attempted to remove some of the glamour from Diamond’s flamboyant life, a life that would be cut short about a year later in an Albany rooming house…

OUT WITH THE BOYS…**Legs Diamond** leaves the federal court in New York with his attorney and a couple of cronies on Aug. 8, 1931, after being convicted of owning an unlicensed still and conspiring to violate Prohibition laws. (digitalcommonwealth.org)

BEDFELLOWS…**Legs Diamond** had a number of mistresses, but the best known was **Marion “Kiki” Roberts**, who was with Diamond shortly before he was slain. (The Mob Museum/Pinterest)

DEADLY TRIO…Clockwise, from top left, **Legs Diamond** is comforted by his wife, **Alice** Kenny **Diamond**, after being shot three times at a roadhouse near Cairo, NY, on April 27, 1931. His enemies finally succeeded in killing him on Dec. 18, 1931, shooting him three times in the back of the head in an Albany rooming house. Alice would be shot and killed less than two years later, possibly by Diamond’s enemies to keep her quiet. And sadly, *The New Yorker’s* “Reporter at Large” columnist **Morris Markey** would also meet a violent end, dying of a gunshot wound to the head in 1950. Whether it was by his hand or another’s, it was never determined. (Albany Archives/NY Times)

An afternote: Enemies would finally catch up to Legs Diamond and kill him on Dec. 18, 1931. Diamond’s wife, Alice Kenny Diamond, would be shot and killed less than two years later. Diamond’s mistress and former Ziegfeld Follies performer Marion “Kiki” Roberts would return to the stage and cash in on her notoriety. In 1937 it was reported she was the big draw in a touring “Crazy Quilt” burlesque revue. And according to the writer William Kennedy, who wrote about Diamond in his 1975 novel Legs, the last record of Kiki Roberts was in Boston in the 1940s, where “she was still appearing as ‘Jack (Legs) Diamond’s Lovely Light o’ Love.’ ”

Here is newsreel footage of Diamond’s mistress Marion “Kiki” Roberts, shortly after the gangster’s death. In this brief interview with a Boston reporter (and with her mother at her side) Roberts advises girls to “live good clean lives and obey their parents wishes.” Note how it appears she is reading from cue cards.

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Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

A precursor to the helicopter, the autogyro was considered by many to be the next logical step in aircraft development, and especially in the development of smaller craft that could serve as safe, affordable transportation options for commuters. The New Yorker’s E.B. White, an aviation enthusiast, demonstrated to readers the wonders of this aircraft:

EASY AS PIE…A Cierva Autogiro C30 takes flight circa 1933. (findmypast.co.uk)

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Baker’s Big Show

Nineteen-year-old American-born French entertainer Josephine Baker became an instant symbol of Jazz Age Paris when she starred in La Revue Nègre in October 1925. Her erotic dance routines wowed Paris audiences, and she quickly moved on to the famed Folies Bergère. In 1930 she opened a new show at the Casino de Paris that also featured her pet cheetah, Chiquita. The New Yorker’s Janet Flanner was there to take it all in:

HEAR THE THUNDER…Nineteen-year-old Josephine Baker took Paris by storm when she appeared in *La Revue Nègre* at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in October 1925. (harleminmontmartre.paris/artphotolimited.com)

HEAR ME ROAR…*The* *New Yorker’s* **Janet Flanner** was wowed by **Josephine Baker’s** newest show at the Casino de Paris that also featured her pet cheetah, **Chiquita.** (pictorem.com/vam.ac.uk/artphotolimited.com)

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Grim Reminder

Despite the deepening Depression across the country, few mentions of it were made in the pages of The New Yorker. Howard Brubaker, in his “Of All Things” column, offered this not-so-gentle reminder:

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From Our Advertisers

We feature Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, a Swiss-born American socialite shilling for Pond’s cold cream. At the time of this ad she was the mother of six-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt (who would become a famous fashion designer and artist and the mother of CNN’s Anderson Cooper)…

POOR LITTLE RICH GIRLS…**Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt** and her husband, **Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt** with daughter **Gloria**, circa 1924-25. Reginald died in 1925, and a famous custody battle over little Gloria (who recently died at age 95) would take place in 1934. At right, portrait of Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt by **Dorothy Wilding**, 1933. (Perkins Library, Duke University)

…the makers of Ybry lipstick apparently did not have the budget to garner a patrician endorsement, so they settled for this illustration by New Yorker cartoonist Barney Tobey…

…and we have another lovely color ad from R.J. Reynolds, once again linking cigarettes to athletic prowess…

…on to our cartoons, we mark election season with Carl Rose…

…Barbara Shermund explored the generation gap…

…Peter Arno gathered his sugar daddies for a game of chess…

…Kemp Starrett introduced us to an unlikely life of the party…

…Alan Dunn examined the influences of popular cinema…

…Mary Petty gave us an Ivy League perspective of the Great Depression…

…and Arno again, with a cartoon that was featured along with The New Yorker’s “Wayward Press” column…

Next Time: Body and Soul…

Ghosts of Gotham

Since I am posting this on the night before All Hallow’s Eve, let’s take a quick look back 89 years at Halloween 1930 through the pages of the Oct. 25, 1930 issue of The New Yorker…

…which featured a short story (excerpted below) by Sally Benson, who would write a series of shorts for The New Yorker in 1941-42 that were later published in her book, Meet Me in St. Louis. Note how Prohibition laws seemed to pose no obstacle to the Bixbys’ party plans:

Benson’s Meet Me in St. Louis would be adapted into a popular 1944 film starring Judy Garland. One of the film’s highlights featured the Halloween hijinks of Tootie and Agnes Smith (Margaret O’Brien and Joan Carroll).

BOO!…**Margaret O’Brien** and Joan Carroll go trick-or-treating in 1944’s *Meet Me in St. Louis. (Comet Over Hollywood)*

…Halloween revels were also popular with the college kids…

…and of course Hollywood got in on the act, each studio issuing pinup-style images of major female stars to newspapers and magazines …

Clockwise, from top left, **Bessie Love** (ca. 1920s), a still from a 1933 **Betty Boop** cartoon, **Anita Page, Joan Crawford, Clara Bow**, and **Myrna Loy**. (Vintage Everyday/YouTube)

…the pages of the Oct. 25 issue contained other references to the holiday, including these Julian de Miskey spot drawings…

…and there were also ads offering both parties and party treats to those seeking some Halloween fun…

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Not Exactly Whale Watching

On to our issues, the Oct. 15, 1930 edition featured a strange account (in “The Talk of the Town”) of a man who travelled the country with an embalmed whale carcass, which apparently drew large crowds wherever it was displayed.

Oct. 15, 1930 cover by **Peter Arno.** As I noted in my previous post, it seemed everyone was lighting up in the 1930s.

The account is disgusting on a number of levels (the last line: “People simply love whales”). During my research I learned that these “whale tours” continued into the 1970s.

SAVE THE WHALES…in this case, by pumping the animal with gallons of formaldehyde.

For further reading, author Lydia Pyne offers some history on this strange phenomenon at Not Even Past.

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From Our Advertisers

The owners of the new Barbizon-Plaza Hotel at 106 Central Park South tried their best to lure the smart set (especially artists and musicians) to this “habitat” designed especially for them. Unfortunately, artists and musicians were as broke as everyone else, and the property was foreclosed on in 1933…

…and we have another appeal to the smart set, this one from the publishers of Vogue magazine (now a sister publication to the New Yorker, as both are now owned by Condé Nast)…

…and one more appeal to fashionable sorts, this time perfume in a bottle shaped like an art deco skyscraper…

…here is what one version of the bottle looked like in 1928, similar to ad above. According to the blog Cleopatra’s Boudoir, the We Moderns perfume was sold from 1928 to 1936 in bottles made in Czechoslovakia. The bottle below was made from glass, enamel (label), and the early plastic Bakelite (cover and base)…

…on to our color ads, I like this one because RCA induced the inventor of wireless radio, Guglielmo Marconi, to endorse their “Radiola”…

…and we have a beautiful illustration by Ellis Wilson for Dodge Boats…

…on to our cartoons, we begin with Denys Wortman…

…here’s the art of Rea Irvin on a full page…

…Helen Hokinson kept up the tradition of New Yorkers looking down on those backward Bostonians…

…Alan Dunn, illustrating the sunlamp fad of the 20s and 30s…

…and Jack Markow, checking on the progress of the Empire State Building…

On to the Oct. 25 issue, and the Broadway opening of the comedy Girl Crazy…

…which featured Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman introducing the many hits from George Gershwin’s score including “I Got Rhythm” and ‘Embraceable You.” The plot was simple: a young New York playboy is banished by his family to a dude ranch in Arizona to keep him out of trouble…where of course he finds trouble. The orchestra for the Broadway performance included such talents as Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, and Gene Krupa.

THEY SEEM SANE ENOUGH…Above, poster for the Broadway musical *Girl Crazy.* Below, **Ginger Rogers** poses with fellow stage actors. (gershwin.com)

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More from Our Advertisers

Ads from the Oct. 25 issue included this recurring one from the promoters of the Empire State Building, marking progress through various historical vignettes…

…the ad accurately depicted the building’s progress, measured against these images below…

…and we have more radio ads…no endorsement from Marconi here, but the makers of Fada claimed their receiver was far less annoying than their rivals…

…while Atwater Kent touted the convenience of its new “Quick-Vision Dial”…

…as I’ve previously noted, backgammon was all the rage in 1930, so much so that this clothier even advertised a special frock for the game…

…and what would the 1930s be without smoking tied to athletic prowess…

…and remembering friends and family in California in 2019 as they battle wildfires across that great state…

…on to our cartoons, Garrett Price introduced us to a man with a peculiar taste in pet canaries…

…Barbara Shermund illustrated the startling views afforded by rail travel…

…and Peter Arno leaves us in a moment of religious ecstasy…

Next Time: Risky Business…

Leatherheads

One thing you won’t see in today’s New Yorker magazine is extensive coverage of college football (more likely you’ll see an indictment of the game). In the magazine’s first years, however, that sport was enthusiastically embraced.

A writer identified by the alias “Linesman” assessed the early season’s prospects, and noted the return of Yale’s Albie Booth (1908–1959) to the field. Booth became famous during the previous season for his spectacular play against Army: Booth led Yale to an upset victory by scoring all of the team’s points (two rushing touchdowns, a 65-yard punt return for a touchdown, and three extra point kicks). Newsreels featuring the game sported the caption, “Booth 21, Army 13.”

GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES…Top and left, only 5 feet 6 inches tall and 144 pounds, **Albie Booth** nevertheless could do it all on offense – running, passing, kicking. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1966. Bottom, left, Fordham’s famed “Seven Blocks of Granite,” in 1936. In the days before he became a legendary coach, **Vince Lombardi** served as one of those seven blocks (he is third from the left). (footballfoundation.org/yaledailynews.com/Associated Press)

* * *

Foul Ball

While The New Yorker geared up to cover the college football season (as well as everything from Badminton to yacht racing), it continued to ignore professional baseball, mentioning its existence only in passing, such as this observation shared by Howard Brubaker in “Of All Things”…

Footnote: Simeon Fess (1861-1936) was a Republican Senator from Ohio known as an apologist for a very unpopular Republican Party.

* * *

Not For The Kiddies

The Office Wife was a romantic drama featuring such “pre-Code” themes as infidelity and workplace hanky-panky. The film was the talking picture debut of Joan Blondell, who would become a big star in the 1930s and enjoy a long career that would include numerous appearances on television through the 1970s. Here are excerpts from John Mosher’s review of the film:

SHE TALKS! SHE BATHES! At top, Anne Murdock (**Dorothy Mackaill**) practices her charms in *The Office Wife.* Below, Anne’s younger sister Katherine (**Joan Blondell**) has a soak in the tub. It would be Blondell’s talking picture debut. (11east14thstreet.com/classicmoviefavorites.com)

SEX SELLS…Warner Brothers played up the salacious aspects of *The Office Wife* to generate interest among movie theater operators. (Pinterest)

While Joan Blondell was on the verge of a meteoric rise, one of the silent era’s biggest stars and sex symbols, Clara Bow (known as the “It Girl,”) was seeing her popularity wane in the sound era. After Her Wedding Night (reviewed here by Mosher) she would make just four more films before she would retire from the pictures at the ripe age of 28.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT…From left, **Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher, Ralph Forbes** and **Clara Bow** observe the hijinks of **Charles Ruggles** in 1930’s *Her Wedding Night.* Bow’s enormous popularity would quickly wane in the era of talking pictures. (IMDB)

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Twin Peaks

Architecture critic George Chappell chronicled the latest changes to the skyline surrounding Central Park, most notably Emery Roth’s landmark San Remo and El Dorado.

THIS TOWN AIN’T BIG ENOUGH FOR THE TWO OF US…New York’s original Hotel Majestic (left) stood for just 35 years before it was razed to make way for its bigger Art Deco successor, at right. (Pinterest/Wikipedia)

FRATERNAL TWINS…Architect **Emery Roth** designed both the San Remo at 145 Central Park West (left) and the El Dorado at 300 Central Park West. (Wikipedia/mapio.net)

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“Cultural hotels” of the 1920s and 30s catered to college students as well as young professionals engaged in music or the visual arts. Two of these hotels shared the Barbizon name, and one in particular on East 63rd Street served as a combination charm school and dorm for young women who wanted a safe New York retreat while they pursued school or professional opportunities. For decades it would be home to many celebrities including Candice Bergen, Joan Crawford, Cybill Shepherd, Joan Didion, and Grace Kelly…

CULTURAL SIBLINGS…Opened in 1927, The Barbizon at 140 East 63rd Street (left) served for many decades as a female-only residential hotel, housing many celebrities before they became famous including **Candice Bergen, Joan Crawford, Cybill Shepherd, Joan Didion,** and **Grace Kelly.** At right, the Barbizon-Plaza, which opened in May 1930, was noted as the first music-art residence center in the U.S. (newyorkitecture.com/Museum of the City of New York)

…of course not everyone could afford the excitement of life among the rich and famous…some had to settle for lesser thrills…

…on the other hand, these posh tots appeared to be destined for the Barbizon crowd…you can even sense that feeling of entitlement in their vacant little eyes…

…and for something completely different, another weird Flit ad, with Dr. Seuss…

…on to our cartoons, another day in the country with Rea Irvin…

…Alan Dunn found a young couple living above one of the city’s “skyscraper churches,” the result of valuable Manhattan church property being developed into a combinations of churches and hi-rise apartments…

…an example of a “skyscraper church” is Calvary Baptist Church at 123 West 57th…

…closer to the street, we have a couple of high society waiters with low opinions of man’s best friend, courtesy Garrett Price…

…Barbara Shermund looked in on some gossip (paying special attention to the smoking habits of the smart set)…

…and we end with Robert Love’s sole contribution to The New Yorker…

Next Time: Will It Play In Peoria?…

Animal Crackers

Above image: Groucho Marx, Margaret Dumont, and Lillian Roth in the Marx Brothers second film, Animal Crackers, 1930 (IMDB)

The Marx Brothers were famous for a string of hit films in the 1930s, but some of the comedy on which those films were based went all the way back to the days of vaudeville and 1920s Broadway.

Animal Crackers was their second film (the first was 1929’s The Cocoanuts), and the last to be adapted from one of their stage shows. It was also the last Marx Brothers movie to be filmed at Paramount’s Astoria Studio in Queens before the brothers headed for Hollywood.

MUSICAL CIRCUS…*Animal Crackers* began as a Broadway stage production in 1928 before moving to film in 1930; from left to right: **Groucho, Harpo, Chico** and Zeppo in a publicity photo for the stage version of *Animal Crackers.* (www.georgeskaufman.com)

The New Yorker’s John Mosher reviewed the film version, which was playing at the Rialto Theatre:

SO LONG, NEW YORK…*Animal Crackers* was the second and final Marx Brothers movie to be filmed at Astoria Studios in Queens; from left, **Chico, Zeppo, Groucho** and Harpo Marx pose for a 1930 publicity photo. (IMDB)

Always partial to European directors, Mosher found Ernst Lubitsch’s Monte Carlo among the better films playing in the late summer.

OH YOU CAD!…**Jeanette MacDonald** and Jack Buchanan in Monte Carlo. (IMDB)

* * *

Fox in the Hen House

“The Talk of the Town” made light of Mayor Jimmy Walker’s plan to “rid the city of graft.” Ironically, Jimmy himself would be drummed out of office two years later for accepting bribes…

WHAT ME WORRY? Yes maybe. Mayor Jimmy Walker in 1930. (nymag.com)

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We have another lovely illustration from Carl “Eric” Erickson promoting the joys of smoking unfiltered cigarettes…

…these small ads for apartments in the back pages of the magazine promoted the bucolic vistas in Westchester…

Images of Fleetwood Hills from *The American Architect,* June 1926.

…and European-style living on East 44th Street…

The Beaux-Arts Apartments (which still stand) consisted of buildings on both sides of E. 44th Street. (Museum of the City of New York)

…as for cartoons, Peter Arno continued this running gag…

…as did Rea Irvin in another tableaux (originally running sideways, full page) featuring the clash of country bumpkins and city elites…

…Garrett Price looked in on the burdens of the wealthy…

…and Barbara Shermund caught some small talk at a cafe…

…back to Peter Arno, and a heated game of table tennis…

…and Gardner Rea, witness to modern-day crime reporting…

On to the Sept. 13, 1930 issue…

Sept. 13, 1930: yet another satirical kakemono cover by Rea Irvin.

As I’ve noted many times before, the early New Yorker covered every sport under the sun (and especially elite sports such as yacht racing, tennis and badminton, golf and polo) but to my knowledge never covered a major league baseball game in its then five-year existence. Here, E.B. White, in his “Notes and Comment,” complains about the high price of tickets to polo matches…

…White, a well-known dog lover, offered a rather cruel solution to a problem cat in this feature:

* * *

Oh Never Mind

At first glance I thought this might actually be an article about a baseball game, but alas, it was a column by Ring Lardner (titled “Br’er Rabbit Ball”) that showed little enthusiasm for the game (the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal apparently soured his love for baseball). Excerpts:

Speaking of sports, we move to the advertisements and the helpful folks from Lucky Strike, who wanted to help you get in shape with a smoke…

…and another ad for Flit insecticide by Dr. Seuss, featuring an elephant that looked a lot like the future Horton, and some unfortunate racist imagery…

…yet another Peter Arno repeat with a new caption…

…and another in a series of 1930’s images by Ralph Barton…

…a maritime dilemma, courtesy Garrett Price…

…and apartment shopping with Constantin Alajalov…

Next Time: The Flying Misanthrope…

Hell’s Angels

Among the films in 1930 that marked a new era in motion pictures was Howard Hughes’s epic war film Hell’s Angels.

Originally shot as a silent, Hughes (1905-1976) retooled the film, and over a period of three years (1927-30) poured much of his own money into making what many consider to be Hollywood’s first sound action movie. The film also introduced audiences to 19-year-old Jean Harlow (1911-1937), handpicked by Hughes to replace Norwegian actress Greta Nissen in the lead role (Nissen’s accent posed a problem for the talkies). The film would make Harlow an instant star, propelling her to worldwide fame as the “Platinum Blonde” sex symbol of the 1930s.

Beset by delays due to Hughes’s incessant tinkering, the movie was famously expensive. For example, a total 137 pilots were used in just one flying scene at the end of the film. In addition to monetary costs, the filming also claimed the lives of three pilots and a mechanic, and Hughes himself would fracture his skull during a stunt flying attempt.

PRE-CODE…Before **Will Hays** imposed his moral code on Hollywood, films in the early thirties were frank with sexual references, as the image at left attests. When **Howard Hughes** switched the filming of *Hell’s Angels* to sound, he replaced Norwegian actress **Greta Nissen** with 19-year-old **Jean Harlow** (seen with co-star **Ben Lyon**). Harlow’s first major film appearance would make her an overnight star; at right, **Frank Clarke** and **Roy Wilson** flying an S.E.5A (front) and a Fokker D.VII (back, note camera) in the filming of *Hell’s Angels*. (Wikipedia)

The New Yorker’s John Mosher found the action scenes enticing, but the acting left something to be desired…

COSTLY VENTURE …This Sikorsky S-29A (left), repainted to represent a German Gotha bomber, would crash into the California hills during filming (right), killing mechanic **Phil Jones,** who failed to bail out along with the pilot. (Northrop Grumman)

GEE WHIZ…The media often reported on the progress of the film, such as in this May 1930 article in *Modern Mechanics and Inventions* that detailed a $1 million sequence in which a fighter dives his plane into the top of a Zeppelin, causing it to explode and crash to earth. (Modern Mechanix)

We skip ahead briefly to the Aug. 30 issue, in which “The Talk of Town” featured a mini profile of Howard Hughes and his film. Note how Hughes’s extravagance is described through his frequent use of long-distance telephone calls:

A STAR IS BORN…19-year-old **Jean Harlow** and **Ben Lyon** in 1930’s Hell’s Angels. (IMDB/Pinterest)

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A Whale of a Movie

Critic John Mosher also took in a film adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a very loose adaptation that excluded the novel’s central character, Ishmael, and invented a love story for the maniacal Capt. Ahab…

A WHALE OF A STORY…From left, **Noble Johnson** as Queequeg, **John Barrymore** as Ahab, and **Walter Long** as Stubbs in 1930’s Moby Dick. At right, top, the whale puts the hurt on a boat; bottom, **Joan Bennett** as Faith, a contrived love interest for the old salt. (IMDB)

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Daily Dazzle

“The Talk of the Town” gushed over the lobby of the new Daily News Building, likening it to the glitz of a Broadway revue:

HOME FOR CLARK KENT…The Daily News Building served as the model for the headquarters of the fictional *Daily Planet*, the building where Superman worked as mild-mannered Clark Kent; at right, an image from 1941 of the lobby, dominated by the world’s largest indoor globe. (Wikipedia/Public Domain)

A LOBBY FOR LEARNING…The lobby includes an array of clocks, top left, that give the time in various global destinations. (Luke J. Spencer via atlasobscura.com)

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A Busboy’s Dream

Charles Pierre Casalasco left his life as a busboy in Corsica and studied haute cuisine in Paris before arriving at the shores of Manhattan in the early 1900s. He became a renowned headwaiter who by 1929 garnered enough financial backing from New York’s most powerful families to construct the exclusive Hotel Pierre. Writing under her pseudonym, “Penthouse,” New Yorker columnist Marcia Davenport described the building’s apartments to eager readers:

FUN WHILE IT LASTED…The 41-story, 714-room Hotel Pierre officially opened in October 1930 to great fanfare. The party would be short-lived, as the deepening Depression would force the hotel into bankruptcy just two years later. At right, photo of the Rotunda, before a 2017 remodeling. (New York Public Library)

* * *

So Much For Title IX

Then as now, women athletes were held to a separate set of standards, not only judged for their athletic abilities, but also for their “sex appeal,” as John Tunis suggests more than a few times in his profile of English tennis champion Betty Nuthall (1911-1983). Excerpts:

HOW’S THAT BACKHAND?…**Betty Nuthall** greets American tennis star **Bill Tilden** in September 1930; on the cover of *Time* after winning the 1930 U.S. Open. (Digital Commonwealth/Time Inc.)

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Free Expression

Robert Myron Coates (1897–1973) was a writer of experimental, expressionistic novels who later became a longtime art critic for The New Yorker (he is credited with coining the term “abstract expressionism” in 1946). In the Aug. 23 issue he contributed the first installment of “Dada City,” here describing street life in Harlem. Excerpts:

STREET LIFE…Scenes around Harlem’s 125th Street, clockwise from top left: the Apollo Theatre marquee punctuates a busy street scene in 1935; NW corner of 125th and Broadway, 1930; Regal Shoes storefront, 1940s, photo by Weegee; 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue in 1934. (Skyscraper City/Museum of the City of New York)

AMERICAN ORIGINAL…**Robert M. Coates’s** *The Eater of Darkness* (1926) has been called the first surrealist novel in English. (Goodreads)

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New Yorkers who were still enduring the brutal summer of 1930 could find relief, if they could afford it, on a New York Airways flight…

…or if you had the means, you could take your yacht out to sea, like this chap in a coat and tie who calmly steers with one hand while offering a box of chocolates to his guests with the other…

…our sailor wasn’t the only one dressed to nines…here are two ads offering suggestions to young folks returning to college or prep school…

…for comparison, this is how a group of college students at Columbia University dress today…

…Dr. Seuss continued to crank out drawings on behalf of Flit insecticide…

…and on to cartoons, yet another rerun (the sixth) of this Peter Arno drawing with a new caption (Dorothy Dix was a popular advice columnist)…

…and another look at country life courtesy Rea Irvin (originally printed sideways on a full page)…

…and another country scene, this time among the toffs, thanks to Garrett Price…

…back in the city, some parlor room chatter as depicted by Barbara Shermund…

…downtown, Isadore Klein looked at the economic challenges of peep shows…

…and we close with this reflection on city life, by Reginald Marsh…

Next Time: Marble Halls…

The Woes of Mr. Monroe

Whether probing the battle of sexes or exposing the secret lives of daydreamers like Walter Mitty, James Thurber (pictured above) had a knack for revealing the frustrations and various tics that plagued ordinary people.

That included the fictional John Monroe, whom Thurber placed in various awkward situations in a series of humorous stories, including this encounter with some moving men that required the rather inept Monroe to make a series of decisions usually left to his wife, Ellen. Some excerpts from the Aug. 9 issue:

ODD COUPLES…**Sue Randall** and **Orson Bean** portrayed Ellen and John Monroe on a 1961 episode of The DuPont Show with June Allyson. (findagrave.com/Wikipedia)

…a decade later, **William Windom**, left, and Joan Hotchkis portrayed John and Ellen Monroe on the Thurber-inspired (and award-winning) NBC comedy *My World and Welcome to It* (1969-70). (TV Guide)

* * *

Beats the Heat

In the hot August of 1930, film critic John Mosher probably found the air-conditioned theaters to be the best feature of the cinema, given the generally mediocre quality of the summer movies. Mosher also noted the new trend of adapting Broadway plays to the screen, a practice that continues to this day.

THE SOUND OF 1930…**Joan Crawford** (left) examines a boom microphone on the set of *Our Blushing Brides*. Although most films were produced with sound in 1930, it was still something of a novelty to actors who began their careers in the silent era; at right, **Douglas Fairbanks Jr.** and **Anita Page** in *Little Accident.* (IMDB)

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Well, who doesn’t love a whole chicken in jar, ready to “fry or cream” in just 20 minutes? This was actually a big deal in 1930, given that chicken dinners were not as common back in the days before factory farms and Chick-fil-A…

…the makers of Marlboro cigarettes abandoned their essay and penmanship contests and took another direction with their drab, back-page ads, appealing to a vague sense of status in the prospective smoker…

…this sad little bottom-of-the-page ad enticed readers to take a drive in the country to see Texas Guinan and her “Famous Gang” still whooping it up like it was 1925. The venture was short-lived…

…on to our cartoons, Peter Arno looked in on nightlife in the city…

…William Crawford Galbraith took in an outdoor concert…

…Ralph Barton offered his comic skills to a glimpse of domestic life…

…Garrett Price observed some boaters on an outing that would be frowned upon today (or at least I hope so)…

…and Constantin Alajalov examined the pitfalls of modern art…

* * *

Speaking of art, we move on the Aug. 16, 1930 issue…

Aug. 16, 1930 cover by **Barney Tobey.**

…in which Robert Benchley has fun with the foibles of the art world…

* * *

Rough Riders

In his “Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey looked in on the working world of one chain-smoking ambulance driver…some excerpts…

SLIDE ‘EM IN…1930s Flexible ambulance and its rather cramped interior. (coachbuilt.com)

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From Our Advertisers

Hard to believe that zippers were a novel invention just 90 years ago…in this ad from the leading manufacturer, Talon, this “hookless” wonder was still referred to as a “slide fastener”…

…the Chrysler Corporation was never the biggest car company in America, but it was always known as a leader in both technology and design, as in these graceful lines that flowed over its new “Straight Eight” models…

…the makers of Camel cigarettes continued to push their product as a sound way to stay fit and trim…

…in the cartoons for Aug. 16, this drawing by Peter Arno appeared for the fifth time in the magazine, always with a different caption (the others appeared in three consecutive issues — June 5, 12 and 19, and on Aug. 2, 1930)…

…William Crawford Galbraith detected some wet vs. dry tension at the country club…

…Ralph Barton returned with another full-page illustration of a weekend domestic scene…

…Garrett Price found confusion in a lengthy queue…

…and Kemp Starrett gave us a bird’s eye view of a future New Yorker…

Next Time: Hell’s Angels…