The “Profile” for the May 12, 1928 issue was unusual in that its subject was not a titan of industry, or a prominent politician, or noted artist, musician or literary figure, but rather a dog—an extraordinary animal named Egon who would be lost to history were it not for Alexander Woollcott writing about this particular German Shepherd and his exploits on the French Riviera.
May 12, 1928 cover by Julian de Miskey.
I should be clear that the dog featured at the top of this entry is not Egon, but a famous contemporary named Rin Tin Tin. It is said Egon could have enjoyed similar fame on the silver screen (Hollywood was looking for an animal to replace the aging canine superstar), but Egon’s owner, Benjamin Finney, had no interest in the limelight. So I couldn’t find any images of Egon save for this drawing that accompanied Woollcott’s essay:
Writing for the Huffington Post, Anne Margaret Daniel calls Egon Finney the “Jazz Age celebrity no one has noticed since his lifetime, but who is surely as interesting as many of his human contemporaries — and far more interesting than many of them.”
Woollcott would agree with that statement, given the opening paragraphs of his piece on Egon:
When Egon and Finney lived in Antibes in 1927 and 1928, Egon would give diving exhibitions off the rocks below the Hotel du Cap. According to Daniel, the dog also “availed himself of his owner’s surfboard, and water skis — possibly the first pair ever on the Riviera.” Egon was aided in his efforts by none other than the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived on the Riviera from 1925 to 1930.
DOG LOVERS…Alexander Woolcott, left, and Egon owner Benjamin Finney (boweryboyshistory.com/Sewanee University of the South)HE TAUGHT A DOG TO WATER SKI, TOO…F. Scott Fitzgerald, wife Zelda and son Scottie in Antibes in 1926. Fitzgerald lived on the Riviera from 1925 to 1930, writing much of The Great Gatsby there. His last-completed novel, Tender Is The Night, was set on the Riviera. (NY Times)
According to Daniel, Finney recalled that Egon’s physical design “made it difficult for him to get started (on the surfboard), but his friend Scott Fitzgerald was expert at giving him a hand… Firmly balanced, tail streaming in the wind, he was a noble sight — and he knew it.”
Because the dog outshone his owner, Woollcott headlined his profile, “The Owner of Ben Finney.” Egon died in 1934, and those very words are carved on his headstone, located in America’s first pet cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
Someone He Could Finally Relate To…
Charles Lindbergh was famously shy and crowd averse, so when the famed aviator met with the serious-minded boxing champ Gene Tunney, he found something of a kindred spirit. Writing for the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town,” Peter Vischer was there for all of the action:
NOWHERE TO HIDE…This item in the El Paso Evening Post (Feb. 29, 1928) was precisely the sort of thing both Gene Tunney and Charles Lindbergh detested. (Evening Post)
* * *
From Our Advertisers…
Beginning in 1924 the Southern Pacific’s Golden State Limited trains added modern and luxurious 3-compartment, 2-drawing room observation cars to their Pullman fleet. This advertisement in the May 12, 1928 New Yorker enticed affluent readers to take the 2,762 mile, 70-hour journey from Chicago to Los Angeles:
NOT THE WORST FOR WEAR…The Russian actress, singer and dancer Olga Baclanova exits the Golden State Limited in Los Angeles in July 1929 after a long journey from New York. Billed as “The Russian Tigress” who often portrayed an exotic blonde temptress, she is best known for her roles as Duchess Josiana in the silent The Man Who Laughs and as a circus trapeze artist in Tod Browning’s 1932 cult horror movie Freaks. (olgabaclanova.com)
As the fashion advertisements turned to summer, the May 12 issue featured no less than three separate ads for straw boaters…
Today’s ubiquitous polo shirt was an entirely new look for the summer of 1928. The shirt was designed by France’s seven-time Grand Slam tennis champion René Lacoste, who understandably found traditional “tennis whites” (starched, long-sleeved white button-up shirts with neckties) both cumbersome and uncomfortable. Lacoste first wore the polo at the 1926 U.S. Open, and in 1927 he placed the famous crocodile emblem on the left breast of his shirts. It didn’t take long for many imitators to hit the market. This ad from Wallach Brothers offered one version for $6, although I can’t imagine wool was the best material for this shirt (Lacoste used cotton in his).
No doubt B. Altman had June brides in mind for this advertisement featuring a deco bride of impossible proportions:
And our cartoon is once again from Peter Arno, who explored the not so subtle racism of the upper classes:
The “King of Greenwich Village Bohemians,” Maxwell “Bogie” Bodenheim, was a leading (and notorious) American poet and novelist when “The Talk of the Town” (July 25, 1925) reported on the controversy surrounding his latest novel, Replenishing Jessica, sometimes referred to as one of the infamous “lost” bohemian novels of the 1920s.
Although few consider the book to be great literature (or by today’s standards, scandalous), Replenishing Jessica’s frank portrayal of a woman’s many sexual liaisons was enough to draw the ire of censors.
Maxwell “Bogie” Bodenheim (The Chiseler)
Bodenheim’s publisher, Horace Liverwright, even found himself the subject of a grand jury investigation, which had declared the book obscene, although he was never prosecuted (Liverwright’s defense attorney was none other than Arthur Hayes, who would also serve on Clarence Darrow’s defense team in the Scopes Monkey Trial).
The New Yorker reported that Bodenheim was “present under a $2,500 bond” following publication of Replenishing Jessica, and called him “one of our few sincerely colorful literati.” It was also suggested that Bodenheim suffered from a “the same persecution complex which tortured Lafcadio Hearn; in his mind, editors meet to plot means to keep him out of print” (Hearn was a late 19th century writer known for his stories based on Japanese legends).
“Talk” described Bodenheim as “ragged and unkempt,”
his pipe “a burnt corn-cob, wedged in his broken front teeth…Eccentric, erratic, is Mr. Bodenheim, careless of the world’s criticism outside of his work, but there is an air of sincerity about him, cynical sincerity, a brittle sparkle to his conversation, that fascination of exotic, social lawlessness.
There is an interesting New Yorker connection to Bodenheim, who met writer Ben Hecht in Chicago in 1912 and with him co-founded the short-lived Chicago Literary Times, which featured such poets and writers as Carl Sanburg, Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson.
After his success as a leading American author in the 1920s and 1930s, Bodenheim became a panhandler and was arrested and hospitalized a number of times for vagrancy and drunkenness. In an article for The Chiseler, critic John Strausbaugh wrote that Bodenheim had “a real talent for scandal, easy enough to generate during Greenwich Village’s prolonged drunken orgy in the Prohibition years.”
Maxwell Bodenheim and Ruth Fagin sharing a breakfast of tomato juice and sandwiches as they await eviction from their Bleecker Street apartment, circa 1952. (The Chiseler)
In 1952 the 60-year-old Bodenheim married his third wife, Ruth Fagin, who was 28 years his junior. Strausbaugh takes it from there:
In 1953, Ruth took up with a violent, mentally unstable dishwasher named Harold Weinberg. One night in the winter of 1954 the three of them wound up in Weinberg’s room off the Bowery. Bodenheim roused himself from a drunken stupor to see Ruth and Weinberg having sex. He attacked Weinberg, who pulled out a .22 and shot him through the heart. Then Weinberg stabbed Ruth in the chest. The last photos of Bodenheim show him and Ruth lying dead in the squalid room.
Weinberg confessed to the double homicide, was judged insane and sent to a mental institution.
Now on a happier note…
This issue was also replete with various equine diversions. A feature titled “Au Gallop!” looked at groups of New Yorkers who plied the bridal paths of Central Park.
In “Profiles,” Jack Frost wrote admiringly about Harry Payne Whitney (accompanied by an heroic pen-and-ink portrait by Johan Bull). Whitney was a wealthy American businessman, thoroughbred horse breeder, and according to Frost, a “restless impatient force” who “concentrates on success.”
The victorious American team at the 1911 Westchester Cup. Harry Payne Whitney is second from left. (westchestercup.org/archives)
Among other things, The New Yorker credited Whitney with the creation of international-level polo competition in America and considered him the country’s best hope to win the Westchester Cup from England (Whitney was on the 1909, 1911 and 1913 winning American teams). Frost wrote that thanks to Whitney, “we have Homeric contests at Meadow Brook, as blood-stirring as the most epic battles of a Griffith film…”
There was no coverage of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, but cartoonist Al Frueh provided this reminder:
(New Yorker Digital Archive)
“Of All Things” noted that the population of New York City stood at 6,103,384, the 384 representing “those who have never had ferry-boats named after them” (The current population of the city is about 8.5 million).
View of midtown Manhattan looking southeast from Central Park, May 1925, when the population stood at 6,103,384. (Fairchild Aerial Surveys)
The column also offered this quip about the difference between France and England: “Another difference between the two countries is that England is working on the isolation of germs while France is still concerned with the isolation of Germany.”
Will Rogers was a popular draw as part of the “Follies” cast. (Will Rogers Memorial Museums)
The “Critique” section urged readers to see select Broadway shows before the new fall season. Recommended plays included What Price Glory, They Knew What They Wanted, Desire Under the Elms, Is Zat So?, the Ziegfeld Follies, Artists and Models, Lady Be Good and Rose-Marie.
The “Music’ section praised a new talent, Abram Chasins. “This young man is going to be something. In fifty years you may pat your granddaughter’s hair (if she has any) and tell her that you saw it in THE NEW YORKER first.” Chasins would have a long career as a pianist and composer, and later as a broadcaster and radio executive. He is perhaps best known for his Three Chinese Pieces composition.
The “Moving Pictures” section looked at Lightnin (“all our sentimental friends will find it a charming American epic”), and Rugged Water, starring Wallace Beery, who played a cowardly coast guard captain. Wrote the reviewer: “(Beery) does not seem to know what it is about and funks badly indeed. As for the rest of the picture, a good performance is given by the ocean.”
June Marlowe and Rin Tin Tin in a scene from Tracked in the Snow Country. (1925) (Warner Bros.)Rin Tin Tin and June Marlowe appear in an advertisement for wristwatches. They made four films together in 1925-26 (Warner Bros.)
In reviewing the dog superstar Rin Tin Tin’s latest movie, Tracked in Snow Country, Theodore Shane (who signed his column “TS”) mused that “It is questionable as to what a dog would say were he able to appraise the virtue that he defends on the screen. Would he find that gold mine worth fighting for or that gal’s innocence worth saving or that villain’s throat worth chawing?…He is a handsome animal to look on and appealing in every foot of the film he plays, but we wish that all that beauty would get cynical for a change.”
Susan Orlean wrote a terrific article about Rin Tin Tin in the August 29, 2011 issue of The New Yorker titled “The Dog Star: Rin Tin Tin and the making of Warner Bros.” She also published a book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend that same year. Highly recommended.
In her column “When Nights Are Bold,” Lois Long offered readers cool escapes from the summer heat at various themed entertainment venues:
(New Yorker Digital Archive)
While advertisers continued to shill exclusive getaways for “carefully selected clientele”…
(New Yorker Digital Archive)
At this point the magazine itself seems to be hanging on by a thread. There is scant advertising in this thin issue (24 pages plus cover). The full-page ads on both the inside front and back covers are in-house ads promoting subscriptions to The New Yorker:
And here are two 1/6 page ads featured in the sports section, one from a Detroit hotel no less:
(New Yorker Digital Archive)
In a final note, I feature a rare non-NYC item. After falling into decay over several decades, the Book Cadillac Hotel (advertised above) was restored in 2008 and reopened as a Westin hotel:
Before restoration (NBC News)The same room today after restoration (above), and the hotel’s exterior (Westin/Wikipedia)
A New Yorker State of Mind 