Robert M. Coates – A New Yorker State of Mind

Art of the Machine

Above, at left, self-aligning ball bearing from SKF Industries, featured in MoMA's 1934 Exhibition of Machine Art; at right, judges for the exhibit were aviator Amelia Earhart and professors John Dewey and Charles R. Richards, holding first, second and third prizes, respectively. (MoMA)

The notion that machine-made objects have aesthetic value has been with us for some time, dating back to avant-garde movements of the early 20th century such as Futurism, which influenced other schools, including the Bauhaus and De Stijl. However, the idea that a museum would display a propeller or a vacuum cleaner as a work of art was startling to many in 1934.

It had been a little over twenty years since New York art patrons experienced their first shock of the new at the 1913 Armory Show. By 1929 the city had established the Museum of Modern Art, which opened the exhibition Machine Art on March 5, 1934, at MoMA’s second location—the old Barbour mansion at 11 West 53rd Street (razed in the late 1930s and replaced by today’s museum).

Novelist and art critic Robert M. Coates (1897–1973) paid a visit to the Machine Art exhibition and wrote of the experience in “The Talk of the Town.” Coates was no stranger to the avant garde, having himself embraced literary innovation and experimentation as a novelist. James Thurber is credited with bringing Coates to The New Yorker in 1927—the two became close friends—and Coates would stay forty years with the magazine. Excerpts:

EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY…Clockwise, from top left: According to MoMA director **Alfred H. Barr,** Jr, the 1934 *Machine Art* exhibition celebrated the machine’s abstract and geometric beauty; MoMA found its second home—the Barbour mansion at 11 West 53rd Street—in 1932; sign on West 53rd advertising the exhibition; outboard propeller by Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa); collection of scientific beakers and flasks from Corning Glass Works. (MoMA)

KA-CHING!…*Machine Art* featured Model 1934 from National Cash Register; at right, Electrochef range, model B-2, designed by **Emil Piron** for Electromaster Inc. Objects featured in the exhibition were selected by noted architect **Phillip Johnson**, who was the founding chairman (1932-34) of the museum’s Department of Architecture. (MoMA)

IN A NEW LIGHT…Springs and wires took on new perspectives at the *Machine Art* exhibition. From left, the apparent first-prize winner (based on the photo of Earhart at the top of this entry)—a section of a large spring; cross-section of wire rope; and typewriter carriage and motor springs, all produced by American Steel & Wire Company, a subsidiary of US Steel. (MoMA)

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Salad Days

Swiss-American restaurateur Oscar Tschirky (1866-1943), who was known throughout the world as Oscar of the Waldorf, worked as maître d’hôtel of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City from 1893 to 1943. He is credited with having created the Waldorf salad, along with any number of cocktail recipes. “The Talk of the Town” noted his latest concoction:

WINNING OSCAR…From 1893 to 1943 **Oscar Tschirky** was the Waldorf-Astoria’s public face and a gracious host who made both the great and the not-so-great feel welcome. At left, in 1923; at right, Tschirky samples the first shipment of beer to arrive at the Waldorf-Astoria when the brew became legal again in April 1933. (Library of Congress/Karl Schriftgiesser)

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Unburdened

In the March 17 issue, writer and poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967) published the first of three fiction pieces that would appear in The New Yorker (one posthumously in 2016). In the short story “Why, You Reckon,” Hughes tells the tale of two hungry Black men who rob a rich white man by pushing him into a basement coal bin—one of the Black men takes the white man’s money, jewelry, shoes and overcoat, then rushes off, leaving his companion without any of the loot. To the companion’s surprise and befuddlement, the white man is left excited by the incident, because it is the first real thing that has happened to him. Here are the final lines of the story:

HARLEM RENAISSANCE LEADER **Langston Hughes** in a 1936 photo by **Carl Van Vechten.** A prolific writer and poet, Hughes published three short stories and three poems in *The New Yorker.* (Wikipedia)

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From Our Advertisers

New Yorker ad sales were booming, and blooming with color…we kick it off with this ad from Coty touting “3 New Boxes for Face Powder!”…so why are there four boxes in the ad?…

…the obvious answer to the question posed below would be “wealth and privilege…and youth”…the “Eleanor Roosevelt” featured in this Pond’s ad is obviously not the wife of FDR, but rather Eleanor Katherine Roosevelt, the teenaged daughter of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Henry Latrobe Roosevelt…

…speaking of the high seas, I have to admit I sigh a little when I see ads like this, obviously staged, but suggest a style of travel that is as extinct as the T. Rex…

…perhaps those folks on the boat were enjoying a splash of Perrier in their evening cocktails…

…or maybe the domestic White Rock was on ice…why is the rich old coot so much shorter than his wife?…I guess it emphasizes her relative youthfulness and her maternal obligations to a child-like older man…

…their proportions are similar to Jiggs and Maggie, but that’s another story…

…R.J. Reynolds was back with their “jangled nerves” theme on behalf of Camel cigarettes…

…maybe your tires will hold, but have you checked your brakes lately?…

…in the 1930s the anti-war organization World Peaceways ran a series of provoking ads on the artificial glories of war…some magazines, including The New Yorker, ran these ads free of charge or at reduced rates…

…a closer view of the explanatory copy at the bottom of the ad…

…speaking of war, James Thurber opens our cartoons on a Connecticut battlefield…

…Al Frueh contributed this illustration for a two-part profile of entertainer and theatrical producer George M. Cohan…

…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) offered this spot art for the opening calendar section…

…Peter Arno gave us two fellows on thin ice…

…cartoonist Gregory d’Alessio made his first appearance in The New Yorker…

…Barbara Shermund was back with some tax advice…

…which this gentleman (by Alain) might have found useful…

…and we close with Mary Petty, and a little brown-noser with a taste for greens…

Next Time: Through the Looking Glass…

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* 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 *Hell’s Angels* (1930); at right, Harlow and **Howard Hughes** at the premiere of the film. (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…

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH…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, **John 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:

A 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.

A LOBBY FOR LEARNING…The lobby includes an array of clocks, top left, that give the time in various global destinations. (aatlasobscura.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)

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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)

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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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From Our Advertisers

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…

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…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)…