Tag: The Outlook magazine

A New Outlook

New York Governor Al Smith and the man who succeeded him in that office, Franklin D. Roosevelt, were both Democrats, but when it came to personalities, they were more like oil and water.

Sept. 3, 1932 cover by Ilonka Karasz.

A popular governor (1923 to 1928) from working-class roots, Smith thought he could ride that popularity to the White House, but lost to Herbert Hoover in the ’28 presidential elections. He then hoped to be of some use to his gubernatorial successor FDR, but was more or less snubbed by his fellow Democrat – the regal Roosevelt branded himself as a reformer, and didn’t want Smith’s deep Irish Tammany connections to sully that reputation. Smith did find something to do, however, by becoming president of the corporation that built and operated the Empire State Building.

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP…Al Smith (pointing) extolls the wonders of the Empire State Building at the May 1, 1931 grand opening. (chrismurphy.com)

But after the building’s dedication, Smith took another shot at the White House, this time against Roosevelt in the 1932 Democratic presidential primaries. Smith lost the nomination in a bitter convention battle (he eventually endorsed FDR) but kept busy with another venture: editor of the New Outlook magazine…

SECULAR SHIFT…The Outlook began publication as The Christian Union (1870–1893). The issue at left is from July 1, 1893, when the magazine became The Outlook to reflect its shift from religious subjects to social and political issues. That magazine went bankrupt and became the New Outlook in 1932; the issue at right is from October 1933, a year after Al Smith became editor. The magazine folded in 1935. (Wikipedia/Abe Books)

…which Smith used as a platform to attack his Democratic rival, and, particularly the New Deal policies following Roosevelt’s successful election to the White House. The election was still a couple months away when E.B. White offered these observations about Smith’s new publishing venture:

…Otto Soglow provided this interpretation of Smith’s new job for “Notes and Comment”…

…while other cartoonists made hay over the Roosevelt/Smith rift:

COMIC APPEAL…Cyrus Cotton “Cy” Hungerford produced daily cartoons for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for 50 years, including this gem at left that aptly illustrated the political circus that featured Al Smith as its star attraction; during his 32 years as editorial cartoonist for The Kansas City Star, Silvey Jackson (S. J. or Sil) Ray amassed a portfolio of roughly 10,000 cartoons, including the one at right that depicts the ghosts of past Outlook contributors and editors including Teddy Roosevelt, Lyman J. Abbott and Henry Ward Beecher. (Museum of the City of New York/kchistory.org)

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Nein Bitte

The German artist George Grosz (1893–1959) was perhaps best known for his bitter caricatures and paintings of Berlin’s Weimar years (roughly 1918 to 1933). In June 1932 he accepted an invitation to teach the summer semester at the Art Students League of New York, then briefly returned to Germany before emigrating to the U.S. with his family in January 1933.

SEEING RED…Clockwise, from top left, George Grosz depicted Berlin as a hellscape awash in blood and corruption in Metropolis (1917); by contrast, Grosz celebrated the energy and freedom of New York in his 1915–16 work Memory of New York; Grosz in New York, circa 1932; after emigrating to the US in 1933, Grosz abandoned his harsh caricatures and corrupted cityscapes in favor of nudes and landscapes. He returned to the subject of the New York skyline a number of times, including his 1934 painting Lower Manhattan. (MoMA/Flickr)

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From Our Advertisers

Back in the day when it was still acceptable to drape dead animals around your neck, Gunther Furs offered these ensembles…the coat at left would cost the equivalent of $17,000 today…

…this 1932 photo gives us some idea of how these coats might have appeared…

FUR SURE…Models in 1932 wearing (from left) wool coat with fur collar and armbands; wool coat with blue fox collar by Lanvin; and wool coat with caracal collar and sleeve trimming by Mainbocher. Photo by Edward Steichen. (pleasurephotoroom.wordpress.com)

…perhaps you could wear one of the coats on a breezy day atop Ten Park Avenue…even this posh address felt the need to emphasize its affordability in those depressed times…also note the advertisement at the bottom for a “Milk Farm”…

…the 1930s saw a weight-loss fad that included dairy as a dietary must; one such “milk farm” was the Rose Dor Farm just up the Hudson from New York…

HUMP DAY…Top, Rose Dor Farm trainer Steve Finan directs mat exercises calculated to reduce hips and remove “widow’s humps” in the 1930s. Below, note the choice of footwear for the workout. (vintag.es)

…back to our apartment hunting, The Lombardy was built in the 1920s by William Randolph Hearst for his movie star mistress Marion Davies…unlike Ten Park Avenue, it wasn’t on Park, but the ad makes sure to note its close proximity, and the illustration assured that the clientele were sufficiently dour in their good taste…also note the ad for the Fraternity Clubs Building, which was going co-ed…

…The New York Times reported in August 1932 that “the ninety rooms of the fourth and fifth floors of the building have been redecorated and furnished with a ‘feminine touch'”…

NO ANIMAL HOUSE…The Fraternity Clubs Building, erected in 1923, went co-ed in 1932. The Renaissance Revival-style building was designed by the firm Murgatroyd & Ogden. Today it serves as the Jolly Madison Towers hotel. (New York Public Library via Daytonian in Manhattan)

…time to step out for a smoke with another Old Gold ad illustrated by Peter Arno…

…in contrast to Arno’s defiant vamp, this woman enjoyed her smoke with a sense of ease…

…if you’ve never heard of Richard Himber, he made a name for himself in New York beginning with his days in vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley. Described in a Wikipedia entry as “American bandleader, composer, violinist, magician and practical joker,” Himber ran a band-booking agency before forming an orchestra of his own at the Essex House that performed over NBC Radio…

…our last ad is a most unlikely one from the Sterling Engine Company of Buffalo, New York, definitely an outlier among the other New Yorker ads…

…our cartoonists include Perry Barlow on the campaign trail…

…along with Alain (Daniel Brustlein)…

…Carl Rose gave us two zoo animals who were less than keen to become movie stars…

…and we close with William Steig, who showed us one of his Small Fry coming of age…

…but before we close, here’s a brief nod to Halloween, 1932, and some popular costumes for the grown-ups, including a Minnie Mouse costume that is unintentionally creepy…

…Hollywood liked to get in on the fun by releasing studio “pin-ups” featuring stars of the day…

BOO…Paramount stars all pose with the same prop Jack ‘o Lantern circa 1931-32. From left, the original “It Girl” Clara Bow, who would retire from movies in 1933 at age 28 and become a rancher; Robert Coogan and Jackie Cooper were child stars of the film Sooky; Nancy Carroll’s latest film, Hot Saturday, was released a few days before Halloween 1932. The film also starred Cary Grant in his first leading role. (vintag.es/twitter/Pinterest)

Next Time: The Red House…

Dorothy Parker Goes to the Movies

Dorothy Parker turned her jaded eye to the latest big thing — talking pictures — and in the Sept. 1, 1928 issue she joined her New Yorker colleagues in a collective yawn at the technology that was dramatically transforming cinema.

Sept. 1, 1928 cover by Helen Hokinson.

In a feature titled “Out of the Silence,” Parker mused about the changes facing former silent stars…

…and seemed unconvinced that the talking pictures, at least to date, were any real improvement over the silents, including a performance by her Algonquin Round Table pal and New Yorker colleague Robert Benchley, who seemed but a talking simulacrum:

HIS SCREEN VERSION…Robert Benchley delivers his comedy sketch The Treasurer’s Report in a short 1928 Movietone film. Benchley portrayed a nervous assistant treasurer struggling to present an organization’s yearly report. (YouTube screen shot)

Parker attended a matinee at a jam-packed Warner Theatre, where folks paid a dollar apiece for standing room only to witness a series of shorts and a feature-length film, all presented with sound:


One of the shorts featured a performance by female impersonator George Francis Peduzzi, known professionally as Karyl Norman, “The Creole Fashion Plate,” followed by a performance from violinist Albert Spaulding:

WHAT A DRAG…Dorothy Parker was underwhelmed by Karyl Norman’s performance in a Vitaphone short. He is pictured here in a 1924 publicity photo, dressed as “The Creole Fashion Plate.” (queermusicheritage.com)

What Parker was subjecting herself to was the Vitaphone Varieties, described by North Carolina Museum of Art film curator Laura Boyes as “the last gasps of vaudeville.”

Boyes writes that many vaudevillians stepped off the stage to immortalize their acts on film in the early days of the talkies. They were produced in Brooklyn between 1927 and 1929 using the Vitaphone method (large recorded discs synchronized with the film) “at a time when the major studios hoped that the talkies were just a passing fad.” She notes that “talkies would eventually put this style of theater completely out of business, and Vitaphone shorts literally became the place where Vaudeville went to die. Many of the people in these short films were obscure at the time, and they are doubly obscure now.”

As for the main feature, The Terror, the only terror Parker felt was the fear of being bored to death:

SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING…Dorothy Parker found The Terror to be unexciting, its sound effects a “racket.” But for the record, it was the first all-talking horror film. (IMDB)

Parker concluded that “talking pictures are marvels of invention,” but “a bad show is a bad show, synchronize it how you will.”

Coming of Age in Samoa

Social critic and humorist Baird Leonard took the honors as book reviewer for the Sept. 1 issue, offering a brief, humorous endorsement of Margaret Mead’s landmark Coming of Age in Samoa, in which the famed anthropologist explored the link between culture and psychosexual development among the island’s adolescents. Leonard found much to like about the book, and particularly Mead’s observations on the separation of youth from adult activities in Samoan culture (it would enhance his bridge-playing enjoyment):

GOING NATIVE…Margaret Mead sitting between two Samoan girls, ca. 1926. (Library of Congress).

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Writer Cameron Rogers profiled American sculptor Paul Manship, who was an important contributor to Art Deco style, and is perhaps best known for his iconic Prometheus sculpture at Rockefeller Center in New York. Rogers made these closing observations about Manship, noting that the artist’s success netted him about $60,000 a year — close to $850,000 today (These days, someone like showman/artist Jeff Koons, who makes giant shiny balloon animal sculptures, among other things, has a net worth of at least $100 million).

PROMETHEUS, gilded cast bronze by Paul Manship, 1934, at Rockefeller Center. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

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From Our Advertisers

I find it interesting when one magazine advertises in another, especially when an older magazine like the Outlook (founded in 1893) advertises in an upstart like the New Yorker. But then again, the publishers of the Outlook were looking to breathe new life into their stodgy journal, and what better way than to announce that their “conservative girl” was now a modern, grown-up woman with a new Jazz Age look and an attitude to match. And it was no coincidence that they hired the New Yorker’s Rea Irvin to illustrate their point.

OUTLOOK magazine was first published as The Christian Union in 1870, changing its name to Outlook in 1893 when it shifted its focus from religious subjects to social and political issues. The magazine folded in 1935. (Pinterest)

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Our cartoon is by Peter Arno, who continued to explore the lighter moments of New York night life…

Next Time: Mussolini’s Romance Novel…