Above: New Year’s Eve at the “El Morocco” Night Club at 154 E. 54th Street, New York, 1935. (Posted on Reddit)
Lois Long took her nightlife seriously, and when it didn’t live up to her standards—defined by the wild speakeasy nights she wrote about after joining The New Yorker in 1925 —she was crestfallen, to say the least.
November 16, 1935 cover by Leonard Dove. This is one of Dove’s fifty-seven New Yorker covers; he also contributed 717 cartoons to the magazine.Above: Leonard Dove’s self portrait, 1941; photo: 1947. Born 1906, Great Yarmouth, England. Died, Gramercy Hotel, New York City, 1972. (Thanks to Michael Maslin’s indispensable Ink Spill)
*
When Long joined The New Yorker she was a 23-year-old Vassar graduate, and at age 34 she was not expecting to re-live those heady days; but nightlife in 1935 made her wonder where all the interesting people had gone. Instead of the smart and beautiful speakeasy set, she found people who couldn’t hold a conversation, who cared more about being mentioned in the newspapers by “Cholly Knickerbocker” (a pseudonym used by society columnists)—they simply lacked the “sparkle” she so craved. In this excerpt from her column, “Tables for Two,” she explained:
ALL SHOW, NO GO…Lois Long recalled the heady days of the original torch singer Helen Morgan, but her new club, The House of Morgan, offered up tired vaudeville instead of the singer herself. Above, images of the club from Christopher Connelly’sThe Helen Morgan Page. Top, center, detail of Morgan from the 1935 film Sweet Music. Next to Morgan is a photo of Long from the PBS documentary Prohibition. (helen-morgan.net/PBS.org)
* * *
At the Movies
Our film critic John Mosher was in good spirits after taking in MGM’s Mutiny on the Bounty, and especially the inspired performance by Charles Laughton as the cruel, tyrannical Captain Bligh…
LET’S HAVE A STARING CONTEST…Clark Gable (left) portrayed Fletcher Christian, the Bounty’s executive officer, who disapproved of the cruel leadership of Captain Bligh, portrayed by Charles Laughton (right) in Mutiny on the Bounty. (theoscarbuzz.com)
…two other pictures reviewed by Mosher were less than inspired, but at least the George Raft/Joan Bennett gangster film, She Couldn’t Take It, offered a car chase, and the occasional surprise.
STERILITY ISSUES…Top, Gary Cooper and Ann Harding needed a bit more life in Peter Ibbetson; at least Joan Bennett (bottom photo) found some action in She Couldn’t Take It. (IMDB)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Not all fashion advertisements in The New Yorker were aimed at the posh set…Macy’s offered some thrifty selections, including a French-inspired “Theatre Curtain Blouse” that could be opened in the back “so as to reveal your own lily-white vertebrae”…
…I am puzzled by the “Duchess” types that appeared in food and beverage ads in the back of the magazine…we’ve seen some angry duchesses in ads for tomato and pineapple juice, and here we have one who has stooped so low as to shell her own peas…
…a side note, the Duchess’s peas came in a can bearing the old Green Giant logo, a savage, bearskin-clad figure…he was redesigned by ad executive Leo Burnett in 1935 to become the friendlier “Jolly Green Giant”…
…the makers of Camels presented football coach Chick Meehan in cartoon form to extol the wonders of football and smoking to a young woman…Meehan coached football at Syracuse, NYU and Manhattan College…
…the football theme segues to our cartoon section, beginning with this spot art by James Thurber…
…Christina Malman’s spot drawings could now be found in every issue, and usually more than one…
…this one by Robert Day also caught my eye, maybe because I like chickens, and dogs too…
…Day again, on the streets of Manhattan…
…Barbara Shermund showed us a wolf in wolf’s clothing…
…Alan Dunn seemed to be channelling Barbara Shermund here…or maybe Dunn’s wife Mary Petty had some influence…
…William Crawford Galbraith eavesdropped on some wagering waiters…
…Carl Rose found an outlier at the modern Walker-Gordon Dairy Farm…
…The Rotolactor featured in Rose’s cartoon was a mostly automatic machine used for milking a large number of cows successively on a rotating platform…first used at the Walker-Gordon Laboratories and Dairy in Plainsboro, New Jersey (pictured below), the Rotolactor held fifty cows at a time, and hosted about 250,000 visitors annually…
(rawmilkinstitute.org)
…and we go from cows to cats, courtesy Helen Hokinson…
…and Charles Addams booked an unusual perp…
…on to the November 23 issue…
November 23, 1935 cover by Antonio Petruccelli. Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer, becoming a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover contests. This is one of four covers he produced for The New Yorker.Antonio Petruccelli. Here are samples of Petruccelli’s remarkable work.(Helicline Fine Art)
*
Worth the Wait
The highly-anticipated circus-themed spectacle Jumbo finally opened at the Hippodrome. In his That’s Entertainment! blog, Jackson Upperco observes that Billy’s Rose’sJumbo was “more circus than musical comedy,” a production that “was largely an excuse for Mr. Rose to present a circus.” It was headlined by comedian Jimmy Durante and bandleader Paul Whiteman, with a score by Rodgers & Hart. Here are excerpts from a review by Wolcott Gibbs:
JUMB0-SIZED ENTERTAINMENT…Clockwise, from top left, Hippodrome billboard promoting Jumbo; built in 1905, the Hippodrome provided entertainment to thousands who couldn’t afford a Broadway ticket; a circus tent was erected inside the 5,300-seat theatre for the spectacle; Jumbo was one of the most expensive theatrical events of the first half of the 20th century. (Facebook/Library of Congress/Broadway Magazine/jacksonupperco.com)
* * *
At the Movies
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment was adapted to film by both French and American producers in 1935, but critics including The New Yorker’sJohn Mosher mostly preferred the French version, titled Crime et châtiment.
DOUBLE FEATURE…American and French producers each turned out a film adaption of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Top photo, Marian Marsh as Sonya and Peter Lorre as Roderick Raskolnikov in Columbia’s Crime and Punishment; bottom photo, Madeleine Ozeray as Sonia and Pierre Blanchar as Rodion Raskolnikov in Crime et châtiment.(silverscreenmodes.com/SensCritique.com)
…Mosher reviewed another crime thriller, Mary Burns, Fugitive, but found some comic relief in two other films…
BAD CHOICE IN BOYFRIENDS was the theme of Mary Burns, Fugitive, starring (top left) Sylvia Sidney and Alan Baxter; top right, Joan Bennett and Ronald Colman in the romcom The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo; bottom, Fred Allen and Patsy Kelly provided some laughs in musical comedy Thanks a Million. (IMDB)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Readers of the Nov. 23 issue opened to this lovely image…
…which sharply contrasted with the clunky Plymouth ad on the opposite page…
…not so clunky was this colorful illustration promoting Cadillac’s economy model, the La Salle…
…the back cover was no surprise, with yet another glamorous cigarette ad…
…our cartoonists included Richard Decker, and a fashion faux pas to open a boxing match…
…George Price eavesdropped into some football strategy…
…Carl Rose spotted a canine unbeliever…
…Richard Taylor was back with his distinctive style…
…Al Frueh continued to illustrate the latest fare on Broadway…
…Otto Soglow crept in for a snooze…
…and we close with James Thurber, and some literary cosplay…
Above: Left image: Todd Duncan (Porgy) and Anne Brown (Bess), in the 1935 Broadway production of Porgy and Bess. Right image: John Bubbles (Sportin’ Life) and Brown. (Photos courtesy the Ira & Leonore Gershwin Trusts)
The 1935 Broadway production of Porgy and Bess is widely regarded as one of the most successful American operas of the twentieth century, but when it opened at the Alvin Theatre on Oct. 10, 1935, reviews were mixed, including the one penned by Wolcott Gibbs.
October 19, 1935 cover by William Crawford Galbraith. The New York Times (Oct. 9, 1935) made this observation about the rodeo at Madison Square Garden: “New York, which for several days has been vaguely aware of an impending rodeo because of a profusion of ten-gallon hats along Eighth Avenue and a sign in a beauty parlor, ‘Welcome, Cowgirls,’ will see the real thing this morning.”
Now you would think a work by composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by DuBose Heyward (author of the 1925 novel Porgy) and lyricist Ira Gershwin, would be a sure hit. Some critics did praise the production, which ran for 124 performances, but others criticized themes and characterizations of Black Americans that were created by white artists.
MIXED REVIEWS…The original Catfish Row set for Porgy and Bess as seen at Broadway’s Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon Theatre) in 1935. (Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library Digital Gallery)
This wasn’t the first time Porgy was adapted to the stage. It was originally produced in 1927 by Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, at the Guild Theatre in New York. The Heywards insisted on an African-American cast—an unusual decision at the time—and enlisted newcomer Rouben Mamoulian to direct. The play ran a total of fifty-five weeks.
ORIGIN STORY: Porgy: A Play in Four Acts, was a 1927 play by Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward, adapted from the short novel by DuBose. (Wikiwand)
Gibbs preferred the original Porgy to the Gershwin–Heyward production, admitting that he simply did not care for “the operatic form of singing a story.”
continued…
TAKING THEIR BOWS…George Gershwin greets an audience after a performance of Porgy and Bess. Behind Gershwin are his brother, Ira Gershwin (left), and librettist and Porgy author DuBose Heyward (partially hidden, at right). (umich.edu)
The Moss Hart/Cole Porter musical comedy Jubilee! premiered at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre on Oct. 12, 1935, just two days after the Porgy and Bess premiere. Gibbs dubbed this show “heat-warming and beautiful.”
THE BEGUINE BEGINS…Inspired by the Silver Jubilee of Britain’s George V, the musical comedy Jubilee! told the story of a fictional royal family. The play featured such hit songs as “Begin the Beguine” and “Just One of Those Things,” which have become part of the American Songbook. (ovrtur.com)ROYAL HIJINKS…At left, June Knight as Karen O’Kane and Charles Walters as Prince James in Jubilee!; at right, Mary Roland (the Queen) encounters “Mowgli” (Mark Plant) in Act I. (ovrtur.com)
Note: In the last issue (Oct. 12) we saw an ad for an around-the-world luxury cruise on the Franconia.Cole Porter and Moss Hart—with their families, friends, and assistants—sailed on a previous Franconia cruise, possibly in 1934, with the intention to write a new musical while on the trip. Apparently some of the songs and scenes in Jubilee! were inspired by their ports of call.
* * *
Steering Clear
“The Talk of the Town” commented on the “steer-wrestlers” that were featured at the Madison Square Garden rodeo. Since steer-wrestling was also called “bulldogging,” it caused considerable consternation among New York animal lovers.
A BIG HOWDY…Cowgirls From the Madison Square Garden Rodeo With Millicent Hearst, 1932. (texashistory.unt.edu)
* * *
Much Ado About FDR
The Conference on Port Development of the City of New York took issue with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign trade policies, particularly his strict stance on neutrality, which the Conference believed was detrimental to foreign trade. This was likely related to the October 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia. E.B. White offered this satirical poem in reaction to the trade spat.
Howard Brubaker also chimed in on the trade issue, and on other unsettling developments in Europe:
* * *
Puppy Love
Critic and poet Cuthbert Wright (1892–1948) was moved to write poetry after visiting a dog cemetery that also welcomed animals of all stripes. Here are excerpts of the opening and closing lines:
PET PROJECT…Cuthbert Wright was moved to verse after his visit to a pet cemetery, possibly the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester. (Wikipedia/parenthetically.blogspot.com)
* * *
Man and Machine
Art and culture critic Lewis Mumford is back this week, this time taking a look at the work of French artist Fernand Léger (1881–1955), who created a form of cubism known as “tubism,” regarded today as a forerunner of the pop art movement of the mid-1950s and the 1960s.
It is no surprise that the humanist Mumford, who sought an “organic balance” in everyday design, found Léger’s machine-like works alienating and sterile, representing an “aesthetic poverty.”
TOTALLY TUBULAR…Clockwise, from top left, works of Fernand Léger cited by Lewis Mumford: The City, 1919; photo of Léger, circa 1930s; from the 1918–1923 series Mechanical Elements, 1920; Composition in Blue, 1920–27. (Philadelphia Museum of Art/The Met Collection/Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection)
* * *
Disappointment in O’Hara
That is how Clifton Fadiman titled his “Books” column after reviewing John O’Hara’s latest novel, Butterfield 8.
O’Hara (1905–1970) wasn’t just any old scribbler. A prolific short-story writer, he has often been credited with helping to invent The New Yorker’s short story style. Praised by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, O’Hara cranked out two bestsellers before the age of thirty. One was the acclaimed Appointment in Samarra (which was praised by Fadiman). The other was BUtterfield 8, the novel Fadiman found disappointing (Hemingway, on the other hand, blurbed, “John O’Hara writes better all the time.”). Here are a couple of brief excerpts from Fadiman’s review:
Fadiman concluded his review with a note to the author: “Why not let Jean Harlow have it, Mr. O’Hara, and start a fresh page?”
Well, Harlow didn’t get it, but twenty-five years later Elizabeth Taylor would reluctantly take on the role of Gloria Wandrous, and win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
YOU AGAIN?…Laurence Harvey and Elizabeth Taylor played on and off lovers in 1960’s Butterfield 8.John O’Hara did not participate in writing the adaptation, and the film’s plot bore only a slight resemblance to his novel. However, after the film’s release more than one million paperback copies of the novel were sold. (aiptcomics.com)
* * *
At The Movies
We begin this section with an excerpt from “The Talk of the Town,” which covered the “International World Première” of the Warner Brother’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The film opened worldwide on October 9, 1935 in London, Sydney, Vienna and at New York’s Hollywood Theatre, where crowds turned out to get a glimpse of the stars.
RUBBERNECKERS…A Midsummer Night’s Dream premiere at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City on October 9, 1935. (britannica.com)
Film critic John Mosher praised Joe E. Brown’s performance as Flute, as well James Cagney’s portrayal of Bottom, and lauded the “magnificent group of clowns” that formed the remainder of The Players. Here are excerpts from his review (note I included the entirety of Otto Slogow’s delightful spot drawing):
THE LOVERS…Left to right: Ross Alexander (Demetrius), Olivia de Havilland (Hermia), Dick Powell (Lysander) and Jean Muir (Helena) meet cute and confused in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (TCM.COM)THE SEVEN STOOGES…Bottom (James Cagney) and his fellow Players prepare to perform a stage play about the death of Pyramus and Thisbe which turns into a farce. From left, in front, Joe E. Brown (Flute), Cagney, and Otis Harlan (Starveling); in the back are, from left, Hugh Herbert (Snout), Arthur Treacher (Epilogue) and Dewey Robinson (Snug) as The Players in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Frank McHugh (Quince) can be seen behind the wall in back. (IMDB)DANCING THE NIGHT AWAY…Fairie scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Facebook)
Mosher also reviewed the romantic comedy I Live My Life, which he found to be a satisfying satire on the lives of the rich.
MATCHING WITS…Bored socialite Kay Bentley (Joan Crawford) has a tempestuous romance with idealistic archaeologist Terry O’Neill (Brian Aherne) in I Live My Life. (IMDB)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Readers ninety years ago opened the Oct. 19 issue to this two-page spread featuring the latest in fall/winter fashions…the ad on the right from Bergdorf Goodman featured stage and screen actress Gladys George donning a full-length silver fox fur…
…George (1904–1954) was appearing at Henry Miller’s Theatre in the play Personal Appearance…she was featured in this testimonial ad for Schrafft’s in the theatre’s Playbill…
(playbill.com)
…the folks at Packard took out this colorful two-page spread to promote their more affordable model, the 120…the move to more affordable models helped the luxury carmaker weather the lean years of the Depression…
…there is a strange quality to these Arrow Shirt advertisements…what are the they looking at?…apparently something amusing as the man applies mustard to a hotdog, but it isn’t the vendor, who looks down at his cart…
…R.J. Reynolds continued its Camel campaign featuring accomplished athletes who got a “lift” from smoking…the ad also included a couple of regular folks at the bottom, who claimed the cigarettes were so mild “You can smoke all you want”…
…Old Gold continued to enlist the talents of George Petty to illustrate their full-page ads…
…here’s a couple of back of the book ads touting Irish whisky and Ken-L-Ration dog food…note how the Scottish terriers speak in “dialect”…Ken-L-Ration was a leading dog food brand in the 1930s, thanks to their use of horse meat rather than “waste meat”…
…on to our cartoonists, we start with Al Frueh enhancing the “Theatre” page…
…James Thurber showed us a man at odds with the times…
…Barbara Shermund kept us up to date on the modern woman…
…Whitney Darrow Jr offered a challenge to Helena Rubinstein (note the woman on the right—she could have been drawn by Helen Hokinson)…
…Gluyas Williams checked in on the lively proceedings of a book club…
…Helen Hokinson went looking for a good winter read…
…Gilbert Bundy offered an alarming scenario on the top of p. 31…
…and we close with Peter Arno, and an eye-raising encounter…
It has been a while since we’ve heard from art and design critic Lewis Mumford, who often cast a censorious eye at the rapidly changing world around him.
October 12, 1935 cover by William Steig. From 1930 until his death in 2003 at age 95, Steig contributed 121 covers and 1,676 drawings to The New Yorker.
In his column “The Sky Line,” Mumford cast an envious gaze north toward Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Zoo, which he believed had greatly improved upon the recently rebuilt Central Park Zoo.
HE HAD OPINIONS…Lewis Mumford (1895-1990).
Brooklyn’s advantage, according to Mumford, was the superior design of Prospect Park, which offered a better location for a zoo than Central Park. We’ll let Mumford explain in these excerpts:
CURIOSITIES, MOSTLY…Clockwise, from top left: Animals were on display at Prospect Park as early as 1866, as seen in this photo of the “Deer Farm”; circa 1900 postcard of Prospect Park’s rather distressing “Menagerie,” which opened around 1890; the park’s Elephant House opened in 1908—modeled after the Hippo Palace at the Antwerp Zoo, the Elephant House also featured rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and tapirs; baby elephants (postcard circa 1940s) were a popular attraction until the zoo moved on to smaller creatures in the 1990s. (bklynlibrary.org/untappedcities.com/blog.wcs.org/nycgovparks.org)
LEWIS MUMFORD PRAISED the 1934 plan for the Prospect Park Zoo, designed by architect Aymar Embury II and approved by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. The zoo was built, in large part, through Civil Works Administration and Works Progress Administration labor and funding. (Brooklyn Public Library)
FLATBUSH FAUNA…Clockwise, from top left: Postcard image of Prospect Park Zoo circa 1935; zoo keeper sprays an elephant with a hose, circa 1940; an 1899 bronze sculpture depicting a mother lion nursing her cubs was created by French artist Victor Peter; seal pool, undated photo. (nycgovparks.org/Center for Brooklyn History/Facebook)
CARING OVER CAGES…Prospect Park Zoo today. The zoo closed in 1988 for five-year, $37 million renovation program that, except for the exteriors of the 1930s-era buildings, completely replaced the original zoo. With an emphasis on education and conservation, current exhibits house smaller species rather than elephants, tigers, and lions. (Prospect Park Alliance)
Mumford also looked at the latest developments at Rockefeller Center. As we’ve seen before, he favored smaller-scale developments that were organic and community-focused, and therefore was a strong critic of projects like Rockefeller Center. At its inception he called it a dehumanizing “megamachine,” a product of corporate greed, a “reckless, romantic chaos” that represented the capitalist jungle. Harsh words indeed, so it was something of a surprise to see his approval of the latest piece of the complex—the International Building at 630 Fifth Avenue:
SIMPLE AND CORRECT were the words Lewis Mumford used to describe the interior entrance to 630 Fifth Avenue. (Wikiwand/newyorkoffices.com)
* * *
Bad Benito
In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White had some choice words for the murderous Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and for the newspaper columnist Arthur Brisbane, both unconcerned with the slaughter of “backward” Ethiopians by invading Italian forces:
White also noted the role played by The New Yorker in a new novel by William Farquhar Payson (1876–1939) titled Give Me Tomorrow. Apparently the novel credited the magazine’s unique humor for revealing the banality of an evangelist and delivering a young woman from his clutches…
THE NEW YORKER TO THE RESCUE…William Farquhar Payson deployed a copy of the magazine for a pivotal scene in his novel Give Me Tomorrow. (findagrave.com)
* * *
A Star Is Born
Stage and film director Vincente Minnelli (1903-1986) moved from Chicago to New York in 1931, where he worked as a stage designer for Earl Carroll’s Vanities and costume and set designer for the Ziegfeld Follies before becoming art director at Radio City Music Hall. He got his big break in 1935 when he directed, to critical acclaim, the Broadway musical At Home Abroad. “The Talk of Town” took notice of the rising star (excerpts):
AN EYE FOR DESIGN…Photographer Lusha Nelson photographed Vincente Minnelli at his desk with a miniature stage on Feb. 1, 1936. (James Grissom via threads.com)
* * *
A Safe Space
Lois Long had mixed feelings regarding the Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, fearing that it was a tourist magnet but also desiring to take in its sumptuous floor shows. In the first excerpt, Long continued her comment on the heated competition she perceived among nightclub owners.
FEAR FACTOR…The entertainment lineup at Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room helped Lois Long overcome her fear of encountering tourists. Clockwise, from left, the Rainbow Room in 1934; Ramon and Renita lit up the dance floor (photo from Nov. 1935 Harper’s Bazaar); Ray Noble and his orchestra provided “all-around beauty”; and (inset) cabaret singer Frances Maddox offered her sophisticated warble to the glittering affair. (Rockefeller Center Archives/Pinterest/Shedd Institute)
* * *
An Untamed Shrew
Theatre critic Wolcott Gibbs had a good time watching Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne take on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew at the Guild Theatre, especially Lunt’s uproarious take on the play.
FUN WITH SHAKESPEARE…Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne matched wits in the Theatre Guild’s presentation of The Taming of the Shrew. (minnesotaplaylist.com)
* * *
At the Movies
Our film critic John Mosher didn’t have much to say about Here’s To Romance, which seemed contrived to introduce the Italian tenor Nino Martini (1905–1976) to a wider audience. To Mosher, the highlight of the film was the appearance of Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861–1936), the Austrian-American operatic dramatic contralto, who appeared to be having a good time.
SINGER SANDWICH…Genevieve Tobin (center) stands between tenor Nino Martini and dramatic contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink in a scene from Here’s to Romance. (rottentomatoes.com)
Mosher reviewed two other films that were a bit more dismal: The Last Outpost was a war-themed melodrama starring Cary Grant and Claude Rains; O’Shaughnessy’s Boy featured Wallace Beery as a circus animal trainer who loses his arm as well as his family.
DUELING MUSTACHES…Cary Grant (left) sported a rare mustache in a role opposite Claude Rains in The Last Outpost. (mabumbe.com)A TOUGH ACT…Sara Haden played a skeptical aunt who sees a one-armed circus animal tamer (Wallace Beery) regain his son (Jackie Cooper) and the confidence he lost along with his wife in O’Shaughnessy’s Boy. (tcm.com)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
I find these advertisements oddly appealing, because this kind of travel no longer exists. Today there is exactly one ocean liner left in the world—the Queen Mary 2; the cruise ships that rule the 21st century seas are essentially hotel/amusement parks stacked on top of a huge barges…water slides, Vegas-style entertainments, and all-you-can-stuff-into-your-face buffets…
…this curious ad on page 10 mimicked the look of a New Yorker short in the vein of Clarence Day…what it promoted was an around-the-world cruise that would take two-hundred (well-heeled) passengers to more than twenty destinations including Malaysia, Bali and Singapore…
Postcard image of the Franconia. (Pinterest)
…society women could be counted on to endorse all sorts of things from cigarettes to cold cream…here a “Mrs. Francis L. Robbins, Jr” (I couldn’t find her given name) endorses Cutex nail polish and lipstick…the ad noted that Mrs. Robbins “is a beautiful and popular member of Long Island and New York society”…
…the makers of Spud menthol cigarettes entered the realm of the surreal with a talking cigarette that encouraged chain smoking…
…the board game Monopoly had its origins in The Landlord’s Game, created in 1903 by an anti-monopolist named Lizzie Magie…over the years variants of the game were introduced until Parker Brothers bought the rights from Magie and another inventor and began mass-marketing the game in the fall of 1935…
…Peggy Lou Snyder was performing in vaudeville when she met the saxophone-playing bandleader Ozzie Nelson in 1932. Nelson hired her to sing with his band (under the name Harriet Hilliard) and then married her three years later…in 1944 the couple would launch a comedy series for radio, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which made a successful transition to television, appearing on ABC from 1952 to 1966…
…here we have some old-timers offering hunting advice and promoting octane-boosting Ethyl gasoline, which helped prevent engine knock…it also contained the highly toxic additive tetraethyllead, which could cause severe neurological damage, particularly in children…it was completely banned in the U.S. by 1996…
…on to our cartoonists, we start with this delightful spot art by Christina Malman that graced the bottom of the calendar and events page…
…Helen Hokinson appeared twice, first at the vet’s…
…and later shopping for the maid at a department store…
…George Price had a surprise in store for this mirror-gazer…
…Charles Addams took the top of page 29 to show us a proud papa in a maternity ward…
…Ned Hilton uncovered some history at the Singer Building…
…Mary Petty eavesdropped on a tactless toff…
…Leonard Dove showed us that being a sugar daddy wasn’t so sweet…
…and we close with William Steig, one of his “Small Fry” speaking up for the old man…
Heading into the dog days of summer we take a look at the last two issues of July 1935, both somewhat scant in editorial content but still offering up fascinating glimpses of Manhattan life ninety years ago.
July 20, 1935 cover by William Crawford Galbraith. He contributed seven covers and 151 cartoons to the magazine.
That includes the observations of theatre critic Wolcott Gibbs and film critic John Mosher, both escaping the summer heat to take in some very different forms of entertainment.
Gibbs found himself “fifty dizzy stories above Forty-second Street” in the Chanin Building’s auditorium, where he experienced New York’s take on Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. Founded in Paris by Oscar Méténier in 1897, Grand Guignol featured realistic shows that enacted, in gory detail, the horrific existence of the disadvantaged and working classes. It seems audiences were drawn to the shows more out of prurient interest (or sadistic pleasure) than for any desire to help the underclasses.
NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART…Wolcott Gibbs recommended the Grand-Guignol only for those who “admire a frank, uncomplicated approach to the slaughterhouse and the operating table.” (Image: Wikipedia)PRETTY HORRORS…Clockwise from top left, the original Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, in the Pigalle district of Paris–it operated from 1897 until 1962, specializing in horror theatre; a poster from one of its productions; New York’s Chanin building, circa 1930s; the Chanin’s auditorium “fifty dizzy stories above 42nd Street”; fake blood applied to an actress’ neck before a scene from The Hussy; Wolcott Gibbs described a madhouse scene from André de Lorde’sThe Old Women, which depicted the fury of ancient inmates performing “optical surgery” on a young woman. (thegrandguignol.com/Wikipedia/NYPL/props.eric-hart.com)
* * *
Popeye to the Rescue
With the Hays Code in effect you wouldn’t see anything like the Grand-Guignol on the silver screen. Indeed, with the exception of a Popeye cartoon, critic John Mosher found little to get excited about at the movies. He did, however, enjoy the air conditioning that offered a break from the hot city streets.
THEY ALL COULD HAVE USED SOME SPINACH…Clockwise, from top left, Popeye and Bluto strike an unlikely partnership in Dizzy Divers; Bette Davis and George Brent in Front Page Woman; Will Rogers and Billie Burke in Doubting Thomas; James Blakeley and Ida Lupino in Paris in Spring. (brothersink.com / rottentomatoes.com / cometoverhollywood.com / classiccartooncorner.substack.com)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Just a few ads from this issue, first, a jolly appeal from one of the magazine’s newer advertisers, the makers of the French apertif Dubonnet…
…by contrast, this quaint slice of Americana from Nash…
…and a shot of pesticide from Dr. Seuss…
…our cartoonists include Constantin Alajalov, contributing this bit of spot art to the opening pages…
…Barbara Shermund explored the world of hypnotic suggestion…
…Peter Arno prepared to address the nation…
…William Steig checked the weather forecast…
…Helen Hokinson’s girls questioned the burden of a lei…
…Carl Rose found himself on opposite sides of the page in this unusual layout…
…Richard Decker joined the crowd in a lighthouse rendering…
…Ned Hilton reminds us that it was unusual for women to wear trousers ninety years ago…
…Mary Petty examined the complications of marital discord…
…and Charles Addams shone a blue light on a YMCA lecture…
…on to July 27, 1935, with a terrific summertime cover by William Steig…
July 27, 1935 cover by William Steig, one of his 117 covers for the magazine.
E.B. White (in “Notes and Comment”) was ahead of his time in suggesting that the city needed to build “bicycle paths paralleling motor highways” and invest in more pedestrian pathways.
NEW YORK’S FINEST…Doris Kopsky, who trained in Central Park, won the first Amateur Bicycle League of America Women’s Championship in 1937. Bicycle races were a big draw in the 1930s. (crca.net)
* * *
Breaking News
“The Talk of the Town” checked in on the New York Times’ “electric bulletin,” commonly known as “The Zipper.” Excerpt:
NIGHT CRAWLER…Launched in 1928, the Times Square “Zipper” kept New Yorkers apprised of breaking news. (cityguideny.com)
* * *
Dog Knots
“Talk” also took a look backstage at the Winter Garden, where burlesque performers shared the stage with a contortionist dog called “Red Dust.” Excerpt:
WOOF…Famed animal trainer Robert “Bob” Williams with one of his pupils. The dog in the photo is misidentified as Red Dust (he was actually a Malemute/chow mix).
* * *
Suddenly Famous
Charles Butterworth (1896-1946) earned a law degree from Notre Dame before becoming a newspaper reporter. But his life would take on a new twist in 1926 when he delivered his comical “Rotary Club Talk” at J.P. McEvoy’sAmericana revue in 1926. Hollywood would come calling in the 1930s, and his doleful-looking, deadpan characters would become familiar to movie audiences through a string of films in the thirties and forties. Alva Johnston profiled Butterworth in the July 27 issue. Here are brief excerpts:
Charles Butterworth (left) and Jimmy Durante in Student Tour (1934). A bit of trivia: Butterworth’s distinctive voice was the inspiration for the Cap’n Crunch commercials voiced by Daws Butler beginning in the early 1960s. Butterworth’s life was cut short in 1946 when he crashed his imported roadster into a lamppost on Sunset Boulevard. (Detail from film still via IMDB)
* * *
Noisy Neighborhood
The “Vienna Letter” (written by “F.S.”–possibly Frank Sullivan) noted the rumblings of fascism in a grand old European city known for its many cultural delights as well as its many factions that included Nazis, Socialists and Communists (and no doubt a few Royalists). An excerpt:
CALM BEFORE THE STORM…Vienna in 1935, less than three years before the Anschluss, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria. (meisterdrucke.us)
* * *
Ex Machina
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) penned this poem for The New Yorker that is somewhat appropriate to our own age and our fears of the rise of A.I. In “Nightmare Number Three,” Benét described a dystopian world where machines have revolted against humans.
BOTH CLASSY AND FOLKSY is how some today describe Stephen Vincent Benét, who in 1928 wrote a book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown’s Body, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He was also know for such short stories as The Devil and Daniel Webster, published in 1936. (mypoeticside.com)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We begin with more extraordinary claims from R.J. Reynolds, who convinced a lot of folks that drawing smoke into your lungs actually improved your athletic stamina…
…the makers of Lucky Strike, on the other hand, stuck with images of nature and romance to suggest the joys of inhaling tar and nicotine…
…General Tire took a cue from Goodyear, suggesting that an investment in their “Blowout-Proof Tires” was an investment in the very lives of a person’s loved ones (even though they apparently drove to the beach without seatbelts or even a windshield)…
…another colorful advertisement from the makers of White Rock, who wisely tied their product to ardent spirits as liquor consumption continued to rebound from Prohibition…
…I toss this in for the lovely rendering on behalf of Saks…it looks like the work of illustrator Carl “Eric” Erickson, but he had many imitators…
…we do, however, know the identity of this artist, and his drawings on behalf of the pesticide Flit, which apparently in those days of innocence was thought appropriate for use around infants…
…great spot drawing in the opening pages…I should know the signature but it escapes me at the moment…
…James Thurber quoted Blaise Pascal for this tender moment ( “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing”)…
…Peter Arno illustrated the horrors of finding one’s grandmother out of context…
…Helen Hokinson’s girls employed a malaprop to besmirch the good name of an innocent mountain…
…Richard Decker discovered the missing link(s) with two archeologists…
…Alan Dunn narrowly averted a surprise greeting…
…George Price added a new twist to a billiards match…
…Price again, at the corner newstand…
…Al Frueh bit off more than he could chew…
…and we close with Barbara Shermund, and a prattling mooch…
Above: Coney Island "freak" show, summer of 1935. (seeoldnyc.com)
It has been about a year since we’ve visited Coney Island, and with summer upon us (and upon 1935 New York) let’s have a look at “The Talk of the Town” and see the latest attractions.
June 15, 1935 cover by Garrett Price. Price (1897–1979) illustrated 100 covers for the magazine.Garrett Price’s first New Yorker cover, “Heat Wave,” Aug. 1, 1925.
This lengthy “Talk” entry (excerpted), attributed to Clifford Orr, noted that much was unchanged, including the “mustard-laden breezes.” The place was noisier, however, with carnival barkers increasing their range through loudspeakers.
THE HIGH AND LOWS of society were on display in various attractions at Coney Island. Clockwise from top left, gawkers gather at Coney Island freak show, which included the “Armadillo Boy,” August 5, 1935; strollers near the Virginia Reel and Wonder Wheel, circa 1935; Borden’s frozen custard stand, 1930s; couple have a nap on the beach, circa 1935. (seeoldnyc.com)LINEUP…Beauty contests near the Steeplechase, like this one in 1935, were a common sight at Coney Island. (seeoldnyc.com)LIKE MOTHS TO THE FLAME, the dazzling lights drew thousands to Coney Island’s Luna Park in the 1930s. (seeoldnyc.com)THEY LOOK LIKE…ANTS…Aerial view of the beach in 1935. The Steeplechase ride is at the top left. (seeoldnyc.com)
* * *
Ship Ahoy
E.B. White (in “Notes and Comment”) mentioned that he danced aboard the newly arrived S.S. Normandie (presumably with Katharine White) while it was docked at Pier 88.
GROOVY…E.B. White noted the “luminous grooves” of the S.S. Normandie’s theatre. (drivingfordeco.com)JUGGERNAUT…The S.S. Normandie docked at New York’s Pier 88 after completing her maiden voyage on June 3, 1935. Note the paint chipped from the hull, the result of the ship’s record-breaking speed. (yesterdaystrails.wordpress.com)
* * *
Another Freak Show
Theatre critic Wolcott Gibbs found Earl Carroll’s latest stage production to be nothing more than a “vulgar assortment of comedians, jugglers, and performing dogs,” accompanied by “very lovely and disarming” young ladies who chanted their lines “in high childish voices.” One skit apparently featured Abe Lincoln with “fifty-six young ladies in cellophane hoopskirts.” Too bad no one filmed that performance.
HOLDING IT TOGETHER…Gibbs noted that comedian Ken Murray carried most of the show’s comedy (Murray had found success on the New York stage after appearing in Carroll’s Vanities on Broadway in 1935); Sibyl Bowen was known for her impersonations of famous women. In Sketchbook she portrayed Martha Washington, among others. (eBay/entertainment.ie)
* * *
Weathering the Field
Like the recent 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont (won by J.J. Spaun), ninety years ago Oakmont was also plagued by bad weather, and it also featured a tournament winner who outplayed the top golfers in the field. Excerpt:
WHY NOT ME?…Sam Parks Jr. (left) was considered an unlikely winner of the 1935 U.S. Open after competing with Hall of Famers at Oakmont. A 25-year-old club pro from Pittsburgh who played on the winter tour without ever winning, he bested a field that included Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Denny Shute and Horton Smith. His secret? For months leading up to the U.S. Open, Parks played nine holes at Oakmont every morning before going to work at nearby South Hills Country Club. He knew the course like the back of his hand. (progolfweekly.com)
* * *
Straight From the Headlines
Film critic John Mosher noted how the storylines in latest “G-men” pictures seemed to be taken directly from the daily papers. Public Hero Number 1 was no exception.
THE GOOD GUYS…from left, Chester Morris, Lionel Barrymore and Jean Arthur in Public Hero Number 1. One effect of the Hays Code was to replace gangster films—which some believed glorified criminals—with films that depicted the dedication and courage of law enforcement officers. (Rotten Tomatoes)
Mosher suggested moviegoers would get more pleasure out of Public Hero Number 1 than from Our Little Girl, which seems an unfair comparison since gunplay was rare in a Shirley Temple flick.
NO GUNS, JUST SOME SCARY CLOWNS…Joel McCrea and Shirley Temple in Our Little Girl. (csfd.sk/film)
* * *
Speaking Brooklynese
The June 15 issue featured Thomas Wolfe’s classic short story, “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.” Written entirely in “Brooklynese” dialect, the simple plot features four men standing on a subway platform arguing about how to get to “Bensonhoist.” The story (seemingly told to the author himself) recalls the existential themes of Wolfe’s contemporary, the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Here is an excerpt, the second paragraph of the story:
So like I say, I’m waitin’ for my train t’ come when I sees dis big guy standin’ deh—dis is duh foist I eveh see of him. Well, he’s lookin’ wild, y’know, an’ I can see dat he’s had plenty, but still he’s holdin’ it; he talks good an’ is walkin’ straight enough. So den, dis big guy steps up to a little guy dat’s standin’ deh, an’ says, “How d’yuh get t’ Eighteent’ Avenoo an’ Sixty-sevent’ Street?” he says.
GONE TOO SOON…Portrait of Thomas Wolfe taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1937. He died the next year, eighteen days before his 38th birthday. (Library of Congress)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We begin with this two-page spread—what readers of the June 15 issue would have seen after turning the cover page…
…the inside cover ad was part of an ongoing series of spots for Old Gold cigarettes illustrated by pin-up artist George Petty…almost all of the ads featured a fat, homely man (possibly a sugar daddy) mooning over a leggy blonde who relieves the tedium by reaching for an oversized cigarette…
…the ad on the facing page couldn’t be more different, except for the fact the woman is smoking, suggesting, of course, sophistication when paired with the latest fashions from Bergdorf Goodman…
…on the back cover we find these swells enjoying a belt at the horse races…
…while on the back cover, Camel gathered together all of its recent society endorsers for another round of shilling for R. J. Reynolds…
…swells and society women were the only persons (along with celebrities) who could afford to take this early version of a “red eye” to L.A. or San Francisco…it was not all that cushy, however…airliners were loud, cold, and not pressurized, so they flew at low altitudes and were often bounced about by the weather. The Boeing 247 also required several stops for refueling…
‘OL SPEEDY…This Boeing 247 was featured in the above ad. One of the first all-metal airliners, the 247 was considered revolutionary when introduced in 1933—United Airlines boasted that it cruised at speeds of three miles per minute and carried ten passengers across the country in twenty hours, cutting eight hours from previous travel times. Seven refueling stops included Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Cheyenne and Salt Lake City. (Wikipedia)WATCH YOUR STEP…Interior of the Boeing 247. Note that the main wing ran through the cabin, so persons moving down the aisle had to step over it. (Library of Congress)
…we learn a lot about a 1930s New Yorker reader by looking at the advertisements…it doubtful the magazine had many truly upper-class readers—the barbarians were content to flip through a copy of Town & Country or similar undemanding fare…what we do have are striving “smart set” readers, some with the means to buy a luxury automobile, fly cross-country, or cruise on the Normandie, all things one would desire as a member of upper-middle class or even the educated bourgeoisie in the middle…this Campbell’s soup ad is for the latter…the upper-middles would sniff at canned soup, while the barbarians would probably eat whatever was set in front of them, since talking about food would be considered vulgar…
…Pabst Blue Ribbon beer has been around since 1844…in the 20th century it was increasingly associated with the working class and rednecks until the brand caught on with urban hipsters in the early 2000s…
…in the May 25, 1935 issue we saw an ad promoting Walter Hagen’s “Honey Boy” golf balls, which contained real honey in their cores…the folks at MacGregor’s had a different idea—they inserted a pellet of dry ice into the center of their golf balls…what will they think of next?…
…we move on to our cartoonists, beginning with a James Thurber spot…
…and continuing with another Thurber classic…
…Robert Day took a lunch break in the opening pages…
…Alan Dunn felt charitable while relaxing in Westchester…
…Mary Petty gave us a wedding guest that would not be out of place today…the caption reads, “Home, Prince!”…
…Helen Hokinson went hog-wild in the garden…
…Barbara Shermund looked in on the idle thoughts of the idle rich…
…and we close where we began, with Daniel Brustlein aka Alain at Coney Island…
Above: At left, Adolphe Cassandre's famed 1935 depiction of the S.S. Normandie; right, image from a 1935 promotional booklet published by the French Line.
When the S.S. Normandie entered service in 1935, she was the largest and fastest passenger ship afloat, crossing the Atlantic in a little over four days. The ship was so impressive that even the imperturbable Janet Flanner expressed enthusiasm over its launch.
May 25, 1935 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
As Paris correspondent, Flanner was giving New Yorker readers a preview of Normandie‘s May 29 maiden voyage from Le Havre to New York City.
HER ENTOURAGE…The S.S. Normandie was welcomed into New York Harbor on June 3, 1935. (Wikipedia)IMAGINE THAT…An S.S. Normandie promotional poster from 1935 depicts the ocean liner making an unlikely entrance into Manhattan. The sleek ship measured 1,029 feet (313.6m) in length and carried nearly 2,000 passengers plus 1,345 crew. It was the first ocean liner to exceed 1,000 feet in length. (Museum of the City of New York–MCNY)
To give New Yorkers some idea of the liner’s size, Flanner noted that the Normandie would stretch from 43rd to 47th Street, and if stood on her stern, would stand nearly 180 feet above the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center.
FRENCH TOAST…Top, a crowd cheers the S.S. Normandie as it arrives at New York’s Pier 88 on June 3, 1935; below, the first class dining hall was 305 feet long, 46 feet wide and three decks high. (drivingfordeco.com/MCNY)IN, AND ON THE WATER…Passengers take a plunge in the Normandie’s swimming pool, which included a bar at the far end. (MCNY)EYE-POPPING…Colorized image of the first-class lounge. (Pinterest)BARGAIN…Accommodations for weren’t too bad, either, for the other classes. Here is the 3rd class salon. (drivingfordeco.com)TAKE YOUR PICK…Clockwise from top left, elevators decorated in sea shells; the rear of the Grand Salon; a first class suite; view of the swimming pool. An incredible scale model of the S.S. Normandie is displayed on the Queen Mary, which is permanently docked at Long Beach, CA. (MCNY)
World War II would cut short the Normandie’s life. Seized in New York and renamed USS Lafayette in 1942, she was being converted to a troopship when she caught fire, capsized onto the port side, and came to rest half submerged on the bottom of the Hudson at Pier 88, the same pier where she was welcomed in 1935. She was scrapped in 1946.
THE WAGES OF STUPIDITY…The Normandie after a fire brought her glory days to an end. (Reddit)
* * *
A Critic Is Born
It turns out that Wolcott Gibbs (1902–1958) cut his teeth as The New Yorker’s theatre critic while he was still in short pants. Gibbs recalled his five-year-old self in an essay that described his first experience with the theatre—a play based on the New York Herald’s popular comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, by Winsor McCay. In parallel with Gibbs’ childhood, the strip ran from 1905 to 1911.
As a child, Gibbs was wild about Little Nemo’s adventures, but the stage adaptation left the child disillusioned (and feeling “tricked and furious”). The New York Public Library’s Douglas Reside wrote (in 2015) that the producers, seeking to draw as wide an audience as possible, presented Little Nemo “as a bloated mixture of theatrical styles, including the minstrel show, pantomime, operetta, farce-comedy, vaudeville, revue, and ballet,” featuring three comedians “mostly superfluous to Nemo’s story.” The part of Nemo was played by a 25-year-old actor with dwarfism.
DREAMLAND…The Little Nemo strip from Dec. 17, 1905 depicted the boy’s dream of a visit to Santa’s magical city at the North Pole. (Wikipedia)THAT’S SHOWBIZ…As a boy, Wolcott Gibbs (left) was disillusioned by a 1907 theatre adaptation of his favorite comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland. The play was dominated by three comedians including Joseph Cawthorn, right, who burlesqued German linguistic and cultural mannerisms for comic effect. He played Dr. Pill, the quack doctor of Slumberland’s royal court. The “boy” in the bed portraying Nemo was 25-year-old “Master” Gabriel Weigel. (Wikipedia/New York Public Library)
* * *
Humorous Humors
Clarence Day, best known for his Life with Father stories, wrote humorously about his physical ailments and contributed a number of cartoons to The New Yorker that were accompanied by satirical poems. Day would be dead by December—after a bout with pneumonia—however, despite his ailments he would spend his last months arranging publication of his Life with Father book, which was published posthumously.
* * *
Frankie Got Hitched
Film critic John Mosher still wasn’t finding much to rave about at the cinema, getting more chuckles from the monster mash-up of Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein than he did from the Dolores Del Rio vehicle Caliente.
DATE NIGHT…Top, Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff let the sparks fly in The Bride of Frankenstein, while Dolores Del Rio danced and chatted her way through the unfunny musical comedy Caliente. (Wikipedia/TCM)
* * *
Other features in the May 25 issue included H. L. Mencken’s continuing exploration into the origins of American names…
…and The New Yorker published its first John Cheever story, “Brooklyn Rooming House.” Of Cheever’s 180 short stories, the magazine would publish 121 of them.
A NEW FACE…In spring 1935 The New Yorker bought two John Cheever stories, paying $90 for “The Brooklyn Rooming House” and $45 for “Buffalo.” Fiction editor Katharine White urged the purchase of the stories. Above, Walker Evan’s photo of Cheever, circa 1940s. (metmuseum.org)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We start with some one-column gems from the back of the book including the latest innovation in electric refrigerators…a shelf in the door!…apparently Crosley was the first to invent this “Shelvador”…the ad to the right is interesting in that it advertises honey-filled golf balls…in the early 20th century some golf balls did contain real honey…apparently it was chosen for its consistent viscosity (or maybe for a quick snack on the ninth hole)…
…and from General Tire, we have another ominous warning from Dad as the teens head out for another night of crooning, or whatever they are dressed for…
…last week Chrysler was offering its sedans for $745, and this week you could have one of their Plymouths for just 510 bucks…the message: you would be admired by your polo buddies for your smart, thrifty choice…
…where the above ad crammed every square inch with information, the folks at Pierce Arrow offered a restrained, minimal message (suggesting “we can afford to buy a full-page ad and leave much of it blank”)…another class signifier was the absence of a price tag (about $150k in today’s dollars)…but Chrysler-Plymouth would survive the Depression because it sold affordable cars, while Pierce Arrow was on its last legs…
…here’s a couple of Pierce Arrow owners toasting the return of the Manhattan…
…Moët & Chandon offered up this whimsical tableau from the youth of Bacchus…
…Ethel Merman popped through a curtain on the inside back cover to invite readers to subscribe to The Stage magazine…
…and Lucky Strike claimed the back cover with another stylish woman and a talking cigarette bent on mind control…
…the Ritz-Carlton announced the spring re-opening of its famed Japanese Garden…
The Japanese Garden in 1924. (clickamericana)
…and we kick off our cartoonists with this “Goings On” topper by D. Krán…
…followed by this visit to the zoo by Abe Birnbaum…
…James Thurber was up for some fashion criticism…
…Helen Hokinson found a surprise in a paint-by-numbers kit..
…Peter Arno was up for some late night nuptials…
…Gluyas Williams continued to examine club life…
...George Price was back in the air…
…Alan Dunn gave us some men on a mission…
…and we close with Charles Addams, and some dam trouble…
If you think today’s food trailers are the result of some hipster craze, consider that their origins go back more than a century; by 1934 Manhattan was home to 300 of the country’s 5,000 “lunch wagons,” which were commonly called “dog wagons.”
September 8, 1934 cover by Ilonka Karasz.
Some of Manhattan’s dog wagons belied the moniker, however, resembling the sleek roadside diners over which many today wax nostalgic. Jerry O’Mahony Diner Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, produced more of these dining cars than any other concern—2,000 of them between 1917 and 1952 (only about twenty remain today). “The Talk of the Town” had this to say about the dog wagon phenomenon. Excerpts:
PROMISE OF BIG BUCKS…Tierney, based in New Rochelle and established in 1895, was an early manufacturer of lunch wagons and dining cars. It went out of business in 1933. Above, detail from a Tierney Diner Car Advertisement from the late 1920s. (scalar.usc.edu)LUNCH ON THE RUN…Clockwise, from top left, early “dog wagons” were horse-drawn affairs; the wagons became semi-stationary with the advent of manufactured units designed to resemble old railroad dining cars; bottom photos show interiors of two O’Mahony diners. (restaurantingthroughhistory.com/americanbusinesshistory.org/dinerhunter.com)ALL IN A NAME…Above: The Jerry O’Mahony Diner Company produced 2,000 diners in its Elizabeth, New Jersey, factory. Below, an O’Mahoney dining car headed for its new home in Kansas—the O’Mahony company preferred that patrons give their dining cars elite names, such as this “Palace Diner.” (dinerhunter.com/nyfta.org)LAST CALL…One of the few surviving O’Mahony diners—The Summit Diner in Summit, New Jersey. A prototypical “rail car” style diner, it was built by the O’Mahony Company in 1938. (Jeff Boyce/Wikimedia Commons)
* * *
A Captain’s Curios
“The Talk of the Town” also paid a visit to Captain Charley’s Private Museum for Intelligent People, a place that would later be visited (and written about) by The New Yorker’s chronicler of the commonplace, Joseph Mitchell. Excerpts:
MURKY MUSEUM…This is likely the red brick building on 127th Street where the old mariner Captain Charley held court in the basement with his Private Museum for Intelligent People. (Google Street View)
* * *
Origins of Life
Wolcott Gibbs took his turn as theater reviewer (in relief of Robert Benchley) and managed to sit through Life Begins at 8:40, which had a successful run at the Winter Garden.
GIVING IT A REST…Roy Bolger, Luella Gear, Frances Williams and Bert Lahr headed the cast of Life Begins at 8:40 at the Winter Garden. Critic Wolcott Gibbs appreciated Lahr’s change in tempo, as he was becoming a more “restful” comedian. Lahr was the father of New Yorker theater critic and writer John Lahr. (Library of Congress)
In contrast to Bert Lahr’s new toned-down style, Milton Berle’s outlandish antics over at the Imperial Theatre had Gibbs wondering what the comedian’s vaudeville-style show Saluta was all about, if it was about anything. Whatever it was, it worked—Berle would enjoy a comedy career spanning eight decades, including becoming one of early television’s biggest stars.
ON FIRE…Milton Berle’s show Saluta featured Chaz Chase (right), famed for gobbling up whatever was placed in front of his mouth, including a box of lit matches. At left, Berle in 1930; right, Chase in the 1935 film Vaudeville. (Pinterest/IMDB)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We begin with a cold one from Rheingold, which had “beverage balance” and wasn’t afraid to stamp a slogan right over its ad copy…
…Lucky Strike gave us another stylish reason for taking up a bad habit…
…Arts & Decoration magazine took out this full page to tout the latest news in modern design…
…while the folks at Packard bought this center spread to give ample space to their 1935 model, which must have been a helluva thing to parallel park…
…clothing companies continued use class shaming to goad aspiring toffs to purchase the “correct” attire for school…
…with the help of Gardner Rea, Heinz suggested that the upper orders would simply swoon over cuisine you managed to scoop out of a can…
…on to our cartoonists, we begin with spots by James Thurber…
…and Lloyd Coe…
…with the absence of Otto Soglow’sLittle King, Gluyas Williams did his best to fill the void of a full page, something Williams did quite nicely…
…Rea Irvin gave us yet another local bird sighting…
…Richard Decker found understatement over a reservoir…
…Robert Day borrowed from the style of Rockwell Kent to offer a bit of humor from the northern climes…
…here is a woodcut from Kent’s N by E is, an illustrated story of his voyage to Greenland…
(From Rockwell Kent’s 1930 book of woodcuts, N by E, via untendedgarden.com)
…Reginald Marsh lent his social realism to an uglier side of American life…
…and we close with Helen Hokinson, just taking in the passing scene…
In 1925 New Yorker founding editor Harold Ross wrote that he wanted his new magazine to be “humorous from a sophisticated viewpoint” and “record the situations of everyday life among intelligent and substantial people as do the English magazines, notably Punch, except that our bent is more satirical, sharper.”
Jan. 13, 1934 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
Sharper indeed, as was demonstrated in the Jan. 13, 1934 issue, when Ross’s young magazine took aim at Punch, which was founded in 1841 and had grown long in the tooth under the guidance of Sir Owen Seaman, whose Victorian sensibilities (he joined Punch in 1897) were ripe for parody by a magazine founded during the Jazz Age.
Writer and cartoonist V. Cullum Rogers (MagazineParody.com) notes that the eight pages devoted to “Paunch” was The New Yorker’s longest and most elaborate parody of another publication.
RIPE FOR THE PICKING…The covers of Punch for August 30, 1933, and The New Yorker’s 1934 parody.
E.B. White and Franklin P. Adams contributed parodies (“The Mall” by White and “The Intent Caterpillar” by Franklin) of what Rogers cites as “two of Punch’s favorite forms of bad verse: the sticky-sentimental and the mechanically clever.”
The New Yorker’s theatre critic Wolcott Gibbs joined the fun by penning “Mr. Paunch’s Cinema Review” (excerpt)…
…Rea Irvin and James Thurber offered up their cartooning skills…
Rea Irvin’s parody of a Punch cartoon. (Caption enlarged below).
…and Robert Benchley contributed this gem, “Hyacinths for Pamela.”
Rogers writes that although “Paunch” wasn’t promoted on the cover, “the issue it ran in became the first in The New Yorker’s nine-year history to sell out on newsstands. (The second sellout contained Wolcott Gibbs’sTime parody, which suggests a demand for such things).”
The parody issue concluded with this page of advertisements:
* * *
The Show Must Go On
The death of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. in 1932 did not put an end to his Follies; indeed, under the direction of his widow, Billie Burke, the show seemed to have new legs, at least according to Robert Benchley:
HOOFIN’ IT…Clockwise, from top left: Program for the 1934 Ziegfeld Follies; performers in the show included popular brother–sister dancing act Buddy and Vilma Ebsen, pictured here with Eleanor Powell in Broadway Melody of 1936 (most of us know Buddy Ebsen as Uncle Jed from The Beverly Hillbillies); Al Hirschfeld drawing of the show’s stars; Willie Howard, Fanny Brice and Eugene Howard in Ziegfeld Follies of 1934. (YouTube/NYPL)
* * *
Keen on the Airflow
The streamlining trend in autos was not to E.B. White’s liking (see below), but the reviewer of the National Auto Show (pseud. “Speed”) was eager to take the Chrysler Airflow for a spin.
* * *
From Our Advertisers
The Chrysler Corporation ran this two-page ad that took issue with E.B. White’s criticisms of the streamlining trend in automobiles, led by Chrysler’s “Airflow” model…here Chrysler responded with a note pinned to a tear sheet from the Dec. 16, 1933 “Talk of the Town”…You wrote this before you saw the new Chryslers, Mr. New Yorker…
…with the National Auto Show still in town the splashy car ads continued, including this one from the makers of Fisher car bodies…
…another advertising stalwart, the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, gave us a young woman who enjoyed their Chesterfields “a lot”…
…Guinness was back for those who missed that taste of Dublin…
…and the folks behind “The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous” placed their first ad in The New Yorker…
…if you wanted to have your drink outside of the home, what better place than the Madison Room at The Biltmore…
…on to our cartoons, with begin with Perry Barlow and a tot losing sleep over the new year…
…Kemp Starrett also explored the world of sleep deprivation…
…and we end with James Thurber, and a woman with a low tolerance for “cute” news…
…in case you are wondering, Anna Eleanor “Sistie” Dall was the daughter of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s eldest child Anna Dall. When Dall separated from her husband in 1933, she moved into the White House with her children, Sistie and Buzzie.
TOO CUTE…Franklin Roosevelt with his grandchildren Anna Eleanor “Sistie” Dall and Curtis “Buzzie” Dall in 1932. According to Buzzie, he and his sister lived in the White House from September 1933 to November 1935. (AP)
As in her other films, Mae West’s character in I’m No Angel was sexually independent and unapologetically so. (Kino Lorber)
We first encountered Mae West back in 1926 when The New Yorker commented on her risqué Broadway play, Sex. Although the play was the biggest ticket in town, it eventually attracted a police raid that landed West in jail on morals charges. Sentenced to ten days for “corrupting the morals of youth,” she could have paid a fine, but for West a short stint on Welfare Island was worth its weight in publicity gold.
Oct. 14, 1933 cover by Rea Irvin.
Fast forward seven years, and West is one of the nation’s biggest box office attractions and starring in her third film, I’m No Angel. Depression-era audiences responded enthusiastically to West’s portrayals of a woman from the wrong side of the tracks who in the end gains both fortune and social acceptance. Although puritanical forces continued to be outraged by West’s antics, New Yorker film critic John Mosher found her act to be “a safe parody on indecency.”
SHIMMY TO SUCCESS…Clockwise, from top left: At the beginning of I’m No Angel, Tira (Mae West) shimmies and sings in a circus sideshow; studio poster for the film— In the early 1930s, West’s films were key in saving Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy; a wealthy sideshow customer (William B. Davidson) arranges a private rendezvous; Tira has her day in court despite attempts by her ex-boyfriend, Slick Wiley (Ralf Harolde), to discredit her. (IMDB)SHE GETS HER MAN…Cary Grant starred opposite Mae West for the second and final time in I’m No Angel. Eleven years junior to West, Grant portrayed Tira’s fiancé, Jack Clayton. (TCM)
And finally, a much-talked about scene from the movie featured West putting her head (rather sensually) into the mouth of a lion. In reality it appears to be a camera trick: West was actually placing her head to the side of the lion’s mouth. Still, a gutsy move by West. As for the lion, it was no picnic either.
* * *
Comic Relief
Eugene O’Neill surprised critics and audiences alike when he premiered Ah, Wilderness! at Broadway’s Guild Theatre on October 2, 1933. Among the critics was Wolcott Gibbs, who concluded that O’Neill should stick to his usual themes of disillusion and despair. An excerpt:
PASS THE CORN, PLEASE…Around the table in the original 1933 Broadway production of Ah, Wilderness! are (from left) George M. Cohan (Nat Miller), Eda Heinemann (Lily), Elisha Cook, Jr. (Richard), Gene Lockhart (Sid), Marjorie Marquis (Mrs. Nat Miller), Walter Vonnegut, Jr. (Tommy) and Adelaide Bean (Mildred). (Photograph by Vandamm for Stage magazine, November 1933)ERRORS OF COMEDY…Wolcott Gibbs (left) found Eugene O’Neill’s attempt at comedy to be nothing more than a recycling of corny old saws. However, Ah, Wilderness! proved successful in its first Broadway production and in the touring company that followed. It remains to this day a staple of community repertory. (The New Yorker/Playbill/Encyclopedia Britannica)
* * *
Hell in a Handbasket
If Eugene O’Neill couldn’t offer up some woe, then leave it to E.B. White of all people to supply reason for despair. In his 1982 review of a collection of White’s poems and sketches, Timothy Foote observed that White occasionally assumed the guise of Pessimist, “a desperate fellow who served as a one-man distant-early-warning system…”
For the Oct. 14 issue White bemoaned the loss of the American elm (of the 77 million elms in North America in 1930, more than 75 percent were lost to Dutch elm disease by 1989), the dangers of pesticide use, and other maladies. Excerpts:
APPLE OF HIS EYE…E.B. White had reason to be concerned about the widespread practice of spraying lead arsenic on fruit trees. This 1930 photograph shows an Oregon orchardist and his child spraying apple trees with the stuff. (oregonhistoryproject.org)
White’s New Yorker colleague John O’Hara raised some concerns of his own, namely the likelihood of another world war in this prescient piece titled “Dynamite is Like a Mill Pond.” Excerpts:
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE…John O’Hara pondered the likelihood of another world war and an unlikely bedfellow: Soviet Russia. Photo circa 1938. (AP via loa.org)
* * *
Pooh-Poohing Mr. Milne
In his review of A.A. Milne’s latest novel, The Red House Mystery, Clifton Fadiman seemed to recall Dorothy Parker’s own revulsion to Milne’s juvenile style (“Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up” Parker once wrote of The House at Pooh Corner). Excerpts:
* * *
From Our Advertisers
The makers of Camels took to the water to prove how their cigarettes supported “healthy nerves,” whether in the deep sea or on the high dive…
…with a name like “Spud” you really had to stretch to prove you were a choice of the smart set…here they claimed their product was “quite at home among royalty”…
…here’s another great example of class appropriation, a white-tie dinner featuring a couple of toffs eating canned soup…
…and we give our eyes a break with a bit of elegance from Lord & Taylor, featuring the art of modern living…
…on to our cartoons, we begin with James Thurber…
…curious to know Thurber’s favorite songs?—then check out this Thurber Thursday post from Michael Maslin’sInkspill...
…we continue with William Steig’s look at a “Lady With Mirror”…
…and discover the calm after a storm in this domestic scene by Kemp Starrett…
…visit the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago, with George Price…
…for reference, Price’s cartoon depicted the Federal Building at the Century of Progress…
…and is often the case with this blog, we give Peter Arno the last word…
ABOVE: Broadway's As Thousands Cheer (1933) featured evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (Helen Broderick) trying to persuade Mahatma Gandhi (Clifton Webb) to end his hunger strike and join her act. (NYPL)
Broadway gave Depression audiences a lift with As Thousands Cheer, a revue featuring satirical sketches that skewered the lives and affairs of the rich and famous and served as a precursor to sketch shows like Saturday Night Live.
Oct. 7, 1933 cover by Peter Arno.
With a book by Moss Hart and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, the revue was a big hit, playing for nearly a year on Broadway in its initial run.
TOON TIME…Marilyn Miller led a chorus of cartoon characters in a sketch titled “The Funnies” in As Thousands Cheer; leading the revue were Miller, Clifton Webb and Helen Broderick, here featured on the cover of the Playbill. The production would be Marilyn Miller’s last—one of Broadway’s biggest stars known for playing sunny characters, her personal life was filled with illness and tragedy, and she would go to an early death in 1936. (playbill.com)
Wolcott Gibbs took his turn as Broadway reviewer, and pronounced As Thousands Cheer “the funniest thing in town.”
Not everything was roses in As Thousands Cheer: In a poignant star turn, Ethel Waters sang—at Irving Berlin’s request—his famous tune “Supper Time,” a Black woman’s lament for her lynched husband. The revue was the first Broadway show to give an African-American star (Waters) equal billing with whites, however she was segregated from her co-stars and did not appear in any sketches with them. Her co-stars even refused to bow with her at the curtain call until Berlin intervened. According to the James Kaplan biography Irving Berlin, “The show had a successful tryout at Philadelphia’s Forrest Theatre in early September, although opening night was marred by an ugly incident all too in tune with the times: the stars Clifton Webb, Marilyn Miller, and Helen Broderick refused to take a bow with Ethel Waters. To his everlasting credit, Berlin told the three that of course he would respect their feelings—only in that case there needn’t be any bows at all.
“They took their bows with Waters at the next show.”
NEWSMAKERS…Each sketch in As Thousands Cheer was preceded with a newspaper headline. Clockwise, from top left, in the sketch headlined JOAN CRAWFORD TO DIVORCE DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, JR, Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb portrayed the stars arguing over publicity rights to their divorce; Webb as 94-year-old John D. Rockefeller; the headline FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT INAUGURATED TOMORROW featured Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Hoover on their last day in the White House, portrayed by Leslie Adams and Helen Broderick; Ethel Waters singing Irving Berlin’s “Supper Time.” (New York Public Library)
* * *
A Final Byline
E.B. White opened his column with a tribute to Ring Lardner, who died at age 48 of a heart attack and other complications. In the months before his death Lardner had contributed a number of comical “Over the Waves” radio reviews.
JOURNALIST AT HEART…Ring Lardner (1885-1933) worked for several newspapers before settling at the Chicago Tribune in 1913—it became the home newspaper for his syndicated column, In the Wake of the News. (Chicago Tribune)
Lardner’s first contribution to The New Yorker came shortly after the magazine’s founding. “The Constant Jay” was published in the April 18, 1925 issue: Readers appreciated his subtle wit, including this oft-quoted gem:
“The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet.”
Lardner also liked to poke fun at himself and his aw-shucks view of things. Here are the opening and closing paragraphs of his final New Yorker contribution, “Odd’s Bodkins:”
* * *
Macy Modernism
As Lewis Mumford observed in his “Skyline” column, Macy’s was the first department store to embrace a modern approach to interior design, but as Marilyn Friedman notes in her book, Making America Modern: Interior Design in the 1930s, Macy’s modernism was a bit toned down to blend into more traditional settings. A case in point was Macy’s 1933 Forward House exhibition, which Mumford described as “a brilliant piece of modern showmanship.”
EASY ON THE EYES…”Living room in the Suburban House of Forward House” at R.H. Macy & Co., New York, 1933, from The Upholsterer and Interior Decorator, October 15, 1933. (artdeco.org)
* * *
Fishing for Commies
Geoffrey Hellman profiled New York House Rep. Hamilton Fish Jr (1888–1991), a staunch anti-communist perhaps best known for establishing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. I feature this brief excerpt mainly for the great caricature by Abe Birnbaum.
MINDING THE HOME FRONT…Hamilton Fish, Jr making a speech in Los Angeles, 1935. Fish served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1920 to 1945 and during that time was a prominent opponent of intervention into foreign affairs. (UCLA Special Collections)
* * *
All Wet
Eleven years before Esther Williams made her first aqua-musical, Ruby Keeler took the dive under Busby Berkeley’s direction in Footlight Parade. E.B. White served as film critic for the Oct. 7 issue, and found Footlight to be a feast for the male gaze, as well as mindless entertainment.
TAKING THE PLUNGE…Clockwise, from top left: According to E.B. White, there was no gainsaying “the general aahhhhh” of the semi-nude waterfall scene in Footlight Parade; promotional poster left no doubt as to what audiences might expect from the film; Busby Berkeley displayed his craft in water-based choreography; Ruby Keeler portrayed a dancer turned secretary who is transformed back into a dancer—just add water. (IMDB)
* * *
A Dog’s Life
Doubtless drained from writing The Waves, Virginia Woolf followed up with some historical fiction, namely Flush: A Biography, a book about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel. Clifton Fadiman had this to say about the unusual biography:
VIRGINIA WOOF…Frontispiece for Flush: A Biography. Virginia Woolf used the tale of a dog to explore social themes ranging from feminism to class conflict. (Heritage Auctions)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
When you market a car for only $445 you aren’t going after the luxury market, but hey, drop a ten-truck truck on this baby and you can live to tell about it…
…with legal beer flooding the market brewers were particularly keen to attract female drinkers of all ages…and apparently social classes…
…a couple of ads from the back pages, the first touting the smart-set writing of columnist and foreign correspondent Alice Hughes for the New York American, and the second an advertisement for Chase & Sanborn coffee, which relayed the story of a marriage on the brink due to stale coffee…
…I include this ad for the heroic scale of the ocean liner, particularly as depicted by the people in the background…
…we bounce on to our cartoons with Otto Soglow’s Little King…
…James Thurber continued to explore the unrest among our domestic youth…
…speaking of America’s youth, this gathering (courtesy Gardner Rea) appeared to have trouble finding some…
…Helen Hokinson found fun with flounder…
…Rea Irvin turned the tables on a life-drawing class…
…and we close with Richard Decker, over the moon with a stranded chorine…
…and in a nod to the approaching holiday, imagery from a 1933 Fleischer Studios animated short film, Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party…
A New Yorker State of Mind 