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:
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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/Britannica)
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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)
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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:
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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 Irving 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)
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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:”
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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. (www.artdeco.org)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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From Our Advertisers
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…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…
Clark Gable made such an impression as a charming rogue in 1931’s A Free Soul that it transformed him almost overnight from a bit actor to into one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the 1930s.
June 13, 1931 cover by Helen Hokinson.
When the film was released it was Norma Shearer who was the biggest name, supported by Lionel Barrymore and Leslie Howard. As this was “Pre-Code” Hollywood, MGM played up the film’s risqué themes of gangsters, drunks and infidelity. After all, according to this ad, Norma was “born in an age of FREEDOM!”
Although critic John Mosher — already weary of the gangster film genre — found the film pretentious, the public voted it one of the best films of 1931, and Barrymore took home an Oscar for his performance as a successful but conflicted (and alcoholic) attorney…
TRUST ME, HE WON’T BITE…Defense lawyer Stephen Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) introduces Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable), a bootlegger he successfully defends from a murder charge. Unfortunately, Ashe’s daughter Jan (Norma Shearer), who was betrothed to another (the squeaky-clean Dwight Winthrop, played by Leslie Howard), ends up falling for his shady client. (IMDB)DECISIONS, DECISIONS…Jan Ashe (Norma Shearer) must decide between bad boy and goody two-shoes in 1931’s A Free Soul. Clark Gable and Leslie Howard would again play rivals for a woman’s affections eight years later in 1939’s Gone With The Wind. (IMDB)
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Speaking of Gangsters
A real one was profiled in the New Yorker by novelist and screenwriter Joel Sayre — Jack “Legs” Diamond — a thug who seemed to have nine lives but would be dead before the year was out (spoiler: he would not die from natural causes). An excerpt:
IN TROUBLE AGAIN?…Jack Diamond, aka “Legs Diamond” being escorted to the courthouse in Troy, New York in July 1931. (Everett)
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Some Real Guts
“The Talk of the Town” (via E.B. White) looked in on the work of famed aerial photographer Albert Stevens, who back in the day employed the common practice of chucking “flashlight bombs” out of airplanes to illuminate subjects below, including buildings along Riverside Drive that had their windows blown out during one of his aerial photo sessions…
Captains Albert Stevens (left, with the devil-may-care smile) and St. Clair Streett prepare for a high-altitude airplane flight in 1935. At right, Stevens readies his camera for an aerial photo session. (National Air and Space Museum).
Below is something similar to what Stevens dropped from the plane to get the effect he needed during nighttime shots…
Nighttime aerial photography owes its origins to pioneers like George Goddard, who stunned residents of Rochester, NY, in 1925 when he ignited an 80-pound flash bomb to illuminate the city (image at left). It is considered the first aerial night photograph. At right, Manhattan at night, 1931.
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Poetic Pugilist
Throughout his career and into his retirement, heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney took great pains to distinguish himself from the other brutes who practiced his violent trade, and was known for his love of the higher and gentler arts. In his “Notes and Comment” E. B. White further explored this phenomenon upon the boxer’s return to the States:
I’M NO PALOOKA…Gene Tunney chewing the fat with playwright George Bernard Shaw during a holiday in Brioni, 1929. (NYT)
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Not So Brief
I include this entire page to feature both Garrett Price’s cartoon (Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey, a leader in abolishing child labor, supported the idea of unmarried couples living together, hence the caption), and Wolcott Gibbs’ thoughts on applying for an advertising position…
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And speaking of advertising, we have this summer-themed ad from Macy’s (yes, they had inflatables back then, too)…
…for reference, here’s a 1930s photo of actress Una Merkel astride an inflatable horse like the one featured in the ad…
…R.J. Reynolds continued to market their Camel cigarettes to women, but the ads moved away from illustrations of Continental leisure and instead emphasized the freshness of the product, thanks to the cellophane-wrapped “Humidor pack”…
…while cigarette smoking continued to increase in America, the sale of alcohol remained illegal — it didn’t stop people from drinking, and if you got a bad batch of bootleg, or just had too much, there were remedies available…
…perhaps a fortunate few were able to just sleep it off on a lovely bed fitted with Wamsutta sheets…
…on to our cartoons, Rea Irvin continued to explore his alter ego, “Du Maurier Irvin”…
…Alan Dunn showed us why some “can’t make it there” in New York, New York…
…Otto Soglow revealed that his Little King preferred beer to bubbly…
…William Steig found an unlikely customer for a photo button…
…Barbara Shermund explored politics between the sheets…
…and Peter Arno gave us his Major with a major itch to scratch…
“Everyone in this life draws bad cards with the good. The great trouble with most of us is that we do not know when to discard quickly,” observed New York Mayor Jimmy Walker.
April 4, 1931 cover by Theodore Haupt.
Signs that the first bad card was being turned were apparent in the April 4, 1931 edition of the New Yorker. In his weekly collection of quips — “Of All Things” — Howard Brubaker suggested that Walker — known for his frequent trips and general lack of attention to governance — had a different sort of homecoming awaiting his return from California…
…Walker was no doubt hobnobbing with the Hollywood crowd back in the Golden State…the mayor loved donning fine attire (thus the nickname “Beau James”) and enjoyed throwing lavish events for famous people…
MIGNIGHT MAYOR was one of the many nicknames New Yorkers bestowed on Mayor Jimmy Walker, known for his love of nightlife, fine clothes, and beautiful people (another nickname was “Beau James”). Although he was married at the time, he conducted a very open affair with actress Betty Compton (left), who later became his wife. At right, in his element, Walker (center) accompanies actress Colleen Moore to the October 1928 premiere of her film, Lilac Time. (IMDB/konreioldnewyork.blogspot.com)
…which made him an easy target for parody, such as this 1932 Vanity Fair cover, where the mayor even welcomes himself to the city…
(Conde Nast)
…Ralph Barton revived his “Hero of the Week” feature to welcome the mayor back to the city…Barton alluded to the fact that Walker preferred conducting his office outside of the official confines:
Walker (1881-1946) made a far more interesting personality than an effective mayor. When he took office in 1926 he proved to be a terrible administrator, partying at speakeasies late into night, sleeping till noon, and leaving city matters (except the lavish ceremonies) to Tammany Hall cronies. This didn’t seem to bother voters when the economy boomed in the 1920s, and indeed they re-elected him by an overwhelming margin in 1929.
The 1929 market crash quickly changed things. The Roaring Twenties abruptly ended, and with people losing their jobs (and fortunes), the mayor’s antics didn’t seem so amusing anymore. Reform was in the air, and leading the charge was Gov. Franklin Roosevelt, who was no fan of Walker’s.
IF LOOKS COULD KILL…Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with Mayor Jimmy Walker in conference at Roosevelt’s home on E. 65th St. in December 1928; at left, campaign banner for Walker on Tammany Hall, 4th Avenue and 17th Street, Oct. 28, 1929. Walker was a product of the Tammany Hall political machine, and much of the mayor’s backroom dealings were conducted there, as well as at various speakeasies and nightclubs. (NYC Municipal Archives/NY Daily News)
Investigations into corruption in Walker’s administration landed Walker before an investigative committee of led by Judge Samuel Seabury in 1931…
IN THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY…Mayor Jimmy Walker takes the stand in the New York County Courthouse on May 25, 1932, to answer questions from Judge Samuel Seabury (left). Thousands of New Yorkers showed up to cheer the mayor when he entered the courthouse, but those cheers soon became jeers as details of the administration’s corruption were made public. (NY Daily News).
…Mayor Walker resigned the following year and fled to Europe, where he married his mistress, Betty Compton (1904-1944) in Cannes, France, on April 19, 1933. We will revisit this tale in later issues…
SEE YA…
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On the Lighter Side
“The Talk of the Town” included this note about the play Peter Pan, which was being staged at the Fourteenth Street Theatre. Much was made of the wizardry that enabled actors to float above the audience.
Eva Le Gallienne (1899-1991), who portrayed the title character, made the theatre home of her stage company in 1926, and renamed it the Civic Repertory Theatre. Le Gallienne played the role of Peter Pan 129 times, and although the flying effects were quite hazardous, she said she “took to flying like the proverbial duck to water.”
NO STAGE FRIGHT HERE…The Fourteenth Street Theatre, originally constructed in 1866, was dubbed the Civic Repertory Theatre when Eva Le Gallienne (center) made it the home of her stage company. Le Gallienne played the role of Peter Pan 129 times on the theatre’s stage, and loved performing the dangerous flying stunts. Images of Le Gallienne from Bruce K. Hanson’s book, Peter Pan on Stage and Screen, 1904-2010. (Wikipedia/Bruce K. Hanson).DARLINGS…The Darling family as portrayed in the Civic Repertory Theatre’s production of Peter Pan. At bottom, right, “The Wendy House” as it appeared on stage. And a bit of trivia: the young lad who portrayed John Darling (see arrow) was none other than Burgess Meredith, who would go on to a long and successful career on the stage, television (he played the Penguin in the 1960s Batman TV series), and in film, seen top right as Sylvester Stallone’s trainer Mickey in 1976’s Rocky. (Bruce K. Hanson/IMDB)
Eva Le Gallienne lived 92 years, and Burgess Meredith made it to 89. Such was not the fate of the Civic Repertory Theatre, which closed in 1934 due to the Depression. The 1866 building was demolished in 1938. Not a trace remains.
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Fightin’ Words
I have to say it’s really too bad Dorothy Parker didn’t stay on as theatre critic for the New Yorker (she was subbing for her friend, Robert Benchley) because her weekly forays into the middlebrow world of Broadway produced some of her most entertaining writing. For the April 4 issue Parker offered some thoughts about The Silent Witness, which ran from March to June at the Morosco Theatre.
Instead of turning cartwheels, Parker took aim at actress Kay Strozzi, “who had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. … Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.”
She ended the review with another plea to Benchley, who was traveling abroad:
WHAT ABOUT THIS OUTFIT, DOROTHY?…I don’t have a photo of the “horrible” gown worn by Kay Strozzi (left) in The Silent Witness, so you’ll have to settle for this image of Ms. Strozzi from the 1931 film Captain Applejack. At right, and dressed to kill, Dorothy Parker posed for Edward Steichen in this 1931 portrait. (IMDB/Pinterest)
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Tipsy Tots
Tired of Prohibition, and its farcical enforcement, Wolcott Gibbs had some fun with the official Wickersham Report’s conclusions regarding the success of the 18th Amendment:
Wolcott Gibbs (wsj.com)
On a loftier note, we have this ode to the new Empire State Building from Price Day, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and noted editor of the Baltimore Sun:
The profile, written by Gilbert Seldes, featured artist Gaston Lachaise…I include a brief excerpt for personal reasons, because I first encountered this artist in the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery’s sculpture garden in Lincoln, Nebraska (my hometown), many years ago, via his “Floating Figure”…
WEIGHTLESS…”Floating Figure” by Gaston Lachaise was cast in bronze at the end of 1934 after a retrospective held in January 1935 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This is one of seven casts, at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. (Lincoln Arts Council)
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From Our Advertisers
Pierce Arrow would struggle to promote its luxury cars in the Great Depression (and they would go under by the mid-1930s) but their advertising still harked back to the carmaker’s early days of refined travel…
…the folks at Ethyl would make that car run smoother, thanks to the lead they added to gasoline (and to the air folks were breathing)…
…tired of driving? Then hop a freighter and fire up a Chesterfield…
…or go for a more cushy ride on the French Line…
…we turn to our cartoons, and Ralph Barton’s revival of his old “Graphic Section”…
…Helen Hokinson showed us the nuances of the DMV…
…Leonard Dove showed us a pet on the wild side…
…Otto Soglow zigzagged across the pages with his Little King…
…and Gardner Rea revealed the wonders of world travel…
We close out the boiling August of 1930 with Wolcott Gibbs and his fanciful musings regarding the future offices of the New Yorker, inspired by his recent visit to the glitzy new lobby of the New York Daily News Building.
August 30, 1930 cover by Julian De Miskey.
I include a brief excerpt of Gibb’s tongue-in-cheek fantasy of the future, which inadvertently foresees the New Yorker’s current offices (see contrast of old and new above) in the gleaming glass tower now known as One World Trade Center:
THAT WAS THEN…The New Yorker’s first offices were located at 25 West 45th Street, a 16-story building erected in 1913 (it still stands). It’s almost impossible to find images of the New Yorker’s early office spaces, but you can probably get some idea from these photos of another tenant of the building, the Y.M.C.A. Dental School. (Museum of the City of New York/New York Public Library)THIS IS NOW…Almost in fulfillment of Wolcott Gibbs’ fantasy, the New Yorker today occupies offices in the Condé Nast section (images above) of the 104-story, 1,776 foot One World Trade Center (floors 20 to 44). When the New Yorker moved onto the building’s 38th floor in early 2015 (one floor above Wired), it marked the first time the magazine was located outside of a small area in Midtown. (New York Magazine/interiordesign.net)
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His Bit of Earth
“The Talk of the Town” noted an increasingly rare sight along Fifth Avenue, a private garden created by Thomas Fortune Ryan that in 1930 was occupied by his son Clendenin J Ryan:
DUST TO DUST…Thomas Fortune Ryan demolished the Charles T. Yerkes mansion and its art galleries (before and after photos, top, and image of a gallery, bottom right) to make way for his private flower garden, which is visible in the bottom left hand corner of the image at top right. An apartment building erected in 1937 (bottom left) occupies the site today. (Museum of the City of New York/Alice Lum)
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From Our Advertisers
Backgammon became all the rage in the 1930, so much so that one Grosvenor Nicholas, “a famous authority on backgammon,” commanded a fill-page ad from Saks…
…for reference, the New Yorker made note of Nicholas’s visit in the Sept. 6 “Talk of the Town”…
FUN IN THE SUN…Joan Crawford playing backgammon with her first husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in 1931. (Pinterest)
…celebrity endorsements continued to grow in importance in the 1930s, here the famed Australian-born British actress Judith Anderson (1897-1992) marvels at the products manufactured by Angelus…
…Anderson would later be made a “Dame,” and would enjoy a long career and a long life, even appearing in 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as the Vulcan High Priestess T’Lar…
VERSATILE…At left, Dame Judith Anderson in 1930. At right, Anderson on the set of 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, with actor Leonard Nimoy. (Tumblr)
…this ad for Buick shows a rich gent dismissing his chauffeur, something he would probably have to do permanently as the Depression continued to ruin fortunes…
…and perhaps a lost fortune could lead to one being “difficult,” and in that case Dyers & Dyers could sooth the hurt with squab from a can…
…on to our cartoonists, we have Constantin Alajalov illustrating a scene at the Battery…
…Ralph Barton continued his interpretations of a new decade…
…some unfortunate racist humor from Al Frueh…
…an indelicate moment at the beach, courtesy Garrett Price…
…Perry Barlow looked at the challenges of city life…
…and Alan Dunn found a man with a case of the moderns…
From the late I.M. Pei to Frank Gehry, America has its share of “starchitects,” but only one architect in the history of the profession could claim to be a true household name: Frank Lloyd Wright.
July 19, 1930 cover by Peter Arno.
In a profile titled “The Prodigal Father,” Alexander Woollcott wrote about Wright’s “return” to American acceptance after nearly two decades of scandal and tragedy. Woollcott took great pains to defend Wright’s reputation, marred by his extramarital affair with Mamah Cheney, her murder in 1914 along with six others (including her children) at Wright’s Wisconsin home, Taliesin, and his subsequent remarriage, divorce, and remarriage that followed.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN…Clockwise, from top left, Reginald Marsh illustration for the profile; Frank Lloyd Wright, circa 1930; Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel, completed in 1923. Designed in the Maya Revival Style Wright favored throughout the 1920s, it was damaged by the 1923 Great Tokyo Earthquake just months after opening. It was demolished in 1967, however the iconic central lobby wing and the reflecting pool were disassembled and rebuilt near Nagoya. (Library of Congress/dezeen.com)
Woollcott also wrote of his visit to Taliesin (the third version of the house, after the first two were destroyed by fires). It’s a shame these two headstrong fellows never met — it would have been a lively conversation, no doubt. One thing that does stand out about this profile is that it is a rare hagiography from a man renowned for his savage wit.
AN ADMIRER…Alexander Woollcott praised the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright in his profile. He doesn’t mention actually meeting Wright. It would have been fascinating to see these headstrong individuals match wits.MAYA OH MAYA…Clockwise, from top left, Frank Lloyd Wright favored the Maya Revival Style in the 1920s, which is evident in the Alice Millard House in Pasadena (1923) and the Hollyhock House in Los Angeles (1919-21). At bottom, the third version of Taliesin (built in 1925) that Woollcott would have visited. (Wikipedia/Taliesin Preservation)
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No Surprise Endings, Please
Although sometimes confused with Alexander Woollcott because of his first name, the timid, taciturn Wolcott Gibbs was a force at the New Yorker in his own right, perhaps even more so as he served the magazine from 1927 to 1958 as a jack-of-all-trades: copy editor, feature writer, theater critic, and overall wordsmith. So when the editors of The Writer’s Digest posed a question regarding the New Yorker’s policy for submissions, it was Gibbs who was tapped to compose a response, which was a particular challenge given the magazine didn’t have a clear set of editorial requirements. So Gibbs conjured up an “Answers-To-Hard-Questions Department,” and signed it “Mr. Winterbottom.” Some excerpts:
IN HIS ELEMENT…Wolcott Gibbs, left, relaxes at the Algonquin Hotel in 1937. At right is his New Yorker colleague Dorothy Parker. (Time)
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Munitions of Bremen
The German Ocean liner SS Bremen was one of the most technologically advanced ocean liners of its day, known for its speed and luxury. Author Eric Hodgins climbed aboard to file a report for the New Yorker, and in the excerpt below marveled at the “mechanical perfection” of the ship’s engine room:
PLOUGHSHARES INTO SWORDS…More than the length of three football fields, the streamlined SS Bremen, launched in 1928, was designed to have a cruising speed of 27.5 knots (50.9 km/h). After a 1941 fire, the ship was largely dismantled, its steel used to manufacture war munitions. (Wikipedia/greatoceanliners.com)
You can get some idea of the ship in this clip from the 1936 German comedy Spiel an Bord (Game on Board). Location shooting took place in Bremerhaven, New York, and on the Atlantic crossing of the SS Bremen (at about :53 there is an image of a Nazi flag salute that I don’t believe was in the original film, but that flag undoubtedly flew on this ship in 1936)…
In 1941, while docked in Bremerhaven, a disgruntled crew member set fire to the ship, completely gutting its luxurious interior. During the war the ship was stripped of its steel for use in munitions, and in 1946 what remained was destroyed by explosives.
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From Our Advertisers
In my readings of recent issues I’ve noted numerous references to hot weather, and for good reason. The summer of 1930 would see record high temperatures and diminished rainfall that would usher in the “Dust Bowl” era of the 1930s. The Wallach Brothers adjusted by offering this “Dixie Weave Suit”…
…the hot weather also called for a tall glass of sparkling soda (mixed with your favorite bootleg beverage, of course)…
…smokers could keep cool by puffing on a Spud, the first menthol cigarette…
…or you could stick with your Luckies, endorsed by none other than this generic, genial doctor and some bogus survey…
…on to our cartoons…I. Klein showed us a downside of Edison’s invention…
…and Leonard Dove gave us two gentlemen on the skids, a frequent sight in Depression-era New York…
…after a long absence, we see suddenly see a flurry of activity from the pen of Ralph Barton, including this rare sequential cartoon…
…and with the hot summer New Yorkers took to the waters, at Coney Island with Denys Wortman…
E.B. White gazed 50 years into the future in the Sept. 21, 1929 issue, predicting that New York City would be much the same if not a little worse by the time the calendar turned to 1979.
Sept. 21, 1929 cover by Theodore G. Haupt.
White dismissed the popular notion that the future would be one of push-button happiness and gleaming white cities. And as it turned out, he was mostly right on the mark with his predictions:
LOVE IS IN THE AIR…Autogyros (as illustrated on a 1930 cover of Modern Mechanics) were often seen as the future of transportation in the 1920s and 30s; Maureen O’Sullivan (as “LN-18”) and John Garrick (“J-21”) glide above 1980 Manhattan in 1930’s Just Imagine. (modernmechanix.com/pre-code.com)
Instead of the antiseptic fantasy world predicted in such movies as 1930’s Just Imagine (a futuristic musical set in 1980), White correctly foresaw a city that, despite technological advances, would still be a gritty rat race. And if you lived in New York City in 1979 (I was but a visitor then, as now), you would have found a city that indeed was quite dirty and crime-ridden (check out the 1979 movie The Warriors to get a sense of how Hollywood perceived the city at that time). As White observed, “Prophets always leave out the eternal mud”…
JUST A LOT OF HOT AIR…In addition to autogyros, futurists in the 1920s and 30s also saw dirigibles as integral to future transportation. At top left is an illustration of a solar-powered aerial landing field atop a dirigible on the cover of Modern Mechanix magazine, October, 1934; top right, Manhattan in 1980 as depicted in the the 1930 film Just Imagine; bottom right, workers dismantling the Third Avenue Elevated line in 1955; bottom left, Times Square in 1979. (airships.net/IMDB/gothamist.com/viewoftheblue.com)
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Cradle of Civilization
Dorothy Parker took aim at ugly Americans abroad in a casual titled “The Cradle of Civilization.” In these excerpts, Parker commented on the pretensions of young New Yorkers in France, including their ridiculous costumes…
…their bad French, and their even worse manners…
WELL, THEY GOT AWAY WITH IT…Actors Leslie Howard and Ingrid Bergman don the look of French fishermen during the filming of Intermezzo: A Love Story, in 1938. Howard and Bergman were supposed to look like a couple visiting the French Riviera, but in reality it was all filmed near Hollywood. The film was Bergman’s Hollywood debut. (Pinterest)
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A Penny Saved
Back stateside, Wolcott Gibbs looked in on the dying art of the penny-arcade peepshow, and expressed his disappointment with the quality of that product in general…
DON’T JUDGE A PEEP BY ITS COVER…A patron checks out “Hot Tango” at a penny peepshow parlor of the 1920s. (Pinterest)
Gibbs seemed particularly miffed by a film with the misleading title “For Men Only”…
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Uncle Jed
Jed Harris (1900-1979) was a wunderkind of Broadway, producing and directing 31 shows between 1925 and 1956. Before he turned 28 he produced a record four consecutive Broadway hits over the course of 18 months (including the 1928 smash hit The Front Page), and so it was time for some rest. “The Talk of the Town” reported…
Although it was rumored Harris would retire at age 30, he would instead return in the spring of 1930 with a production of Anton Chekhov’sUncle Vanya, and continue producing on Broadway through the 1950s.
WUNDERKIND…A 1928 portrait of Jed Harris that was featured on the Sept. 3, 1928 cover of Time magazine. (Wikipedia)
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Dueling Cassandras
About a month before the big stock market crash we find this curious little item in Howard Brubaker’s “Of All Things” column…
…Considered the first “celebrity economist,” Irving Fisher stated in September 1929 that the stock market had reached “a permanently high plateau,” while around the same time (Sept. 5, 1929) rival economist Roger Babson warned in a speech that “sooner or later a crash is coming, and it may be terrific.” Note: “Ben Bolts” refers to a character in a popular 1842 poem that became an oft-parodied popular song. Each stanza begins with a variation of “Oh don’t you remember…”
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Parental Advisory
Fifty-five years before Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center pushed the music industry to place warning labels on records containing explicit lyrics, there was much ado about “lascivious lyrics” uttered on “race records” — the term referred to 78-rpm records marketed to African Americans from the 1920s and 1940s. The Sept. 21 “Popular Records” column looked at the controversy surrounding Ethel Waters’ “Second Handed Man,” and didn’t find any…
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING…Ethel Waters (circa 1930) and her recording of “Second Handed Man.” (discogs.com/YouTube)
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New Kids on the Block
Architecture critic George S. Chappell (aka “T-Square”) concluded his Sept. 21 column with praise for the designs of the yet-to-be-built Daily News and Chrysler buildings, but expressed dismay at the recently completed Lincoln Building…
BAD COMPANY…New Yorker architecture critic George S. Chappell was excited about the designs for the Daily News Building (left) and Chrysler Building (center), but the Lincoln Building left him wanting. No doubt its gothic topper seemed dated in contrast to the sleek lines of the other buildings. (nyc-architecture.com)
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Movie critic John Mosher took in a couple of new films including Paramount’s 1929 pre-Code drama Jealousy…
FINAL CURTAIN…Jeanne Eagels and Fredric March in a publicity photo for Jealousy. Eagels died of a drug overdose on Oct. 3, 1929, just days after Mosher’s review appeared in the New Yorker. (IMDB)
…and Mosher also reviewed the musical drama The Great Gabbo, which was derived from a story by occasional New Yorker contributor Ben Hecht…
WHO ARE YOU CALLING A DUMMY?…Erich von Stroheim has issues with his co-star in The Great Gabbo. (MoMA)
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From Our Advertisers
What appeared to be an unassuming ad from General Motors was actually a plan for world domination, at least in the area of ground transportation. GM gobbled up a number of car companies in the 1920s (see the ad’s fine print) as well as shares in power plants and home appliances. It would overtake Ford in sales in the late 1920s, and thanks to propaganda efforts including those illustrated in the ad below, it would lead a streetcar removal conspiracy that would destroy intercity train transport systems across the U.S. (and convert them to GM buses, naturally)…
Here we have yet another “distinguished handwriting contest” ad from the makers of Marlboro, this time exploiting the efforts of Corinne B. Riley of Sumter, S.C….
…Riley would win more than a handwriting contest, however. She would be elected as a Democrat to Congress in 1962 to fill a vacancy left by her husband, Congressman John Jacob Riley.
Corrine B. Riley in 1962. (Wikipedia)
On to our illustrators and comics, we begin with this two-page drawing by Reginald Marsh that appeared along the the bottom of “Talk of the Town” (click to enlarge)…
…Gardner Rea lent his spare style to this peek into Wall Street…
…Peter Arno appeared to be experimenting with yet another style of drawing…
…that is in some ways looked similar to Alan Dunn’s…
…the British cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather provided this sumptuous drawing of an exchange at a card shop…
…and I. Klein gave a vertiginous perspective to home buying…
A New Yorker State of Mind 