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A Letter From Berlin

Above: Nineteen-thirties dance class sponsored by Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy), a sub-organization of the German Labour Front that sought to fulfill the totalitarian ambitions of the Nazi regime by "forming a genuine national and performance-based community of all Germans," in other words, keep them busy and distracted from reality. (bundesarchiv.de) Paris correspondent Janet Flanner…

That Tammany Taint

Above: The building that housed Manhattan's Democratic Party, known as Tammany Hall, circa 1935, and James Joseph "Jimmy" Hines, perhaps Tammany's most powerful leader. (wpsu.org/facebook.com) Tammany Hall was founded more than two hundred years ago as an independent social organization serving the needs of New York City’s immigrants and Irish Catholics in particular. After the 1854 mayoral…

Platoon Platitudes

Above: Political cartoon by Clifford Berryman depicting three supporters of the Neutrality Act, 1939; at right, Frank Sullivan at his favorite watering hole, the Worden Hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY. (nationalww2museum.org/digitalarchive.sspl.org) In 1935 the American humorist Frank Sullivan introduced the “Cliche Expert” Mr. Arbuthnot to New Yorker readers, exploring a variety of bromides…

Better Living Through Fiction

Above: Introduced by the American Tobacco Company in 1917, the iconic slogan "It's Toasted" became the cornerstone of Lucky Strike marketing in the 1930s. The company claimed their heat-curing method (as opposed to sun-drying) removed tobacco's "corrosive acids." This 1933 Lucky Strike advertisement was illustrated by Hayden Hayden. (wash.edu) In May 1936 the Advertising Federation of America…

Highfalutin Absurdities

Above: Margaret Mitchell poses with her award-winning novel, c. 1938. Mitchell won the National Book Award for Fiction for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Gone With the Wind was the only novel she published in her lifetime. (britannica.com) Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone With the Wind and the 1939 film it inspired have both served as controversial…

Poppy Returns

Above: Rochelle Hudson and W.C. Fields in scene from Poppy. Fields reprised his vaudeville character Professor McGargle (from the hit 1923 stage revue of the same name), who learns about a million-dollar inheritance meant for a long-lost local heiress and concocts a plan to pass off his daughter, Poppy, as the true heiress. (Facebook.com) Eighty years after his death W.C. Fields is still…

An Urban Spectacle

Above: Rudolf Persson's rendering of the main entrance to the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, designed by Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund. The exhibition was a landmark event that introduced Functionalism to Swedish architecture and design.(Svensk Form) Architecture critic Lewis Mumford turned his exacting eye on exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art that looked to the future of building design.…

Meet Father Divine

Above: Father Divine points to a Crum Elbow Estate sign (in Highland, NY) in July 1938. His followers purchased the 500-acre spread from anti-New Dealer Howland Spencer...the property was located directly across the Hudson from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Hyde Park family home. That same summer Father Divine would also buy a fifty-room double dwelling in New York City. These and other…

Izzy & Moe

Above: Former Prohibition agents Isidor "Izzy" Einstein (right) and Moe W. Smith meet at a New York City bar in 1935. Known for their clever disguises and unorthodox tactics, from 1920 to 1925 the duo confiscated roughly five million bottles of illicit liquor and arrested 4,932 people. (Wikipedia) Legendary Americans come from all walks of life—sports stars, movie actors, political and business…

Queen of the Seas

Above: The RMS Queen Mary arriving at New York harbor accompanied by a flotilla of escorts on June 1, 1936. (liverpool.ac.uk) The RMS Queen Mary was launched in the age of superliners that included the SS Bremen, the SS Île de France and the SS Normandie. These and other liners competed for the Blue Riband, an unofficial honor bestowed on Atlantic Ocean liners achieving the highest average speed.…

Vast Horizons

Above: Pierre Lelong painting (circa 1950s) of the outdoor café at New York's Hotel St. Moritz (left); view of the St. Moritz and Café de la Paix, 1944. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, nightlife in Manhattan slowly picked up steam. By 1936 things were swinging, and although the club scene wasn’t as heady as the Roaring Twenties, there was still plenty to entice New Yorkers into the night…

A Flivver Farewell

Above: Undated image (left) demonstrates the versatility of the Model T Ford. At right, E.B. White and Katharine Sergeant White take a spin in a Model T Roadster. (freep.com/whistlestoppers.com) E.B. White often shared anachronistic views on progress, decrying everything from streamlined cars to fully-enclosed city buses that removed passengers from the open air. May 16, 2026 cover by Leonard…

Saving The Row

Above: Washington Square North circa 1930. (nypap.org) In the first decades of the 20th century very few buildings in New York City were considered sacred, especially during the building boom of the Twenties when large swaths of the old city were erased to make way for massive skyscrapers and more than 740,000 new housing units. May 9, 1936 cover by Constantin Alajalov. To keep anything historic…

Safari Under Glass

Above: A group of eight East African elephants greet visitors to the American Museum of Natural History's Akeley Hall of African Mammals, which opened in 1936. The elephants are surrounded by twenty-eight habitat dioramas. (amnh.org) One can instantly call up a photo on an iPad of every known animal on the planet, so why are people still fascinated by dead, stuffed animals displayed in glass…

#Akeley Hall of African Mammals #American Museum of Natural History #Barbara Shermund #Carl Akeley #Charles Addams #Daniel &039;Alain&039; Brustlein #Garrett Price #George Balanchine #Helen Hokinson #Henry Anton Steig #John Mosher #Miguel Covarrubias #Morris Markey #Museum dioramas #Richard Taylor #Tamara Geva #Whitney Darrow Jr #William Cotton #William Steig

Things to Come

Above: Behind the scenes production photo of the space gun used to launch a manned projectile to the moon in Things to Come. (Instagram) One of the most anticipated films of the 1930s was the British production of Things to Come. Loosely based on the 1933 science fiction novel by H.G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, the film was an extraordinarily ambitious and expensive production featuring…

Age of the Clipper

Above: Detail from illustration depicting the Philippine Clipper arriving in Hong Kong to establish the first commercial air service between North America and the continent of Asia on October 23, 1936. (Otto G. Richter Library, University of Miami) We take to the air with the April 18, 1936 edition of The New Yorker, namely via the China Clipper, a Pan American flying boat that was preparing to…

People in Glass Houses

Above: The Morris B. Sanders Studio and Apartment is the second-oldest modern townhouse in Manhattan. Sanders designed the townhouse, located on 49th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue, in 1934 for his own use, and construction was completed in December 1935. (Wikipedia/docomomo-nytri.org) Today we barely notice the tens of thousands of shiny glass buildings that populate our cities, not to…

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