W.C. Fields – A New Yorker State of Mind (2024)

Above: W.C. Fields was a well-known juggler and vaudeville performer decades before he became even more famous in the movies of the 1930s.

William Claude Dukenfield was a vaudeville juggler who distinguished himself from other “tramp acts” by adding sarcastic asides to his routines. Internationally known for his juggling skills, by the turn of the century the man who billed himself as “The Eccentric Juggler” would become much better known by another name: W.C. Fields.

In the first of a three-part profile, Alva Johnston pondered the secret behind Fields’ genius, an “inborn nonchalance” that he considered “the rarest of gifts.” Johnston surmised that some of that genius derived from the volatile relationship Fields had with his father, and the street-smarts he gained as a runaway at age eleven. It is no surprise, however, that these childhood stories of hardship were significantly embellished by the great wit himself.

Johnston also described Fields’ acting style and demeanor, noting that the actor’s asides were likely inspired by his mother, Kate Spangler Felton, who was known for her doorstep witticisms.

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Macabre Diversions

In the days before television and the internet, folks got their dose of the sensational and macabre from the tabloids, or, on occasion, in real life. Before crime or accident scene investigations became more sophisticated, it was not uncommon for crowds to mob grisly death scenes, including the car containing the bullet-riddled bodies of notorious bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Their Ford automobile, pocked with 112 bullet holes, became a popular traveling attraction at fairs, amusem*nt parks, and, in February 1935, at a car dealer’s showroom in Missouri. E.B. White explained:

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Saar Kraut

Janet Flanner mused on the recent plebiscite in the Saarland, which following World War I was seized from Germany and placed under the governance of a League of Nations commission. Much to the dismay of the French, the majority German population voted to return the Saar region to Germany, and its Nazi leadership.

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Over the Rainbow

In a previous column, Lois Long took aim at the Rockefeller Center’s new Rainbow Room, dismissing it as a tourist trap filled with interminable strains of organ music. In her latest column, Long retracted some of that vitriol, finding the entertainment (and, one supposes, the food) more to her liking.

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As Lois Long mentioned in “Tables for Two,” British actress and singer Beatrice Lillie was appearing at in the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center; according to the ad below, also featured were ballroom dancers Lydia and Joresco and bandleader Jolly Corburn…

…at first I though this was Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne shilling for Luckies, but the resemblance isn’t quite there, plus I’m not aware of the Broadway legends ever endorsing any product, let alone cigarettes…

…the folks at Hormel continued to feature notable Frenchmen who were known to enjoy French onion soup, although this particular image doesn’t do much for one’s appetite…

…the Bermuda Trade Development Board continued to feature colorful ads that enticed New Yorkers away from the late winter blahs…

…this ad for Schaefer is a bit odd…I guess the artist wanted to suggest a handbill, and therefore tilted the image it at an angle, unsuccessfully, one might add…

…The Theatre Guild once again called upon the talents of James Thurber to advertise their latest production…

…which segues into our cartoons, with Thurber once more…

…Al Frueh did his part to promote the stage with this illustration for the theatre section…

…Otto Soglow offered his spin on pairs figure skating…

…Gardner Rea explored the world of art appreciation…

…Helen Hokinson aptly supplied this cartoon for Lois Long’s fashion column…

…Whitney Darrow Jr. showed us the consequences of classified advertising…

…Barbara Shermund clued us in on the latest gossip…

…and we close with Peter Arno, and one butcher’s cold greeting…

Next Time: A Decade of Delights…

Above: Charles Sellen as Mr. Muckle and W.C. Fields as shopkeeper Harold Bissonette in the 1934 film It's a Gift.

Rea Irvin featured the New York Auto Show on the cover of Jan. 12, 1935 issue—the extravaganza of cars at the Grand Central Palace was one place New Yorkers could go to chase away the winter blues. The other was at one of the city’s RKO theatres, where a classic W.C. Fields comedy was gracing the silver screen.

It’s a Gift was a showcase of Fields’ vaudevillian talents, tied together in a story about grocer Harold Bissonette (Fields) whose various tribulations included a pompous wife (who insisted on pronouncing the surname “biss-on-ay”), bratty children, and challenging customers (the hilarious Charles Sellen as Mr. Muckle). Writing for BFI Film Classics, Simon Louvish calls the film a chronicle of the “many titanic struggles between Harold Bissonnette and the universe. There will be battle of wills between father and daughter, between male and female, between man and a variety of uncontrollable objects.” Here is John Mosher’s review for The New Yorker.

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By Another Name

E.B. White led off his column with a note about Persia, which had officially changed its name to Iran. To mark the new year, Reza Shah had officially asked foreign delegates to use the new term, which referred to the native name of the people who inhabited the region.

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Hot Rods

The New Yorker was back at the auto show, where correspondent “Speed” noted the appeal of the Auburn Speedster to a college-age crowd. The $2,500 price tag (equivalent to about $55k today) was apparently within reach for some of the lads at Columbia and other Ivies. Speed also admired the limousine version of the Chrysler Airflow, but the real car of his desires was a bottle-shaped milk truck.

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The proprietors of Essex House tapped into the popularity of the Auto Show to market their economical, yet deluxe accommodations…

…the anti-war group World Peaceways continued its ad campaign with this image of the “most powerful man in America,” that is, the average citizen who should not be tricked into “the absurd business of war”…

…United Airlines used the endorsem*nt of journalist and radio commentator Edwin C. Hill to tout the safety and comfort of its airliners…

…at the time, United’s flagship airplane was the Boeing 247…

…”Mrs. William LaVarre” (Alice Lucille Elliott) was the latest adventurous soul to endorse the energizing effects of Camel cigarettes…

…it was no coincidence that the Camel and Chesterfield ads both featured women, the tobacco companies’ biggest growth market in the 1930s…

…on to our cartoons, we go bowling in this spot by George Shellhase…

…a doctor’s bedside manner, in James Thurber’s world of the battling sexes…

…two of Helen Hokinson’s “Girls” were left breathless by the exploits of Elias Burton Holmes, an American photographer and filmmaker who apparently coined the term “travelogue”…

…for this next cartoon by Robert Day, a snippet from the Auto Show will shed some light…

…and we close with Carl Rose, and some hijinks among the statuary…

Next Time: Everything’s Jake…

Above: Final Design of Grand Central Terminal, ca. 1910. (New York Transit Museum)

The heat wave of 1934 spread misery from the Midwest to the East Coast. The temperature in New York City hit 101 degrees F (38.3 C) on June 29, and July recorded at least ten days of temps in the mid- to upper 90s. It must have been miserable in the days before air-conditioning, and since no adult would dare be seen in public wearing shorts and a t-shirt, an outing on a crowded tour boat, as illustrated below by William Cotton, must have been hellish.

…putting a fine point on it, recall this wryly captioned cartoon from the June 30 issue by Garrett Price…

…but let us move ahead to the July 28 issue, where E.B. White was hopefully keeping his cool in the men’s waiting room at Grand Central Station, where he plunked down a nickel to cool his heels in the “middle class” section, where he observed side attractions including a vending machine that dispensed handkerchiefs and a coin-operated peep show featuring burlesque star Sally Rand.

…White referred to a peep show that featured famed fan dancer Sally Rand…

White also commented on the growing number of travelers, still pinched by the Depression, opting for the free section:

We settle in with the June 21 issue (which leads this post) with White once again, this time enjoying a drive to Stamford, Conn., where he admired the “splendor” of the Condé Nast printing plant (apparently the plant also printed The New Yorker, although the magazine itself would not be acquired by Condé Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications, until 1985).

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Disney’s Other Mouse

Film critic John Mosher was a fan of Disney’s “Silly Symphony” cartoon shorts, which were produced between 1929 and 1939. Animation, and especially color animation, was in its infancy, so these doubtless had an uplifting effect on many moviegoers.

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The Great McGonigle

W.C. Fields appeared in more than a dozen silent films before making his first talkie, 1930’s The Golf Specialist, and it was in sound films that Fields was able to truly express his vaudevillian wit. It was also in the sound era that Fields teamed up with Baby LeRoy for three films (in 1933 and 1934), including The Old Fashioned Way, in which Fields portrayed “The Great McGonigle,” leader of a traveling (and perpetually underfunded) theater troupe who was always a step ahead of police and creditors. Critic John Mosher found the film’s riff on an old morality play, The Drunkard, to be a bit dated, but overall thought it a cheerful diversion.

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We begin with scientific proof (from a “famous research laboratory in New York”) that Camel cigarettes increased one’s flow of energy…

…if that crackpot claim doesn’t get you, here’s one that recommended downing a PBR before a big meeting, a sure remedy for that “listless, tired-out feeling”…

…of course we all know that a few sugary co*kes will get you going…back then they were taking it in six- and ten-ounce bottles, not 30- to 50-ounce Big Gulps…

…it’s not every day you see a dog food ad in The New Yorker…in the 1930s there was no secret to where ol’ Sparky ended up…

…popular were these Rockwellian ads that equated various products with happy and wholesome (and safe) living, in this case a massive “Dual-Balloon” tire that dominated this tableau featuring a stylish mommy and her little boy slumming with an old sea salt…

…the folks at Essex House hired an illustrator who did his or her best to channel Helen Hokinson and William Steig for this New Yorker ad…as we have seen before, Essex House ads walked a fine line between thrift and snob appeal…

…on to our cartoons, beginning with Ned Hilton, whose work appeared in The New Yorker from 1934 to 1957…

…Mary Petty recorded some sweet nothings by the seaside…

…George Price drifted along with two men and tuba…

…Carl Rose revealed a modest side to life at a nudist colony…

…we know Clarence Day for his Life With Father series, but on occasion he also contributed illustrated poems such as this one from the July 21 issue…

…on to July 28…

…where we encounter more “scientific research” that encouraged folks to smoke…This ad was placed on the very last page of the July 28 issue by the Cigarette Research Institute, based in Louisville, Kentucky…

…the booklet was filled with “amazing facts” uncovered in a “scientific investigation,” facts did not address the health effects of smoking, but rather such important topics as how to hold a cigarette the right way and how to reduce staining on your teeth…it also helpfully debunked the notion that nicotine was a “dread demon”…

…take for example this woman smoking a Lucky…now she knew how to hold a cigarette!…

…the folks at Essex House were back, aggressively playing the class/caste card…apparently if you lived there you were entitled to kick your old friends to the curb…

…the antacid and pain reliever Bromo-Seltzer was ubiquitous in 1930s medicine cabinets, but after the recipe was changed in the 1970s (all Bromides were withdrawn from the U.S. market in 1975) the brand slowly fizzled away…

…Mildred Oppenheim Melisse was a popular illustrator of ads for department stores and various household goods, including Cannon towels, here guaranteed to absorb even this man’s sweaty “flood”…

…Dr. Seuss back again for Flit, once again having no issues mixing insecticide with food preparation…

…Rea Irvin kicks off the cartoons with his Double Breasted Dowager…

…Helen Hokinson found some misplaced pity at a garden party…

…Garrett Price offered some unsolicited advice…

…Reginald Marsh filled two pages with a scene from Central Park…

…Robert Day looked for a unique experience at an auto camp…

…and we close with Barbara Shermund, and some alarming news on the domestic front…

Next Time: Men of Mystery…

As we enter the summer months we find the recurring themes of June brides…and German Nazis…

Those Nazis were on the mind of U.S. PresidentFranklin D. Rooseveltwhen hewrote to the sixty participating nations at the Geneva Disarmament Conference, imploring them to eliminate all weapons of offensive warfare. As we now know, it was a plea that mostly fell on deaf ears, notably those of the leaders of Japan and Germany. E.B. White offered this observation:

Howard Brubaker was also keeping an eye on FDR’s efforts to hold off the rising powers in Europe and Asia…

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Writer of Lost Causes

The short story “Pop” would beSherwood Anderson’s first contribution to The New Yorker. Anderson was known for his stories about loners and losers in American life, including Pop Porter, whose sad, drunken death is described in the closing lines:

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The German Tourist Information Office welcomed visitors to “witness the rebirth of a nation,” promising a land of “new ideas and broader visions” that would bestow on travelers “undying memories endlessly renewed”…

…Those “undying memories” might have included massive, country-wide book burnings that took place on May 10, 1933, when students in 34 university towns across Germany burned more than 25,000 “un-German” books…

…knowing where all of this would lead, it is hard to look at this next ad and not think of the Luftwaffe raining death from the skies later in that decade…

…so for the time being we’ll turn to something less menacing, like checkered stockings, here resembling one of John Held Jr’s woodcuts…

…and this crudely illustrated ad (which originally appeared in one column)…call your buddy a fatso and the next thing you know he’s moving to Tudor City…

…and from the makers of Lucky Strikes, a back cover ad that provided a thematic bookend to Constantin Alajalov’s cover art…

…James Thurber kicks off the cartoons with this sad clown…

…atop the Empire State Building,Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein found more than just a view of the city (it’s former governor Al Smith!)…

…Otto Soglow’s Little King got his vision checked, in his own way…

…a loose button threatened to bring down a nation…per Gardner Rea…

…and we take a leisurely Sunday drive, Peter Arno style…

…on to the June 3, 1933 issue…

…where we appropriately look to the skyline, which was giving Lewis Mumford a crick in the neck…

Later in the column Mumford called skyscrapers “insupportable” luxuries, arguing instead for long, shallow buildings rising no more than ten stories.

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The Stars Align

Film critic John Mosher was delightfully surprised by International House, a film loaded with some of the era’s top comedic stars along with other entertainers.

The film featured an array of entertainers including Peggy Hopkins (more famous as a real-life golddigger than an actress), the comedy duoBurns and Allen, W.C. Fields, Bela Lugosi, Cab Calloway, Rudy Valley and Baby Rose Marie.

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The New Germany, Part II

The June 3 “Out of Town” column took a look at life in Berlin as well as the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The piece is signed “A.L.”, leading me to believe it might be A.J. Liebling (author of the terrific Between Meals), but he didn’t start at The New Yorker until 1935. At any rate the article seems to dismiss the crackdown on Berlin’s cultural life as a mere inconvenience.

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From Our Advertisers

More propaganda from Germany, where everything is sweet and bright away from the din of the city and the sound of marching jackboots and the crash of broken glass…

…an unusual ad from Cadillac, which barely mentions the automobile but goes full bore on the June bride theme…

…the folks at Camel went full color in their latest installment of “It’s Fun to be Fooled”…in this strip Jack gets his friend Ellie hooked on his cigarette brand…

…looking for fresher air, well you could get a window air conditioner from the folks at Campbell Metal Window Corporation…however, these units were only available to the very wealthy, roughly costing more than $25,000 apiece (more than half a million today)…

…better to take a drive a catch the breeze with this smart pair…

…and fight off those pesky bugs with a blast of Flit, as illustrated by Dr. Seuss before he became a children’s author…

…Richard Decker picked up some extra cash illustrating this ad for Arrow shirts…

…which segues to our other New Yorker cartoonists, such as H.O. Hoffman…

…and yet another bride, with sugar daddy, courtesy ofWhitney Darrow Jr…

…William Crawford Galbraith continued his exploration into the lives of showgirls…

…Gardner Rea gave us this helpful switchboard operator…

…Carl Rose showed us how the posh set got into the spirit of the Depression-era farm program…

…George Price was getting into familiar domestic territory…

…and on this Father’s Day, we close with some fatherly advice from James Thurber…

Next Time:Making Hays…

With a lull in the news from the Scopes Trial, the June 27, 1925 is another hodgepodge of seemingly random bits. Perhaps this is a good time to look at some of the magazine’s early artists, editors and writers.

The masthead of the very first issue listed these founding (ceremonial) Advisory Editors: Ralph Barton, Marc Connelly, Rea Irvin, George S. Kaufman, Alice Doerr Miller, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott. Not listed was founding editor Harold Ross.

The list remained the same for the June 27 issue, minus Ralph Barton. His story is rather sad.

In his day, Barton was well known for his celebrity caricatures, the most famous being his group drawings. He was also a regular early contributor to The New Yorker of brief theater reviews that were accompanied by a large illustration:

Despite his short stint as a ceremonial advisory editor, the Kansas City native contributed often to the magazineduring its first years. Barton also contributed drawings to such publications as Collier’s, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar.

Although his work earned him an impressive income, Barton was a manic-depressive withfour failed marriages. In May 1931 he shot himself through the right temple in his East Midtown penthouse. He was only 39.

According to Wikipedia, Barton wrote in a suicide note that he had irrevocably “lost the only woman I ever loved” (the actress Carlotta Monterey, who divorced Barton in 1926 and married playwright Eugene O’Neill in 1929), and that he feared his worsening manic-depression was approaching insanity.

Following his death, Barton’s artistic reputation quickly dropped from sight, due not only to his demise but also to the waning of the Jazz Age subjects he drew with such verve:

A 1928 letter from Harold Ross to Barton (posted on The American Reader website) seems to be an attempt by Ross to cheer up the artist:

Wednesday 27 June 1928

Dear Ralph,

I was on the brink of writing you when your letter came—this morning—telling me about your latest predicament. I knew, of course, that you had reached some conclusion as this. You are a creative soul and therefore a restless soul; therefore, a damn fool. I would leave this to any fair-minded banker. I wish I were a banker. I also wish I were Henry Ford or anybody who can accept the church, the government, conventions, and all those things.

I also had house trouble. I am thinking of burning the damn thing down. The insurance would net a tidy bit of cash and would enable me to get a room somewhere and fit up what I really ought to have. I am not competent to manage more space than this. I would be if I were a fairy. Fairies are the happiest people there are. All editors ought to be fairies. I fuss around with commas, semi-colons, dictionaries, and wordings, and it drives me crazy. I am too virile. I ought to be building subways. I was thinking of going to the North Pole with the Byrd expedition but that would take a year or two and I can spare, at most, only two months. It probably would be a bore anyhow. All life is a bore if you think at all…

As ever,

Ross

Others listed on The New Yorker masthead were associated withlegendary Algonquin Round Table, including the playwrights Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman and writers Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott—all charter members. The writer Alice Duer Miller was also an occasional guest of this “Vicious Circle,” as they called themselves. From roughly 1919 to 1929, they met every day for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel.

Other regular Round Table members included Harold Ross, Franklin Pierce Adams, (best known for his newspaper column, “The Conning Tower”), New Yorker humorist Robert Benchley, husband-wife writers Heywood Broun and Ruth Hale, broadway producer Brock Pemberton, playwright Robert Sherwood and broadway publicist John Peter Toohey.

Thosewho moved in and out of the circle included feminist writer Jane Grant (who with her first husband Harold Ross co-founded TheNew Yorker),vaudeville comedian and later film star Harpo Marx, actresses Peggy Wood, Tallulah Bankhead, Lynn Fontanne and Margolo Gillmore, actor and director Alfred Lunt, playwrights Edna Ferber and David Ogden Stewart, humorist Frank Sullivan, writers Margaret Leech and Frank Crowninshield, illustrator Neysa McMein, playwright Beatrice Kaufman (George’s wife) and composer Deems Taylor.

It is important to make note of these various players in the “Vicious Circle,” since they figure prominently both as contributors and subjects in the early issues of The New Yorker.

A prominent name on The New Yorker’s masthead absentfrom the Round Table is graphic artist Rea Irvin, creator of the magazine’s distinctive look and its mascot,Eustace Tilley.

Irvin signed on as an advisory editor with the assumption that the magazine would fold after a few issues. Little did he realize that his illustrations, department headings, caricatures, and cartoons would grace the pages of The New Yorker for many years; that he would go on to illustrate 169 covers between 1925 and 1958; and that his distinctive typeface and mascot would continue to serve the magazine to this very day (Irvin died in 1972 at age 90).

Not to give the June 27 issue short shrift, “The Talk of the Town” reported Roald Amundsen had returned from his North Pole flight; “Profiles” looked at the life of theatrical producer Morris Gest; and “Books” offered a brief and somewhat mixed review of D.H. Lawrence’s new book, St. Mawr.

In “The Theatre,” W.C. Fields continued to impress in his performances with the Ziegfeld Follies.The New Yorkernoted that Fields was becoming a “talking comedian” comparatively late in life, and that after 26 years “as a straight and comic juggler,” he has become “ever so many people’s favorite comedian.” Under “Moving Pictures” it was also observed that D. W. Griffith’s Sally of the Sawdust was going to “put W.C. Fields across as a big screen comedian. Wait and see!”

The June 27 issue offered yet another full page cartoon, this time by Gardner Rea, taking aim atthe droll antics of the moneyed classes:

And finally, we are shown the answer to the mystery drawing by Covarrubias–ahem–an advertisem*nt for a photography studio:

TheMarch 28 “Talk of the Town” ponders “what sort of paces a visiting literary lion may be expected to put through.”

The “literary lion” in question was writer Michael Arlen, who was planning his escape from New York by reserving a cabin on the Olympicfor its April 18 sailing: “It is expected that very few of his writing compatriots in London will venture America-wards after he reports on the ritual to which he was subjected.”The “ritual,” it seems, was Arlen’s constant exposure to various literary hangers-on and assorted socialites.

Arlen’s real name was Dikran Kouyoumdjian, an Armenian writer transplanted to England who was most famous for his satirical romances set in Englishsmart society. He also wrote psychological thrillers, including TheGentleman from America, filmed in 1956 (the year Arlen died) as a television episode for Alfred Hitchco*ck Presents.He was well known in New York and London society, a dandy who resembled many of the characters he portrayed in his novels.

Returningto the“ritual,” Arlen received “the reasonably constant chaperonage, at tea time, of John Farrar” (editor of the literary magazine The Bookman)who took it upon himself to add Arlen’s publishing interests to his duties (Farrar would go on to found the publishinghouse ofFarrar & Rinehart, and laterFarrar, Straus and Giroux).

“Talk” also noted that Arlen was “admitted into the game known as meeting Miss Elsie de Wolfe.”

A bit more about Miss de Wolfe: Inthe September 14, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, Dana Goodyear observed that“Interior design as a profession was invented by Elsie de Wolfe.” A prominentfigure in New York, Paris, and London society, de Wolfe was also an American stage actress and author of the bestselling 1913 book,The House in Good Taste.

During Arlen’s first two weeks in America, de Wolfe arranged no less than three formal gatherings, each with the purpose of introducing the author to herself.“Talk”also reported that Arlen was invited to a costume party given by Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, for which Paramount Studios producer Jesse Lasky “gracefully supplied (Arlen) with a gypsycostume.” It was notedthat Lasky was there to arrange some movie work with Arlen to occur later in the fall, when the authorwould return to New York to attend the opening of the Broadway play The Green Hat,based on the 1924 book that made him famous.

Arlen was then to depart for Hollywood to “adjust his ideas into adequate scenario form for Miss PolaNegri.” Negri was a Polish stage and screen star world famous for her roles as a femme fatale. Her personal life often made headlines in the gossip magazines of the day, fueled by a series of love affairs that included Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino. Negri would not land the female lead for The Green Hat; it would eventually go to Greta Garbo in a 1928 film titled A Woman of Affairs.

“Talk” reported that “Mr. Arlen, early in his American visit learned a piece of social usage that has stood him in good stead. This has involved, upon introduction to any stranger, his saying rapidly “Didn’t I meet you at tea?” whereupon the gratified stranger murmurs yes and has become a friend for life. This stratagem is said to have suggested itself to Mr. Arlen when he noticed that the average number of guests at teas in his honor was around two hundred.” The columnist noted that “that this business of becoming a friend for life” was a bit of literary exaggeration, and in reality the magazine:

has seldom seen such atrociousbehavior and lack of fundamental good manners as has characterized a largeproportion of the people who have been brought forward to met Mr. Arlen.Seemingly ignoring the fact that there was no law compelling their attendance at afunction in Mr. Arlen’s honor, ever so many persons have come to his parties withan axe rather awkwardly concealed behind them.

The “Profile” in issue featured John McGraw and proclaimed that he “isbaseball…the incarnation of the national sport.” The piece wastitled “Mr. Muggsy,” a nickname reportedly detested by McGraw because, as the magazine observed, “it is soperfectly descriptive.”

At the time of the writing, McGraw was manager and part-owner of the New York (baseball) Giants.He still holds the record for the most wins of a manager in the National League.

The issue also featured a humorous column by Frank Sullivan, which took aim at the complexity (and likely graft)of taxicab fares. The caption reads: The Taxicab System is Simple to Any Man with a Master’s Degree.

The April 4 Issue, the “gypsy-themed party” continues…

The following week’s issue of “The Talk of Town” (April 4) offeredmore details regarding the “gypsy-themed costume party” given by Mrs. William Randolph Hearst at the Hotel Ritz-Carlton and attended by Michael Arlen.

Theparty was in honor of Ambassador Alexander Pollock Moore’s departure to his Spanish post (he left the post later that year and served as ambassador to Peru in 1928-29. He died at age 63 in 1930).

The itemnoted that the widower Moore (his wife,famed stage actress Lillian Russell, died in 1922) during an earlier Condé Nasteventfor the “theatrical and literary world,” never rose from his chairwithout scattering to the winds a dozen or more ingénues who had been drapingthemselves around him…”

“Talk” shared accounts from the New York American and the New York Mirror that described the Ritz’s famous Crystal Room as decorated to resemble a “gypsy camp,” complete with organgrinder and monkey wandering through the crowd.

Entertainment at the event featured a cabaret with vaudevillian W.C. Fields, who apparently “gazedat his distinguished audience and allowed his thoughts to play with the wealth ofjuggleable material that confronted him.”

Finally, “Of All Things” noted that “The Turks are said to be mobilizing a hundred thousand men in an effort to affect the Mosul boundary decision but, despite this display of force, we have every confidence that right and justice and Christian civilization will prevail and the British will get their oil.”

The League of Nations awarded Mosul to Iraq, and to the British a 25-year mandateover Iraq (at this writing Mosul is firmly under the control of the Islamic State).

“Books” looked at Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil and suggested that it is not“A-One Maugham.” It also mentioned the New Yorker’s own Alexander Woollcott and his The Story of IrvingBerlin, described as “uncommonly pleasant reading.”

In cartoons, Gilbert Wilkinson published the first of four cartoons he would contribute to The New Yorker in 1929, still very much in the style of Judge or Punch humor magazines.

Next Time: Slices of 1920s New York…