Articles from Stage Magazine
New Yorker theater critic, columnist, actor and Algonquin wit Robert Benchley (1889 – 1945) was interviewed for Stage Magazine and photographed by theater shutter-bug Ben Pinchot:
Sometimes he writes digests of the news which The New Yorker calls ‘The Wayward Press’ and signs them Guy Fawkes for some quaint reason…
Click here to read more about the The New Yorker.
New Yorker theater critic, columnist, actor and Algonquin wit Robert Benchley (1889 – 1945) was interviewed for Stage Magazine and photographed by theater shutter-bug Ben Pinchot:
Sometimes he writes digests of the news which The New Yorker calls ‘The Wayward Press’ and signs them Guy Fawkes for some quaint reason…
Click here to read more about the The New Yorker.
Child movie star Shirley Temple (1928 – 2014) was by no means at her box-office peak when this article was penned (her most popular period would span the years 1936 through 1938), but the institution that she had become by 1935 had already built many second homes and an assorted number of mansions for more than a few well-placed studio executives and mogul types. When the news hit the palmy, sun-soaked boulevards of Hollywood that she had lost her first baby tooth, there was panic!
That the end now shows unmistakable signs of beginning. That first baby tooth fell to the studio floor with a crash heard ’round the world….Yet, even as as the nabobs of Fox stood about applauding and cooing, the cold hand of fear must have gripped their kindly hearts.
Click here to read a 1939 profile of Shirley Temple.
If you’ve been wondering how the Academy Awards came to be known more popularly as Oscar and you think that the answer simply has to be bathed in an endless amount of Hollywood Glamour, involving a boat-load beautifully tailored, charming and overly talented matinee idols, you’d better hit the ‘ol back browser button now.
An article by Rebecca West (1892 – 1983) in which she listed an enormous number of reasons as to why May 12, 1937 (the coronation date for George VI) will not be a good day to be in London. From time to time throughout the article she throws-in some bon mots:
This is a crucifixion as well as a coronation. The best kings we have ever had have been Queens, and every year Kingship becomes less and less suitable for a man. A constitutional monarch has constantly to behave as if he were a mindless puppet in circumstances which would prove fatal to everybody, including himself, if he really were a mindless puppet.
The King’s Speech
An article by Rebecca West (1892 – 1983) in which she listed an enormous number of reasons as to why May 12, 1937 (the coronation date for George VI) will not be a good day to be in London. From time to time throughout the article she throws-in some bon mots:
This is a crucifixion as well as a coronation. The best kings we have ever had have been Queens, and every year Kingship becomes less and less suitable for a man. A constitutional monarch has constantly to behave as if he were a mindless puppet in circumstances which would prove fatal to everybody, including himself, if he really were a mindless puppet.
The King’s Speech
The following STAGE MAGAZINE article by American playwright Clare Boothe (Clare Boothe Luce 1903 – 1987) appeared in print shortly after the successful opening of her play, The Women:
Of course, writing plays wasn’t exactly a flash of genius. I mean I am shewed in spots…But inspiration or calculation, it was frightfully lucky that I hit on writing plays, wasn’t it? And it was so wonderfully fortunate that quite a lot of people that I’d met socially on Park Avenue, at very exclusive parties, people like cowboys, cooks, manicurists, nurses, hat-check girls, fitters, exchorines, declasses countesses, Westport intellectuals, Hollywood producers Southern girls and radical columnists, gave me such lovely material to write about.
Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.
In his review of contemporary Broadway costume design for the Autumn of 1933, the fashion journalist asked the pressing question:
What is the well-dressed play wearing these days?
There was much talk of Chanel, Schiaparelli and the House of (Elizabeth) Hawes as he heaped the praises high and deep for the the rag-pickers who clothed the ungrateful actresses for such productions as Men in White, Undesirable Lady, Her Master’s Voice and Heat Lightning.
The fashions in the plays are vivid, authentic, and wearable. They have sprung from the gifted brains and fingers of the cream of the crop of designers, Schiaparelli and Chanel in Paris, and our own industrious Americans who, themselves, are becoming hardy annuals. The silhouette is lengthening into slim height but even in sports clothes corners are rounded and curves are accentuated…
Noël Coward (1899 – 1973) was simply the best all-rounder of the theatrical, literary and musical worlds of the 20th century. He invented the concept of celebrity and was the essence of chic in the Jazz Age of the 20s and 30s. His debonair looks and stylishly groomed appearance made him the icon of ‘the Bright Young Things’ that inhabited the world of The Ivy, The Savoy and The Ritz. No one is totally sure when and why it happened but following his success in the 1930s he was called ‘The Master’, a nickname of honor that indicated the level of his talent and achievement in so many of the entertainment arts. -so say the old salts at NoelCoward.net, and they should know because they have a good deal more time to think about him than we do.
The attached article was no doubt written by one of his many groupies for a swank American theater magazine following the successful New York premiere of his play Design for Living:
Click here to read about Cole Porter.
Elsa Maxwell kept the party going during the Great Depression…
The editors of STAGE MAGAZINE were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident.
The editors of STAGE MAGAZINE were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident.
Attached is an article by One Take Woody (Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke, Jr. 1889 – 1943) on the topic of the two Thin Man films he had directed:
Looking back into the infinite past, I seem to recall that a certain motion picture was made and that I had something to do with it. It stirs restlessly in my memory, for it was immediately seized by the theater public as a new cycle in screen entertainment. In Hollywood, things are often done in cycles – gangster cycles, G-man cycles, historical romances, sea stuff,even Shakespeare. Somebody starts it and others fall in line to catch the shekels that bounce to the floor after the first jack pot.
Click here to read an article about Dashiell Hammett.
Seven years after his film debut in Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse continued to pack the theaters of the world. Prior to the release of Disney’s animated film,William Tell, STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Katherine Best was rightfully in awe over the world-wide popularity the rodent was enjoying and at the time this essay appeared in print, he had already been seen in over sixty cartoons.
Aren’t you tired of Hollywood’s socio-political rantings?
•Nuclear power…………….They’re against it (The China Syndrome).
•Antisemitism……………….They’re against it (Gentleman’s Agreement).
•Alcoholism………………….They’re against it (Lost Weekend).
•Racial segregation………..They’re against it, but in 1915 they were for it (Birth of a Nation).
One glance at this 1939 article and you’ll be able to blame it all on the poet Archibald McLeish (1892 – 1982) who clearly advocated for political posturing in American movies.
No doubt, McLeish must have been very happy when Warner Brothers released Confessions of a Nazi Spy in April of 1939; it was the first Hollywood film to take a swipe at the Nazi war machine.
Shortly before this article went to press, that particular member of the Hollywood film crew called the director of photography (DP) was treated a wee-bit better than other crew members were likely to be treated (but not that much better). Granted, the director and producer knew his name and his body of work – but his screen credit was still mixed among all the other names of the crew (if listed at all) – and this article points out that much of that changed in the Thirties.
This 1939 article was written by a wise old sage who probably hadn’t spent much time with a television set but recognized fully the tremor that it was likely to cause in the world of pop-culture:
Of all the brats, legitimate and otherwise, sired of the entertainment business, the youngest, television, looks as if it would be the hardest to raise and to housebreak…
Click here to read about the early Christian broadcasts of televangelist Oral Roberts…
Tickled by the New York laws that prohibited bars from serving spirits between the hours of 4:00 to 8:00 a.m., this correspondent for Stage Magazine, Stanley Walker, sallied forth into the pre-dawn darkness of a 1937 Manhattan wondering what kind of gin mills violate such dictates. He described well what those hours mean for most of humanity and then begins his catalog of establishments, both high and low, that cater to night crawlers.
For something a shade rougher, more informal, smokier: Nick’s Tavern, at 140 Seventh Avenue South [the building went the way of Penn Station long ago], dark and smoky, with good food and carrying on in the artistic traditions of the old speakeasies.
Click here to read about the arrest and conviction of New York’s high society bootleggers.
Waiters are to New York City what lobbyists are to Washington and celebrated illustrator, author and all-around foodie Ludwig Bemelmans (1898 – 1962) had some thoughts on this very diverse group:
New York is full of waiters, Chinese, American, Congo, French, Italian and German waiters, Jewish and Christian waiters, Vegetarian and Greek waiters, many good waiters, many bad waiters.
Click here to read an article by Benny Goodman concerning the arrival of Swing on Park Ave.
