…Famous Players-Lasky releases the romantic comedy Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife starring Gloria Swanson, 24, distributed by Paramount Pictures. This is the tenth film that Swanson and director Sam Wood, 40, have made together—mostly known for their fabulous costumes—since she signed with Famous Players-Lasky three years ago. They have now amicably agreed to move on to separate projects.
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife poster
…The Constance Talmadge Film Co. releases the comedy Dulcy, starring Constance Talmadge, 25, distributed by Associated First National Pictures. The film is based on the recent hit Broadway play by Marc Connelly, 32, and George S Kaufman, 33, but the screenplay was written by Talmadge’s friends, Anita Loos, 35, and her sometimes writing partner-sometimes husband, John Emerson, 49.
Dulcy lobby card
…Universal Pictures releases the historical drama The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Lon Chaney, 40, distributed by Universal. Chaney has wanted to make a film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel for years now, and he and the producer, Irving Thalberg, 24, finally convinced Universal’s co-founder and president, Carl Laemmle, 56, that at heart the grotesque novel is a love story. The 102-minute film, at $1.25 million the most expensive in Universal’s history, is having its premiere here at Carnegie Hall. Next week it will transfer to the Astor Theatre and then go into general release.
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
The Hemingways are planning to be in Toronto before their first child is due in October, so the baby will be born in North America.
Ernest and Hadley Hemingway
Ernest, 24, originally from Chicago, and his wife Hadley, 31, originally from St. Louis, have been living in Paris for the past three years while he has been the European correspondent for the Toronto Star. They decided Ernie could work for the Star in their offices until after the baby is born.
Although Hemingway has enjoyed traveling around, reporting on stories for the paper, lately he’s been having good luck with his first love, his fiction writing.
This past spring, one of the other American ex-pats he has met in Paris, poet Ezra Pound, 37, commissioned Ernie to write some short pieces for a special edition of a New York magazine, The Little Review. Hemingway turned in six vignettes, which are set to appear in this “Exiles” issue under the overall title, “In Our Time.” The magazine was supposed to be out in April, but now it is set for fall. Go figure.
Pound hasn’t been able to get any of Hemingway’s poems in the American magazine The Dial; however, he had better luck with Poetry, published in Chicago.
Poetry, January issue
Pound is going to use the six vignettes in a book series he is editing for an American publisher in Paris, Bill Bird, 35. His Three Mountains Press will be bringing out in our time this fall as part of Pound’s series, “Inquest into the State of the Modern English Language.”
But Ernest’s first book has already appeared. One of his American drinking buddies, Robert McAlmon, 28, started Contact Publishing Company with his rich English wife’s family money. He brought out Hemingway’sThree Stories and Ten Poems just two weeks ago. The stories are “My Old Man,” “Out of Season,” and “Up in Michigan.” Luckily enough, Ernie had stuck that last one in a drawer when his mentor, Gertrude Stein, 49, advised him that it would be unprintable. So it wasn’t in the suitcase containing all of his written work that Hadley lost last December. Let’s not bring that up.
Three Stories and Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest had stopped writing fiction after that fiasco, but Pound and McAlmon’s interest got him working again.
And, on Gertrude’s advice to go to the bullfights in Spain, he and Hadley, Bird and McAlmon had spent July at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona. Fabulous time. Ernie has written a couple of pieces for the Star about the “tragedy” of the bullfights.
Robert McAlmon and Ernest Hemingway at the bullfights
Hemingway is not making any money from these shoestring publishers. The young couple have been living on his Star salary and Hadley’s trust fund. But when they come back to Paris, Ernest is hoping that he can give up newspaper work and get started on a novel.
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
On the one hand, she could stay here in lovely Venice with her husband, Gerald, 35, and their fellow ex-pat Americans, Cole, 32, and Linda Porter, 39.
Gerald Murphy, friend Genevieve Carpenter, Cole Porter and Sara Murphy in Venice
The couples have interrupted their summer at Cap d’Antibes to come here so Gerald and Cole can work on the ballet they’ve been commissioned to write. Cole is composing the music; Gerald is outlining the scenario and designing the sets.
But they don’t need Sara around to do that. And she gets the feeling that Linda, who has a lot of her socialite friends stopping by, doesn’t really like the Murphys anyway.
Sara also thinks that Cole is sneaking out at night to hit the gay bars. Is Gerald going with him?!
On the other hand, Sara could go back to the Riviera where her three children are being cared for by their nanny. Their friends Pablo, 41, and Olga Picasso, 32, are still there. Sara and Gerald have picked up some presents to take back to them.
Sara has sent a note addressed to both Pablo and Olga, saying how much she looks forward to seeing them again, ending,
We love you very much you know.”
But Sara feels that Pablo has become a bit too touchy feely and may have misinterpreted her use of the word “love.”
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Sitting on the beach outside Knoll House, Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 31, is watching her lover, John Maynard Keynes, 40, in deep conversation with a few of his friends from Bloomsbury.
Knoll House
Maynard has rented this stately seaside house and invited his intellectual London friends to come stay. Lydia has just finished a three-week run in a ballet in the London Coliseum’s summer season and has joined Maynard for a much-needed rest.
Lydia finds Keynes’ friends to be intimidating. They are mostly writers and editors for the magazine Keynes has recently acquired, the Nation and Athenaeum. For example, Leonard Woolf, 42, one of Keynes’ friends from his days in Cambridge, is its literary editor. And Raymond Mortimer, 28, is a former Oxford student who writes for the magazine and other prestigious publications in the UK and U. S.
But the guest who makes Lydia feel the most uncomfortable is Leonard’s wife, novelist Virginia Woolf, 41. Lydia knows Virginia makes fun of her broken English behind her back. And when they do chat, Lydia feels as though her character is being analyzed by the novelist.
At least Leonard has always been nice to Lydia. And Virginia is only staying here for three days. Lydia lies back on the beach and determines that she’s going to try to enjoy the holiday.
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
This week’s issue of Time, the news magazine started just a few months ago, carries a review of the film Little Old New York, a historical drama that premiered on the first of the month at the Cosmopolitan Theatre in Columbus Circle, owned by media magnate William Randolph Hearst, 60. The film was produced by Hearst’s Cosmopolitan production unit and stars his really good friend Marion Davies, 26. Time says:
Little Old New York film poster
With a pounding of drums and shrill cries of the ballyhoo herald sounding more loudly than ever, the latest production from the laboratories of William Randolph Hearst arrives in New York. A theatre was purchased and re-decorated at an expense of hundreds of thousands. A huge list of famous names was amassed for the opening night. Victor Herbert conducted the orchestra. A very singular thing thereupon took place. The picture lived up to, indeed exceeded, the golden frame of publicity. The most startling feature of the occasion is the sudden blossoming of Marion Davies. Hitherto she has been simply a pretty girl surrounded by expensive actors and a king’s ransom in scenery. No one, except Mr. Hearst’s critics, ever accused her of being an actress. In Little Old New York she turns the tables. She reveals a sense of comedy and a pathetic touch which quite took the critical first night audience by storm. Robert Sherwood [in Life magazine]: ‘Miss Davies excellent.’ Heywood Broun [in The World]: ‘Really a pretty good picture.’”
In the fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about the art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Yesterday, at 2:30 in the morning, U. S. Vice President Calvin Coolidge, 51, became U. S. president here in his family home upon learning by messenger of the death of Warren G. Harding, 57, in San Francisco the day before.
Recreation of the inauguration of Calvin Coolidge
Harding fell ill during his cross-country speaking tour after becoming the first president to visit Alaska. First, his illness was reported as ptomaine poisoning. Then, bronchopneumonia. Finally, stroke.
The oath of office was administered to Coolidge by the local notary public and justice of the peace—his father, Colonel John Calvin Coolidge, Sr., 78—by the light of a kerosene lamp in the family parlor. Calvin then returned to bed.
Today the new president boarded a train for Washington, D. C. As his first duty, he declared that August 10th, the date of Harding’s funeral, will be a national day of mourning and prayer.
*****
Major league baseball cancelled all games for today and the 10th and ordered the flags at all ballparks to be flown at half-mast.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 64, author and spiritualist, has completed his own cross-country speaking tour and is embarking on the voyage back home to London. He is quoted in the papers as saying,
After a period of about three days the spirit of President Harding may, if sought, advise Calvin Coolidge, the nation’s new chief executive, wisely and helpfully on the great problems confronting him.”
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Littsburgh is a locally-run website devoted to all things literary in Pittsburgh. They host a directory of author’s biographies, and also invite us to submit interviews about our latest works. So I did…
Q&A: Kathleen Dixon Donnelly, author of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Thanks to Littsburgh for the opportunity to tell you about my paperback series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. The series is based on blogs I’ve been posting at www.suchfriends.wordpress.com, chronicling what was happening in the literary and artistic world 100 years ago. The title comes from a poem by William Butler Yeats, “…say my glory was I had such friends.” Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, and on Amazon in both print and e-book formats, or from me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
As an author I jumped at the chance to interview myself, but, I have to say—that felt a bit narcissistic. So I enlisted the help of one of my best friends, Liz, to do the honors over glasses of chardonnay in her back garden.
Three volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
LIZ BFF: So what’s this obsession you have with the 1920s?
KDD: My Mom always talked about the 20s in a good way. She was born in 1920, one month to the day after Prohibition went into effect (I snuck her into Volume I). And your first nine years are usually remembered fondly.
My mother talked a lot about Dorothy Parker—
Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses”
—and her friends who lunched together as the Algonquin Hotel Round Table throughout the 20s.. For example, I remember she told me that the humorist Robert Benchley—we read his essays in 9th grade English—instructed his wife to have him cremated and go to the cemetery in a taxi with his ashes in his briefcase next to her on the seat. Imagine my surprise to find out when doing my academic research that my mother was right—the story is true.
LIZ BFF: That’s right—your research. This all started with your academic research.
KDD: Yes—but these books aren’t academic! My Ph. D., from Dublin City University in Ireland, was about writers and artists who hung out together. How did these friendships affect their creativity? I looked at four main “salons,” two before and two after World War I: Yeats and the Irish Literary Renaissance who founded Dublin’s Abbey Theatre; Virginia Woolf and the writers and artists in the Bloomsbury group in London; our fellow Pittsburgher Gertrude Stein and the Americans who came to Paris in the 1920s; and, of course, Parker and the Round Table. 31 creative people all together. For the books I’ve expanded a bit to include others who weren’t in the groups, and important world events going on during the decade.
LIZ BFF: That’s a lot of creative people. Who are your favorites?
KDD: Well, Parker for one. I feel as though she was doing a lot of the same things all my friends and I were doing in our 20s—free-lance writing, whining about our relationships with men. But she paid a higher price—back alley abortions, for example.
But my other favorite would be Virginia Woolf’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell. She’s often overlooked, even by British feminists. She was a terrific painter; I use one of her works, A Conversation, on the cover of Volume II, 1921. And she was the earth mother for the Bloomsberries. Everyone came to her houses, in London and Sussex. One of their friends described the sisters this way:
People admired Virginia; they adoredVanessa.”
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume II–1921
LIZ BFF: Those are the kinds of stories and descriptions I’ve really enjoyed reading in your books. How do Gertrude Stein and W. B. Yeats fit in?
KDD: Gertrude’s relationships with writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are probably the best known. She and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, were the most committed couple of all my 31 writers. In the words of one of their biographers, Diana Souhami, from the day they met they were together; they
never traveled without each other or entertained separately, or worked on independent projects.”
Of course, Gertrude and her family left Pittsburgh when she was only six months old. But we ‘burghers are quite proud.
As for Yeats and the Irish, I’ve found that they illustrate a big contrast between Ireland and the rest of the world in the 1920s. Once the Irish won their war for independence from the British, they started shooting each other in their Civil War, while people in London, Paris and New York were doing the Charleston. However, the Irish did manage to keep their theatre going.
LIZ BFF: You’ve got so many great stories about all these people. But how do you think they compare with today? I mean, stories are nice, but what’s the point? What can we learn from looking back at that decade?
KDD: Good question! I think the main lesson I’ve come away with is that the good old days weren’t. Alcoholism, depression—particularly in men—gambling addiction, suicide, eating disorders: These are issues that have always been with us but were not discussed then. The early biographies I read laughed off the addictions and depression:
She was sooo drunk! Ha ha.”
“He gambled away his apartment! Ha ha.”
“He just got up and walked away from his job! Ha ha!”
In reality, not so funny.
LIZ BFF: Well, I’ve certainly enjoyed reading them. I dip in and out because they’re short and the layout makes the books easy to read. At the end of each one I’m thinking, I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
Easy-to-read layout of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
KDD: Thank you! That’s the effect I’m going for. There is an awful lot of foreshadowing. Every vignette is related to another one.
LIZ BFF: I noticed that.
KDD: For example, in 1920 an armed burglary in Massachusetts will culminate in the executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927—which Parker and others protested. Hemingway goes to a party and meets Hadley Richardson; a year later they get married and move to Paris. In 1921 excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses are found to be obscene by a New York court, and the following year Sylvia Beach’s bookstore in Paris publishes the whole book, on Joyce’s 40th birthday. Meanwhile, in London, VirginiaWoolf can barely force herself to read it, but she and her husband publish T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land the next year. So if you’ve never gotten through Ulysses, don’t feel bad. Sometimes I think most of the vignettes should end with “Stay tuned…”
LIZ BFF: I’m tuned. I can’t wait to read Volume V, 1924.
KDD: Great. I’m working on it. In the meantime, remember—they make great gifts!
LIZ BFF: That chardonnay was really nice.
“Such Friends” at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books, 2023
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book formats. There is a discount for reading this far and ordering directly from the publisher (me), and if you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus route, I will hand deliver your signed copy. Email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 