“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, November 28, 1923, Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York

Taking a year off from making movies wasn’t a bad idea.

During the past year, Hollywood heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, 28, published a book of poetry, had essays in popular magazines like Photoplay and Movie Weekly (which sold out fast), made recordings (although his English pronunciation isn’t great) and appeared on radio broadcasts where he was able to vent his frustration with the movie business.

Oh—and he got married. Eight months and two weeks ago.

Rudolph Valentino and Natasha Rambova

Valentino and his bride, Natasha Rambova [actually Winifred Hudnut], 26, have spent the past year on a grueling schedule of exhibition dances across the country. His new manager had previously worked for Mineralava Beauty Products and convinced them to sponsor the Valentinos through 88 cities with 88 dance performances and 88 beauty pageants. In the end, there were a lot more than 88, and the newlyweds had to wait until June to take time off from the tour for their planned European honeymoon.

Rudolph Valentino in a Mineralava ad

Tonight, here at Rudolph Valentino and His 88 American Beauties, 88 beauty contest winners are lined up on stage to compete for the title of “America’s Queen of Beauty,” bestowed by a panel of judges led by Valentino himself.

The George White Orchestra is entertaining the formally dressed audience, and the whole gala is being filmed by David Selznick, 21, the son of one of Valentino’s connections in Hollywood.

And the winner is:  15-year-old Norma Niblock of Toronto, Canada, who wins a big trophy and contracts with, not only Mineralava, but also a major movie studio.

The Valentinos are looking forward to a long rest.

Title slide from Rudolph Valentino and His 88 American Beauties

To watch David Selznick’s full 12-minute silent film, click here.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

In the new year, I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century arts patrons in the Osher program 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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends” This Weekend, Small Business Saturday!

*Burp*

Oops. Excuse me. All that turkey.

You are definitely too stuffed to go out and fight your way through Black Friday crowds. Relax. Avoid the crowds and instead go out tomorrow for Small Business Saturday and shop your local bookstore. #smallbizbump

For example. If you are lucky enough to live near Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, stop by Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue.

Riverstone Books merch

Perhaps you are of a more Ohio-an persuasion. Then Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin is the place to be.

Pan Yan Bookstore

And if you find yourself on the West Coast of Ireland, stop by Thoor Ballylee, the tower owned by poet and playwright W. B. Yeats, and visit their gift shop.

Thoor Ballylee

At any of those three you will be able to pick up copies of “Such Friend”:  The Literary 1920s. They all carry volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923, and in the two American shops the copies are signed—by me!

If none of those locations is convenient, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. If you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus line I’ll even deliver them myself.

Have a safe holiday weekend and support your local small businesses!

“Such Friends” at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books

P. S. Remember–they make great gifts!

Early in the new year I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available from me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com .

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, end of November, 1923, Century Theatre, 62nd Street and Central Park West; Frazee Theatre, 254 West 42nd Street; and Belasco Theatre, 111 West 44th Street, New York City, New York

When the Ballets Suedois performed part of its repertoire as a preview for an invitation-only audience, including two American writers, John Dos Passos, 27, and Donald Ogden Stewart, about to turn 29, at least two of the sketches went over the heads of the posh crowd.

Century Theatre

Stewart had seen the show in Paris, where it has been a big hit for weeks, so the producers asked him to introduce those two pieces with a funny monologue in front of the curtain at the next performance.

Didn’t work. Fell flatter than a pancake.

But since they have been including another piece from the Paris production, the one-act ballet Within the Quota, by American ex-pats living in Paris Cole Porter, 32, and Gerald Murphy, 35, the show has been doing much better. Even Broadway pros such as producer and composer Irving Berlin, 35, have been coming by. Ballets Suedois will definitely keep the ballet in its tour of the northeastern United States.

Within the Quota

*****

One mile south, in the theatre district, two experienced American playwrights, Marc Connelly, 32, and George S Kaufman, just turned 34, are trying to improve one of their own flops, West of Pittsburgh. Putting their hometown in the title hadn’t helped this dud from last year, so they fixed it up and renamed it The Deep Tangled Wildwood.

Frazee Theatre

Connelly and Kaufman have decided that their mistake this time was asking for and then following advice from all their writer friends who they lunch with regularly at the nearby Algonquin Hotel.

*****

Just two blocks away, Laugh, Clown, Laugh, by this theatre’s namesake, David Belasco, 70, and Tom Cushing, 44, both of whom have had recent Broadway successes, is doing well. Adapted from an Italian play, Ridi, Pagliaccio, the star is veteran actor Lionel Barrymore, 45, playing opposite his new (second) wife, Irene Fenwick, 36, who stands less than five feet tall.

In the New York World, drama critic Alexander Woollcott, 36, says,

Lionel Barrymore deepens an old conviction that they do not make many actors like him in any one generation.”

Barrymore is hoping for a hit after a few failures, including his disastrous Macbeth of a few years ago.

Belasco Theatre

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

In the new year, I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century arts patrons in the Osher program 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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, November 19, 1923, Nixon’s Apollo Theatre, Atlantic City, New Jersey

This is getting to be ridiculous. The audience is all leaving.

It’s the second intermission in the premiere of The Vegetable:  From President to Postman: A Comedy in Three Acts, the first play written by hit novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27.

Nixon’s Apollo Theatre

Scott has been so hopeful about his play. Once he finally found a producer willing to take it on, all the people backstage were telling him it would definitely move on to Broadway.

He even promised his publisher, Scribner’s, that he would assign them the royalties to clear off some of the debt accrued from the loans he’s been taking over the past few years. His editor, the extremely understanding Max Perkins, 39, had deposited money in Scott’s bank account a few weeks ago when the panicked author had written to him,

If I don’t in some way get $650 in the bank by Wednesday morning, I’ll have to pawn the furniture…I don’t even dare come up there personally, but for God’s sake try to fix it.”

Scott’s wife, Zelda, 23, even bought an expensive dress for this premiere.

At this point, Fitzgerald and his friend, sportswriter Ring Lardner, 38, go backstage and approach the lead actor, theatre veteran Ernest Truax, 34. Are the actors actually going to continue and finish the last act?!

Truax assures them that the show will go on.

Scott and Ring leave and head to the nearest speakeasy.

The Vegetable by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in book form

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

In the new year, I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century arts patrons in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, November 14, 1923, 82 Merrion Square, Dublin

The excitement starts a bit after 10 p.m. when Irish poet, playwright and senator, William Butler Yeats, 58, takes a phone call from Irish Times reporter Bertie Smyllie, 30, who informs Yeats that he has been announced as this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

82 Merrion Square

Yeats had heard a rumor about a week ago, but he didn’t think anyone in Sweden’s Academy had any idea who he was.

Swelling with pride, Yeats knows that this is not just recognition for his own individual work, but for his newly independent country, the Irish Free State, as well. This is a welcoming gesture from Europe.

Yeats’ next thought is whether they have a decent bottle of wine in the cellar. He and his wife may have to celebrate with sausages.

Excitedly, Willie asks Bertie,

How much, Smyllie, how much is it?”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Tonight!, Tuesday, November 14^th I will be talking 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. You can still register here for free, and the Zoom link will be sent to you. The recording of my talk will be archived on YouTube at a later datet.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, November 11, 1923, Uffing, Germany

He showed up at the door two days ago.

Helene Hanfstaengl, 30, knew the friend of her husband, Ernst, 36, quite well. Adolf Hitler, 34, had just led a failed attempt to take over the Bavarian government. Ernst had been there in the Beer Hall where the riot started. But after the supposed “revolution” fizzled out the next day, Ernst took off for Austria and Adolf showed up here.

Hanfstaengl house

Helene has been keeping Adolf in the attic, taking care of the shoulder he injured in the failed “putsch.” But now the police are at the door, come to arrest him.

Helene finds Adolf waving his revolver around, threatening to shoot himself rather than let the “swine” take him. Helene manages to get the gun away from him and throw it into a barrel as the police arrive.

The Hanfstaengls

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Next Tuesday, November 14^th, I will be talking 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. You can register here for free, and the Zoom link will be sent to you.

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.ukin both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: Next Week, November 14, 2023, Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, Tiffin, Ohio

Frequent readers of this blog will be familiar with one of my favorite early 20^th century characters, Irish-American lawyer and supporter of the arts, John Quinn (1870-1924).

For the past few years, Heidelberg University and the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, Ohio, have sponsored the John Quinn Lecture Series online.

Next week, I am honored to be the first presenter to give my talk, “Such Friends”:  Quinn’s Circle of Artists and Writers, both in-person and online.

John Quinn Lecture Series poster

What? You can’t make it to Tiffin, Ohio?

Good news!

By clicking here, you can register for free to watch my talk on Zoom. You will be sent a link the day before.

Or wait a few weeks and I’ll tell you how to access the video on YouTube.

John Quinn was a tireless supporter of the arts and artists. Come with me next week back to the early days of the last century to spend time with Quinn and his circle of “such friends.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, November 4, 1923, Hogarth House, Richmond, London

English novelist Virginia Woolf, 41, is writing to her friend, French painter Jacque Raverat, 38, currently living in Vence, France. Virginia knows that Jacques has been quite ill and decides that some juicy gossip will cheer him up. She writes to him about the three days she spent in August in Dorset with her Bloomsbury friends, including economist John Maynard Keynes, 40, and his Russian ballerina girlfriend, Lydia Lopokova, 32:

Jacques Raverat

Poor little wretch, trapped in Bloomsbury…Nobody can take her seriously, every nice man kisses her. Then she flies into a rage and says she is…a seerious [sic] woman…[She] got cross, frowned, complained of the heat, seemed about to cry precisely like a child of six…Lydia has the soul of a squirrel…She sits by the hour polishing the sides of her nose with her front paws…I assure it’s tragic to see her sitting down to [read] King Lear.“

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

On November 14^th I will be talking 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. You can register here for free, and the Zoom link will be sent to you.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, November, 1923, New York City, New York

Letters have been flying back and forth across Manhattan all year.

In February, Paul Robeson, 25, a Rutgers alumni and aspiring actor, wrote to one of the University’s trustees, who had funded the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village,

I am anxious to get before any theatrical managers and playwrights, especially those who may possibly have Negro roles…I know that you are a power both in theatrical and musical circles and I am hoping that you will be kind enough to use your influence in getting me a hearing.”

Provincetown Playhouse

Robeson included a few clippings of good reviews from his tour of England last year, and the names of references. He knows that the top playwright for the Provincetown Playhouse is Eugene O’Neill, 35, whose The Emperor Jones was a huge success about three years ago.

Figuring it would be good to approach O’Neill from a few different angles, Robeson also asked a mutual friend to contact O’Neill. Augustin Duncan, 50, who had directed Paul in his Broadway debut, Taboo, wrote,

If you have a Negro part to cast…you will find that Mr. Robeson has in my opinion…extraordinary ability as an actor and most admirable qualities as a student and a man.”

O’Neill’s play, Anna Christie, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year, and is now a big hit in London’s West End. The producer of that play, Arthur Hopkins, 45, had recently contacted Robeson about the possibility of him appearing in The Emperor Jones in London.

Pauline Lord, Anna Christie in New York and London

Finally, Robeson has now heard back from O’Neill himself. He reports that Hopkins

was extremely favorably impressed by your talk with him…You will like being associated with him I know…[Hopkins] agreed with me before he left [for London] that Jones would be best to follow A. C. [Anna Christie] if it could be so arranged…[Will let you know] whatever information I get.”

Robeson heard that the Playhouse had planned to open this season with a new O’Neill play with an “unusual Negro part,” All God’s Chillun Got Wings. However, that had to be postponed because of an agreement O’Neill made that it would first appear in the new American Mercury magazine, early next year.

Robeson and his wife Essie, 27, went to the Playhouse to see the August Strindberg play that was staged as the season kick off instead. Essie noted in her diary,

Didn’t know what in hell it was all about.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

On November 14th I will be talking 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. You can register here for free, and the Zoom link will be sent to you.

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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.