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