“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 7, 1924, Time magazine, New York City, New York

The one-year old newsweekly, Time magazine, reports on the fate of two of the rioters in last November’s “Beer Hall Putsch”:

Time, April 7

There came an end to the treason trial in Munich. Feldmarschall Erich von Ludendorff (flagitious, inscrutable, unrelenting) was acquitted of all blame for his part in the so-called ‘Beer Hall’ uprising of last fall. The General appeared for his final day in court equipped in full military regalia with numerous orders, decorations…[Adolf] Hitler the other prime instigator of the revolt, was sentenced to five years of confinement in a fortress and fined 200 gold marks. Since it was understood that Hitler will be obliged to serve only six months—and then receive a parole…his followers received the verdict with loud approval, deluged [the pair] with floral tributes.”

“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, City Books on the North Side 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.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.

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, February 6, 1924, Bethlehem Chapel of the Washington Cathedral, Washington, D. C.; and Time magazine, New York City, New York

The 28^th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, 67, is laid to rest today in two private, simple ceremonies, first at his home, then at the Washington Cathedral.

Entrance to the Wilson crypt, Bethlehem Chapel, Washington Cathedral

Officiating at both ceremonies are the pastor of the church Wilson attended while President, the bishop of Washington, and the Rev. Sylvester Beach, 71, who served as Wilson’s pastor when he was president of Princeton University.

Rev. Beach’s wife, Eleanor, 62, cannot attend as she is traveling in Europe, visiting their middle daughter, Sylvia, 36, who owns a bookshop in Paris.

*****

Two days ago, Time magazine reported on the thousands of people lined up to see the body of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who died last month at age 53. According to official sources,

’the greatest number of people who had ever looked upon the same corpse’ (exact number unspecified) passed before his body which lay in state. All of them had stood in line in the streets. of Moscow for 10, 20, 30 hours in inhuman cold…A blizzard raged. Sparrows fell frozen in the streets. Ice covered the horses of the guards. Three gigantic bonfires in Red Square melted the ice for the burial.”

Vladimir Lenin’s funeral

“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 at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, both in 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.

Later this month I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts 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.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”: 100 Years Ago, August 13, 1923, Time magazine, New York City, New York

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, March 10, 1923, Time magazine, New York City, New York

Ohioan Sherwood Anderson, 46, had his fourth novel, Many Marriages, published last month. His first appeared seven years ago, around the time he embarked on a second marriage, to sculptor Tennessee Mitchell, now 49.

Many Marriages by Sherwood Anderson

The review in the New York Herald, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, currently working on his third novel, was positive. In “Sherwood Anderson on the Marriage Question,” Fitzgerald said he thinks Many Marriages is Anderson’s best work.

Henry Seidel Canby, 44, in the New York Evening Post declares,

if we are to have an American Thomas Hardy, [Sherwood Anderson] is the man.”

Those leading crusades against “dirty books” are not as impressed. Because Anderson’s work deals with sexual freedom, they have linked it with other contemporary novels such as Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence, 37, which they have tried to ban.

However, today’s issue of Time magazine points out that when Many Marriages was serialized in a magazine, there was resounding praise. Now that it is a hardback book, many find it boring—including Edmund Wilson, 27, in The Dial; Burton Rascoe, 30, in the New York Tribune; and the dean of Manhattan columnists, FPA [Franklin Pierce Adams], 41, in the New York World.

Burton Rascoe by Gene Markey

But Sherwood is pleased with a complimentary letter he has received from his mentor and friend in Paris, American ex-pat writer Gertrude Stein, 49, who likes Many Marriages.

Gertrude Stein

Stein has praised him privately and in print before, including her recent piece in The Little Review, “Idem the Same:  A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,” which says, in the section titled, “A Very Valentine,”:

Very fine is my valentine.

Very fine and very mine.

Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.

Very fine is my valentine and mine, very fine very mine and mine is my valentine.”

To hear Gertrude Stein read the complete poem, click here.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, 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.

This summer I will be talking about Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, 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, late February, 1923, East 40th Street, New York City, New York

Henry R. Luce, 24, knows how this day is going to pan out.

Henry R. Luce

Luce and his partner, fellow Yale alum Briton Hadden, just turned 25, have been planning their magazine for well over a year. Now they are coming down to the deadline to start the presses so the new magazine, Time, will appear on newsstands with a March 3^rd cover date.

Serious discussions hadn’t started until Hadden, then learning the publishing ropes from editor Harold Bayard Swope, 41, at the New York World, contacted his old buddy from the Yale Daily News, Luce, who had recently been dumped by the Chicago Daily News. He suggested they both go to work for the Baltimore News.

Briton Hadden

In late night talks they began brainstorming the concept of a weekly magazine called Facts which would condense the important news of the day for busy businessmen. Eventually, they came up with the name Time, and the slogan, “Take Time—It’s Brief.” Hadden thought it should be fun as well as informative, including news, celebrities, politics, culture and sport.

Funded by $100,000 raised from other Yale alumni, and working out of this abandoned brewery, Hadden, as editor, is overseeing the process he and Luce learned in their short publishing careers:  Get the flats together. Race over to the printer at 36^th Street and 11^th Avenue. Stay up all night with the staff writing copy to fill holes and cutting copy to make columns fit. Then write captions for the three-inch square fuzzy photos.

Within the 32 pages—including the cover featuring retiring congressman and former Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives Joseph G. Cannon, 86—were brief pieces on:

• The Kansas legislature considering a bill to make smoking illegal;
• The wife of the Pennsylvania governor beseeching Congress to put women in charge of enforcing Prohibition, which cost the country $15 million last year;
• Charges by muckraker Upton Sinclair, 44, that department stores have too strong an influence over newspapers because of their heavy advertising spends;
• Influential British art critic Clive Bell, 41, declaring that cubism is dead;
• A review of Black Oxen, the new novel by Gertrude Atherton, 65, which categorizes the writers who lunch regularly at the midtown Algonquin Hotel as “Sophisticates”; and
• A review of the hit Broadway play, Merton of the Movies, by two of those Sophisticates, Marc Connelly, 32, and George S Kaufman, 33, calling it a “skillful dramatization” of the original novel.

Newsstand price is 15 cents.

First issue of Time magazine

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, 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.

This month I am talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in 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.

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