Florence Nash's Copy of Actorviews: Intimate Portraits by Ashton Stevens With Drawings by Gene Markey

Writer Steve Stoliar brightens my new year with news of his most recent acquisition:

It's a 1923 book called Actorviews, written by noted Chicago theatre critic Ashton Stevens. (Orson Welles said he based Jed Leland on Stevens, who was also George Stevens's uncle.) It was issued in a signed/limited edition of 210 and is also inscribed by Stevens. The book is signed to Florence Nash, a theatrical actress and poetess who is mentioned in Stevens's interview with Nora Bayes.

In addition to Stevens's inscription, there is a fairly accurate caricature of Stevens drawn by Gene Markey, who did the illustrations for the book. Since you blogged about Markey's drawing of Benchley and Woollcott, I knew you'd know who he is. He also did a famous caricature of a young Ben Hecht—and he was married to Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamarr, and Myrna Loy, though not at the same time.

For me, Chicago in the '20s has the same sort of romantic image as New York in the '20s: Gangsters, speakeasies, Hecht, Lardner, Dreiser, all those newspapers, etc. This particular copy evokes so much of that time.

Picked it up for $25.

Actorviews
Title page

Limitation page
No. 89/210

"For Florence Nash,
My friend since she
was a baby poet,
my admiration ever.
Hers faithfully,
                               The Author"
and
"The Venerable Critic on a quiet
night in what he has nick-named
'The Windy City.'
To Flo-Flo—
                                         GM"

So did Stevens truly "nick-name" Chicago "The Windy City," as Markey suggests? It wasn't his coinage. Steve writes back, "I also checked earlier and saw that Stevens didn't invent 'The Windy City' but, to my surprise, he was well-known for having popularized the term." Aha!

Steve also provides some helpful Wikipedia links for those of us who aren't quite so up-to-date on 1923 Chicago-based literary celebrities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Stevens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Markey

Note:  I'm so grateful to Steve Stoliar for sharing this find here on Attempted Bloggery. I had no idea such a book was out there. This is Steve's eighth contribution to the blog if I'm counting correctly and his thirty-seventh if I'm not. Steve is the author of Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House. If you don't have a nightstand, buy one and place this book on it.

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Peter Arno's Side-Show for September 1937

A couple of readers noted that Peter Arno's College Humor cartoons don't look entirely like his more celebrated New Yorker work. The cartoons in College Humor seem edgier and angrier. They are a little  less sophisticated and, perhaps appropriately, a little more sophomoric. They do not look like New Yorker rejects that have been sold elsewhere or repurposed. Rather, it seems they are a separate product line created by Arno for this specific market.

In the September 1937 issue of College Humor, Arno gives us three more cartoons. First up, he exposes hiring practices in the theatrical business—or do they expose themselves?

"Don't bother, Mrs. McGrady—these letters of recommendation are sufficient for the cleaning up job!"
"Peter Arno's Side-Show," College Humor, Vol. 6, No. 1, September 1937, p. 10

On the next page, Joe's oversells its menu and Albert's wife takes her words too literally.

"No! We ain't got Myrna Loy!" [above]
"Albert! I haven't a thing to wear!" [below]
"Peter Arno's Side-Show," College Humor, Vol. 6, No. 1, September 1937, p. 11

What's on our menu? Unlike Joe's, of course we have Myrna Loy:

William Powell and Myrna Loy
Scene from "Double Wedding" (1937)
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Screenplay by Jo Swerling

Note:  Over the years Peter Arno published many cartoons in College Humor, and this week I'm presenting all of them from July of 1936 and from May, July, September, and October of 1937. His work is in many other issues too, and if one of these is in your collection I'd love to hear from you.

Yesterday's blog post was mentioned on Ink Spill! Here you can read it and all of Ink Spill's posts about Attempted Bloggery.

Michael Maslin's spanking new biography of Peter Arno will be published on April 19 by Regan Arts. Peter Arno:  The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker's Greatest Cartoonist can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com, where incidentally you can also buy something nice for Albert's wife to wear.

This copy of College Humor, Vol. 6, No. 1, for September 1937 is one of the many treasures in the Steven Boss humor magazine collection at Columbia University. Imagine, if you will, my recent visit to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Surrounded by serious scholars delving into the great questions of our age, I flip through decades-old humor magazines and try to contain my laughter. None of this could have happened without the assistance of comics librarian Karen Green.


The archives also have a couple of posts about Purim.

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