Robin R. Cutler's Blog, page 4

A Burning Question: Skin Color and Social Class -1937 and 2017

 

[image error]“What interests you most in this Cosmopolitan world of today?” the magazine asked in September 1937.  The answer could be found in another question: Is a person’s social standing to be “gauged by his complexion”? Columnist, cartoonist, and frequent contributor to the New Yorker and several other magazines, Weare Holbrook (d.1985), tackles this issue – and he’s not writing about American cultural diversity. He’s talking about sun worshipers.

“ The Burning Question” begins with the following: ”Since the suntan craze swept the country like a plague of jaundice, a new caste system has arisen in our summer resorts.” Of course, that system also applies to our chic winter resorts in, say, Florida.  It seems that in 1937 there were” three distinct color groups.” The “Cordovan ruling class, composed of the aristocrats who own cottages and stay there all summer.” “The Beige bourgeoisie who live in hotels and stay only a few weeks.” And the third, oh so unfortunate group, was “the Pink proletariat who bloom but for a single day and then return to the city.”  Holbrook acknowledges somewhat wistfully that he is, in fact, a member of this third group. With more than a twist of satire he notes how carefully sun worshipers apply oil assiduously to each body part and bake themselves like rotisserie chickens.  (This is way before Neutrogena 100%, or widespread TV. Have you noticed the requisite golden visage of so many pundits these days who appear on screens with very real news and fake complexions?)

The “mania for looking leathery” distracts golfers and tennis players who feel an even suntan is more important than the score, Holbrook observes. His empathy for those who do not turn brown no matter how much they try is evident. “You can see them at any summer resort, basking away as if their little hearts would break.… from shell- pink, their color deepens to ashes of roses, and then to lobster red.” Then the peeling and blisters begin. Holbrook does not support this craze: “It seems to me that it might be simpler to intermarry with the Indians and let nature take its course. At least it would save our grandchildren  a lot of trouble.” Hmmm…that’s a provocative thought for 1937.

Holbrook will retire to the shade rather than compete with the sun worshipers. Happily resigned to being “a pale, anemic- looking eccentric who may be found on the front porch, fully dressed and in his right mind, with an electric fan on one side of him and a tall drink on the other. Small boys may hoot at me derisively and my café- au- lait contemporaries may point the nut- brown finger of scorn at me, but there I will remain. And perhaps, years hence, the Daughters of the American Revolution or the Colonial Dames or some other group of harker- backers may erect a monument to my memory, as the Last White Settler in America.”

I find this occasionally tongue-in-cheek essay intriguing 80 years later when, alas, a person’s social standing is still gauged by his complexion in some parts of this country, and it’s not because of a suntan or lack of it. Oddly enough, some of those doing the judging may have the deepest tans. Concerns about social status remain prevalent in the public’s consciousness.

My mother’s first Cosmopolitan story,” Sidewalk Café,” appears in this issue. In looking back, I’m reminded how important it was to Jane Hall to have tan legs and arms, while never letting the sun touch her porcelain face – thanks to wide- brimmed hats, it remained practically free of lines until she died at age seventy-two. There’s a lesson in that.

Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: Cosmopolitan 1937, Jane Hall, Rosalie Rush, skin color and social status, suntans 1937, Weare Holbrook

Cosmopolitan’s “Shocking Exposé” of Real Spies and Intelligence in 1940.

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“Cosmopolitan Coed” by Bradshaw Crandell, October 1940

As I flipped through old Cosmopolitans from the days when the magazine introduced critical national issues to its young, largely female readers, an article from the Oct 1940 issue jumped out at me.* It was written by White House correspondent John Jay Daly and author Donald E. Kehoe. In light of our current battles about the credibility of our intelligence agencies, and a recent tweet from our soon-to-be president: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” this article, “Inside the Trojan Horse,” seems relevant. As a header, the Cosmo editor wrote: “A shocking exposé of the extent to which Fifth Column activity has already undermined America and a ringing challenge to every citizen to do something now — before it’s too late.”

The article begins with a quote from then Attorney General Robert H. Jackson assuring Americans that the “Department of Justice is well-equipped to deal vigorously with sabotage and espionage, but if our work is to be effective it is imperative that the people, too, be alert and watchful, cool and sane.” [Jackson’s tenure as Attorney General was short-lived; Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1941 where he served until 1954.] Daly and Kehoe continue with an anecdote. A private wire to the White House had been cut — “it’s a direct presidential line to the suite of a high government official residing at a hotel. Over this supposedly inviolate wire, the President infrequently discussed matters of foreign policy based on confidential reports from Europe.” It turned out that spies (“later linked with a Nazi ring”) were listening in as the Nazis invaded the Low Countries and France to see what the American Administration’s reaction would be.

In 1940, protecting the nation from attacks by thousands of subversive agents inside the country, rather than in cyberspace, was a huge challenge. (It still is.)  “There is hardly a phase of our economic and social structure without at least a few of these hidden enemies,” Daly and Kehoe wrote. FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, warned: “Their insidious propaganda has even gained entry into some of our churches and many of our schools. Unless we unite to resist these efforts, America will regret the day when it let down the bars.” Not surprisingly, Daly and Kehoe note, the Nazi agents “operate behind a cloak of anti-Hitlerism.” Italian and Russian agents pretending to attack Fascism and Communism in public were also building up sabotage rings inside America. “The Nazi, Fascist and Communist legions in America are trying with every trick of hatred and violence to wreck this democracy and destroy our freedom. It is time they were shown that there is an end to American patience.”

The foreign spy rings were under precise orders. “And every day confidential reports to the FBI bring fresh evidence that the secret war orders are being carried out.” Numerous examples may have riveted Cosmo’s readers — fake humanitarian work, sabotage in factories, aircraft plants, shipyards, and ubiquitous propaganda that confused the public. “The FBI has not been asleep. With the aid of Army, Navy and Coast Guard Intelligence, the more dangerous members of the Fifth Column are kept under surveillance. Six hundred new agents were being trained by the FBI to try to handle more than 3000 daily complaints and tips. But we needed more agents then. “To prevent the blackout of true free speech and at the same time pull the fangs of the Fifth Column is a difficult problem within limits of a democracy.”

Attorney General Jackson urged Americans to “strike against this hidden menace” by learning “every symptom of its cancerous growth; the vicious system by which it corrupts youth, coerces peaceful aliens, misleads honest citizens; this thousand and one lying tricks by which it shields itself behind “front” organizations — falsely named leagues, guilds and societies — controlled by alien governments.” What was the penalty for those accused of sabotage? Ten years in jail and a $10,000 fine had not proved a deterrent. In fact, Nazi propaganda had tripled in the months before them article was written.

Business men in America and owners of industries, perhaps the equivalent of some of our current billionaires, considered appeasement with Hitler. Their argument: “Why build up a vast defense machine, ruin business with huge taxes when you can cooperate with Hitler? He’d rather make a business deal with the United States than go to war.” (Of course, we know how that worked out.) And then, Daly and Keith noted, one of the tactics of the subversive propaganda experts was “a smear campaign directed against the FBI and other government enforcement agencies, to create public fear of a Gestapo. Another campaign, costing at least $50,000 in printing bills, was aimed at stirring up religious hatred with a story of a Jewish revolution plot against the American government.” Communists used even more devious tactics to disrupt American democracy, especially after the alliance between Hitler and Stalin.

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“Inside The Trojan Horse” by John Jay Daly and Donald E. Kehoe

Situations such as those described in great detail in this article must have made neighbors suspicious of neighbors at times. Today, some of our most dangerous threats come from invisible hackers as well as foreign agents operating inside this country. The intelligence community has had to grow as the nature of espionage has changed. And in the current climate, Americans still need to be “alert and watchful, cool and sane.” But we must also be vigilant against suggestions that we should appease Vladimir Putin possibly to protect shadowy business deals. Above all—no matter what comes out in the twittersphere —–we must not assume that people whose backgrounds, dress, customs, skin colors, or even political parties are different from our own are subversive or dangerous. To paraphrase FDR’s famous statement, one thing we have to fear is fear itself — in this case fear of each other, fear of our neighbors. We are not living in Nazi Germany.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY JANE HALL!  JANUARY 17, 1915 WAS A GREAT DAY.

Latest news for Such Mad Fun.  The book was recently named a Best Book of 2016 by Kirkus Reviews.  And I’ve been skyping with book groups. Contact me through the website if you’d like to do that. Or subscribe to this monthly blog.

*(I have the October 1940 Cosmo because it includes Jane Hall’s “The Lady and The Witch,” one of nine short stories.)

 

 

Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: 1940 Fifth Column, Cosmopolitan Magazine 1940, Donald E. Kehoe, Franklin Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, Jane Hall Stories, John Jay Daly, Robert H. Jackson, Spies and intelligence 1940, Trump tweets

“The Shape of Things to Come” — Winter 1939

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“Beauty on Ice.” Bradshaw Crandell, Cosmopolitan, Feb 1939

In February 1939 Jane Hall was hard at work as a screenwriter at MGM. Eight months later she would be on the cover of Cosmopolitan. I collected dozens of old Cosmos while working on Such Mad Fun. And though it does not contain any of Jane’s stories, the February 1939 issue of the magazine is fascinating. The cover design, “Beauty on Ice,” by Bradshaw Crandell, fits the current frigid conditions across much of the United States. What a difference in content there was between the magazine then and now as we’ve discussed before; Cosmo’s young readers were expected to be interested in politics and literature. Author Pearl S. Buck was the “Cosmopolite of the Month.” The “Autobiography of America” section is a detailed story of what it was like to work as a government clerk. But perhaps most intriguing is the section on “The Shape of Things to Come — 1939.” Let’s look at the American situation. (Europe was covered in an essay by H. G. Wells.)

Renowned pollster, Dr. George Gallup, was founding director of the American Institute of Public Opinion. Iowa born and educated, Gallup had a stellar reputation for integrity and would become one of the leading Americans of the 20th century. He never took polling that was sponsored by special interest groups or political parties. Gallup explained to his readers that the Institute talked with “hundreds of thousands of typical American voters in cities, on farms, along the back roads — people of all ages and in all stages of life who represent a cross-section of the voting population.” He used 700 field investigators to determine some trends in American public thought. And this is what he found:

“We — the American people — are moving toward the right, toward a more conservative viewpoint in national politics.” In 1936 and in 1940 Franklin Roosevelt was elected president. Of course there was another election in 1938. The November 1938 election, with its Republican gains, “high-spotted the trend” towards this new conservatism. . . “Barring some emergency like war, the pendulum may continue to swing for the right next year because the public is no longer in a mood for experimentation to the same degree that it was when the New Deal came to power. What we are witnessing, and will witness, is a public desire for ‘leveling off” in the tempo of change brought about by the New Deal, a desire for consolidating the gains after a period of rapid social adjustment.”

Roosevelt was still in favor, Gallup explained, but the public now wanted Congress to “exercise greater control over” how money is spent. “The trend of popular thinking is away from centralization of power in the chief executive.” In fact, “it was only a few years ago that big business and its leaders were looked upon with disfavor, even distressed, by a critical public who demanded reforms of social and economic abuses.…” Now “the leadership of businessmen is gradually coming back in the popular favor” and “sympathy for business is indicated in many surveys which have found an increasing number of people saying business should be left alone.”

The biggest dilemma in 1939: “If the government stops spending it runs the risk of losing political support among the poor voters, who were strongly Democratic. But if taxes are increased that will “invite political defection in the middle and upper classes, where the Republicans have already made inroads.” Most people still believed that the government “should take responsibility for aiding the needy unemployed.” Gallup also found most people supported spending for national defense. “More than 70% of the voters felt the Army and Navy should be strengthened. “ But at the time this piece was written, the vast majority of Americans were reluctant to become involved in another European war.

Other conclusions of Gallup’s polling are also worth remembering today. “In the field of social problems the nation is likely to witness a spread of the birth-control movement, for it is approved by large majorities of both sexes and also of the campaign against venereal disease, one of the most popular campaigns ever undertaken by health authorities.” As for health insurance, Gallup’s Institute discovered “a marked trend toward voluntary health insurance. This movement for providing hospital care to individuals at a small monthly cost is approved by a decisive majority of voters who indicate that they are willing to pay anywhere from $1 to $3 a month.” Even if a dollar in 1939 is worth almost $17.00 today that’s a bargain!

The conservatives whom Gallup polled in 1939 accepted some of Roosevelt’s new deal reforms. His conclusion: “the public is seeking a path between extremes, a middle-of-the-road down which it can progress in democratic fashion after eight years of profound social upheaval.” Seems as if we are still looking for this path.

Many other polls compete with Gallup today, but information on important topics including our last election is at http://www.gallup.com/topic/election_2016.aspx.  And if you are ever in Jefferson, Iowa, consider a visit to The Gallup House.

 

 

 

Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: Bradshaw Crandell, Cosmopolitan Magazine 1939, George Gallup, Jane Hall's world, politics 1939, public opinion 1939

Should Wives Work? It’s 1938 and Eleanor Roosevelt Has Some Thoughts About the Subject.

A Happy Couple–with Chesterfields. Good Housekeeping ad, June 1938.

For the next few months, this blog will focus on young Jane Hall’s world–life in the 1930s and 1940s– as seen through popular culture. In 1938, the editor of Good Housekeeping, William F. Bigelow, a big fan of Jane’s work, put together twelve articles as “The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book.” Targeting hundreds of thousands of university and college students, as well as millions of other young men and women who were eager to learn more about what makes a marriage work, he wrote: “I have heard lots about Youth in recent years — it’s lackadaisical attitude toward all serious things, it’s tendency to look at the moral code straight in the eye and smash it, it’s belief that chastity isn’t worth its cost or success in marriage worth looking for.” He was incredulous, and decided to offer useful advice.

Should wives work? First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had a lot to say on this subject. It’s one that still generates debate in 2016, and has come up in at least one ad in our presidential election. “Is it possible for a woman to marry and still have a career?” At the end of the Depression, Roosevelt found the question itself a bit foolish, “for there are very few women who have careers.” In fact, she felt that marriage itself was a career. And while there is “no general answer” to the question, she asked young women: “Are you able to carry on two full-time jobs? Have you the physical strength and the mental vigor to do this day in and day out — particularly when you are young, first married, adjusting yourself to a stranger’s personality, and perhaps bearing children, which is an added physical strain?”

Why should you adjust yourself to a stranger’s personality? Roosevelt, by then a 55-year-old mother of six, felt the answer was simple: “No two people really know each other until they have been married for some time, and one of the most exacting duties of family life is the adjustment of the various personalities that make up the family circle.”

And then there’s the fact that a woman who wants to make a successful career of marriage needs time to study her husband; and think about “his capabilities, his interests, and even his peculiarities.” She should know about his business and about his pleasures. For she is instrumental to his success both by bringing out his strengths and supplementing his shortcomings.

But Eleanor Roosevelt was, of course, well aware of economic realities. She admitted that many young people marry knowing both will have to continue working. These couples need financial security before they have children. Even though “a craving for a home of her own is the first stirring of maturity in a woman. To many women, however, a home is not wholly satisfying unless she is making it for someone else, and nature has made most women yearn for a man to mother.”

Mrs. Roosevelt showed great empathy for women in mill towns or in poverty-stricken families where the women had to work. She also acknowledged that men need to understand that there are some women who want to have some financial independence. Plus a woman who remains dedicated to her job often feels that she will be a more interesting spouse if she has a life outside the home; couples must grapple with these issues together.

So Mrs. Roosevelt was not completely adverse to women with careers. Some women have a “capacity within themselves which cannot be denied, and they should marry only men who understand this and are willing to make some compromises. It can be done very happily, but it depends on both the man and the woman in each case.” In 1938, these ambitious women were very fortunate indeed if they found the right man.

Her final thoughts: “I think any young couple is fortunate when the woman has to do everything about the house and does it happily, but in view of all the different angles that the problem presents, I would give no advice, only urge young people to think over what they want out of life very carefully when they are making the decision of how they will start their life together.”

So much of popular magazine fiction grappled with this question in the 1930s through the 1950s. And other experts weighed in for Mr. Bigelow on topics such as “Sex Instruction in the Home” and “The Case for Monogamy.” Stay Tuned.

Between now and Nov 14th, enter the Goodreads Giveaway for the chance to win a signed hardcover copy of Such Mad Fun  along with the movie featured in the book, These Glamour Girls. Click Here.

 

Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: Eleanor Roosevelt, Good Housekeeping, Marriage in 1938, Popular Culture 1938, Such Mad Fun

Whatever Happened to Jane Hall’s Ocelot?

For much of my childhood and young adulthood I had an ocelot for a sibling. In fact, many of my friends remember that more than anything else about our family.  My mother, Jane Hall Cutler, was devoted to Menasha Skulnik — she named him after the famed Jewish American actor in spite of her Catholic roots. (She often named pets after people she admired.) The other day, as I sorted though papers, I found an article from The Fauquier Democrat (4/5/1973) by Jane Cutler, “If You Want to Own an Ocelot, Consult Your Nervous System.” It has Jane’s characteristic wit, and the answer to a question I still get — “Whatever happened to that ocelot your mother had?”

The article is really a eulogy:  “Last week, Casanova [Virginia] lost her oldest resident — an ocelot, Menasha Skulnik Cutler. By human standards, he was well over 100 years old. According to Dr. Lee Crandell, former director of New York’s Bronx zoo, the oldest ocelot on record died at age nine years, eight months, seven days. Skulnik was going on 20 years old. And he had all his original equipment, never had the three disarming operations that appeal to so many owners of ‘exotic’ pets. .… Ocelots are beautiful, lovable, and intelligent, but they are also noted for taking on whatever they can overpower — including veterinarians.”

Jane recalled some of Skulnik’s various “jet-pet” adventures. “He spent two summers swimming on Long Island and Cape Cod; winters he lived in a penthouse apartment. One afternoon, before his legal difficulties dictated the move from New York, while we watched, petrified, we saw a six- foot college student come headfirst out the window of his parents 18th floor apartment . . .where, handily, there was a narrow ledge. (That’s how Skulnik got in.)”  The ledge was next to our terrace and protected by a balustrade. “This nice young man appeared visibly shaken. He said he had been fast asleep recovering from exams, when, he said, he heard a sort of roaring and there was this wild animal on his bed, ‘Just staring at me! Can you imagine, in a New York apartment?’ Oh yes, we said. We could.” I remember that incident well though I wasn’t sure, until I saw this article, why Skulnik had to leave Manhattan.

1100 Park Avenue was, I assume, full of well-mannered residents who were not about to put up with a wild animal for a neighbor.  But it didn’t help that a rumor mill distorted the facts a bit. That’s because my parents had a visit from “Cesare,” “a magnificent cheetah made famous by the Disney film, “African Lion.”My mother recalled that as soon as this extraordinary creature came in the front door from the elevator hall, “he lit on our zebra foyer rug and tore it all to pieces. “‘I guess he must be tired,’” she told the handler politely. Soon letters began to arrive on legal letterheads implying that the wildcat in apartment 18A was actually verrrry large. And so, in 1959, Skulnik was forced to retire to Poplar Springs, his Casanova farm.

But how in the world did Skulnik live so long? “Well,” Jane explains, “in addition to Dr. Atkins’ diet, which he discovered in the spring of 1954, we attribute Skulnik’s longevity to green peppers, the occasional aperitif, and TV.… He had two sets — gifts from admirers: one was black and white, one color portable.” While I remember “I Love Lucy” being one of his favorite programs, apparently Skully also loved westerns, auto races and sports. “Soap operas put him quietly to sleep, newscasters sent him underground,” Jane observed. Nor did I realize how much he loved football games. “Each weekend he would watch unblinkingly for hours.” And then, Jane noted wistfully, that Skulnik’s health began to go to pieces after the Dolphins beat the Washington Redskins. Following a rocky winter, he died on the first night of spring 1973.

This was probably the last published article author and MGM screenwriter Jane Hall ever wrote; the topic is not surprising. Her love for her animal companions was legendary.

My most vivid recollection of Skulnik, who was a one-woman kind of guy, comes from his time in NYC. I was about nine years old. On this particular night, my parents were out and I tried to poke some raw hamburger into the chicken wire on Skulnik’s Park Avenue habitat. I wanted so much to be his friend. Unfortunately, I used the closest implement available — a pen that was on my mother’s desk. Skulnik grabbed the pen and the hamburger and took it down into his lair. I panicked and threw the top out an 18th-story window, foolishly thinking he would eat the rest of it. But he didn’t. Unfortunately, that was my grandfather Dick Wick Hall’s pen. Jane adored her father who died when she was eleven. I still have the chewed up bottom of the pen and indelible memories of my mother’s reaction to this fiasco. But that’s not a story for print.

If you want to know what happened to Jane before she met Skulnik, check out Such Mad Fun. Skulnik never made onto the cover of Cosmopolitan as my mother’s wire hair fox terrier, Kate, did. However, this golden-eyed feline is still alive in the memory of so many people. Perhaps today his spirit enjoys the jazz on the new terrace at Poplar Springs which is now an inn and spa. Few visitors know that Skulnik and Kate are both buried there near each other. I was wrong in the book–Skulnik lived with us for nineteen years, not seventeen. Still, that must be some kind of record.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Casanova VA, Dick Wick Hall, Fauquier Democrat, Jane Cutler, Jane Hall, Menasha Skulnik, ocelots, Poplar Springs, Such Mad Fun

A Such Mad Fun Author Interview

 

Many Thanks to Annette Bochenek for permission to use this interview that appeared with a review on her terrific website Hometowns to Hollywood. This may answer some of the questions you have about Such Mad Fun.

Annette: Jane Hall was a writer who worked behind the scenes of several great MGM films. However, most of the attention and advertising surrounding a film goes to the actors. What compelled you to focus on Jane Hall and take on the project of telling her story?

Robin: When I began reading Jane’s diaries, letters, and her published work from the 1920s and 1930s, I realized that she had an unusual story to tell about the joys and challenges talented, motivated young women faced in those decades. Jane would be an astute observer of and participant in a rarefied world once she came to New York in 1930. She’s funny, articulate and authentic in describing this world and allowing readers to immerse in her personal growth and her literary journey. Because she was my mother and very tight-lipped about her early life and her worries in the 1950s and beyond, I met someone through this research that I didn’t know. And I wanted to put her story in the context of other women’s lives in the mid-20th century because their stories and hers resonate so much today.

Annette: Jane was not your average woman of the 1930s and 1940s! Are there any other career- driven women that associated with her, either as fellow writers or women of other career paths?

Robin: Many women succeeded in the arts in those years — some people believe ambitious women were better off in the 1930s than they were in the 1950s. (Remember Betty Draper in Mad Men?) Often they had extremely supportive husbands or, if not, married more than once. Jane admired prolific author Faith Baldwin and her senior MGM colleague Frances Marion; she was also impressed by two women that she interviewed, screenwriter Vina Delmar and actress Margaret Sullavan; and, of course, Rosalind Russell who befriended her at MGM. She remained friends with the accomplished artist Ruth Gikow whom she had met in art school. But she trusted men more than women and needed their admiration; among her closest lifelong pals were former suitors or colleagues such as Marion Parsonnet, and artists Jon Whitcomb and Bradshaw Crandell, who shaped her sense of who she was meant to be.

Annette: While you were putting together this book, was there any piece of information that you found particularly interesting or shocking?

Robin: I was moved to tears by what Jane wrote when she was a preteen and young teenager. Although these heartfelt stories, poems, and articles are not the focus of the book, I wondered what happened to this fiercely determined and gifted little girl by the time I was born. Also intriguing was the way she inserted elements of her own life in the stories that she wrote for Cosmopolitan and other magazines. When I read them, I recognized people I had known as a teenager. One of her funniest stories is her last — “Acapulco Fizz” (Cosmopolitan Jan 1946) —which is based on her brother’s romance with an art school friend of hers whom I knew very well.

Annette: What are some typical characteristics of Jane Hall’s writing? Does she have any trademarks that she uses often in her writing?

Robin: Jane’s writing is at times irreverent and sassy. She had a great ear for dialogue and used it well. She was an expert at the clever comeback which could mask true feelings. Magazine editors loved the way her buoyant personality came through in the stories and articles they commissioned her to do. Perhaps the strongest influence on Jane throughout her life was her father, Arizona humorist Dick Wick Hall, who died tragically when she was 11. Jane didn’t hesitate to use satire to poke fun at pretentious people as he had, and she used random capital letters (another one of his trademarks) which editors didn’t seem to mind.

Annette: Jane Hall showed promise in her writing at an early age, long before her career in Hollywood began. Are there any tributes to her in the various places she lived?

Robin: Articles came out about young Jane in Arizona and in Los Angeles, and Manhattan Beach, California, that gave her tremendous confidence — she was very proud of being called a “genius” and a “prodigy.” She was especially taken with herself when a reporter from the Newspaper Enterprise Associates feature service came to her home office in Manhattan Beach to interview her (at 15) in February 1930. She won prizes as a juvenile author leading to frequent notice in the Los Angeles Times and the popular St. Nicholas Magazine. Later on Jane would be covered frequently by Manhattan society columnists and the Hollywood trades. She was a mix of strong ego and touching vulnerability.

Annette: What is the biggest lesson you learned from researching Jane Hall’s life?

Robin: That so often we really don’t know the back stories of people we think we know. So do we really know them? If we take time to listen to others, sometimes we might be surprised. My mother never talked about her early life much at all, but then I probably didn’t ask about it either. I can see she carried a lot of mixed emotions in an era when women did not have much support for following their own dreams.

Annette: Is there something you are particularly proud of in this book?

Robin: I’m glad to have collaborated with my late mother, in a sense, to let her story come out. I’m sure she wanted to write about her own life or she would not have carefully kept so many papers — I’m not so sure she would have wanted me to do the telling. And I’m happy I waited a long time to tackle this project; I was only forty three when she died which seems very young now. (My oldest daughter is forty three.) At that point in my life I might not have had the perspective to do a good job with this story.

Annette: Writers are often overshadowed by other professions in the film industry, but Jane Hall is such a great talent to celebrate. What can we do to continue to preserve her legacy?

Robin: These days, people are more aware of how important screenwriters are in the creation process. Jane did not remain in the film industry for very long, but her on-the-spot descriptions of becoming and being a screenwriter are worth preserving. That was one of my main reasons for writing Such Mad Fun. I expect to offer some of her papers to the wonderful Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. And of course I will send the library this book.

Robin Cutler’s Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood’s Golden Age is an excellent addition to the library of any classic film fan. For more information about Robin Cutler and her work, please visit her website and Facebook page for this book.

Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: Annette Bochenek, Hollywood 1930s, Jane Hall, MGM, Robin Cutler, Such Mad Fun

Such Mad Fun – A Kirkus Reviews’ Best Book of 2016

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What determines who a woman will become?

Jane Hall was an orphan at fifteen and a “literary prodigy” according to the press. How did this daughter of Arizona’s most popular humorist become a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Hollywood’s most glamorous studio? Jane soon found that her ambition conflicted with the expectations of her family, her friends and the era in which she lived. Devastated by the loss of her parents, how long would it take Jane to trust her emotions and love again?

Read the full story in the new book Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robin Cutler.

“A valuable, absorbing contribution to the history of women, golden-age Hollywood, and America’s magazine culture of the 1930s and ’40s.”

— KIRKUS starred review.

Unsure? There are even more advance reviews.

And this excerpt in Vanity Fair!  

For the latest news or comments  check out Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/suchmadfun/

Contact the author through this website or message her on Facebook.

Or contact:

Angelle Barbazon

JKS Communications

angelle@jkscommunications.com

(615) 928-2462

Such Mad Fun is available in all formats  except audio. And it can be ordered from your local bookstore anywhere if they don’t have it. Enjoy!

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Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: featured

Such Mad Fun is Available Now

What determines who a woman will become?

Jane Hall was an orphan at fifteen and a “literary prodigy” according to the press. How did this daughter of Arizona’s most popular humorist become a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Hollywood’s most glamorous studio? Jane soon found that her ambition conflicted with the expectations of her family, her friends and the era in which she lived. Devastated by the loss of her parents, how long would it take Jane to trust her emotions and love again?

Read the full story in the new book Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robin Cutler.

“A valuable, absorbing contribution to the history of women, golden-age Hollywood, and America’s magazine culture of the 1930s and ’40s.”

— KIRKUS starred review.

Unsure? There are even more advance reviews.

And this excerpt in Vanity Fair!  

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Angelle Barbazon

JKS Communications

angelle@jkscommunications.com

(615) 928-2462

Such Mad Fun is available in all formats  except audio. And it can be ordered from your local bookstore anywhere if they don’t have it. Enjoy!

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Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: featured

Such Mad Fun Released Sept. 8

What determines who a woman will become?

Jane Hall was an orphan at fifteen and a “literary prodigy” according to the press. How did this daughter of Arizona’s most popular humorist become a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Hollywood’s most glamorous studio? Jane soon found that her ambition conflicted with the expectations of her family, her friends and the era in which she lived. Devastated by the loss of her parents, how long would it take Jane to trust her emotions and love again?

Read the full story in the new book Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour in Hollywoods Golden Age by Robin Cutler.

“A valuable, absorbing contribution to the history of women, golden-age Hollywood, and America’s magazine culture of the 1930s and ’40s.”

— KIRKUS starred review.

Unsure? There are even more glowing advance reviews.

If you’d like to share this information with friends… why not do it on Facebook?  Or let me, @nycrobin know on twitter with hashtag  #suchmadfun!

For more official communication & review copies:

Angelle Barbazon

JKS Communications

angelle@jkscommunications.com

(615) 928-2462

We went to a great effort to make sure that everyone could get the story in the best formats possible – enjoy! Of course, don’t forget to leave a review!

Amazon

Hardcover
Paperback
Kindle

Barnes and Nobel

Hardcover
Paperback
Nook

iBook

iBook Store

Kobo

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Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: featured

The Composite Cosmopolitan Girl in 1939

Her name was Isabel MacDougal of Greenwood, Mississippi, and, in July 1939, she became “The Cosmopolitan Girl.” Prolific author Faith Baldwin noted that she had been “selected by an impressive jury from among thousands of entrants,” in this “Autobiography of America — 1939.” Isabel appeared on the cover of the summer fiction issue of Cosmopolitan thanks to illustrator Bradshaw Crandell.

There had been state winners, some tall, some short, some blond, some brunette or redheaded. Of course, they were all white. Baldwin concluded that the composite Cosmopolitan girl was in her early twenties, 5’6” tall , weighing 120 pounds. “She has blue eyes, golden brown hair, and beautiful teeth. She is a member of a small family; her parents are living, and her father is a businessman. The composite Cosmopolitan girl has college training. She loves dancing, and next to it horseback riding and swimming. And she works, or expects to work. As there was almost no duplication of occupation among the state winners,” Baldwin continues, “you can take it for granted that the composite girl has many ideas, all of them good.”

Though she won the contest, Isabel was actually younger than the ideal— just eighteen — and quite petite at about 5’3½ inches tall. She’d been born on Green Hill plantation, surrounded by 2000 acres of lush Mississippi countryside. Her mother, who married at sixteen, had three healthy children within the next five years. Baldwin found that Isabel “hasn’t an atom of classic beauty, but she’s as pretty as spring in the South or for that matter as spring in New England.” She loves to dance and also plays the clarinet, piano and the saxophone. Not only that, she’s a good tennis player and golfer, likes reading, knows how to embroider, knit, and crochet as well as cook. But that’s not all – Isabel “is a practical girl, so in college she is taking a business course. Neat, efficient, she has excellent grades,” plus she’s already learned shorthand and typing.

I  felt a bit inadequate by the time I read all this, and then learned that Isabel’s thirty-something mother made all her daughter’s clothes. And I wondered how my mother, Jane Hall, reacted to this description of a model young woman which came out just before the movie of her Cosmopolitan novel, These Glamour Girls, released. I’m sure Jane saw Baldwin’s piece; her short story about a girl close to Isabel’s age, “Elizabeth, Femme Fatale,” appeared in the same issue of the magazine.

Jane would have approved of Isabel’s strong character — she too abhorred “petty jealousy and deceit.” Isabel, it turns out, was popular with girls as well as boys, something Faith Baldwin found unusual in 1939. She had no shortage of dates, but kept a special place in her heart for a Brooklyn baseball player who often wrote to her. At eighteen, Isabel was no more ready for marriage than Jane had been; she hoped to be an actress. “A Cosmopolitan girl if ever there was one, with plenty of ambition, plenty of spirit and a logical, practical mind to guide her romantic heart,” Baldwin stated.

I have no idea what happened to Isabel, but I have a feeling she raised a family and contributed to many worthwhile causes. She was six years younger than Jane Hall who would be a Cosmo cover girl in October 1939. And she was exactly the same age as Betty Friedan. Was she happy? I hope so.

If there was a statewide search to find today’s composite Cosmopolitan Girl, given the changes in the magazine –and American life –over the past three quarters of a century, what sort of young woman would rise to the top?

For the original article: Faith Baldwin, “Autobiography of America–1939: The Cosmopolitan Girl.” Cosmopolitan (July, 1939), 55-56. For what happened to one of Isabel’s contemporaries, Jane Hall, Such Mad Fun comes out next week.   .

Filed under: Such Mad Fun Tagged: Betty Friedan, Bradshaw Crandell, Cosmopolitan 1930s, Faith Baldwin, ideal young woman 1939, Isabel MacDougal, Jane Hall