Even if you know little about publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst you may have inferred a few things about him from Orson Welles film Citizen Kane (1941), “loosely” based upon Hearst’s life,
Hearst, an inveterate collector, loved all animals. He could not stand to see any animal suffer. Mice and even rats were to be caught and released. Continue reading
October 29 is an important anniversary date that many do not remember because they did not live through it. On that date in 1929 the stock market crashed to an astonishing level.
Major media outlets are praising Aaron Ross Sorkin’s forthcoming book 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattered a Nation, (Random House, November 4 2025).
Coincidentally I was just finishing an older book about the same subject. It is among the best books ever written about Wall Street.
The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts (Doubleday, 1979) is a masterful work of storytelling.
While John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1955 book The Great Crash 1929, remains the seminal work on the economic causes of the crash, Thomas and Morgan-Witts examine the human aspects of the financial calamity which ushered in the Great Depression.
Threading together the lives of movers and shakers of Wall Street and the ordinary citizen, the authors lay out stories that resonate today. Events unfolding before us now, have similarities to the great crash of 1929. Continue reading
Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949) was a prolific author, poet and editor of such prestigious magazines as Smart Set, Delineator, McClure’s, Designer, and Harper’s Bazaar.
As an urbane New Yorker, Towne’s hobnobbing with celebrities in literature, stage, politics and society was de riguer. His acquaintances also gave him access to juicy gossip.
In the second of Towne’s memoirs (he wrote three), This New York Of Mine, Cosmopolitan (1931), he relates an apocryphal story which occurred at the turn-of-the-century that Towne claims is true.
There are no names attached to the tale. But if the facts are correct an online detective could figure out Continue reading
Congress Hall Hotel, Saratoga Springs, NY ad 1886
Summer is underway. For many people summer vacation plans are in place.
Yet, vacations are something we take for granted and are a relatively modern notion.
What was leisure like in the late 1870s?
Your family lives in the city. Your job as a shipping clerk; pressman; dressmaker; bookkeeper; engineer; blacksmith; engraver or iron worker pays the bills, and you may be able to put a little money aside each month.
New York Sun Help Wanted ads 1872
Your work schedule: 10 hours a day, six days a week.
Days off?
One. Sunday. The Lord’s day of rest. Continue reading
Nathan (Nat) D. Lobell’s Of Things That Used To Be A Childhood On Fox Street In The Bronx In The Early Twentieth Century is a memoir concentrating on a striving South Bronx neighborhood full of immigrants, primarily Jewish, Irish and Italian between World War I and the 1920s. Continue reading
The band Van Halen share their name with its two founding members. So when speaking of Van Halen sometimes it’s important to distinguish if you are referring to the band or personnel. Frequently it was interchangeable. The band Van Halen or the guitarist Edward Van Halen. Infrequently was the reference to band co-founder Alex Van Halen.
Sitting behind a drum kit for over 50 years made it possible for Alex Van Halen to be in the background rather than the spotlight. Continue reading
Carole Lombard and Fernand Gravet (Gravey) starring in director Mervyn Leroy’s Fools For Scandal (1938) are apparently amused by something during a break in filming. The candid photograph taken by Otto Dyar perfectly displays Lombard’s exuberant personality.
During a war bond drive. Lombard, along with her mother, died tragically in a plane crash on January 16, 1942. She was 33.
Kyle Crichton’s biting memoir of literary. political and celebrity attachments,Total Recoil (1960) Doubleday & Company, gives a brief portrait of Lombard. Continue reading
Henry Luce photo via: PBS
Henry Luce, the founder of Time, Fortune and the modern Life magazine was prescient in what might become of the United States in the future if we rely upon the government to solve social issues.
While reading Lloyd Morris’ Postscript To Yesterday – America: The Last Fifty Years, (Random House) 1947, I came across this passage describing Life magazine and Luce’s views: on the matter. Continue reading
If Ronald Colman had his way, Gone With The Wind star Vivien Leigh would have played opposite Colman in The Light That Failed, (1939) not Ida Lupino. Continue reading
Crowd gathered around the recovered body of a child from the General Slocum, North Brother Island, New York City, June 1904 photo George Ehler Stonebridge / NY Historical Society
This year marks the 120th anniversary of a tragedy that has been mostly forgotten, the General Slocum Disaster.
If you are unfamiliar with the General Slocum and the inferno that killed over 1,000 people, we previously wrote about it here.
Delving deeper into full length accounts of the General Slocum, you have several choices.
A total of eight books and two government reports are solely devoted to the tragedy and encapsulate the story thoroughly. Continue reading