Articles from Vanity Fair Hall of Fame
This article was written by the silent film star herself for a fashionable American magazine concerning a few of the difficulties in the way of dress, make-up, manners and technique an actress might consider before portraying a child on stage or screen.
At the very peak of bourgeois respectability, one of the high priests of art and culture, Gilbert Seldes (1893 – 1970), sat comfortably on his woolsack atop Mount Parnasus and piled the praises high and deep for one of the lowest of the commercial arts. The beneficiary was the cartoonist George Herriman (1880 – 1944), creator of Ignatz Mouse and all other absurd creations that appeared in his syndicated comic strip, Krazy Kat (1913-1944):
His strange unnerving distorted trees, his totally unlivable houses, his magic carpets, his faery foam, are items in a composition which is incredibly with unreality. Through them wanders Krazy, the most tender and the most foolish of creatures, a gentle monster of our new mythology.
A smattering of cartoons depicting those sweet young things of yore who were partial to bathtub gin, short skirts and
short hair styles.
In 1919 you didn’t have to be plugged-in 24/7 to the youth scene in order to recognize that bobbed hair was where the fickle finger of fashion was pointing. Perhaps the editors of VANITY FAIR presumed that a bobbed hair party was the best social alternative that could have been offered six months after the 1919 passage of the 18th Amendment, which ushered in the Prohibition of alcohol throughout the United States.
There were several clothing options available for the well-heeled men fortunate enough to (briefly) enjoy Titanic‘s First Class comforts. Dinner suits were not strictly confined to black and there were a number of shirting and accessory choices; this article covers all of them quite thoroughly.
More on men’s fashions can be read here.
In the June, 1920 issue of British Vogue, an anonymous correspondent tried her hand at prophecy:
As surely as the woman of yesterday was born to ride in a limousine, the woman of today was born to fly an aeroplane.
-that said, we have higher hopes for the women of the 21st Century – however, a year earlier, the Vanity Fair writer charged with covering all aspects of motoring, both horizontal and vertical, penned this enthusiastic article and filled it with the names of many of the women aviators who were at that time, striving to make new records in aviation history; it must have been a very exciting time in history to experience (except for the dental care).
A small column from a 1915 issue of Vanity Fair in which the correspondent praised the virtues of Howard Copeland (an American psychologist and ambulance volunteer working in Frabce), Gertrude Aldrich (author of an Atlantic Magazine essay titled, Little House on the Marne), Cardinal Mercier (author of the Great Belgian Pastoral) and W.F. Bailey (authored a paper concerning the war in Northeastern Europe). These writers are preferred to the usually celebrated ink-slingers like Hellaire Belloc, Rudyard Kipling, Anatole France, and Arnold Bennett who are all compared to amateur recruiting sergeants in support of the War.
This image file is poorly scanned: we recommend that you print it for greater legibility.
Writing his review of O Pioneers, DRESS and VANITY FAIR book critic Henry Brinsley wrote:
Miss Willa Cather in O Pioneers! (O title!!) is neither a skilled storyteller nor the least bit of an artist. And yet by the end of the book, something has happened in the readers mind that leaves him grateful…There isn’t a vestige of ‘style’ as such: for page after page one is dazed at the ineptness of the medium and the triviality of the incidents…And the secret of this is the persistence throughout of a single fine quality of the author – her extraordinary sincerity.
Contained within the confines of the attached PDF is an excerpt from the review of the New York production of the 1921 play, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton 1888-1965) – with much enthusiasm, the reviewer wrote:
We know of no better expression of the creed of the new generation than that which Clemence Dane has drawn up….
What followed was a very short soliloquy which beautifully summed up not only the philosophy of the modern woman, but the philosophy of much the Twentieth Century.
Here is a mock society page that sought to belittle all the goings on among the sweet young things at Newport
A large and fashionably dressed group of Newport’s ‘creme de la creme’ were observed on burning sands. Mixed bathing was indulged in…Many succulent bits of gossip and spicey rumor have been overheard in the ladies annex during the noon dressing hour and right merry time was had by all.
One of Conde Nast’s most popular magazines reviewed D.W. Griffith’s film, The Birth of a Nation and gave a somewhat balanced account of the production. The journalist clearly recognized that the movie was unfair to the Negro yet remarkable for it’s photography.
In the early Twenties there were a good many social changes which men had to struggle to understand; among them was the Modern Woman. The Italian novelist and lexicographer Alfredo Panzini (1863 – 1939) attempted to do just that for the editors of Vanity Fair.
‘Don’t expect us’, she says to you, disconsolate male, ‘don’t expect us to be like the old-fashioned girls who went to church, and did the laundry, and looked up to their husbands as to their God.’
The following is an excerpt from the review of the New York production of the 1921 play, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton 1888 – 1965). With much enthusiasm, the reviewer wrote:
We know of no better expression of the creed of the new generation than that which Clemence Dane has drawn up….
What followed was a very short soliloquy which beautifully summed up not only the philosophy of the modern woman, but the philosophy of much the Twentieth Century.
With the publishing of the first part of his autobiography, Reveries Over Childhood and Youth, W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) got some attention in the American press. This small column first appeared in VANITY FAIR magazine praising his ability as a genuine artist.
Stephen Leacock (1869 – 1944) had some amusing opinions concerning social introductions according to the recognized formulas.
With the approach of the winter season, conversation as an art is again in order. It is a thing that we all need to consider. Some of us are asked out to dinner merely because we talk. Others, chiefly because we do not. It is a matter in which we can help one another. Let us discuss it…
Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms.
Photographs of the Christmas Bullet, the flexible-winged strutless bi-plane, and the designer of the craft, Dr. William Christmas (1865 – 1960). Also pictured are the Curtiss two seater, the Dayton-Wright Air Limousine and the Dayton Wright bi-plane.
Click here to read the 1912 obituary of Wilbur Wright.
A thumbnail biography of the celebrated silent film director,D.W. Griffith
This cartoon was drawn by the New York artist Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954), who had a swell time comparing and contrasting the bio-diversity along 1922 Fifth Avenue; from the free-verse poets on Eighth Avenue up to the narrow-nosed society swanks on Sixty-Eighth Street -and everyone else in between.
Click here to read a 1921 article about the growth of the Jewish population in New York.
Click here to read a magazine article about 1921 Harlem.
A witty if dry profile of George Jean Nathan (1882 – 1958), one of the more prolific essayists and reviewers of all things dramatic and literary during the Twenties. At the time of this printing he was serving as the co-editor (along with his friend H.L. Mencken) of the American magazine The Smart Set while contributing occasional drama reviews to Vanity Fair. You’ll read a very long list of Nathan’s likes and dislikes, which, in fact, comprise 99% of the profile.
Later in life, Nathan would wed Mary Pickford – read about her here…
