08:47

[Music – I Still Love To Kiss You by Hutch, Album The Age of Style – Hits of the 30s]

Section 2 – History & Historiography

[Music Fade Out]

09:01

In January, February, and March 1930, the stock market had improved substantially, then in April the recovery seemed to lose momentum.  In June another drop occurred, and then a steady decline week by week through June 1932.

News reports continually mentioned that the hard times were close to being over.  Forecasts were optimistic that improvement was just on the horizon and that the worst had already come.  Thus people who could afford continuing life as it should be, parties and plans, maybe a little less extravagant but still happening.

09:36

Here and there a note of bank failure occurring in random places across the country didn’t take much note.  92% of bank failures happened in rural areas of less than 10,000 people.  This is unrelated to the Dust Bowl, those droughts came later in three waves – 1934,1936, & 1939-40.  Still there were 758 bank suspensions with deposits of $353,500,000 by June of 1930.  In the cities, bank mergers also referred as group banking seemed more likely for the need of better pooled resources and offering more stability.  The end of small independent banks seemed inevitable.

10:18

By October 1930, rumors of bank failures and bank runs started to appear everywhere.  Two biggest ones involved Havana, Cuba and Lisbon, Portugal.  Yes, international news covered these two events.  Havana’s difficulties began in late September and early October.  Within 3 hours of notification, banks from Atlanta flew over $45 million to secure the Havana bank.  Then on October 22^nd, the biggest national bank in Northern Portugal failed, causing government intervention over losses, and effecting over $75 million in deposits

10:50

The mere hint of a bank failure would lead to a bank run, which is when bank depositors rush to withdraw their money.  Thus causing even more bank failures.  These events more than Stock Market Crash of 1929 would be one of the lead factors of economic ruin in the Great Depression.

Another failure closer to home will soon kick off the next level of the Great Depression and two years of continual panics.

11:14

In tough times, it’s always good to remember there is a better way of life, thus the super rich became a lot more interesting to the masses.  Society reporters and editors alert readers of the comings and goings. 

In finding old articles, I kept running across one name – Nancy Randolph, primarily from New York Daily News whose articles would be syndicated across the country.  Anytime a name keeps reappearing it is flag to investigate a little further.  Hence the development of Cobina Wright, Jakey Astor, and Frank Shields into the primary story. 

11:45

Nancy Randolph was the society editor with a long history.  She was a pen name for multiple reporters, like Dear Abby.  In 1928 and for the next 12 years, the role was filled by Inez Callaway Robb who moved to New York for hardcore journalism and was shocked when she had to take over the society pages.  Her only interest in Society’s comings and goings, she remarked in 1935,  “In other words, we don’t give a hand about Mrs. Vanderbilt giving a luncheon unless her guests include Al Capone and the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

12:15

Inez loved mixing her hardcore journalism skills to apply to the Society reports adding depth and context.  She started her journalistic career as a teen who won a hot air balloon trip and wrote a sensational article for the local paper.  She would go on with several serious writing assignments and would eventually be one of the first American female frontline reporters during World War II.  In September 1929, she married a public relations executive with a last name Robb and had a long journalistic career covering Hitler’s use of poison gas to the Duke of Windsor’s marriage, aka former David, Prince of Wales, the abdicated King Edward VIII.

12:53

Another popular reporter is Cholly Knickerbocker.  “Cholly” being an upperclass pronunciation of Charlie.  Knickerbocker refers to the early Dutch settlers and their short pants culottes that formed the earlier colonial elites.  The pseudonym was first used by John Keller in 1891 in New York Recorder and moving with him to New York American, where it continued under other names until 1919.  Then in 1919 – 1942 it was used by Maury Henry Biddle Paul for William Randolph Hearst’s the New York American and New York Journal – American.  Maury as Cholly was a particular nemesis to Doris Duke.  He first praised her then took a quick turn of dislike and continually published the most unflattering portraits of her.  He also coined the term “café society.” 

13:40

Later, Jackie Kennedy’s fashion designer Oleg Cassini’s brother Igor Cassini and his assistant and occasional ghostwriter Liz Smith (yes, the longtime syndicated gossip columnist who passed away in 2017) used the moniker.  Igor as Cholly would coin the term “jet set.”  The Cholly Knickerbocker pseudonym was last used by Charles Van Rensselaer from 1963-1965.  This latter Charles from a long established family and whose brother Philip was brief companion to Barbara Hutton in her later years and wrote her biography Million Dollar Baby after her death.  Charles would later be replaced by Aileen Mehle who would write under the pseudonym Suzy Knickerbocker.

Other reporters and gossip columnists include Elsa Maxwell and later Cobina Wright in one her many incarnations in trying to survive and make a living after her husband lost their fortune.

14:34

Society always involves money and needing a place to go.  The Pierre opened in October 1930 to great fanfare.  Investors included Otto Kahn, Walter Chrysler, and Barbara’s uncle E.F. Hutton, husband to Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Another investor Robert Gerry, Sr, grandson of the inventor of gerrymandering, also provided the lot of his old family mansion at Fifth Avenue and 61^st Street.  The 41 storied building is designed by architects Shultze & Weaver of the future Waldorf-Astoria.  The Pierre cost $15 million to build.

15:07

Born Pierre Casalasco, restauranteur and society caterer Charles Pierre left his Corsican family restaurant & hotel to study Paris haute cuisine and hospitality then moved to London then New York.  He worked for 9 years at Sherry’s then the Ritz-Carlton before setting up his own two different consecutive restaurants, which Charles Pierre closed to venture into the new hotel after being fed up with democratization of public manners.  He fully intended to cater to the elites he had become so accustomed and was one of their favorites.

The hotel would fall into bankruptcy in 1932.  In 1938, oilman J Paul Getty bought the Pierre for $2.5 million and converted 75 rooms into cooperative apartments in 1959.  Elizabeth Taylor, Aristotle Onassis, Sumner Redstone, and Yves Saint-Laurent would be some of the longterm residents.

15:58

The tuxedo had a resurgence of popularity in the 1930s.  The dinner jacket style was first designed in midnight blue for the Prince of Wales who later became King Edward VII in 1865 to use at Sandringham.  While his mother Queen Victoria reigned, Edward served as the epitome of fashionable leisured elite, stylish and socially active, even friends with Sir Thomas Sopwith.  When Queen Victoria withdrew from duties during widowhood, Edward pioneered the royal public appearance for activities.  As his mother was the grandmother of Europe, Edward was its uncle, and he worried his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm II would likely bring the world to war, which happened 4 years after Edward’s death.  Another nephew was the doomed Tsar Nicholas II, the doppelganger cousin to Edward’s own son George V.  Edward was the longest serving heir apparent to the throne after 59 years 45 days only to be surpassed in length by the current Prince Charles now 73+ years in waiting.

16:59

The tuxedo was brought to the United States possibly in 1886 by Griswold Lorillard or more commonly attributed to merchant James Brown Potter at the Autumn Ball in October at Tuxedo Park.  By 1888, it increased in popularity from more strict formal settings to summer and informal attire.  It went out of vogue during the 1920s then resurged during the 1930s as the supreme evening attire for men.

Tuxedo Park was developed in 1885 as an exclusive enclave for Manhattan’s wealthiest.  The term tuxedo is derived to from the word “bear” or “wolf” but likely the Algonquian p-tuck-sepo or more specifically Lenape (leh-nuh-pee) language tucsedo, which means crooked river.

Much like the way our story twists and turns, never flowing in a neat and straight direction.  Filled with pretty colorful and hypnotic distractions discarded whenever the wind blows a different way much like the simple childhood toys of pinwheels.