the1920sinpictures - Tumblr blog

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1915 "Lucie Belin dans l'atelier" by Edouard Villard. From My Vintage Dreams, FB.

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1929 c. Illustration, can't read the artist's name. From Art Deco, Art Nouveau & 20th Century Decoratif Arts Group, FB.

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1925 Poster for a Mack Sennett comedy starring Alice Day in "Cold Turkey". From Silent Era and Pre Code Art, FB.

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WWI Poster, 1918

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Recent Acquisition - Ephemera Collection

The Open Door for Home Builders. 1926 Gordon-Van Tine Co., Davenport, Iowa.

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1924 Spring at the Capitol with a car fit for a senator - a Ford Motor Company Lincoln! Frank Hellsten did the color and posted this on FB.

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1912 "Spring Rain" by John Sloan. From New York City Images: 1850-1980, FB.

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April, 1919 Handcraft work from "Woman's World" magazine. Click to enlarge!

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April, 1928 "La Vie Parisienne" magazine cover with an illustration of "jealousy" by Cheri Herouard. From Art Deco, Avant Garde and Modernism, FB.

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1927 Etching on the glass door of the Peacock Dining Room of the Hassayampa Inn, Arizona. From Art Deco, Avant Garde and Modernism, FB.

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1925 Dahlias table lamp by Charles Schneider. From My Vintage Dreams, FB.

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1929 Jean Harlow in her first speaking role in "The Saturday Night Kid", color by Victor Mascaro. From America in the 1920's, FB.

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1929 Poster for Mercedes-Benz by Edward Cucuel Offelsmeyer. From Art Deco, Avant Garde and Modernism, FB.

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Ex-Wife, published anonymously in 1929, was a succès de scandale. The very title aggressively challenged American mores and morals; divorce was almost unheard of in the middle classes at the time. And Manhattan high life in the 1920s (the novel takes place between 1923 and 1927) gave the prurient everything they could wish: not just divorce, but promiscuity, abortion, smoking, and drinking.

And I had, for an instant, that feeling that New York was an altogether beautiful place to live, no matter what happened to me living in it—a comforting feeling that had come to me sometimes, of late, when I stopped looking to people for comfort.

Narrated by Patricia, it tells of her life after her husband walked out on her. She goes from grief and despair to acceptance to indifference while becoming increasingly successful as a advertising copywriter in fashion, and bedding numerous men. Her friend Lucia, a slightly older and more experienced divorcee, supports and mentors her.

Surprisingly, the book is vehemently anti-feminist. The 1920s were a time when women could vote and were free of Victorian behavioral constraints, but systemic sexism ran deep and went largely unnoticed—at least by Patricia and Lucia.

The book was filmed in 1930 as The Divorcée, starring Norma Shearer, who won her only Oscar for it.

Norma Shearer in The Divorcee

In the forward to the 2023 edition (whose cover is shown above), Alissa Bennett writes, "It's easy to get caught in the trap of Ex-Wife's nostalgic charm; there are phonographs and jazz clubs and dresses from Vionnet; there are verboten cocktails and towering new buildings that reach toward a New York skyline so young that it still reveals its stars."

The author's son, Marc Parrott, agreed. "The New York described here," he wrote in an afterward to the 1989 edition, reprinted in the current edition, "and this was true, I think, for 20 years or more—was much smaller, much more intimate, much safer and much cheaper than the city from the '50s on to the present. It was also cleaner. My mother called it 'shining.'"

This is how Patricia and Lucia react to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue:

"The tune matches New York," Lucia said. "The New York we know. It has gaiety and colour and irrelevancy and futility and glamour as beautifully blended as the ingredients in crêpes suzette." I said, "It makes me think of skyscrapers and Harlem and liners sailing and newsboys calling extras." "It makes me think I’m twenty years old and on the way to owning the city," Lucia said. "Start it over again, will you?"

Second & fourth photos: NYC Past Third photo: eBay

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Edward Hopper, The City, 1927. Oil on canvas.

Photo: WikiArt

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1922 Bodices and necklines for spring from "Gazette du Bon Genre" magazine.

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1919 Spring/summer ads for Kuppenheimer's menswear.