Today -100: November 14, 1925: Governor Smith may be a big man in New York but he does not cut any ice here

The Rhinelander v. Rhinelander court hears more of Alice Rhinelander’s letters to her future husband, in which she tried to make him jealous by mentioning other men, including Al Jolson, who she said was a guest at the house where she was a maid. Did they really spend an entire day just reading out letters? 

Al Kelly, a sailor, has a side gig as a “human fly.” He climbs the 24-story Candler Building on W. 42nd Street, NYC after accepting a $500 bet that he could perch on its flagpole for four hours. But after an hour a cop who used to be a structural steel worker starts climbing after him, and Kelly gives up. The cop drags him to court, where he’s released after telling his story.

Examination of King Tutankhamun’s mummy shows that he was 15 (and let’s not even get into his mummy penis).

Colorado Gov. Clarence Morley refuses to extradite Philip Klein, who is wanted by New York on firearm charges and jumping bail. One of the NYC cops who trekked to Colorado says Morley told them that “Governor Smith may be a big man in New York but he does not cut any ice here” and “If Klein is a menace to New York, he is a menace here as well, so we will keep him.” Which makes no sense at all since he faces no charges in Colorado. Morley denies that conversation took place, says the papers were improperly filled out. Det. Sullivan thinks Morley is following Ku Klux Klan wishes. 

The producers of Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” will skip Boston, refusing Mayor James Curley’s demand for extensive edits.

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Today -100: November 13, 1925: Of debts, bee strikes, filth, and duels

Italy agrees to pay off its war debt to the US. $2,407,000,000 over 62 years. These are better terms than the US is offering anyone else, reflecting the poor state of the Italian economy.

Headline of the Day -100:

These are bees which France insisted on getting from Germany as part of war reparations, no longer producing honey. They sure assimilated fast, didn’t they?

Alice Rhinelander’s lawyer Lee Davis objects to Kip’s lawyer reading out “this filth,” meaning his client’s letters, 26 of which are read to the jury today. He threatens “If this girl is dragged in the slime, I’ll drag him as well (by reading his letters to Alice).”

Sadly, they aren’t filth, even by 1920s standards, so I won’t bother with quotes.

The German Reichstag’s Judiciary Committee adopts a bill to cashier army officers who participate in duels. War Minister Otto Geßler, who personally disapproves of duels, nevertheless objects to officers being fired for something university students get away with all the time and for which other government officials are not fired. Naturally, the right-wing nationalist parties vote against punishing duelists. During a previous Reichstag debate on dueling, one deputy... well, you can guess.

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Today -100: November 12, 1925: Of rhinelanders, blue shirts, and shells

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander continues. Alice’s (semi-literate) letters to Leonard are read to the court to prove that she was the pursuer. He takes the stand and admits to having been a virgin before he spent a week with her at the Hotel Marie Antoinette (well before they married).

Armistice Day is celebrated at the Arc de Triumph by 6,000 members of the new Faisceau des Combattants et des Producteurs, the first French Fascist group (what took them so long?). Blue shirts. Sadly, no nation’s fascist group ever adorned themselves with red shirts. Leader Jacques Arthuys, in his speech, distinguishes French from Italian Fascism, the former being “adapted to our thoughtful and measured temperament”. Perhaps because no one really wants thoughtful and measured fascists, the group will collapse within a couple of years; Arthuys will die in a German concentration camp.

Also on Armistice Day, three girls are killed by a shell they find in a field in Ciry-Salsogne, France.

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Today -100: November 11, 1925: Of negro blood, anti-Semitism, and radios

Headline of the Day -100:

Alice Rhinelander’s lawyer points out that after “Kip’s” father placed him at a school for “backward youths” for a year (he stuttered), he never visited him, but when the proud Huguenot name Rhinelander became associated with negroes, he jumped in with both feet to extract his son from the woman he met while at that school (well, he sent his lawyers to do that, anyway; in fact, neither he or any other member of the family will attend the trial). Ouch. Well, I’m sure this trial couldn’t get more invasive and embarrassing.

Headline of the Day -100:

So the Rhinelander case makes every single inter-racial marriage newsworthy now?

Dr. Herman Vogelstein, chief rabbi of the Breslau Synagogue, says anti-Semitism is on the decline in Germany. Phew. He blames its rise after the war on Germans looking for a scapegoat and on Jews for being too focused on Palestine. Vogelstein’s optimism will probably be dynamited, along with his synagogue, on Kristallnacht and he’ll escape to the US.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover says he’ll stop issuing new radio station licenses, as recommended by the National Radio Conference, until new legislation is passed.

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Today -100: November 10, 1925: Of colored blood luminaphones, and clowns

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander, Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander’s annulment suit against his wife Alice (the only grounds for divorce in New York at the time was adultery), on the ground that she deceived him about having negro blood, begins. His lawyer says “The consent of the plaintiff to the marriage was obtained by fraud.” He says the jury will have to decide if Alice Rhinelander is “colored and of colored blood.” And a lot of shit about how she roped in poor weak-willed Kip.

By the way, an earlier post mentioned that Alice was put in the Social Register by virtue of her marriage, the only black person therein. The person who then successfully pushed for her to be removed was Emily Post herself.

There are a couple of books on the trial. Heidi Ardizzone and Earl Lewis, Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, which looks to be more popular history, and Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor, Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness, is more academic and uses the trial as a lens on race in the US in the 1920s.

H. Grindell Matthews, who you’ll remember as inventor of the Death Ray™, has now invented the less-dramatic Luminaphone™, which sends lights through perforated plates to produce sounds. Not very interesting sounds, but sounds nonetheless.

Grock the Clown says he is leaving Britain forever because they insist on collecting income tax from him, the fuckers. At one point Grock was the highest-paid performer in Europe. See if this explains why.

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Today -100: November 9, 1925: Vast plots are the worst kind

The Italian police claim that the assassination plot against Mussolini was a “vast plot” to overthrow the Fascist regime and the monarchy, involving an ever-increasing number of suspects in every city. Or at least that’s their story and they’re sticking with it. Although they are releasing a lot of the people they arrested.

The Vanderbilts are going to demolish their mansion on 5th Avenue, 

so they’re opening it up to the public for the first time, with the entry charge going to a children’s charity. This is what sits on the site now:

There was another building there between the ‘20s and the ‘50s, but I ran out of patience trying to find a pic of it.

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Today -100: November 8, 1925: Everything and everybody

The Italian Fascist regime continues to arrest people allegedly involved in the assassination plot against Mussolini. Police are blaming a Masonic offshoot which as far as I know had nothing to do with it.

Headline of the Day -100:

Canners say whale meat will soon be available in cans.

The Prince of Wales falls off his horse again.

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Today -100: November 7, 1925: Of unfortunately failed assassinations, klans, and the bootleg class

The Italian government claims the assassination attempt on Mussolini was actually part of a deep conspiracy to overthrow not only the Fascist regime but the monarchy as well, funded from abroad. Bullshit, of course.

After William Jackson copped to being one-fourth black when applying for a marriage license to marry a white woman, Helen Burns, the KKK burns a cross on his lawn in Montclair, New Jersey. Looks like the marriage now won’t happen.

Andrew J. Volstead of Volstead Act fame tells an Anti-Saloon League convention that Prohibition authorities should prosecute and imprison regular users of alcohol “so that the country might know some of the so-called ‘good people’ are simply in the bootleg class.” Some aliens found boozing it up should be deported, he says.

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Today -100: November 6, 1925: The next generation will be both homely and dumb

Tito Zanibóni, a former Socialist (but Fash-curious) deputy is arrested for attempting to assassinate Mussolini. He’d rented a hotel room in Rome overlooking the balcony from which The Duck was scheduled to give a speech, but police arrest him after a tip-off. Mussolini orders the dissolution of the Unitarian Socialist Party to which Zanibóni belonged and the closure of its newspaper, and is going after Masonic lodges, ostensibly to protect them from reprisal by furious Fascists.

It probably doesn’t mean anything, but Mr. M’s speech was to celebrate Armistice Day, which in Italy meant the surrender Austria near the end of the Great War, and Zanibóni’s sniper rifle was the Austrian Steyr-Mannlicher M1895.

Zanibóni’s trial in 1927 (why the delay?) will result in a 25-year sentence, which will be commuted by the king in 1943. He’ll by appointed High Commissioner for the National Purification of Fascism in 1944, but will soon resign because the government failed to give him powers to, you know, nationally purify Fascism.

Biologist and influential racist eugenicist and Albert Wiggam says American women are losing their beauty, which will be followed by their intelligence (the two evidently go together) because stupid, unattractive women are out-breeding them. “If it keeps up, the next generation will be both homely and dumb.” 

25-year-old Soprano Mary Lewis joins the Metropolitan Opera, unusually coming from a career in vaudeville, including the Ziegfeld Follies, and silent movies.

Campbell McCarthy, who we are irrelevantly informed is a negro, gets a last-minute reprieve (a postponement) of his hanging in Illinois, but insists on being allowed to eat the last meal anyway (chicken; it doesn’t sound like prisoners have a choice of last meal).

Lucy Dales becomes the first woman mayor of Dunstable in England, elected almost unanimously by the council, on which she has sat since 1908. I say almost unanimously because her father voted against her. “She already has had as much responsibility as a woman should carry.” Dunstable has only just gotten electricity, explaining the light bulb theme you can sort of see – if you squint – at this wooden sculpture of Dales unveiled this very year.

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Today -100: November 5, 1925: Of fruitcakes, aces of spies, and big parades

The Ku Klux Klan did not do well in elections Tuesday, failing to defeat the Catholic John Purcell (D) for Virginia treasurer and failing to elect mayors in Detroit (where it did elect 4 to the city council), Buffalo or Louisville. The latter’s klannishness was discovered quite late and he was forced to pull out of the race. The Klan candidate for mayor of Indianapolis did win.

The revolution in Southern China is seriously imperiling British Christmas, dependent as it is on imports of ginger for puddings and fruitcakes. Oh noes!

Headline of the Day -100:

“Although”? Surely not being alive is a highly desirable quality in a politician.

Sidney Reilly, the Russian-born so-called “Ace of Spies,” is executed in secret by the Soviet Union’s secret police. The veteran of many plots, most of which fell apart, he was paid by god knows how many countries’ secret services, most notably the British. He is tricked by a OBPU front organization into sneaking back into Russia despite having been sentenced to death in absentia in 1918.

King Vidor’s “The Big Parade” parades into movie theatres.

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Today -100: November 4, 1925: I’m Walkering here

Tammany’s candidate J.J. (“Jimmy”) Walker, 44, is elected mayor of New York, part of a Democratic sweep. The NYT looks to Walker for “a sharp break with the most offensive methods” of Hylan. “It will be a grateful surcease if the City Hall leaves off asserting every day that wicked conspirators are in a ‘plot’ to ‘rob’ the city.” Walker will indeed not assert that, since he’ll be taking large bribes from those conspirators plotting to rob the city.

“Old-timers” complain about how quiet the election is in NYC, with no fights or nuthin’.

One notable Republican loss: former governor Charles Whitman is defeated for district attorney of New York County by incumbent Joab Banton.

Ruth Baker Pratt (R) is elected as the first woman member of the NYC Board of Aldermen, from the “Silk Stocking District.” In 1928 she’ll be the first woman elected to Congress from NY State.

New Jersey elects A. Harry Moore (D) of Jersey City as governor. He ran on a platform of dismantling state enforcement of Prohibition. Hey, NJ has 3-year terms for governors. (Update: changed to 4 years in 1947. And before then they couldn’t succeed themselves, so Moore was governor for three non-consecutive terms).

Greece claims the forensic evidence shows that Bulgarian troops killed that Greek soldier in Greece and dragged his body into Bulgaria.

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, in a speech in Dresden, says that at Locarno, British Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain told him that “England’s entire naval and land forces would be at Germany’s disposal if France crossed the German frontier.” While this does express the multi-lateral nature of Locarno’s security guarantees, the phrasing is a little startling for Brits.

The Prince of Wales falls off his horse, as was the custom, while fox-hunting.

The NYPD will soon patrol the business districts to run down hold-up men using 9 new cars carrying detectives “known as skillful marksmen and equipped with rifles, sawed-off shotguns, tear gas bombs and pistols of unusually large calibre,” as well as machine guns capable of firing 100 rounds in 7 seconds. The drivers will be “expert in driving.” They’re hoping to develop radios to put in the cars; until then, the patrols will have to check in every 30 minutes to see if there have been any robberies. So stupid in so many ways.

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Today -100: November 3, 1925: Of skyscrapers, kluxers, and pleasure gardens

The German Ministry of Health bans skyscrapers (buildings taller than 5 stories) in Berlin, because they are unhealthy, obstructing light and air.

The Ku Klux Klan is making a push to elect a municipal government in Detroit.

“The Pleasure Garden,” the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is released. It’s... nothing special.

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Today -100: November 2, 1925: Everyone’s a critic

José Santos Chocano, the poet-laureate of Peru, shoots to death a journalist for writing articles about him.

A pamphlet called “Fascist Catechism,” which is “stated to be approved by Mussolini,” says Italy must acquire “all the areas of Italy,” including Corsica and Nice (French territories), Malta (British), Dalmatia (Yugoslavia), and parts of Switzerland.

A fake pamphlet supposedly from the Knights of Columbus supporting the candidacy of (Catholic) John Purcell for Virginia treasurer is believed to have been put out by the Ku Klux Klan trying to gin up anti-Catholic sentiment. 

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Today -100: November 1, 1925: Oh, dear, put that gun away

Ku Klux Klan leader D.C. Stephenson’s trial for the kidnapping and assault & battery of Madge Oberholtzer hears her dying statement, after some excisions by Judge Will Sparks. There’s some argument about the meaning of “dear” in the testimony of a railway porter that he heard her say “Oh, dear, put that gun away.” The ominously named Judge Sparks says it might have been used in fear rather than as a term of endearment.

French stage and film comedian Max Linder (born Gabriel-Maximilien Leuvielle in 1893), 41, and his wife Hélène, 26, commit suicide, taking Veronal and morphine before he slits first her wrists, then his own. Er, it may be a murder-suicide rather than a suicide pact. They leave behind an 18-month-old daughter Maud, who dedicated much of her life (she died in 2017 at 93) to discovering, preserving and promoting prints of the films of a father she couldn’t remember. Linder, the first movie star to have his name on a movie poster c.1909, advanced silent comedy in part by basing it on character (“Max”) and developing gags that went beyond slapstick. Some of those were ripped off by Chaplin and many others; his broken-mirror routine in “Seven Years Bad Luck” (1921) is more imaginative than the Marx Brothers’ version in “Duck Soup.” (Also, he looked a lot like John Astin playing Gomez Addams in the ‘60s “Addams Family” tv show. Just sayin’.) His career hadn’t been going brilliantly in recent years. He made a few films in Hollywood, but they weren’t successful. And he had the problem of many film comedians of his generation, that he was good in short films but didn’t scale up well to features.

The Persian National Assembly deposes Ahmad Qajar, who has been shah since he was 11, ending the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925). He’s been in exile in France for a couple of years and has been enjoying casinos and blondes, so he doesn’t seem to much mind being deposed.

Soviet War Minister Mikhail Frunze dies at age 40 after an ulcer operation from chloroform poisoning. There are already rumors that Stalin had him killed, and the use of chloroform and indeed the operation itself were personally ordered by Stalin, who ignored Fruze’s doctors when they said his heart was too weak to survive it. Also, the dosage was super-high. So Stalin might well have purposely had him killed.

Sometime this month, Anita Loos’s book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes will be published.

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Today -100: October 31, 1925: Of frame-ups, aether, and secret bigotry

The ending of the Greco-Bulgar war is considered a triumph and proof of concept of the League of Nations, though Britain’s threat to blockade either country if they failed to comply might have had something to do with it.

The NY Morning Telegraph reported that Fountain Inn in Eustis, Florida, of which Republican NYC mayoral candidate Frank Waterman is a director, is biased against Jewish customers, reproducing a letter from its manager. Waterman calls it a “frame-up” but fires that manager, as one does in response to a frame-up. Then he finds that the recipient of the letter doesn’t seem to exist and he calls the letter a fake, attributing it without evidence to Tammany Hall.

Prof. Dayton Miller of Mt. Wilson Observatory says Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is premised on the non-existence of ether, is disproved by Miller’s detection of the mystery substance.

Headline of the Day -100:

I... don’t... even...

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Today -100: October 30, 1925: Of evacuations, elections, and courts-martialses

Greek troops evacuate Bulgaria by the time set by the League of Nations, which appoints a commission of inquiry to figure out who, human or canine, started this nonsense and what compensation they should pay. Both countries have agreed in advance to accept its decision.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Tsankov’s brother Danoso is assassinated on the streets of Sofia. Danny T is a member of parliament but supposedly estranged from his brother and it’s unclear what this has to do with the war or anything.

Conservatives gain seats in Canada’s general elections, but without winning a parliamentary majority. Prime Minister Mackenzie King (Lib) loses his seat in York North and will have to find another one next year, but he’ll continue as prime minister anyway.

At Col. Billy Mitchell’s court-martial for violating army discipline by expressing his opinions on air defenses, the prosecution admits he was given no opportunity, as the rules require, to defend himself during the investigation stage, and there is some doubt there was such a stage. In other words, the prosecution is reluctant to admit that this court-martial was simply ordered by Calvin Coolidge who, the defense points out, said in June at Annapolis that naval peeps have wide latitude to express their opinions. The court decides the president can just change the rules whenever he sees fit.

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Today -100: October 29, 1925: Fascist molecules?

Paul Painlevé forms a new cabinet, becoming finance minister in place of Caillaux as well as prime minister.

Greece says its troops are out of Bulgaria, Bulgaria says they’re not. Greece accuses Bulgarian troops of attacking the evacuating Greeks.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing.

Anti-Fascists protest a Fascist celebration of the 3rd anniversary of the March on Rome at the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Ave. in NYC (you know its phone number).

Mussolini celebrates on horseback, because of course he does. He tells an audience in Milan, “Every one of you must consider himself a soldier, a molecule, feeling and pulsating with the entire organism.”

It’s a tiny story in today’s paper, but the feds are hunting James Durkin, a suspected Chicago car thief who shot and killed Bureau of Investigation (proto-FBI) agent Edwin Shanahan, who was following him. This is the first BOI agent killed in the line of duty. It will take the feds 3 months to catch Durkin. He will then be tried by an Illinois court because killing a federal officer was not yet a federal crime. He’ll be released in 1954 and die in 1981.

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Today -100: October 28, 1925: What sort of monster turns down a free apple pie?

Since the French Cabinet can’t force Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux to resign when he rejects a capital levy, the whole Cabinet resigns in order to form a new government without him, even though there is no way a capital levy would pass the Senate. Caillaux had also become stalemated with Washington on a plan to repay France’s war debt.

The League of Nations plans to create some sort of Balkans security pact.

A Paris court overrules the Duke of Bisaccia’s veto on his son marrying an actress, the father’s permission normally being needed for under-25s. The court says actresses are perfectly respectable now so there’s no cause for objection.

Brig. Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the assistant Treasury secretary in charge of Prohibition enforcement, complains that Congress made his job impossible by allowing sacramental wine to be sold for profit.

Coolidge turns down an offer from Vermont University’s Girls’ Club of an apple pie for the White House Thanksgiving dinner, possibly because it would be seen as an endorsement of the proposal for an Apple Week, which would be a precedent forcing him to endorse all sorts of fruit-based weeks.

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Today -100: October 27, 1925: The League commands it!

The League of Nations orders Greece and Bulgaria 24 hours to order the removal of their troops from each other’s territory and 60 hours to complete it.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing.

Right-wing military coup in Nicaragua by Gen. (and former president) Emiliano Chamorro, whose Conservative Party lost last October’s elections.

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Today -100: October 26, 1925: Violence should be timely and chivalrous

Greece and Bulgaria both agree to do whatever the League of Nations tells them to do.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing in the NYT.

The right-wing Nationalist (DNVP) ministers of finance, the interior, and commerce quit the German government because they’re not happy with the Locarno Pact. The Nationalists’ constituents especially object to the renunciation of war to re-re-possibly another re-conquer Alsace-Lorraine.

The Berlin Montag Morgen sues former crown prince Wilhelm, who issued an open letter saying... something, the NYT won’t spill the tea... about their report that he’s been lavishing presents on one of his secretaries. Her father says that Willy had him locked up in an asylum for a year after he objected to the attentions Wills was paying his daughter.

In an article looking back over Fascism’s many achievements, Mussolini writes “I have always maintained that violence should be timely and chivalrous. But when the revolutionary party holds the reins of government, then violence should be exclusively in behalf of the State. Private, individual and sporadic violence is harmful to Fascism.” He says “We must impose absolute discipline” on trade unions so that the majority of the people don’t think they can, you know, lead. “Discipline must not be purely formal, but substantial and absolute, almost religious. The workers must be taught that their duties are more important than their rights.”

The Marx Brothers play “The Cocoanuts” (dialogue by George S. Kaufman, music by Irving Berlin) opens in Boston. It will be refined over subsequent runs; by the time the film version is made in 1929, for example, Chico will no longer be called “Willie the Wop.” Margaret Dumont came aboard for the Broadway run. I shall refrain from making any Groucho-esque (Grouchovian?) jokes about Kay Francis coming aboard.

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