Monthly Archives: November 2024

A fish story lands in the public domain

Posted on November 30, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Actress Joan Lowell‘s Cradle of the Deep was a best-selling memoir of a childhood at sea, sailing the globe for years with an all-male crew. But after Lincoln Colcord, who actually had spent years at sea, called it “unmitigated bosh”, … Continue reading →

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The sound of the western

Posted on November 29, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Matthew Kerns has a detailed, illustrated appreciation of The Virginian, the 1929 film that set the standard for Hollywood westerns in the sound era, just as the novel it was based on set the standard for western fiction when it … Continue reading →

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How to cook for forty humans

Posted on November 28, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Baptistin Allevi was one of America’s early celebrity chefs. Born in France, he came to the US in 1913, and oversaw the Savarin restaurants at New York’s Penn Station. His Savarin Cookbook, subtitled “Scientific Cooking for Profit”, aimed for elegance … Continue reading →

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Awkward lodgings

Posted on November 27, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

An odd assortment of itinerant and not-so-itinerant lodgers come together in a spa town boarding house in E. F. Benson’s Paying Guests. Some are strangers, some chafe under family ties, and some would like to form new ties. Stuckinabook’s review … Continue reading →

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A theologian learns from sociologists

Posted on November 26, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

“Christendom has often achieved apparent success by ignoring the precepts of its founder.” So begins Protestant theologian H. Richard Niebuhr‘s first book, where he argues the proliferation of Christian denominations has less to do with theological difference than with attachment … Continue reading →

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“A wife at daybreak I shall be”

Posted on November 25, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Many of Emily Dickinson‘s poems remain under copyright more than 130 years after she died. With some of her manuscripts held by her sister, and others by her brother’s mistress, both camps filtered what they were willing to publish and … Continue reading →

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Ellery Queen arrives on the scene

Posted on November 24, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

This year’s #PublicDomainDayCountdown features several detectives’ debuts. One of the biggest detective franchises that began in 1929 is Ellery Queen, which is both a pen name first used by Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, and the name of the detective … Continue reading →

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Digging for gold, tiptoeing through tulips

Posted on November 23, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

The all-Technicolor movie musical Gold Diggers of Broadway was the third highest-grossing film of 1929, ran in theaters until 1939, and is now partly lost. One reel that resurfaced in the 1980s included a lavish performance of “Tip-Toe Through the … Continue reading →

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Puttin’ on the Ritz, in our own ways

Posted on November 22, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Since its 1946 revision, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” has usually been a catchy invitation to go on the town and mix with old-school stylish dressers. But the lyrics Irving Berlin first published in 1929 instead invited listeners to gawk at … Continue reading →

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“It takes two to make a neurosis”

Posted on November 21, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Before being known for characters like Walter Mitty and Charlotte the literate spider, James Thurber and E.B. White collaborated on a send-up of late-1920s New Yorker preoccupations with sex, changing gender roles, psychoanalysis, and overthinking. Is Sex Necessary? may also … Continue reading →

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