The Extra Woman
Page 27
My father, Jeremy, for better or worse, shaped my image of a writer: late-night whisky, blown deadlines, and all. I wish he could be here to see this.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. “Record Share of Americans Have Never Married,” Pew Research Center, Washington D.C. (September 24, 2014), http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-americans-have-never-married.
2. Ariela R. Dubler, “ ‘Exceptions to the General Rule’: Unmarried Women and the ‘Constitution of the Family,’ ” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 4, no. 2 (2003): 809g.
3. Susan Ware, American Women in the 1930s: Holding Their Own (Boston: Twayne, 1982).
4. Tony Marcano, “Famed Riveter in War Effort, Rose Monroe Dies at 77,” New York Times, June 2, 1997.
5. Jean Van Evera, How to Be Happy While Single (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1949).
6. See, for example, Judith Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex,” Yale French Studies, no. 72, in Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century, ed. Helen V. Wengel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 35–49.
7. Robert Coughlan, “Changing Roles in Modern Marriage,” Life special issue, “The American Woman: Her Achievements and Troubles” (December 24, 1956), 116.
8. “Marlo Thomas on Difficulty of Being ‘That Girl’ in 1960s TV Biz: TCA” Deadline (January 15, 2013), http://deadline.com/2013/01/marlo-thomas-on-difficulty-of-being-that-girl-in-1960s-tv-biz-tca-405197.
9. The term “eyewitnesses” was particularly misleading—Genovese was killed at 3 a.m. on a cold night outside her apartment complex, so although some neighbors (far fewer than thirty-eight) heard her screams, they couldn’t have seen what was happening. Two people called the police, and Kitty’s friend ran outside and held her as she lay dying. Numerous articles and books have revisited the case, especially since Jim Rasenberger’s article, “Kitty, 40 Years Later,” New York Times, February 8, 2004, exploded many of its myths.
CHAPTER 1: SOLITARY SPLENDOR
1. Marjorie Hillis, Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman (New York: The Sun Dial Press/Bobbs-Merrill, 1936), xii.
2. Marjorie Hillis, New York, Fair or No Fair (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1939), 11.
3. Trend, “Goodby to All That,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 6, 1939.
4. Publicity memorandum, D.A. Cameron, n.d., Bobbs-Merrill Archive, Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington.
5. D. A. Cameron to Mr. Kendall, July 24, 1936, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
6. D. A. Cameron to Miss Helen Robertson, Home Economics Editor, Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 19, 1936, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
7. “Excerpts from Letters to Marjorie Hillis,” n.d., Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
8. Margaret Fishback to Marjorie Hillis, n.d., quoted in “Excerpts from Letters to Marjorie Hillis,” Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
9. Margaret Fishback, “Maiden’s Prayer,” The New Yorker, November 12, 1927, 48.
10. Kathleen Rooney, “It’s Glorious, It’s Grand!” Poetry Foundation, December 14, 2016, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/articles/detail/91790.
11. Dorothy Dix, “It’s No Longer a Disgrace to Be an ‘Old Maid,’” Daily Boston Globe, November 20, 1936, 43.
12. Dorothy Dix to Miss Mueller, June 16, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
13. Quoted in Inga A. Filippo, “Biography of Dorothy Dix,” Research Guide to the Dorothy Dix Special Collection, Felix G. Woodward Library, Austin Peay State University, 2005, http://library.apsu.edu/Dix/research/guide.htm.
14. “Dorothy Dix, Adviser to Lovelorn for Half a Century, Is Dead at 90,” Atlanta Constitution, December 17, 1951.
15. Dorothy Coleman, “Impressions of Marjorie Hillis,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 1, 1936.
16. Review excerpts press release, n.d. [1936], Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
17. May Cameron, quoted in Traveler’s Memo #2, August 3, 1936, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
18. Press release, n.d. [September 1936], Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
19. Paz Van Matre, “Women Don’t Need Husbands to Gain Individuality, Says Marjorie Hillis.” St. Louis Star-Times, October 28, 1936.
20. Hillis, Live Alone, 30.
21. Coleman, “Impressions,” ibid.
22. Hillis, Live Alone, 17.
23. Mrs. Charles M. Bregg, “ ‘Lives Alone and Likes It, Miss Hillis Says,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 31, 1936.
24. Marjorie H. Roulston, You Can Start All Over: A Guide for the Widow and Divorcee (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), viii.
25. See, for example, Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: A Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (New York: Doubleday, 2006).
26. “Chat and Gossip about Brooklyn,” New York Herald, April 21, 1899.
27. Unpublished memoir by Marjorie Hillis, n.d., Newell Dwight Hillis Papers, Othmer Library, Brooklyn Historical Society.
28. “Hillis and Ferguson Vie in Bitter Words,” New York Times, October 15, 2015.
29. Nathalie’s wedding appeared in the society pages: “Week in Society,” Brooklyn Life, June 21, 1924; “Kennebunkport, Me., Scene of Kellogg-Hillis Wedding,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 15, 1924.
30. “Marjorie Hillis Author of Jane’s Business,” Brooklyn Life (December 20, 1924): 12.
31. “Simplicity Urged in Lecture on Juvenile Fashions,” Women’s Wear Daily, April 1, 1927.
32. “Dr. Hillis’ Body Cremated; Kin Fulfils Wish,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 28, 1929.
33. Roderick Phillips, Untying the Knot: A Short History of Divorce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 191.
34. Cited in Jill Elaine Hasday, Family Law Reimagined (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 129.
35. Annie Hillis, The American Woman and her Home (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1911), 44.
36. Ibid., 28.
37. Alice Cogan, “Your Caller Can Take in the Milk,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 30, 1936, 3.
38. Annie Hillis, American Woman, 37.
39. Proceedings of the First National Conference on Race Betterment, January 8–12, 1914 (Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation, Gage Printing, 1914), 351, https://archive.org/stream/proceedingsoffir14nati#page/350/mode/2up.
40. Austin American Statesman, October 27, 1936.
41. Evelyn Burke, “Live Alone, but Be Careful How,” The Pittsburgh Press, October 31, 1936, 6.
42. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Lost City,” 1932 (unpublished in Fitzgerald’s lifetime), in Writing New York: A Literary Anthology, ed. Philip Lopate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 569–79.
43. Roulston, You Can Start All Over, viii.
44. Ira Wolfert, “Lives Alone and Likes It,” Daily Boston Globe, November 29, 1936, C2.
CHAPTER 2: “SOMETHING TO GET YOUR TEETH INTO”
1. Marjorie Hillis to D. L. Chambers, April 18, 1938, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
2. Edna Woolman Chase and Ilka Chase, Always in Vogue (New York: Doubleday, 1954), 26.
3. Ibid., 39.
4. “Dorothy Parker: The Art of Fiction No.13.” Interview by Marion Capron. The Paris Review, Summer 1956.
5. Chase, Always in Vogue, 104.
6. Leo Wingshot, “Orchids on Your Budget,” Philadelphia Record, undated clipping [1938], Bobbs-Merrill Archive. Delafield was the then highly popular English author of a series of novels poking fun at rural life.
7. Chase, Always in Vogue, 102.
8. Hillis, Live Alone and Like It, 94.
9. Catherine Keyser’s engaging study Playing Smart: New York Women Writers and Modern Magazine Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010) explores the “smart” phenomenon in detail.
10. “Makes History and Love,” The Austin American Statesmen, December 6, 1936, 1.
11. “King’s Friend Asks Divorce; Simpson Not to Fight Action,” Daily Boston Globe, October 15, 1936, 12.
12. Sheilah Graham, “Film Queens Now Reveal Their Ages,” Hartford Courant, November
1, 1936, A1.
13. Martha Scotford, “Cipe Pineles,” American Institute of Graphic Arts. www.aiga.org/medalist-cipepineles.
14. This brief analysis of American self-help history owes much to Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009).
15. Steven Watts, Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America (New York: Other Press, 2013), 131.
16. Ron Charles, “How to Win Friends and Influence People: Why the Granddaddy of Self-Help Endures,” Washington Post, March 31, 2017.
17. Steven Starker, Oracle at the Supermarket: The American Preoccupation with Self-Help Books (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1989), 104.
18. After extensive promotion by Oprah Winfrey, The Secret became a hit, although it has since been criticized for the lack of evidence for its pseudoscientific claims, and the sleight of hand it performs: like most self-help authors, it’s only Byrne herself who seems to have truly turned her teachings into material gain. But the most powerful critique of this kind of magical thinking philosophy exposes its basic cruelty—it can’t help but imply that those who are suffering have brought sickness and misery on themselves, simply by not wanting badly enough to be healthy and happy.
19. Stephen Recken, “Fitting-In: The Redefinition of Success in the 1930s,” Journal of Popular Culture 27, no. 3 (Winter 1993): 205–22.
20. J. B. Woodside, “She Was Padded to Fame,” Photoplay, December 1917, in Janet Walker, “Margery Wilson,” Women Film Pioneers Project, Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, ed. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta (New York: Columbia University Libraries, 2013), https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-margery-wilson.
21. This was the era when actresses weren’t generally known by their names but by a physical attribute—the powerhouse female star of the silent screen, Mary Pickford, started out as “the girl with the curls.”
22. For more on women’s changing roles in Hollywood in the pre- and post-Code era, see Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (New York: Twayne, 1982), 183–92.
23. Margery Wilson, The Woman You Want to Be: Margery Wilson’s Complete Book of Charm (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1942), 5.
24. Ibid., 15.
25. Ibid., 24.
26. Ibid., 139.
27. Ibid., 22, 25.
28. “Excerpts from Letters to Marjorie Hillis,” Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
29. Wilson, The Woman You Want to Be, 14.
30. More information about Collins’s strange career and politics can be found in Michael J. Tucker, And Then They Loved Him: Seward Collins and the Chimera of American Fascism (Peter Lang Publishing, 2005). Marion Meade describes his erotica obsession in Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? (New York: Penguin, 1987), 144.
31. Anonymous (William Gropper, illustrator), Wake Up Alone and Like It! A Handbook for Those with Cold Feet (New York: The Macauley Company, 1936), 177–78.
32. Recken, “Fitting-In,” 215.
33. Marjorie Hillis, “Material Things,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 4, 1936.
CHAPTER 3: (NOT) A QUESTION OF MONEY
1. Marjorie Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget: Or, Live Smartly on What Have You (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1937), 7.
2. Marjorie Hillis to D. L. Chambers, February 19, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
3. Marjorie Hillis to D. L. Chambers, May 7, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
4. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 135.
5. Ibid., 145.
6. Ibid., 131.
7. Marjorie Hillis to Burford Lorimer, April 24, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
8. Internal memo to D. L. Chambers, May 12, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
9. Leola Allard to D. A. Cameron, June 1, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
10. Marjorie Hillis to D. L. Chambers, May 26, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
11. Marjorie Hillis to D. L. Chambers, June 10, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
12. Review excerpts gathered by publicity department, n.d.; royalty reports, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
13. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 147–48.
14. Ibid., 63.
15. Ibid., 65.
16. Ibid., 66.
17. Ibid., 66.
18. This argument forms the basis of Matt’s book Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890–1930 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
19. Ethan Mordden, The Guest List: How Manhattan Defined American Sophistication—From the Algonquin Round Table to Truman Capote’s Ball (New York: St. Martin’s Prss, 2010), 5.
20. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 8.
21. S. Lightstone, sales promotion manager, to D. A. Cameron, October 2, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
22. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 42.
23. Ibid., 48.
24. Ibid., 50.
25. Wharton herself admits that a short book about an entire culture has its limits, and warns at the outset that hers is based on “desultory” observation and “rash assumption.” However, she says, the recent war’s upheaval of social norms has made it possible to get a more profound look into people’s lives. Wharton, French Ways and Their Meaning (New York: D. Appleton, 1919), v.
26. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 49.
27. Ibid., 90.
28. Ibid., 82.
29. Ibid., 172.
30. Patricia Wainwood’s article on the “Recession of 1937–38” provides a brief overview, Federal Reserve history, last modified November 22, 2013, http://www.federalreservehistory.org/Events/DetailView/27. The impact of this uniquely rapid downturn and recovery was examined less than twenty years later by Kenneth D. Roose in The Economics of Recession and Revival: An Interpretation of 1937–38 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1954).
CHAPTER 4: SETTING FOR A SOLO ACT
1. Marjorie Hillis, “Bandbox by the River,” Vogue, November 1936, 88.
2. Unpublished memoir by Marjorie Hillis, Brooklyn Historical Society.
3. This and a wealth of other astonishing facts about Draper are to be found in the lively biography written by her protégée. Packed with details, quotes, and photographs, the book unfortunately lacks any supporting notes. Carle-ton Varney, The Draper Touch: The High Life and High Style of Dorothy Draper (New York: Shannongrove Press, 1988), 126.
4. Mitchell Owens, “Living Large: The Brash, Bodacious Hotels of Dorothy,” Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 25, “The American Hotel” (2005): 254–87.
5. Chase and Chase, Always in Vogue, 15.
6. Dorothy Draper, Decorating Is Fun!: How to Be Your Own Decorator (New York: Literary Guild of America, 1939), 12–13.
7. Dorothy Draper, Decorating Is Fun! (New York: Literary Guild of America, 1939), pp. 4–5.
8. Varney, Draper Touch, 126.
9. Quoted in Kristina Wilson, Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design during the Great Depression (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Yale University Art Gallery, 2004), 41. Modernity, however, was not the only choice. As Wilson explains, modern designs in the 1930s competed with an equally influential Colonial Revival, which looked to the early American past for comfort and continuity into the troubled modern age. It was a prevalent style of architecture as well as interior design, and its influence went beyond furniture and design—the “living history” museum Colonial Williamsburg opened in 1935 and was an immediate success. To counteract the emotional pull of this backward-glancing style, promoters of modernism emphasized the simplicity, efficiency, and affordability of modernist furniture.
10. “Macy’s Shows Furniture in 10 Decorated Rooms,” New York Herald Tribune, November 5, 1936, 28.
11. Dorothy Draper, Entertaining Is Fun!: How to Be a Popular Hostess (New York: Doubleday Doran, 1941), 3.
12. Marjorie Hillis and Bertina Foltz, Corned Beef and Caviar for the Live-Aloner (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938), 88.
13
. Review excerpts gathered by publicity department, n.d., Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
14. D. L. Chambers to Marjorie Hillis, October 7, 1937, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
15. Review excerpts, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
16. The gendered division in food is explored by Jessamyn Neuhaus in her book Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
17. Hillis and Foltz, Corned Beef and Caviar, 115–52.
18. Review excerpts, Bobbs-Merrill Archive.
19. Laurie Colwin, “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant” in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone, ed. Jenni Ferrari-Adler (New York: Riverhead, 2007), 21.
20. “Working Girls Must Eat,” Colby College, The Colby Alumnus 29, no. 7 (May 1940): 244. http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/alumnus/244.
21. Hillis and Foltz, Corned Beef and Caviar, 15.
22. Laura Shapiro, Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (New York: Penguin, 2005), 97.
23. Alice Kessler-Harris, Women Have Always Worked: A Historical Overview (New York: Feminist Press, 1981), 80–90.
24. Quoted in Sherrie A. Inness, Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001), 74.
25. Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 96.
26. Marion Rombauer Becker, biography of Irma Rombauer, Harvard Square Library. Abridged from Little Acorn: The Story Behind the Joy of Cooking 1931–1966 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966). http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/irma-rombauer.
27. For a fuller history of Irma Rombauer’s creation of The Joy of Cooking, see Anne Mendelson, Stand Facing the Stove (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
28. Mendelson, Stand Facing the Stove, 167.
29. Inness, Dinner Roles, 21.
30. Hillis, Live Alone, 104.
31. Dorothy Coleman, “Impressions of Marjorie Hillis,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 1, 1936.
32. Rosie Schaap, Drinking with Men (New York: Riverhead, 2013), 3.