The story in brief: The death of a young Marine Corps lieutenant in 1907 became a national sensation when his mother, his sister and his ghost challenged the Navy’s suicide verdict. For the American press and its readers, the lieutenant’s mother, Rosa Sutton, came to represent every mother who had lost a son in the…
“Governmental actions should be neither secret nor unjust. . . . If we cannot get justice through the courts, every newspaper in the United States shall have the facts as we have them and then see what the opinion of the world will be.” Rosa Brant Sutton A Soul on Trial Revised edition coming Spring…
The influence of a gaping and curious public can have no effect on the conduct of the Judge Advocate in this matter. . . . The hallowed grave of a dead son is no more sacred than the grave of a military reputation and there are a great many military reputations at stake in this…
From the time she was a young child, Jane Hall had an interest in Native American culture, particularly that of the Hopi Tribe, a northeastern Arizona sovereign nation. My mother adored her childhood home in Arizona; she had learned about the Hopi from her father, Dick Wick Hall, who spent time with the tribe as…
What determines who a woman will become? Jane Hall was an orphan at fifteen and a “literary prodigy” according to the press. How did this daughter of Arizona’s most popular humorist become a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Hollywood’s most glamorous studio? Jane soon found that her ambition…
To my subscribers: OOOPS We have been upgrading this website and you should not have received the last two messages as separate posts. March is Women’s History Month and PBS’s American Experience recently reminded us about the early twentieth-century activism that formed the background for Rosa Sutton’s crusade for justice for her dead son. Between…
“There is nothing which will make the eagle shriek louder than the shadow of a muzzle for the press,” John L. Given wrote in 1907.* In that same year, a young Marine Corps Lieutenant died on the grounds of the Naval Academy after a brawl. His mother’s crusade to find the truth about what really…
In the old days, magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping were filled with articles about current events as well as fiction by some of the nation’s best authors. Taking a look at some of these articles reveals what was on people’s minds a long time ago. Emphasis was placed on cultivating character in pre-1950…
For more details about this case see the website tabs for A Soul on Trial. http://www.robinrcutler.com Was Rosa Sutton the first mother to challenge the military over the death of her son in a courtroom? Probably. Scholars and reviewers have said this is a unique story. But many military court documents still lay buried in…
He called himself Andy. He was an American Army captain from southwestern Virginia on a journey in the French countryside. When he picked up his pen with its fine point on August 21, 1917, to write to Rose Sutton Parker, he had apparently just traveled into the country by auto from one of the finest…
I came across an article about Thanksgiving in the 1930s thanks to journalist Julie Chang. She notes that, for those who could not afford to dine in an elegant hotel or club, making recipes from scratch compensated for inflated food prices during the Depression. And many Americans remained optimistic despite their troubles. At that point,…
One focus of this blog is life in the 1930s to 1950s– as seen through popular culture. In 1938, the editor of Good Housekeeping, William F. Bigelow, a big fan of Jane Hall’s work, put together twelve articles as “The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book.” Targeting hundreds of thousands of university and college students, as well as…
“Congratulations! You’re invited to participate in KDP’s beta for audiobooks.” The April 3 email offered me (apparently one of a select group of randomly chosen authors) the chance to produce an audiobook version of Such Mad Fun using virtual voice narration. Perhaps I didn’t focus enough on the word “beta.” What that meant is that…
Rosetta Agnes Brant was born on January 27, 1860, into a pioneer family already overflowing with the laughter and tears of young children. Ten years earlier, Rosa’s German father, Joseph, and his Irish wife, Louisa Burgett Brant, had made their way on a journey of close to 2000 miles from Dayton Ohio, to Clark County,…
My grandsons are now teenagers, no longer the little boys they were when I first wrote this post in 2018. Since then I moved to California to be nearer family. In addition to unexpected medical adventures, a lot of my time has been spent sorting through boxes of family papers that have some interest outside…
Travel back to the 1930s…. Movies Jane worked on in Hollywood still play on Turner Classic Movies! These include the following four – in a couple of cases to watch the trailer you may have to skip an ad. Though that’s not the case with These Glamour Girls her satire about life among the debutante…
The November 21, 2022, New Yorker cover, “Low Tide” by Barry Blitt, features a huge grey elephant on a red surfboard looking less than confident about the future. How different his mood from a fellow pachyderm that appeared on the December 31, 1938, cover of the magazine, a gleeful pink elephant by Rea Irvin (1881-1972).…
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