From Cooper Union to Harvard’s Hutchins Center: The Journey of a Painting - For my followers, please excuse the delay in posting this past 8 weeks. I’m well on the way to recovery from a fractured right wrist. But there is interesting news to report about an oil painting Jane Hall did while she was in art school at Cooper Union (1932-1935). It has now found a…
A Glamour Girl Hooked on Murder? - It all began when I sang parts of a grizzly ballad to my grandsons who are into gory stuff at almost 7 and 9. We wondered where the verses came from, and what the rest of the lyrics were. I wasn’t even sure how to spell the name of the Wratten family, but the tune…
A Burning Question: Skin Color and Social Class in 1937 and 2017 - “What interests you most in this Cosmopolitan world of today?” the magazine asked in September 1937. The answer could be found in another question: Is a person’s social standing to be “gauged by his complexion”? Columnist, cartoonist, and frequent contributor to the New Yorker and several other magazines, Weare Holbrook (d.1985), tackles this subject– and…
Cosmopolitan’s “Shocking Exposé” of Real Spies and Intelligence in 1940. - As I flipped through old Cosmopolitans from the days when the magazine introduced critical national issues to its young, largely female readers, an article from the Oct 1940 issue jumped out at me.* It was written by White House correspondent John Jay Daly and author Donald E. Kehoe. In light of our current battles about…
“The Shape of Things to Come” — Winter 1939 - In 1939 Jane Hall was hard at work as a screenwriter at MGM. Eight months later she would be on the cover of Cosmopolitan. I collected dozens of old Cosmos while working on Such Mad Fun. And though it does not contain any of Jane’s stories, the February 1939 issue of the magazine is fascinating. The…
Should Wives Work? It’s 1938 and Eleanor Roosevelt Has Some Thoughts About the Subject. - For the next few months, this blog will focus on young Jane Hall’s world–life in the 1930s and 1940s– as seen through popular culture. In 1938, the editor of Good Housekeeping, William F. Bigelow, a big fan of Jane’s work, put together twelve articles as “The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book.” Targeting hundreds of thousands of…
Whatever Happened to Jane Hall’s Ocelot? - For much of my childhood and young adulthood I had an ocelot for a sibling. In fact, many of my friends remember that more than anything else about our family. My mother, Jane Hall Cutler, was devoted to Menasha Skulnik — she named him after the famed Jewish American actor in spite of her Catholic…
A Such Mad Fun Author Interview - Robin has been skyping with book groups. Contact her through the website to arrange a date. Many Thanks to Annette Bochenek for permission to use this interview that appeared with a review on her terrific website Hometowns to Hollywood. This may answer some of the questions you have about Such Mad Fun. Annette: Jane Hall…
Such Mad Fun – A Kirkus Reviews’ Best Book of 2016 - 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…
The Composite Cosmopolitan Girl in 1939 - Her name was Isabel MacDougal of Greenwood, Mississippi, and, in July 1939, she became “The Cosmopolitan Girl.” Prolific author Faith Baldwin noted that she had been “selected by an impressive jury from among thousands of entrants,” in this “Autobiography of America — 1939.” Isabel appeared on the cover of the summer fiction issue of Cosmopolitan…