Modern Literature & Culture Research Centre & Gallery

 

The Modern Literature and Culture Centre (MLC) has recently acquired a January 1938 copy of Life Magazine, featuring a six-photograph feature on Berenice Abbott entitled "A Woman Photographs the Face of a Changing City" (40-45).

After spending many years photographing famous faces in Paris, the Springfield, Ohio, native returned to Manhattan in 1929 to "set to work making a detached and clear-sighted document of the changing face of New York." The return "made her feel that faces from everywhere look much the same" and turned instead to capturing the diverse buildings and landscapes available in the city. The unnamed author of the article concludes: "[Abbott] does not care whether her pictures are called art or not. What she does care about is using the camera medium as honestly as possible to make for posterity a detailed document of the glory of American urban civilization" (40). The MLC will be hosting a Berenice Abbott performance and small exhibition on May 26th from 5-6pm at which the Life magazine will be featured.

This issue of Life also includes Cecil Beaton's portrait of the "great literary experimentalist" Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas. Beaton is quoted in the caption as saying that "those who know them know that Toklas is at least 50 percent of the works" (49).

"Life on the American Newsfront: The Most Famous Legs in History Lose Their Job" is a two-page spread about Marlene Dietrich's rise to and fall from fame. The subtitle of the main photo reads "Marlene Dietrich's legs, exploited by Paramount in pictures like this, were chiefly responsible for making her the highest salaried woman in the world" (18); however, Dietrich lost her job with Paramount Pictures on December 22, 1937 following six box office "flops." Paramount had brought Dietrich from Germany in 1930 and "made her name a byword for exotic foreign glamour," and the brief article asks why Paramount's leading lady lost her sparkle — was it the fault of her first director, or had "the Age of Exotics" simply ended? Life provides no answers to these questions, of course.

 

Life Magazine's January 1938 issue is peppered with advertisements aimed at middle-class readers. Some examples include Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company ("plumbing is a public trust"), Electric Tuning RCA Victor Radio ("so simple, a baby can tune it"), Camel Cigarettes ("do expert marksmen find that Camel's costlier tobaccos make a difference?" — and of course, the answer is yes, because "Camel pays millions more for COSTLIER TOBACCOS! Camels are a matchless blend of finer, MORE EXPENSIVE TOBACCOS — Turkish and Domestic").

Other notable elements of this issue of Life are an essay on Mormonism, a greeting on the inside cover that reads "To 800,000 subscribers, 1,000,000 newsstand buyers, and 14,400,000 other readers of this issue — LIFE wishes A HAPPY NEW YEAR," and an article, with photos, called "The Nightgown Now Goes Out in Public as an Evening Dress."

This copy of Life will be helpful to students and scholars at the MLC who will be able to visually and physically explore the pages — and the lives represented in the pages — of Life in early 1938.

 

To donate materials to the MLC Archives, please contact
archive@mlc.ryerson.ca or 416.979-5000 ext. 7668

Recent News

Payton Knox joins MLC

Payton Knox joins MLC

Payton is involved in providing grading support for the course ENG 240: Contours of Creativity.

MLC Annual Impact Report 2023 - 2024

MLC Annual Impact Report 2023 - 2024

The MLC Research Centre is proud to present a summary of its annual achievements.

Call for Papers for Routledge Book: Life Writing in a Pandemic

Call for Papers for Routledge Book: Life Writing in a ...

We welcome papers that engage with any aspect of life writing during the pandemic.

Julia Perus joins MLC

Julia Perus joins MLC

Julia is involved in exploring the modernist avantgarde, with a special focus on Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

The Great War in Literature and Visual Culture

MLC Themes

The Great War in Literature and Visual Culture

Amid the unprecedented social change of World War I, women renegotiated their identities by dramatically changing the way they engaged with the arts. But how did they do so? And how did everyday citizens engage with the war?

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

MLC Themes

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, considered by many to be the mother of Dada, was a daringly innovative poet and an early creator of junk sculpture. “The Baroness” was best known for her sexually charged, often controversial performances.

Modernism in the World

MLC Themes

Modernism in the World

Recent research has departed from the Euro-centric and national view of Modernism to include approaches and methods studying Modernism across national boundaries and across different art forms to include fashion, dance, performance, technology, and visual culture.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

MLC Themes

Lucy Maud Montgomery

L.M. Montgomery is perhaps Canada's most important literary export. She was prolific writer of over 500 short stories and poems, and twenty novels, including the beloved Anne of Green Gables.

Canadian Modernism

MLC Themes

Canadian Modernism

The works of numerous Canadian authors who lived during the modernist era may well constitute the most central and experimental articulation of Canadian modernism in prose, allowing authors to stage cross-cultural, controversial, and even conflicted identities.

Modernist Biography and Life Writing

MLC Themes

Modernist Biography and Life Writing

Life writing, including autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters and testimonials written or told by women and men whose political, literary or philosophical purposes are central to their lives, has become a standard tool for communication and the dissemination of information.