America in 1939. Cracks in the facade of manifest destiny and the Promised Land…
…In 1939 Italian hand organs were still heard in the streets of American cities, and Yiddish language movies were still made and shown. The cities and even the towns, with their Little Italies and Little Dublins, had a certain European flavor that has been lost. The great waves of European immigration that had rolled westward across the Atlantic in the early years of the twentieth-century were definitely over- during the thirties the combined effects of earlier restrictive legislation and the depression had slowed immigration from a flood to a trickle and finally to a drip- but one American in four was either foreign-born or of foreign parentage.
—PROFILE of Brenda Diana Duff Frazier, the debutante of the year.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1939/06/10/1939_06_10_023_TNY_CARDS_
Nevertheless, such an astute observer as Bruce Bliven could still affirm that the United States was firmly dominated by the Anglo-Saxon Protestant found most characteristically in the small towns of the Midwest, whose religious tolerance was such that he could get along with any man, as long as that man had a religion- that is, wasn’t an atheist- and whose political tolerance could be extended to any Republican or Democrat but less easily, if at all, to a Socialist or Communist. This prototypical American of 1939 was probably a businessman; he was a booster of his town and his country, but was beginning to have serious doubts abut perpetual progress. As Bliven wrote, “One senses a growing and disturbed feeling that perhaps, after all, everything is not going to be bigger and better forevermore.” The typical middle-class man had the traditional American habit for self-improvement; and, of course, he often had his business troubles. Business failures in 1939ran at a rate of seventy per ten thousand, the highest since 1933.
—Brenda Diana Duff Frazier (June 9, 1921 – May 3, 1982) was an American debutante popular during the Depression era. Her December 1938 coming-out party was so heavily publicized worldwide she eventually appeared on the cover of Life magazine for that reason alone. She had invented the famous “white-face” look. Powdered skin made a startling contrast to her very red painted lips combined with dark, dark hair, perfectly coiffed. Brenda often developed a stiff neck, as she feared moving her head lest a hair fall out of place. —click image for source…
The average John Q. Public certainly felt contemptuous toward that European and metropolitan institution, Society- which, nevertheless, was still influential enough so that the Sunday editions of metropolitan papers devoted a separate section to it and self-assured enough so that its debutantes and young matrons were often photographed on the front page of that section n bathing suits. The glamour girl of the year was the glamour girl of any year, the coy yet queenly Brenda Diana Duff Frazier. ( to be continued)…
—This musical melodrama tells the story of Jenny, a young woman torn between two childhood boyfriends. Refusing to marry Joseph, who has become a rabbi, she elopes instead with Jack, an actor who makes her pregnant and eventually abandons her. Brought to the brink of disaster, Jenny is rescued by community, love, and Judaism. Surprisingly risqué for its time, Kol Nidre is a rousing tearjerker that explores assimilation, cultural identity, family and generational conflict, …Kol Nidre Yiddish film. 1939. click image for source…
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