Tweet OT - The New Yorker on DVD, lousy index

Does anyone else have the New Yorker on DVD? I finally got around to installing the hack allowing the DVDs to be loaded to a harddrive for faster retrieval. I've started to notice that the search engine is shockingly bad. Looks like the index was built off the card catalogue and if that catalogue was incomplete then so is the current index. I mean it's not too hard to find main articles completely unindexed. An example off the top of my head is that the first installment of the three part W.C. Fields profile is not indexed. Ditto for any article with more than one author (second author is not searchable).

Anyways, I have the version 1.0 of this set. I know there was an update, has the index been improved?

Sorry if this is a little off topic...

Maybe I'm wrong but isn't the whole archive available online? Though I'm a subscriber I haven't actually looked into the archive much.

I was never able to get my copy to load and run properly, having bought it in the USA it would probably cost me more to post it back and try to get it changed than it was worth.

In my years of collecting various stuff this set probably has widest gap between my excitement in hearing about it being released to my disappointment with the final product. Such a lost opportunity.

Even though their reliance on building the index from the card catalogue has led to several gaps it has also indirectly turned up a few nuggets. I looked up Peter Arno's first cover but when I viewed it, it was a cover by someone else. There's a hint to what happened in the info provided by the card catalogue: The issue was the week of FDR's first inauguration and the cover is described as featuring FDR looking happy and Hoover looking glum. Maybe the cover got pulled before press time but the cataloguing had already been done. Who knows.

AHEM!!
So what's on the DVD s that's not available on the online archive?

As far as issues go I doubt there is anything extra on the DVDs.

I bought this five or so years ago and pretty much shelved it in disgust. I recently learned how to get the data off the DVDs and on to harddrive. Doing so requires an update to an SQL database. It hadn't twigged to me before that the database was SQL. I know SQL so I'm able to do queries on the tables directly. Most interesting thing I can get out of doing this is doing searches on the Talk pieces and turning up secondary authors (or more likely sources of submitted stories). Groucho Marx turns up on a few but you will never find them using the provided search engine, it does not look beyond first author.

I don't have a subscription so I don't know if current online version has an improved search engine. Could check if a search for the W.C. Fields profile includes all three installments or only the last two?

Just checked - the online archive lists three results for WC Fields profile, though they don't appear to load very well.

I looked up Peter Arno's first cover but when I viewed it, it was a cover by someone else. There's a hint to what happened in the info provided by the card catalogue: The issue was the week of FDR's first inauguration and the cover is described as featuring FDR looking happy and Hoover looking glum. Maybe the cover got pulled before press time but the cataloguing had already been done. Who knows.

Arno's cover which you describe, of a triumphant FDR and a gloomy Hoover riding together down Pennsylvania Avenue, was pulled at the last moment due to an attempted assassination of FDR and the death of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who took the bullet intended for Roosevelt. Harold Ross deemed the Arno cover inappropriately facetious in light of the tragic circumstances.

Hey, thanks for the info, where did you get it?

The issue is the March 04, 1933 issue. The substitute cover is by Rea Irvin. And of course a search of covers by Rea Irvin does not turn up this issue. Argh! Elsewhere in the issue is a Thurber cartoon on page four that is similarly not indexed. Argh!

Mistake on my part: This was not to be Arno's first cover, he had already done quite a few.

This is the full cover description: (Franklin Roosevelt on his way to be sworn in as president, next to a disgruntled looking Herbert Hoover.) What you actually get to see is two stereotyped Italian shoe shiners fighting over a client.

Hey, thanks for the info, where did you get it?

The issue is the March 04, 1933 issue. The substitute cover is by Rea Irvin. And of course a search of covers by Rea Irvin does not turn up this issue. Argh! Elsewhere in the issue is a Thurber cartoon on page four that is similarly not indexed. Argh!

This is the full cover description: (Franklin Roosevelt on his way to be sworn in as president, next to a disgruntled looking Herbert Hoover.) What you actually get to see is two stereotyped Italian shoe shiners fighting over a client.

I'm pleased that I could recall it, Robert. When I visited FDR's home in Hyde Park, NY some years back, they had on display Arno's rejected cover of FDR and Hoover, with the explanation behind the substitution. After film collecting I'm sort of an American History buff.

As he lay dying, Cermak's purported last words were to Roosevelt: "I'm glad it was me - not you." I believe there's an episode of The Untouchables that's centered around this tragic incident.

Unpublished FDR Hoover Inauguration 1933.jpg (118.92 KiB) Viewed 931 times

FDR Hoover unpublished cover.jpg (109.38 KiB) Viewed 931 times

Here's the unpublished cover and a better view of the details.

The two Presidents' expressions here reminds me of Herbert Hoover's comment about FDR, spoken some 30 years later: "Well, at least I outlived the bastard!"

That cover said it all concerning where America was and where it was heading.

Wow, thanks for the info. I didn't think this was such a well known unknown.

Did a little reading on the assassination attempt and saw that the assassin was executed 33 days later. Things certainly progressed quicker back then.

I did a little leafing through the issue, and ones of the same era, and was struck by how many of the cartoons veer uncomfortably towards racism or ethnic based humour. Not too offensive but enough to make you go 'Ewwww!'.

This raised a question in mind: My impression of Hollywood films of the same era is that while they certainly used this type of humour at times, they didn't with the frequency I came across in the cartoons. I admit I haven't seem that big of a cross section of 1932 or so films so maybe I'm working from too small of sample. Anyone with more experience in this area? If my perception is true, then why would it be so?

My only guess would be that Hollywood films were meant to be seen across the whole country and maybe it was thought that some of the stereotypes wouldn't be recognized in some places, so then why bother? But was the New Yorker still a regional magazine at this point?

Wow, thanks for the info. I didn't think this was such a well known unknown.

Did a little reading on the assassination attempt and saw that the assassin was executed 33 days later. Things certainly progressed quicker back then.

I did a little leafing through the issue, and ones of the same era, and was struck by how many of the cartoons veer uncomfortably towards racism or ethnic based humour. Not too offensive but enough to make you go 'Ewwww!'.

This raised a question in mind: My impression of Hollywood films of the same era is that while they certainly used this type of humour at times, they didn't with the frequency I came across in the cartoons. I admit I haven't seem that big of a cross section of 1932 or so films so maybe I'm working from too small of sample. Anyone with more experience in this area? If my perception is true, then why would it be so?

My only guess would be that Hollywood films were meant to be seen across the whole country and maybe it was thought that some of the stereotypes wouldn't be recognized in some places, so then why bother? But was the New Yorker still a regional magazine at this point?

The Production Code listed "Willful offense to any nation, race or creed" as one of their "Don't go there's."

There's plenty of racist and ethnic humor in cartoons, serials, shorts (Our Gang), documentaries, features. There were still films being made with blackface as late as 1940.

The Production Code listed "Willful offense to any nation, race or creed" as one of their "Don't go there's."

From the MPPDA's list of criticisms for SO THIS IS AFRICA (1933 Columbia release starring Wheeler & Woolsey):

"Henry Armetta does a very small bit in the first part of the picture as a discouraged street cleaner...The Italians are getting a little sore about having their nation perpetually represented as a race of excitable, arm-waving comics, and they have already registered an official complaint on this score..."