RESIDENTS: James T. Farrell letter

Another post concerning James T. Farrell, author of the Studs Lonigan trilogy in the 1930s, and a resident of No. 5 in the 1960s.

Today's artifact is a letter written by Farrell to Marylew Kogan. What their relationship was exactly is unclear, but Farrell dutifully reports where he stands at the moment on various projects, then asks Kogan to forward some stories to him for inclusion in his archive.  

A familiar return address first caught our eye. Where exactly he lived in No. 5 remains a mystery, but insiders insist it was one of the penthouses. 

Dear Marylew,

    I'll write soon. This is in haste. I finished Invisible Swords yesterday. I regard it as the most powerful book I have ever written.

    Judith is out.

    Childhood Is Not Forever will be out in Sept, 1969. I have a shorter novel than Invisible Swords ‒ Tom Carroll is almost ready. [Tom Carroll never published]

Jim Farrell       

P. S. And please do get the stories back to me so that I can send them away to my archive. 

Farrell was a busy writer, and he produced 52 books in all. But in the end, the most revered were the Studs Lonigan trilogy, written at the start of his career. See more about him here.

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Please note that I'm taking a couple weeks vacation and will be back in October. See you then!

RESIDENTS: Madeleine Carroll

Madeleine Carroll cigarette cards

A return to our series of posts about well-known people who once lived in Tudor City. Today, we examine the life of Madeleine Carroll, at one time the highest paid actress in the world and later a resident of a No. 5 penthouse.

Carroll was British, and her career began in London. After making a name for herself in plays and movies, she was offered a starring role in The 39 Steps, to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Of course, she accepted it.

 

The 39 Steps lobby cards

And so it was that Carroll appeared as Hitchcock's first ice-cold blonde. The picture was a hit in the states, and off she went to Hollywood. By 1938, she had managed to become the world's highest paid actress. 

Carroll made such memorable pictures as The Prisoner of Zenda, On the Avenue, and One Night in Lisbon opposite leading men such as Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda. Then, once war was declared, she stopped making movies altogether to volunteer for the Red Cross, specializing in aiding orphans.

In her Red Cross uniform

After the war's end, she took up with Andrew Heiskell, the newly named publisher of Life magazine. He was 30, married with two children; she was 44 ‒ and pregnant for the first time with Heiskell's child. (She also had three former husbands, among them Sterling Hayden, but that was another matter.)

Things worked out in a manner of speaking. Heiskell got a divorce, they were married, and he took the Tudor City penthouse. They used this as a base in New York, although a country house in Darien, CT was their primary residence. Tudor City was reserved for entertainment; he was the publisher of Life, after all.

The Heiskell family in happier times.

Carroll made her last film in 1949, and acted only occasionally in radio and television programs over the next decade. The couple remained together until Heiskell fell in love with another woman, and they divorced in 1965. Carroll never remarried. She died in Spain at the age of 81.

Circa 1937

The Inquiring Fotographer Returns

It's been a couple of years since we last visited the Inquiring Fotographer, the column in the Daily News in which a question is asked, then answered, along with a photo. Let's see what average Tudor City folks thought about various issues.

 

August 31, 1949

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November 4, 1971

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January 30, 1972

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And here is a bonus shot of Jimmy Jemail, the man who was the Inquiring Fotographer. He's photographing actress Gene Tierney, no doubt for some other project, or just because she's there.

Residents: HERBERT MATTER

Herbert Matter in 1937

In this installment of Tudor City notables, meet Herbert Matter, Swiss photographer/designer, and former resident of No. 45. His innovative work helped shape the vocabulary of 20th-century graphic design.

Between the years 1932-1935, he designed a series of posters for the Swiss National Tourist Office. They are much admired ‒ the Museum of Modern Art acquires them for its permanent collection ‒ and he was off and running; he left for America in 1935.

He lands in New York City where he meets Alexey Brodovitch, art director of Harper's Bazaar, who hires him as a freelance photographer. This leads to many magazine covers, above. The painter Fernand Léger introduces him to his future wife, Mercedes, and she moves into his Tudor City digs, a small studio in No. 45 for living and one of its penthouses for working.

The couple become friendly with some of the artists of that time: Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, and Jackson Pollock. They leave Tudor City for good in 1943, eventually settling in Greenwich Village.

In the years that followed, Matter worked as a design consultant for the furniture company Knoll, taught photography at Yale, and was design consultant for the Guggenheim Museum. Above, a sample of his work for Knoll and the cover design for a Guggenheim show on Alexander Calder.

Matter died in 1984. His wife (pictured above) was a notable artist herself and profiled earlier by this blog. And it was their son, Alex, who raised a ruckus some years later. 

RESIDENTS: Claudia Schiffer

Welcome back to our residents of note feature, where today we spotlight Claudia Schiffer, supermodel and one-time Manor resident.

Schiffer was born in Germany and discovered in a discotheque at age 18. Soon thereafter, she was photographed for Guess Jeans by Ellen von Unwerth (above) and her tousled look reminded many of Brigitte Bardot. "The company became much more known around the world because of Claudia" said the owner of Guess Jeans. A supermodel was born.

She posed on cars and in speedboats, and had a roaring career. She holds the Guinness record for the most magazine covers ever ‒ over 1,000. In 2002, she married director Matthew Vaughn and they now have three children. 

Schiffer lived in The Manor at the beginning of her career, probably starting around 1990, and probably underwritten by Guess Jeans. The above photograph was made on the terrace of PH 6, her apartment. "From the archive," she says. "Early days in my first apartment in NYC, and my first ever Fendi bag." 

Thank you David Reiff for the tip.

RESIDENTS: Anna Nicole Smith

Tudor City has had many residents of note over the years, but no one quite like Anna Nicole Smith, shameless self-promoter and Manor resident.

Following a surgical enhancement of her bust, she was discovered by Playboy in 1992. Immediately thereafter, she signs a contact to model with Guess Jeans, and suddenly she is very well known. Around this time, she takes Apartment 518 in The Manor. How long she keeps it is anyone's guess.

She begins to make a name for herself in the gossip columns by being pictured beside players like Hugh Hefner and Donald Trump, above. But she had a secret.

Back in 1991, Anna Nicole had met an 89-year-old Texas oil tycoon at a strip club, where she was a stripper. They strike up a friendship and one night a year or so later, he asked her to marry him. She said 'yes' immediately.

Her career struggles are put on hold so that she could take care of her husband. When he dies a year later, she spends the rest of her life in court fighting with the family over her inheritance. She would never know the outcome, however.

Anna Nicole dies of accidental prescription drug overdose in 2007, aged 39. Four years later, the court would finally rule against her; her estate would get nothing.

Thanks to David Reiff for the tip.

Resident: WALT CESSNA

A look at the teenaged publishing wunderkind, Walt Cessna, who lived in the colony in 1991.

Walt Cessna, circa 2005

Born in 1964, Cessna lived many lives: street hustler, club kid, photographer, clothing designer, Village Voice writer, stylist for a Nine Inch Nails tour. He was in and out of drug rehab, HIV positive, and very amusing to be around.

He also was a prolific publisher of 'zines, including his infamous journal, STOP, in which he sums up the scene in his own pictures. 

One issue gave its address as 5 Tudor City Place, where Cessna was living at the time. He didn't stay there long.

Returning to the East Village, he continued to do what he had always done -- more 'zines, more photos, more drugs -- but somehow it wasn't the same. At the time of his death in 2017, Cessna was 53 years old. By his own standards, he stayed way too long at the party.

More of the INQUIRING FOTOGRAPHER

Another installment in our ongoing feature spotlighting select items from The Inquiring Fotographer, the Daily News' longtime question/answer/photo column, a guilty pleasure of this blog. Today, three locals discuss Charley Horses, the United Nations, and Nikita Khrushchev.

December 28, 1939

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October 31, 1949

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April 26, 1956

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Background on the Inquiring Fotographer column here. 

RESIDENTS: Andre de Dienes

In this episode of accomplished Tudor City residents of yore, meet André de Dienes, noted photographer and former resident of Windsor Tower.

de Dienes out west, circa 1945.

Hungarian-born de Dienes (1913-1985) arrives in New York in 1938, finding work as a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He rents an apartment in No. 5, and a photo studio on E. 58th St. 

Disenchanted with the fashion scene, he yearns to photograph the great outdoors ‒ especially nude women against the great outdoors ‒ and in 1945 leaves New York for California to do just that. 

There he meets a 19-year-old model named Norma Jeane Baker. They hit it off, and he hires her to take a month-long car trip and be photographed against the great outdoors. He takes lots of pictures (which would one day make him lots of money), and though the model refuses to pose in the nude, she agrees to sleep with him; the affair ends when the trip does. Not long after that, she lands a bit part in a movie and changes her name to Marilyn Monroe. 

In the years that follow, de Dienes makes his living as a pinup photographer, continuing to occasionally photograph Monroe. Over time, her gradual disintegration alarms him; he knew her when, after all. Later, he would bitterly state that "her success was a sham, her hopes thwarted." Her photos were "smiling, radiant ‒ and utterly misleading." 

Marilyn Monroe at 19, photographed by de Dienes.

More Hungarian photographers drawn to Tudor City: Martin Munkacsi, André Kertész, and the infamous George Senty.

Residents: GLADYS PARKER

Gladys Parker drawing Mopsy.

In this installment of notable Tudor City residents, meet Gladys Parker, creator of the cartoon character Mopsy. One of the few female cartoonists of her era, Parker (1908-1966) was one of many illustrators who lived in Tudor City.

Mopsy ‒ a willowy fashion plate with countless beaux ‒ was based on Parker herself. "I got the idea for Mopsy," she later explained, "when the cartoonist Rube Goldberg said my hair looked like a mop." Like Parker, the character was a tousled working girl who was endearingly scatterbrained.

Mopsy debuted in 1937, with some of the earliest cartoons appearing in Tudor City View, no doubt to publicize the budding enterprise. The strip wound up running for 30 years, at its peak appearing in over 300 newspapers.

A single-panel feature, Mopsy ran daily with a multi-panel story on Sundays.

In the 1950s, Mopsy was popular enough to have her own comic book and paper dolls; by the 1960s, her skirts grew shorter and her morals looser, in keeping with the times. The strip ended with Gladys Parker's death in 1966.

Dopplegangers: Gladys Parker and Mopsy

RESIDENTS: Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner

Resident of the day is Erle Stanley Gardner, mega-selling author and Windsor Tower tenant. 

Born 1889, he begins his career as an attorney, but writes pulp fiction on the side, specializing in detective yarns. In 1933 he produces The Case of the Velvet Claws, which introduces Perry Mason, a criminal defense lawyer with a predilection for taking on hopeless cases. The character is a hit, and makes Gardner a very rich man. Countless novels follow, adapted into movies in the '30s, a radio show in the '40s, and most memorably as a TV series in the '50s and '60s.

Tudor City View reports that Gardner resides in No. 5 for a few months in 1942. What brings him to the enclave is lost to history ‒ he lives on a ranch in Temecula, California for most of his life ‒ but it seems likely that he rented a penthouse. 

Like all good mystery writers, he is nothing if not prolific. When he dies in 1970, he has written 151 books selling over 325,000,000 copies. Wikipedia ranks him the 27th best-selling fiction author of all time, behind Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dr. Seuss and Danielle Steele, but ahead of Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Ian Fleming and John Grisham.

Today, his name lives on as a frequent crossword puzzle answer. 'Erle' contains an unusual series of common letters beloved by puzzle designers. First name in courtroom fiction is a typical clue.

Gardner and secretaries in his office in Temecula, California.

Eight of the 82 Perry Mason mysteries.

The INQUIRING FOTOGRAPHER Returns

Another installment of our Inquiring Fotographer series, featuring selections from the longtime Daily News question-answer-and-picture column. Herewith, Tudor City locals voicing their opinions on pressing subjects of the day.

December 16, 1947

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November 29, 1967

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October 31, 1975