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This cynical tone is pervasive throughout every '30s issue of Brevities. America's economic collapse had hit New York in particularly grim fashion, where financiers were throwing themselves out the windows of their Wall Street offices. Central Park had become a shantytown of impoverished squatters, and theft and desperation-charged crime were rampant. Brevities reported Depression-related gossip in every issue, with shame-on-you blind items like "What Queens County Commissioner, with a salary of 6 ½ grand, snared a juicy receivership lately — while other lawyers are struggling to pay office rent and buy gasoline?" But even the stories that had nothing to do with economics reeked of pessimism and reflected the city's general sense of hopelessness. A column called "In One Ear" in the January 11, 1932 issue illustrates the bleak outlook that had come to define many New Yorkers' attitudes:
From top: the "Women About Town" column that warned of the ruin that awaited wayward females; a typical cheeky Brevities cartoon; a cover story on the horrors of miscegenation. (Click images to enlarge.)
"She cheats on the wholesale scale. Life is just a bowl of dates to her. A chain system mama, she likes to link arms with them all. Her husband leaves town frequently and when he does she adds to her lists of conquests. But never did the husband indicate that he suspected.
Just before her husband left on one of his trips she discovered she was in a delicate condition. Hubby gone, she went to a doctor and benefited by science. But the doctor told her (he was a boy friend, too) to lay off for a couple of months or things might go bad with her.
For two months she lived a very quiet life. Nothing but movies and harmless running around with girls friends. When her husband returned he greeted her with more affection than he had shown in years. In fact he acted like the first days of their honeymoon. She asked him why he was so loving.
'Well, I suppose I better tell you, honey,' he said, 'I was getting suspicious. I thought you were running around with other men when I was out of town, so I had a private detective trail you for the past two months. Now I know that you are faithful to me.'
From top: A cover story on southern-border prostitution; an inside page with columns on gang warfare and Wall Street's woes; a rapid-fire rundown of questionable gossip. (Click images to enlarge.)
The wife fell into her husband's arms with the proper amount of protesting and tears and the husband soothed her and profusely apologized for his low suspicions. Now the wife cheats with abandon."
If Brevities wasn't exactly sermonizing, it was promotingsome sort of oblique morality. The society that had just seen the Roaring Twenties disintegrate into ruin was interested in actions and their consequences. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice had particularly strong moral qualms against Broadway Brevities and its tabloid peers, and would eventually aid the magazine's demise. A reform group formed in the late nineteenth century by supporters of the Young Men's Christian Association, the SSV wouldn't allow the tabloids to fall off the police department's radar, and magazines like Brevities were frequently confiscated under indecency laws. For a while, the Brevities offices were located on West 22nd Street, right across the street from the offices of the SSV. The moralist organization was causing so much trouble for the editors of Brevities that they eventually started walking the mock-ups over to the SSV offices to get them pre-approved before printing them.
But in January of 1932, New York City officially banned Broadway Brevities from sale at newsstands. The last issue that Straw has been able to find is from 1935, and he believes it folded shortly thereafter. Its '20s editor, Stephen Clow, went on to start the similar tabloid Broadway Tattler, and later moved back to his native Canada to restart Broadway Brevities in Toronto. But at that point, Clow's career and financial stability were on the decline, and the Canadian Brevities was mainly made up of content plagiarized from other, older publications. Clow died, broke and alone, in 1941, and Brevities, now completely unrecognizable from the 1930s New York version, ran its last issue sometime around 1948.
Though we've benefited from two more feminist movements since then, today's tabloids continue to devote ample space to feigned shock and outrage over the state of the American woman. Stories about student-teacher sex in which the teacher is female always carry a more hand-wringing tone of anxiety than when the teacher is a man — more "what has gone wrong with society?" than "throw the perv in jail." The same magazines that relentlessly monitor starlets' body weights also report Oprah's crash-diet fainting spells and horror stories of lipo gone wrong. These magazines, from the National Enquirer-led second tabloid wave in the '60s and '70s to the current photo-driven glossies like Us Weekly and Star — not to mention the pile of gossip blogs that we refresh hourly throughout our workday — all took the original '30s tabloid revolution as their blueprint. But tepid baby bumps and beach-shot cellulite are enough to make one yearn for yesteryear's hot holes, big balls, Yank queens and fair gals who grab stiffs. n°
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
