The romance of Kitty Foyle and Wyn Strafford intensified as they worked together on Wyn’s Philly magazine project. (Please see my page on the novel: https://philadelphiaasadvertised.com/kitty-foyle-and-philadelphia-the-grand-homey-old-town/) Philly was to be “something like” the New Yorker, full of “wisecracking stuff about football, and hunting, and cricket, and the Orchestra, and famous food and drink, and little articles about picturesque history.” It seemed sure to be a hit with students at the many colleges in the area. But Kitty had her doubts, and so did her friend Molly, who did not believe that Philadelphia shared New York’s passion for “being In the Know.” The upper classes were serenely indifferent to innovation, and the lower classes knew that an appearance of sophistication would not lead to acceptance. Kitty knew that “Sankatown” wanted above all to be comfortable, not to be bothered, and saw in the magazine’s few issues a demonstration that the Main Line could not make fun of itself; that required an outsider. Even Wyn’s mother was aware that Philadelphia did not enjoy “that sort of persiflage” and was happy when her son gave up “that dreadful magazine.” To be fair, we should note that the first issue of the magazine was published just as the stock market crashed, causing his father to cut off his support of the project.

What might Philly have looked like? There is a ready answer in Town Crier of Philadelphia, “Philadelphia’s smart, new, humorous weekly,” as it was called in the issue of May 19, 1930. Here are some pages from that issue. Is the style familiar?

The magazine, appealing to “the cream of the Philadelphia market,” was to present “outstanding work . . . in a fresh and telling manner,” providing “smart Philadelphians” with “an amusing reflection of their tastes.” That sounds a bit like the build-up for Philly. And Morley must have been familiar with Town Crier. It was familiar with him, predicting that he would write a book “containing a whimsical loveliness and a description of the smell of doughnuts.” (This prediction itself may be nothing but whimsy, but, for what it is worth, in both Travels in Philadelphia and Kitty Foyle Morley seems to be drawn to doughnuts.)

Town Crier must have folded very quickly. It scarcely appears in online searches, though we learn that a similar magazine, The Chicagoan, lasted from 1926 to 1935. (Kitty says that another such magazine, intended for the “Detroit smart set,” might be willing to buy and adapt material no longer needed by the defunct Philly.)  If Town Crier seems to have left few traces, why not find out what happened to the magazine’s writers and artists? Please see also The TOWN CRIER and the Talkies: Jay Emanuel and Other Reel Fellows.

Kitty did not seem impressed by the staff of Philly magazine, the Main Line youngsters who treated the project as a lark and the legions of “broke cartoonists” (to the magazine’s lawyer, “bohemians sitting on the stairs”) and “newspaper paragraphers”  with material to sell. As for Town Crier, the names of the writers and artists might not leap off the page, and some appear only as initials (E.H.S., S.N.F., T.R.B.), brief names (Meg), or likely pseudonyms (Criton, Mary Scrapple, Philadelphia West). Some names have not been found, or were too generic to be pinned down: Francine von Schneeberg, Inigo Owen, William A. Armstrong. But the Alphonse B. Miller who wrote a biography of Thaddeus Stevens, as well as many book reviews on U.S. history, is probably the man who contributed an article about Hoover. We find a Harry M. Klingsberg who published fiction on legal subjects, a George H. Eckhardt who wrote about television and clocks, and a Harold W. Brecht who wrote novels. Rae Norden Sauder produced nonfiction for magazines and newspapers. Many continued in journalism: at the Evening Ledger, Sidney Lear, Henry T. Murdock (who became the Inquirer drama critic in 1950 and worked long enough to praise Barbra Streisand), and Eric M. Knight (who was also at the Public Ledger). While Knight was at the Town Crier, as we see in the ad below, his beat was “The Talkies.” Later, he wrote Lassie Come-Home.

TOWN CRIER OF PHILADELPHIA, 19 May 1930

Ivan H. “Cy” Peterman continued his sports reporting, at the Evening Bulletin and the Inquirer, and became a respected war correspondent for the Inquirer during World War II. Samuel Lipshutz is likely the writer of the same name, working around that time at the Record, who went to the New York Post, after being induced by his boss to change his last name to the more Anglo-Saxon Grafton, and became a widely syndicated columnist.

As for the artists, Bainton has not been identified, and two others should be identifiable as locally known artists, were it not for differences in styles and signatures: Angelo (perhaps Emidio Angelo) and Russell Henderson Esq. (perhaps Russell S. Henderson). NOTE: In the small print at the bottom of the second page above, we see that Emidio Angelo was the art director of Town Crier–that would seem to settle the matter!) Styles and signatures can change; E. K. Bergey, the cover artist, could well be the man who (using more than one version of his name and signature) went on to specialize in less stylized, more representational (“realistic” is not quite the word) covers for magazines with names like Spicy and Thrilling Wonder Stories. And two of the Town Crier artists, Richard Decker and George Shellhase (see “This Week” above, and the clown on the next featured page), went on to draw for the New Yorker itself.

TOWN CRIER OF PHILADELPHIA, 19 May 1930

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