Things You Learn From the Paper: Portsmouth Times in the 1930s

Yes, 85 years is quite a span of time. One expects major changes over that period of time, and an exploration into the local paper reveals monumental differences between the 1930s and today.

In 1930, Portsmouth, Ohio had a population of 42,560 (+2.57% growth rate) and perhaps surprisingly Scioto County numbered 81,221 people (+29.23% growth rate).

In 2019, Portsmouth has a population of 20,443 (+0.48% growth rate) And recent census data shows 75,929 people in the county (-0.41 % growth rate)

Does it surprise you to know that while Portsmouth was a much larger industrial city in the 1930s, Scioto County was growing at a phenomenal rate? However, 85 years later Scioto County has 5,000 fewer inhabitants than it did in 1930, and Portsmouth's population has decreased by more than 50%.

People? What about the folks who lived in the area in the 30s? We know the years of the Great Depression of the 1930s were difficult for everyone. Even more disastrous was the flood of 1937. But, the 30s were grand times in other respects. It was the day of the greatest peak population and steady manufacturing growth.

In fact, Portsmouth was once known as the “Shoe Capital of the World.” Portsmouth’s shoe manufacturing history began long before in 1850, when Robert Bell came to Portsmouth and formed the Portsmouth Shoe Manufacturing Co. Portsmouth had many, many shoe factories in its history.

In January of 1877, the Irving Drew & Company was formed. It was reorganized in 1879 as Drew, Selby and Company. In 1927, Selby had become the eighth largest maker of shoes in the world. In the 1930s, over 2,000 workers were employed at Selby’s alone.

The population was of the 30s was very active and full of progressive hope. For example, during this time the Norfolk and Western Corporation that came into existence in 1982 built a grand, art deco passenger station on 16th and Findley streets in Portsmouth that provided a substantial entry to the city. Passengers used the station for access to both interstate and intrastate train lines, which provided basic transportation for many. Many of us have fond memories of the station and its storied service.

Also worth noting is that during this time period, the N&W’s Portsmouth Yards was the largest railroad yard in the world owned by a single railroad, and employed literally thousands of Scioto County residents.

A Long-Time Forgotten

A stroll through the Portsmouth Times of May 4, 1934; June 3, 1934; October 8, 1936,; and December 6, 1936, shows just how engaging folks were here in the 1930s. Their pastimes and forms of entertainment reveal interests that surprise present-day inhabitants.

Contract Bridge

How very popular a card game can be. In simpler times, a simple form of entertainment was all the rage. 

Contract bridge, one of the world's most popular partnership card games, may be dated from the early 16th-century invention of trick-taking games such as whist. Bridge evolved through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to form the present game. It was very popular. In 1925, Harold S. Vanderbilt, American multi-millionaire and three-time America's Cup winner, changed the course of bridge while on a cruise. He suggested that only tricks bid and made count toward game, with extra tricks counted as bonuses. These revised rules turned auction bridge into contract bridge.

In1931, the Culbertson Summary and Culbertson's Blue Book about bridge topped all book sales for the year, outselling such popular titles as Believe It or Not and Crossword Puzzles. That same year "The Battle of the Century" was held in New York City. The team captained by Ely Culbertson won by 8980 points.

Bridge was an ideal populist pastime for the Depression and the war years. It was sociable and challenging, yet the only cost was the price of a deck of cards. Couples took it up by the millions, and in the nineteen-forties, according to the Association of American Playing Card Manufacturers, the game was played in forty-four per cent of American homes.

During this period, Charles H. Goren, a Philadelphia lawyer who had applied himself to bridge in college after a young woman laughed at his poor play, displaced Culbertson as the nation’s preëminent authority.

Then came the decline in popularity. The drop can be attributed to other, more popular forms of recreational media such as television, video games, etc. And, bridge suffered from an image problem. While card games like poker conjure up images of hard-bitten men, scantily clad women, and long nights in Las Vegas, bridge evokes cucumber sandwiches and genteel parlor gatherings.

Serenading

A record serenade in Piketon. Nope, not just a pleasing tune beneath a lady's window. 

“Noising” or harassment of brides and grooms is an old custom in the United States. But the serenade, per se, was comprised of a crowd of friends who would awaken the bridal couple with “rough music and shouting, subjecting them to various indignities, and pestering them until the husband set up a treat.

Because noise was the key to gathering a large crowd, serenading parties worked to improve their racket-making capabilities. They often used noisemakers of various kinds to aid their merriment.

Upon gathering a crowd, the typical serenade party made its way to the home of the married couple. The group would stand out in front of the house making a racket until the married couple made an appearance.

“You wanted to have plenty of cigars and candy handy if you were hosting such a party,” said Robert Ripley. The bride and groom were expected to pass out these favors. Sometimes, if they could get into the house, the serenaders would “remake” or “short-sheet” the wedding bed. The emphasis was on creating as many vexations for the married couple as possible.

The serenades were of particular importance to the community because they brought together a significant number of local people who otherwise might have been busy attending to their local tasks. Although the married couple was the “target” of the senenade, the custom itself was communal in nature.

Serenading, according to Ripley, “gave out after the automobiles came in.” In Yankee Moderns: Folk Regional Identity in the Sawmill Valley of Western … (2000), Michael Hoberman says it is no coincidence that the practice of serenading faded at exactly the same time as other forms of regionally oriented folklife.

Dog and Pony Show

We all know that typically now, the term is used in a pejorative sense to connote disdain or distrust of the message being presented or the efforts undertaken to present it. But, the origins of the phrase are very real.

The term was originally used in the United States in the late-19th and early-20th centuries to refer to small traveling circuses that toured through small towns and rural areas. The name derives from the common use of performing dogs and ponies as the main attractions of the events.

This Portsmouth show was a performance by the famed Gentry Brothers. “Prof. Gentry's Famous Dog & Pony Show” was the most notorious act of its kind in history. It began when teenager Henry Gentry and his brothers started touring in 1886 with their act, originally entitled “Gentry’s Equine and Canine Paradox.” It started small, but evolved into a full circus show. The show operated so successfully that by 1897, it was traveling on 14 cars.

Some of the best known circus owners and managers of later years were graduates of the dog and pony shows, and some of the latter exhibitions were converted into full-fledged circuses as they flourished and expanded.

Henry B. Gentry quit school in 1886 at the age of 17 to join Professor Morris, self-styled “world’s greatest trained animal showman,” and from him, Gentry learned the art of domestic animal training. After a few years, he picked up a troupe of dogs from the streets of his home town, Bloomington, Indiana, and upon training them, made his debut in the Bloomington opera house.

The Gentry shows followed much the same pattern. There were military ponies, the Schneider dog family, the monkey fire department, a dog that walked a high wire, a high diving simian, the monkey horse doctor, and trained pigs and goats. As the shows grew, trained elephants were added.

Gentry advertised his show as “the only moral exhibition in the world under canvas. An educational festival patronized and endorsed by the elite of the land.”

In 1916, Gentry retired from business. But retirement was short, for H. B. Gentry accepted the management of the Sells-Floto circus and was owner of Sparks circus for a brief period, before he revived his original dog and pony show in 1931, traveling on 14 trucks.

Associated with him were his son, Robert, and his remaining brother, Frank, and he gathered together a staff that included several executives who worked for him back in the heyday of the Gentry regime. But the resurrection was ill-timed, coming as it did as the country was sinking deep into the throes of the depression and in 1934, the show disbanded.

Satires of 1934

What can you say about this risque show at the Westland Theatre? The “Satires of 1934” featured music, music, music … and a “bevy of beautiful girls” not to mention torch-singing Helene Brown and fan-dancing Francis Rudy. This extravagant Viola Holden production was booked for three days, which certainly attests to its popularity. I could find no additional information about the show or the performers, but doesn't this make you question any preconceived notions of the widespread Puritanical beliefs of the time?

The morality police, the arbiters of public taste, received a blow in March of 1930. A hung jury caused the judge to dismiss obscenity charges against Mae West's Pleasure Man. This is the same judge who broke a gavel, pounding to keep order and erase from the record a question by Miss West about how a police officer could tell if he were addressing a young lady or a man in drag.

When the show was raided, police arrested 52 members of the cast, several of whom were men in drag. This resulted in an amendment to the "Wales Padlock Law" in New York. In the future, only the writers and producers - and not the cast or crew of a show - would be held responsible for material deemed obscene or immoral.

During the Great Depression, shows distracted audiences with escapism, while also offering political commentary and social engagement. But, vaudeville took a significant stick in the eye. In 1925, there were approximately 1500 theaters in the vaudeville circuits; by 1930, only 300 were left.

Gridiron Warrior Impersonator

Speaking of liberal times, I was surprised to see this entry on the sports page of the Times. I guess we never really known history until we research and find new understandings of the past.

Clifford Glenn, a junior at Glenwood New Boston High School in 1936, had a rather unusual talent. As well as being a great football tackle, he was also a exceptional dancer and ... a female impersonator.

By the way, the New Boston Tigers regained the championship of the Big Six Conference that year. I'd say Clifford was no sissy on the gridiron.

Ali Baba's Spiritualistic Seance and Ghost Show

When viewing this ad, I was thinking about how such a show would be a Halloween hit today. After all, haunted houses and fields attracting huge holiday crowds are very popular now. Why not a séance? I smell a sellout.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the American public had a desperate, insatiable fascination with spiritualism and the promise of communication with dead family members. In 1929, a stage magician named Elwin-Charles Peck (who performed as El-Wyn) came up with an act that was at once very new and very old, and he presented it in a way no one had before. After all the other acts at whatever theater he was playing at the time went home for the night, he put on another show.

The El-Wyn's Midnite Spook Party opened with El-Wyn explaining to the audience that he was in contact with the spirit world, warning them they should be prepared to see some strange, even terrifying things over the course of the next hour. He then did a few of his standard tricks, slowly working in some of the same tricks used by the spiritualist charlatans Houdini had unmasked over the previous 30 years.

Objects moved mysteriously, eerie sounds came out of nowhere, and at the close of the show the theater went completely dark as the spirits of the dead appeared and vanished onstage and flew over the heads of the audience. What he was offering, at heart, was a seance.

The traveling show was such a huge success (playing mostly to lively audiences in their late teens and early 20s) that it quickly spawned dozens of imitators. It was the birth of a new entertainment form. Given these other shows also tended to start at midnight, they came to be known generally as Midnight Spook Shows, Midnight Ghost Shows, or, later, Midnight Monster Shows.

Author Jim Knipfel in the article “Midnight Spook Shows: A Brief History” explains ...

“Considering the level of often raucous audience participation, the Midnight Spook Shows can in many ways be considered the direct predecessors to the Midnight Movie phenomenon which began in the early ‘70s (just as the final spook shows were fading away) with films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

“Cheap as the tricks were, the shows worked thanks to the power of suggestion, imagination, and anticipation. Tell people beforehand that spiders will drop on them or monsters will grab them in the darkness and, well, they will. The real innovation the Bakers brought to the form was clever, gimmicky promotions. Mini graveyards popped up in public places in the small towns where the show was about to open, newspaper and radio ads promised everything from “King Kong live onstage!” to contests where someone in the audience could win “a real dead body!” (it turned out to be a frozen chicken). Spooky trailers plugging the show ran in the theaters for weeks beforehand, and fake protest groups showed up outside the show to denounce the depravity of it all.”