The film is as much about the influence and style of the
magazine as it is about its origins. It includes interviews with many former
and current employees of The New Yorker, as well as lots of images of
art and cartoons from the magazine.
There is some information near the beginning regarding
investor Raoul Fleischmann, and also about some of the magazine’s first
writers. Brendan Gill talks about how the magazine was really the product of
three men who knew nothing about New York City or the Jazz Age. He says (about
Harold Ross, E.B. White and James Thurber): “They were all, in effect, hicks. They were all total outsiders.”
John Updike says: “What Thurber and White
did bring to The New Yorker was a sense of nervousness. I think they were both
truly nervous men.” It was Katharine White who helped provide the
sophistication which Harold Ross envisioned for the magazine.
This documentary provides first an overview of the
magazine, its style and so on before then providing the viewer with information
about Harold Ross himself and his upbringing. We’re halfway through the film
before we learn much about Ross, and it is that material that for me is the
most interesting. The fact that he began working for his local newspaper in his
early teens and then left home for California at age eighteen is interesting.
Even more interesting is the story of how after enlisting during the first
World War, Ross walked to Paris to work on The Stars And Stripes, and became
the editor of that paper. Also intriguing is all of the stuff on how World War
II affected the style of the magazine.
Top Hat &
Tales: Harold Ross And The Making Of The New Yorker was directed by Adam
Van Doren, and is scheduled to be released on DVD on June 17, 2014 through
First Run Features. The DVD contains no special features.
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