"There's
no Greece, just natural good grooming."
- Helen of Troy, N.Y.
I found the above quote as part of an ad in a 1959 Cambridge, Mass.,
newspaper, showing the profile of a woman pushing Wildroot Cream-Oil
for men. We all know about the mythical Trojan War version of Helen,
but a little research shows that our own Helen of Troy, N.Y., was a
pretty popular subject in the Roaring Twenties and throughout the 20th
century.
A couple of years ago, a
previous owner of Proctor's Theatre ripped out a false wall to reveal
a 10-foot mural of our own Helen of Troy. The mural, painted by local
muralist David Lithgow, depicts Helen flanked on both sides by a Troy
female collar worker and a male foundryman. It no doubt impressed all
that entered the vaudeville theater when it opened in 1913.
Perhaps this twist on the classic Helen began as early as 1904, when
Wilfrid S. Jackson penned the 307-page humorous romance novel,
"Helen of Troy, N.Y." Jackson and his wife Emilie, also a
writer, are both well known for translating other works of fiction.
However, "Helen" is an original story about a rich socialite
and German-American, Helen B. Heimer from Troy, N.Y., and those
interested in marrying her.
A connection between Helen and Arrow collars developed early in the
20th century. Cole Porter sang about Arrow
collars in his 1912 "A Football King" (a.k.a. "If I
Were Only a Football Man"). The original title was intended for
the initiation play "The Pot Of Gold" for Yale's Delta Kappa
Epsilon, but it wasn't used, so he revised it and sung it with the
Yale Glee Club during his senior year (1912-13), when he served as the
club's president:
For my autograph I'd charge a dollar, And I'd be the title of an Arrow
collar, Such a very muddy sort of very bloody sort of thing. My
opponents I should give a scalding, That would make me rival Captain
Jesse Spalding. If they'd only realize that I'm a football King.
After World War I, returning soldiers demanded to wear shirts with
soft attached collars, rejecting the traditional stiff detachable
collars. The "Arrow Shirt" was invented by Troy's Cluett-Peabody
& Sons to satisfy those needs. In 1915, Frederick Peabody created
a new advertising campaign to promote these shirts and hired the
popular commercial artist, J.D. Leyendecker, to create the now famous
Arrow Collar Man.
The Arrow Collar Man became the symbol of the perfect American male.
Leyendecker's ads, found in magazines in the U.S. and Canada, were a
big hit, and he found himself being the male "pinup" of
women, along with the recipient of many marriage proposals, up to the
1930s. Never mind the fact that Leyendecker was outwardly gay and his
male models were often his lovers.
We next find "Helen of Troy, N.Y.," in the plot of one of
the early Rouge detective stories. The overweight, slow,
cigar-smoking, unkempt detective Jim Hanvey, created by writer Octavus
Roy Cohen (1891-1959), was one of America's earliest private eyes and
appeared in short stories, mainly in the Saturday Evening Post. One
episode entitled, "Helen of Troy, N.Y." was published in the
Oct. 7, 1922, Post and in The Detective Magazine on Jan. 5, 1923.
It was the Arrow Collar Man that inspired George Kaufman and Marc
Connelly to write the book and two-act play of "Helen of Troy,
N.Y." The play appeared in New York City's Selwyn Theatre from
June to October 1923, followed by a stint in the Times Square Theater
for a total of 191 performances. The play was a hit and starred Helen
Ford as Helen of Troy. Ironic, since Helen was actually born in Troy
on June 6, 1897, her real name Helen Isabel Barnett.
This play also ran for three days at the premiere of the Fairmont
Theater in Fairmont, W.Va., on June 4, 1923. George Jessel (yes, the
comedian) produced the play and it launched the career of music
writers Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. They later went on to write for
the Marx Brothers movies.
Another songwriter who penned a tune for the play was Lorenz Hart (of
Rodgers & Hart fame) who, with W. Frank Harling, wrote
"Moonlight Lane." This collaboration with Harling is one of
the few published songs Hart wrote with anyone other than Richard
Rodgers.
Don Rittner's column appears every Tuesday.