James Michener 1950 "The Main Line" 1st & Limited ~ Scandal & Rare "Holiday" Pub

Description: Vintage 1950 May issue of "Holiday" magazine ~ Extra large publication 14" x 11" This was an upper class travel and leisure publication. It is filled with vivid vintage ads and interesting articles. Features articles by: JAMES MICHENER ~ "The Main Line" Sylvan suburb of Philadelphia's aristocratic middle class.This was a VERY controversial article that he wrote that was not published to my knowledge in any other publication. The cover art of this large and beautiful magazine is done by "Susan Yates" and tells how the Railroad "angels" helped create Philadelphia's Main Line. This article is 24 pages long. It has photos on each page.*****please note that below the remaining general information about this magazine, I have added more detailed information about thisarticle THE MAIN LINE. Being a fan of Michener's work, I was interested in this article. Also, :THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN THE CAT ~ PET OR PEST? ~ wonderful Cat photos and information of the 50's Feline. THE LOST GOLD MINE CATALINA ISLAND ~ California, photos and information of 1950's California CABOOSE ARISTOCRAT ~ Luxury train travel ~ JERUSALEM ~ The Holy City Today ( May 1950) MADISON AVENUE ~ New York City LETTER, MOVIES, BOOKS, TRAVEL, ADVERTISEMENTS IN COLOR 1950 Amazing Large Format 14" x 11" and weighs several pounds 155 Pages Very good condition! Covers and interior show minimal wear, are clean and bright. Please message me with any questions ************When James Michener came to town, he had recently won a Pulitzer for Tales of the South Pacific (1946), his first book, and had just published his second, The Fires of Spring (1949), a semi-autobiographical novel about an orphan who finds professional and romantic success.Michener’s version of his life story was that he never knew his parents, his birthplace or even his birth date. He was adopted by a Doylestown Quaker, graduated from Swarthmore College and went on to teach at a variety of schools, including Harvard. His writing career began during World War II when, as a naval historian, he began to gather material for a collection of short stories.Later in his career, Michener could afford to turn down hack writing assignments. But in 1949, he agreed to do a profile of the Main Line for Holiday magazine, an upbeat travel publication. It paid well. There was no shame in it. John Steinbeck and Irwin Shaw also wrote for Holiday.The article itself was pure puffery. In prose accompanied by photographs of stone mansions, debutantes, horses and Quaker meetings, Michener praised the old families who ran the place so well. The article did acknowledge that the Main Line’s heyday had passed. Rather than a pile of stone costing millions, he wrote, “today’s Main Line aristocrat prefers a $40,000 house. And rather than 30 servants, he strives to get—and keep—one.”Overall Michener depicted a suburban utopia where most residents wanted—and got—little change. He could hardly do anything else. Holiday’s owner, Curtis Publishing, was based in Philadelphia. Many of its executives lived on the Main Line. Walter D. Fuller, president of Curtis, lived in Penn Valley. Michener hadn’t been hired to muckrake.In his article, Michener didn’t omit Lower Merion’s Schuylkill waterfront where, he wrote, a “somewhat impoverished citizenry lives clinging to the river’s edge” despite frequent floods. And this: Farther downriver, the cliffside town of West Manayunk perches Pittsburgh-like in the gloom. ‘It’s a disgrace to call that a part of Lower Merion,’ the Main Liner is likely to protest. ‘It really belongs to Philadelphia.’ The school board, however, is determined to provide the best that democracy can afford, and sends the West Manayunk children to the ultra-lovely Bala Cynwyd Junior High. ‘By the time we get them in Lower Merion High,’ the officials say, ‘you can’t tell them from the others. Good kids, those Manayunkers.’”If they read the article at all, most Main Liners quickly threw it aside. The Ehart brothers, publishers of the Wayne Suburban, entirely missed the implied slight to blue-collar West Manayunkers. Their editorial merely complained that Michener portrayed all Main Liners as rich. The Main Line Times didn’t react at all.But in West Manayunk, there was outrage. At a standing-room-only meeting, neighbors demanded an apology from Holiday for “slurring” the community and “stigmatizing” the youngsters.” In particular, West Manayunkers focused on the implication that their children were not OK until the junior high had processed them to Lower Merion standards. Lower Merion High School principal George W.R. Kirkpatrick appeared to reassure parents their children were valued. “Your children have played in our bands and on our teams,” he told the crowd. “The most cooperative students we get in our orchestra come from West Manayunk.”But it wasn’t quite enough; West Manayunkers wanted to know whom Michener had interviewed.“The hill folk,” reported the Times, “assert that author James A. Michener did not suck the statement out of his thumb.” A civic association was formed to demand an answer.Into this stepped Dr. Albert C. Barnes, art collector and local crank. Barnes had hated Michener since learning that, as a Swarthmore student in the 1920s, the writer had lied his way into his Merion art gallery. Barnes was famously distrustful of—and barred from his art gallery—anyone he thought an intellectual. College students had virtually no chance to get in, so Michener impersonated a steelworker: “I don’t have much education,” he wrote in a letter posted from Pittsburgh, “but I hear you have such a real nice bunch of pictures.”That brought a written invitation and a tour guided personally by Barnes. He was furious when he learned the truth.Now, Barnes drew a parallel between Michener’s earlier deception and what he had written for Holiday. Michener, he said, was an admitted “liar” and a “phony.” When Michener attempted a soothing response, Barnes responded in language that remains unprintable.“What the hell do you use for a handkerchief?” asked Michener. “Barbed wire?”Retorted Barnes: “Why should I use barbed wire when [you] serve the purpose so well?”When Michener lectured at Penn, Barnes climbed on stage to harangue him in person. Michener walked out. When Barnes challenged the writer to a debate, Michener ignored him.Michener declined to identify the official whom he had quoted. “It would be a serious breach of honor for me to tell you that,” he wrote one resident. But West Manayunkers’ angry letters, he noted, proved that the class distinctions he had described did, in fact, exist. (“The Main Liners despise us,” one had written. “But you should hear what we think of the Main Liners!”)The uproar continued for a couple of months. In the Times, letter writer E.D. Wirt addressed Michener as “Commander, Flying Saucer Squadron” and advised him to “load your crew on your flying saucer and fly off into the blue.”Mrs. K.S.C. wrote advising the swells that life was better without servants “in a cozy little six- or seven-room house with one bath, and not being too lazy to do your own work.”Three-and-a-half years went by. In October 1953, West Manayunk’s civic association distributed ballots asking residents to choose the existing name or one of four alternatives: Belmont, Belmont Hills, Welsh Hills or Cadwalader. A Times editorial, which didn’t even mention Michener, joked that the real problem was phonetic.“It’s that ‘yunk,’” said the paper. “A check of the words ending in ‘unk’ discloses that (with the possible exception of ‘plunk’ and ‘spunk’) not a one connotes anything good or true or beautiful. Consider, for instance, such opprobrious examples as bunk, drunk, flunk, funk, junk, punk, quidnunc, skunk, slunk and—of course—stunk.”When the 896 votes were counted, 627 voters preferred a new name; of these, 475 chose Belmont Hills. Another 269 favored the old name.Why? Some residents cited post office confusion. Mail for West Manayunk went to similar addresses across the river. Mrs. Albert Turtle of Price Street favored Belmont Hills because blueprints for the coming Schuylkill Expressway included a Belmont interchange at the foot of the hill. “Hills” worked, said Rita Terravana of Belmont Avenue, because “we certainly have them around here.”Nobody mentioned Michener.I pack with extra care for a safe and dry arrival Thank You for your interest

Price: 75 USD

Location: San Diego, California

End Time: 2025-01-12T21:48:16.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD