Ailing Lou Gehrig Retires From Baseball

"Quiet, Stupid! ... Yeow!"

The state Senate approves a bill that would license bookies and take 5% of their gross. I wonder what the lobbying was like on this bill. A Ford executive says industry voluntarily reduced the workweek to 40 hours. "The charges that these improvements were made at the insistence of a morally outraged society is not tenable."   Talk about fuel economy: 23 mpg. Maybe I'm an overprotective parent, but I really wouldn't want my kid doing this.

Maybe more than any other era, I find the artwork -- and lettering -- in the 1930s ads just remarkable. I recently listened to a program on Winston Churchill. He certainly had a knack with words that put everybody in their place. Especially "Corporal Hitler." The Times begins a contest on movie titles. I'll try to run some of the entries.

Above, a stylish ad for "The Old Dark House" and "My Man Godfrey." At left, a feature on the arrival of Michael Farrow, born to John Farrow and Maureen O'Sullivan.

Another elegant, stylish ad, this one for Harris & Frank. Re-creating the early days of California. Moral Rearmament! The cat ate a watch?

Lou Gehrig's career was over. The Yankees slugger, whose skills had seemed mysteriously in decline, was diagnosed with what was then called infantile paralysis. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is an incurable ailment that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Gehrig, who had played in 2,130 consecutive games with the Yankees and took himself out of the lineup in May, died in 1941. The Times ran an Associated Press story with a horrible lead: "The 'Iron Horse' was consigned to the baseball roundhouse today -- to stay." The Yankees tried to be optimistic about Gehrig's recovery, discussing a post-baseball job with the Yankees "in some executive capacity." The next day, The Times ran a short story on plans for a day in Gehrig's honor. Here's footage from the event. -- Keith Thursby Update: Keith is on vacation so I'll pinch hit for him. The Times' original story indeed says Lou Gehrig had "infantile paralysis." Later stories also say he had "infantile paralysis" or "a form of infantile paralysis." His June 3, 1941,  obituary says he died of "a rare disease" called "amyotrophic lateral sclerosis." --lrh

Comments

[Chris Morales]

"Moral Rearmament"- the listing for the Bowl (Hollywood or Biltmore?) event for July, 1939 was the first I'd seen of the group's presence at that late date.

"Moral Rearmanet" was a Christian based group who strove for cleaning up individual lives (and the world ultimately) through Christian principles.

In the post-WW I era it had started as the Oxford Movement, which begat Alcoholics Anonymouos in 1935. AA began in the Oxford Movement, but soon broke away due to moving toward a non-denominational, spirituallly based group.

At that point, The Oxford group tried to sustain themselves and re-branded themselves as Moral Rearmament, before they ultimately disbanded at some point.
CM

[Dick Morris]

I thought that infantile paralysis was an old name for poliomyelitis (polio), not amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.