The Summer Reads of the 1940s, and Anne Hathaway on Vogue

Also, anyone out there watching Love Island USA this season? Plus, new Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise gossip -- for real.

Over the last two summers, we’ve pulled out our favorite beach bags and eyeballed the best-selling summer books of the 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and the first decade of the current century. (And briefly sidebar’d to check out what people were reading over Thanksgiving during the 1970s.) Yes, there is a missing decade there: the 1940s, which I’m tackling today. And then we’ve done them all! (I feel like 2010-2025 is too current to have the appropriate perspective, but come back to me in five years.) Let’s gather together and see just how weird everyone’s reading materials were during one of America’s most stressful decades. Did I leave this one until last because I was worried it might be a stone-cold bummer? You betcha!

As a reminder, methodologically speaking, “summer” is (roughly) those weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and my source for all book-related data is Wikipedia, which has helpfully collected the New York Times number one best-sellers for every week of every year from 1931 to the present. Let’s dive in!

1940: The list was dominated by three books this summer: How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn rules the list from Memorial Day through the first week of June, at which point non-Wiki-page-having Stars of the Sea by F. Van Wyck Mason takes over. That one bows out around Labor Day for Mrs. Miniver, by Jan Struther. I’ve only heard of the first and the third books and I would have bet money that they came out after World War II but here we are. Good thing there’s not a FanDuel for literary trivia. (I blame those respective film adaptations for my misinformation.)

Llewellyn’s Wikipedia is interesting and sad. Both his daughters and his sister were killed when London was bombed in 1944, and he eventually ended up covering the Nuremberg Trials as a journalist. On the other hand, Van Wyck Mason’s is WILD and very casually written, throwing off tidbits like the time VWM accidentally got arrested for murder, and that he “played quite a bit of polo” while traveling the world to buy rugs — oh, and also that he “wrote a famous communiqué which announced the activities of D-Day to the world” as Eisenhower’s Chief Historian and “was one of the first into some of the concentration camps.” Someone, I beg of you, edit this Wiki so that it is easier to follow and has proper citations! I don’t know if any of that is actually true, and I had to Google his obituary myself!

On the other hand, Jan Struther’s Wiki, while clear enough, is low-key depressing and also includes a racial slur. What a way to start a decade!

1941: We’ve only got two books at the top of the list all summer, and I’ve never heard of either one of them. We kick off with Eric “Creator of Lassie” Knight’s This Above All, the cover of which calls it “a stirring and courageous novel of Britain's most desperate hour.” Tragically, Knight’s Wiki informs me that “in 1943, at which time he was a major in the United States Army – Special Services where he wrote two of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series, Knight was killed in a C-54 air crash in Dutch Guiana (now Suriname) in South America.” I told you this decade might be (understandably) kind of depressing.

This Above All falls out of the top slot on the list at the beginning of August, ceding to A.J Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom, which remained atop the list until mid-November. This book is not about World War II. Instead, per its Wiki:

“Spanning six decades, it tells the story of Father Francis Chisholm, an unconventional Scottish Catholic priest who struggles to establish a mission in China. Beset by tragedy in his youth, as a missionary Chisholm endures many years of hardship, punctuated by famine, plague and war in the Chinese province to which he is assigned. Through a life guided by compassion and tolerance, Chisholm earns the respect of the Chinese—and of fellow clergy who would mistrust him—with his kindly, high-minded and courageous ways.”

This sounds like it could easily have aged poorly — and perhaps it has! But if you read the actual synopsis, it seems like the missionary bits are only a small part of the book, and that Cronin is quite critical of the missionaries; it additionally (surprise!) sounds extremely depressing. Cronin apparently also wrote a book that literally (partially) inspired the NHS (and also won the National Book Award) and was a medical doctor who also was very concerned about the health hazards of the mining industry. We will meet him again.

1942: The United States has officially entered the war. And you can certainly tell it is on people’s minds. John Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down holds court at the top of the list from mid-March through the week of June 8. I have read a lot of Steinbeck, and have still somehow never heard of this book, even though, per its description, you’d think I would have:

The story tells of the military occupation of a small town in Northern Europe by the army of an unnamed nation at war with Great Britain and Russia (much like the occupation of Norway by the Germans during World War II).

A French language translation of the book was published illegally in Nazi-occupied France by Les Éditions de Minuit, a French Resistance publishing house. Numerous other editions were secretly published across occupied Europe, including Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, and Italian versions (as well as a Swedish version); it was the best known work of U.S. literature in the Soviet Union during the war. Although the text never names the occupying force as German, references to "The Leader" as well as "memories of defeats in Belgium and France 20 years ago" clearly suggest it. Written with the purpose of motivating resistance movements in occupied countries, the book has appeared in at least 214 editions throughout the world.

That is fascinating. Steinbeck himself was about to take off to work as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune (and for what eventually became the CIA). And, per his Wiki, “In 1945, Steinbeck received the King Haakon VII Freedom Cross for his literary contributions to the Norwegian resistance movement.” I had no idea! Learning!

A tough one to top, right? The rest of the summer is dominated by Rachel Field’s And Now Tomorrow trading first place slots with The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel. And Now Tomorrow, the book, doesn’t have a Wiki page, but the one about its film adaptation implies that it is kind of a potboiler — something I feel bad saying, given that Field had just died in March of 1942, having contracted “pneumonia after an operation.” She was only 47! Perhaps it helps if I note that I remember liking the book she’s probably now best known for, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, a children’s book for which she won the Newbery Award. (Wiki notes that the book was edited in 1999 to remove “problematic language,” primarily about Native Americans — which is not a huge surprise given that it came out in 1929.)

I mostly recall The Song of Bernadette from the movie, for which Jennifer Jones won an Oscar. But the way it came to be is chilling; Werfel and his wife, Alma (who was also Gustav Mahler’s widow and an extremely interesting person in her own right), had to flee Austria when the Nazis came after them. (He was Jewish, and he’d also been writing “popular satirical plays lampooning the Nazi regime.”) First, they went to France, and then, when the Nazis took France, tried to get to Portugal as a way toward eventually reaching the United States. They eventually ended up in Lourdes, where they were sheltered by a variety of families as the Gestapo looked for them. Werfel vowed that if they got out of France alive, he’d write about Bernadette and the miracle of Lourdes. And he did — he and Alma eventually made it to Los Angeles, where he died in 1945. (Wiki was like, “He had issues with his heart while on the run,” which, like, I’m sure he did.) He lived to see V-E Day, anyway?

1943: The bad news is that we missed being able to talk about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a book I loved as a child (and haven’t read in years), by just a few weeks. But this ENTIRE SUMMER belongs to The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas. Continuing the super peppy and extremely cheerful trend of bestsellers in this decade, The Robe is 556 pages about the aftermath of the Crucifixion, and it seems like everyone dies at the end!

1944: With the exception of two weeks where W. Somerset Maugham and The Razor’s Edge — largely about the mental, emotional, and spiritual turmoil of a World War I pilot, certainly a topic of interest at the moment — pulls one out, the best-selling book of the summer of 1944 is Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit, a tragedy which tackles racism, white supremacy, and interracial romance (and which is allegedly named after the Billie Holiday song, although there seems to be some disagreement about that). Strange Fruit was banned in several cities and was briefly “also banned from being mailed through the U.S. Postal Service until President Franklin D. Roosevelt interceded at his wife Eleanor's request.” (Its ban in Detroit was apparently overturned with help from the UAW; I want to know more about this and how the auto workers got involved.) I haven’t read this one, and its various adaptations seem like they were mostly unsuccessful. Regardless, Smith was a lesbian Civil Rights activist who seems like she was a real one.

1945: World War II officially ends over the course of this summer; V-E Day is May 8, and V-J Day is September 2. Was this vibe reflected in the summer’s best-sellers? Sort of! At the very least, it seems like people read widely this summer, and a lot of books which seem arguably fluffy. The Memorial Day bestseller is The Green Years, by our old friend A.J Cronin, which doesn’t seem that depressing even though it appears a lot of people, yes, die in it. Kathleen Winsor then pops in for one week with famous early (perhaps first!) bodice ripper Forever Amber, a book which does sound like a banger and which I can’t believe I’ve never read. (My favorite tidbit from its Wiki entry: “The book was condemned by the Catholic Church for indecency, which helped its popularity. One critic went so far as to number each of the passages to which he objected.” I’m sure he did!!!) Amber is quickly dethroned by something called Captain from Castile by Samuel Shellabarger, another piece of historical fiction which sounds juicy and melodramatic. (Fun fact: One of the USC marching band’s EXTREMELY ANNOYING two songs originated in the film adaptation of this book.)

The rest of the summer is a constant three-way flipflop between Castile, another historical piece called The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann (who we met when she had a bestseller in the 1930s), which seems like a book I’d have accidentally checked out from the library hoping it was romantic and instead found to be low-key boring, and Adria Locke Langley’s A Lion Is in the Streets, which is based on the life of Huey Long, a fact she denied because she was scared she’d get sued, even though he was dead. The New York Times called it “lurid.” This is a real melange!

1946: It’s a two book summer! The first half belongs to Taylor Caldwell’s This Side of Innocence — a book without a Wikipedia, but its back flap copy tells me that it is allegedly “a mesmerizing tale of forbidden desire and a brilliant portrait of small-town America during the Reconstruction Era.” The first review on Goodreads, on the other hand, reads, “Enough. I hate this book, I hate all the characters and I don't care what happens to them.” Caldwell’s Wiki makes her sound like a total asshole and also a hardcore crackpot who would probably be deep into Q-Anon if she were currently alive.

The back half of the summer, on the other hand, is owned by the year’s best-seller overall, The Hucksters, by Frederic Wakeman. Neither the book nor Wakeman has a Wikipedia page, which makes me think that perhaps neither of them ever existed in the first place. However! The film adaptation does have a Wiki, and it’s A RIDE. Ahem:

Frederic Wakeman's novel The Hucksters (1946) spent 35 weeks in the top stratum of The New York Times Fiction bestseller list, aided perhaps by its raunchy, racy controversy. Life magazine called the book "last year's best-selling travesty" and even Clark Gable, who would eventually star in its film adaptation, said "It's filthy and it isn't entertainment." Life's and Gable's literary sensibilities to the contrary, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer paid $200,000 for the motion picture rights before the novel was even published.

Screenwriter Luther Davis and the novel's adapters Edward Choderov and George Wells had "an extensive laundering job" to do to bring the project into compliance with Louis B. Mayer's tastes and the Hays Office's policies. They had to eliminate the graphic (for 1946) sexual scenes, and they changed the book's Mrs. Dorrance from a married woman into a war widow — so she and Vic "could live happily ever after." More problematic, though, was the portrayal of the talent agent David Lash, a pivotal character in the second half of the film. Lash was based on Jules Stein, the founder of talent agency MCA, and Lash's Hucksters protégé Freddie Callahan, who bore an undeniable physical resemblance to Lew Wasserman, Stein's protégé in 1946 who would eventually head MCA himself. Even in 1947, there were "fears about reprisals from MCA” over the portrayals of Stein and Wasserman…the other problem was Lash/Stein's ethnicity: in the novel, Vic tells Lash people will call his honesty into question because he is a Jew; Davis removed all references to Lash's ethnicity and made him a kid who had been in trouble but had "gone straight" and succeeded.

!!!!

Listen, at any rate, I am happy for my fellow Americans who were reading a raunchy, racy, filthy travesty on a beach after what was presumably a very stressful time in their lives.

1947: Most of this summer was the domain of by Laura Z. Hobson’s A Gentleman’s Agreement, the famous novel (and eventual Best Picture-winning film) about antisemitism. Hobson’s Wikipedia is really interesting; she was the first woman hired by Time in “a non-secretarial capacity,” and for many year she passed off a child she herself gave birth to as one she had adopted because she didn’t want her other, actually adopted, child to feel bad. (Also, I’d imagine, because of the stigma of having a baby out of wedlock.)

Sinclair Lewis pops in for a few weeks in July with Kingsblood Royal, a book about a white-passing man who discovers his Black heritage and the racism he experiences because of it. I’m sure there is currently an enterprising college student writing an essay about how interesting it is that this book hit the list the same summer as one about a man who starts telling people he is Jewish and thus experiences antisemitism. (Lewis’s Wiki is also, by the way, lightly unhinged. I might have been more interested in him as a student if I’d known, for example, that he and Theodore Dreiser once had a literal slap-fight over plagiarism.)

The rest of the summer is ruled by The Moneyman, Thomas B. Costain’s historical novel that does not have a Wikipedia page, but which Goodreads promises me is a “vivid and dramatic story of a great conspiracy and a great love, set in 15th century France.” Goodreads reviewers seem to agree that it is just resoundingly okay.

1948: The first few weeks of summer belong, alternatingly, to Elizabeth Goudge’s Pilgrim's Inn and Ross Lockridge’s Raintree County, the titles of which I feel confident people got confused all the time at the bookstore. Gouge’s book doesn’t even merit a mention in her Wiki, while I remember Raintree County primarily because Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift are both extremely gorgeous in the film adaptation. Tragically, Lockridge died by suicide shortly after the book originally came out earlier that spring.

Most of this summer, though, is dominated by Norman Mailer’s (arguable) all-time banger, The Naked and the Dead. (I’d argue that his ACTUAL all-time banger is The Executioner’s Song.) I cannot tell you how many men have emailed me and Heather over the years to tell us that actually Norman Mailer invented the word “fug” because his publisher wouldn’t let him use as many “fuck”s as he wanted in this very book, as if I were under the misapprehension that Heather and I somehow invented the word. WE KNOW!

ANYWAY. The very last week of this summer takes us out in the hands of – once again!! – A.J. Cronin, this time with a book about a guy who has a nervous breakdown about unpasteurized milk.

1949: A one book summer to close out the decade. And it’s Pulitzer Prize winner (not for this) John P. Marquand’s Point of No Return, which Wiki notes “is notable for its lampooning of W. Lloyd Warner, an anthropologist with whom Marquand had a personal grudge.” Although the book itself has no Wiki, I’d like to congratulate whoever worked “impecunious” into Marquand’s.

It feels right to end this feature with a petty authorial grudge: I truly think more people would be interested in literature if they knew how extremely messy many authors have been throughout time. Thank you for diving into these Wiki Wormholes with me for the past few summers! And don’t worry, we’re not totally done here — next up, I’m going to be investigating the summer bestsellers in non-fiction, which I anticipate will be completely unhinged. I’ll see you next time, when someone is staring at you in Personal Growth.

– Jessica

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Annie, By Annie

Anne Hathaway is the star of August’s Vogue, and as I swiped through the various photos both inside and out, I just KNEW they were by Annie Leibovitz before I even saw the credit. You’ll see why:

They are muddy and miserable, two of Leibovitz’s hallmarks. I couldn’t tell you why Hathaway is rubbing up against a tree while being throttled by a massive silky scarf, nor why they decided to cloak her — skin and all — in the hues of jaundice. And it is a real achievement to put Anne Hathaway in front of a painting, intentionally evoke it in a nouveau riche way, and then proceed both to mute her AND blow her out so much that your eye would much rather go over to the art than to the actress.

At least the movement in the right-hand photo made an interesting shape, but the aura is distressing, like she’s fleeing a predator. The confidence from the left is nicer, but the colors aren’t. Her skin matches both the dress AND the building behind her. It really is like they’re trying to blend her in rather than make her pop.

Well, she pops here, but… no, ma’am. Absolutely not. Nobody should be paying Annie Leibovitz to produce photos that play like AI and Photoshop got drunk and hooked up. This honestly looks like a deranged meme. Sad Keanu, Crabby Bernie (with the mittens), and now Vexed Overdressed Anne.

And, the cover. Once again, a tree. Once again, they’re wrapping up her neck. And we have another grim facial expression in which her eyes appear to be focusing on different things. She looks pinched, congested. None of these photographic reinventions are interesting or enticing or alluring, or make me want to spend any time with her as a cover story subject — which is too bad, because the profile works overtime to remind you that Anne is extremely nice and regular. There are some cute comedic clips on Vogue’s Instagram where Bowen Yang tells her she’s a fashion disaster — check out part 2 and part 3 — and the energy AND almost all the outfits they put together as larks are jointly so much better than this photoshoot. Anne Hathaway may be nice, but she’s also funny and self-deprecating, and those qualities make for a much livelier experience than Sad Aristocrat Goes To The Park.

The profile includes the usual pretentious talk about the process, and film, and has the obligatory cameo from a celebrity bestie (it’s Bradley Cooper, randomly) and the assertions that Anne is hyper-intelligent and yet such a regular-degular mom — all the same stuff they do in every piece about a woman who both acts and parents (Blake Lively’s recent-ish cover comes to mind). But its primary function is to promote Hathaway’s upcoming movie Mother Mary, in which she plays a Lady Gaga-like megastar grappling with the lines between the person and the persona — or at least, that’s what I think it’s about; they try not to say TOO much. Applause to Maya Singer for not pulling the punch: She saw the movie, clearly thought it was weird as fuck, and basically says so. And it doesn’t sound like it was a fun filming experience. Of the cast group chat, Singer writes:

“Maybe they discuss the stuff everyone clammed up about when they talked to me. I don’t mean they went silent about anything specific— there’s a general air of ‘What happened on Mother Mary stays on Mother Mary.’ At a certain point, conversations hit a wall, or, as in my wonderful chat with costume designer [Bina] Daigeler, U-turn back to friendlier subjects, like getting Iris van Herpen to design the film’s all-important frock.”

They also didn’t have any of the songs written until after they were shooting some of the more difficult film sequences:

“It was so confusing,” says Hathaway, with the glow of someone who has been surprised with an extraordinary gift. And that’s how she means it. “I had to learn…. Because if I’d had the music a year before we ever turned a camera on, I would have tattooed every note of it on my soul, and there would have been a whole process, very specific. And that was not available to me. In the end,” she continues, “I am very grateful I could not take control.”

Reading between the lines, they were all stressed-out and cranky and miserable, but now that it’s over, everyone is trying very hard to make it sound profound. Maybe the photo shoot DOES meet the moment, then: odd, off-putting, faintly ill-tempered, and ultimately perhaps better left in the rearview.

— Heather

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ICYMI…

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Last Call

— This Reddit thread was unexpectedly so funny to me: Iconic moment. What are your favorite moments of celebrities interviews? — J

— Congrats are due to a Spice Girl! Mel B got married — for the third time! — over the weekend, with a big ceremony at St. Paul’s. Because I know you’re wondering: Baby Spice attended, Sporty (who was performing in Sweden) and Posh both sent public congrats, and Ginger has thus far been publicly silent. I assume she privately texted and sent a huge fruit plate but couldn’t make it because Red Bull had their big race in the UK this past weekend and she had to soothe Christian Horner’s troubled brow. (She came to Victoria’s 50th and they’re reportedly working on some kind of a reunion; I think they’re all on decent terms.) — J

— Is ANYONE out there watching Love Island USA this season, and should we talk about how WEIRD it’s been? It is a mess of mismatched couples and gameplay and low on likable people, and we’ve had TWO women yanked from the villa for using racial slurs (one on a podcast, one on her socials) in the recent past, and there are some INSANE tattoos???? And yet I am seated every night. Amaya Papaya forever. — H

— Something about this is so funny. Ahem, per the Daily Mail (as if you couldn’t tell from the way this headline is written): “Fans go wild as Katie Holmes LIKES Instagram post confirming ex Tom Cruise's romance with Ana de Armas... after the movie legend, 63, marked Bond Girl's 37th birthday with London night out.” She UNliked it at some point but the Mail does has photographic proof. Everything about this cracks me up. Katie Holmes secretly following the Mail. Katie Holmes approving of this relationship? Is she happy for Tom? Are they secretly in communication? Then, Katie Holmes realizing with horror that she LIKED a Daily Mail (!) post about her most infamous ex and frantically UNliking it? The internet is a risk! — J

— Denise Richards’s husband filed for divorce, a process through which we now know he brings in zero dollars and they jointly spend $105,000 per month: “He said the average monthly expenses include $18,000 on rent, $5,000 on repairs, $7,000 on child care, $10,000 on groceries, $15,000 on eating out, $8,000 on utilities, $500 on his cell phone, $5,000 on laundry and another $20,000 on clothing. In addition, he said he spends $15,000 on entertainment and $1,500 on auto expenses.” TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH IN CLOTHES. I guess part of that is the price of her being on reality TV, but girl, even those Selling Sunset loons admit to renting most of their clothes and you’re not shooting every DAY. Maybe HE just has expensive tastes, even though he has no job, because he ALONE is spending $15k on “entertainment” and he needs to… get dressed for it? SIR. Please.¹ — H

1. OMG THIS IS WHERE I CAN CHIME IN AS RESIDENT BRAVO CINEMATIC UNIVERSE CORRESPONDENT. He is also A LUNATIC and a scam artist who was telling people they could cure cancer with some kind of flim-flam he was selling, and who convinced Denise they were being followed by the government (???) because they knew too much (?????). He sucks!! She seems extremely kind and also maybe has very very bad taste in dudes. ALSO I don’t know how he’s spending this much money on clothes, this man always showed up in a tee shirt and jeans and flip-flops!!!!! — J