The Postcard
A postcard bearing no studio name that was posted in Croydon on Sunday the 16th. July 1905 to:
Percy Hill Esq.,
13, Norbury Court Road,
Norbury,
London S.W.
There are no indications as to the identity of the men and women, nor what was going on, although it looks as though a wedding had just happened or was about to happen.
The message on the divided back and front of the card was as follows:
"Dear Percy,
I'm so sorry you will
not get this in time, but
I do not know your
address so cannot send
it.
Yours,
B. 16. 7. 05.
July 16th. 1905
Many Happy Returns
of the Day.
Belle."
Tess Slesinger
So what else happened on the day that Belle posted the card?
Well, the 16th. July 1905 marked the birth in NYC of Tess Slesinger.
Tess Slesinger was an American writer and screenwriter, and a member of the New York intellectual scene.
Tess Slesinger - The Early Years
Tess was born as Theresa Slesinger in New York City, as the fourth child of Anthony Slesinger, a Hungarian-born dress manufacturer, and Augusta (Singer) Slesinger, a welfare worker who later (after 1931) became a prominent psychoanalyst. Her family was Jewish.
Tess was the younger sister of three brothers, including Stephen Slesinger, later the creator of Red Ryder. Stephen (1901 - 1953) was an American radio, television and film producer, creator of comic strip characters and the father of the licensing industry. From 1923 to 1953, he created, produced, published, developed, licensed or represented several popular literary legends of the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's.
Working with artist Fred Harman, Stephen launched the popular comic strip Red Ryder in 1938.
Between 1938 and 1967, the long-running Red Ryder comic strip was also a comic book, the subject of a 12-chapter film serial, 26 motion pictures and numerous merchandising and promotional tie-ins, including the Red Ryder Daisy Carbine Air Rifle, which holds the longest continuing license in the history of the licensing industry, and was depicted in the film A Christmas Story (1983).
Tess was educated at Ethical Culture Fieldston School from 1912 until 1922, Swarthmore College, and the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York.
In December 1932, Story magazine published her short story "Missis Flinders," which was based on Slesinger's own experience of having an abortion, and which was the first short story to appear in a large-circulation periodical to address the theme explicitly.
Encouraged to expand the story, Slesinger incorporated it as the final chapter of her only novel, The Unpossessed (1934). The novel also satirizes the New York left-wing milieu in which she then lived. A modern edition describes it as:
"A cutting comedy about hard times, bad jobs,
lousy marriages, little magazines, high principles,
and the morning after, with a cast of litterateurs,
layabouts, lotharios, academic activists, and
fur-clad patrons of protest and the arts."
Tess helped to establish the Screen Writers Guild in 1933.
Her first husband was Herbert Solow, who was a staff writer on the Menorah Journal. After marrying her second husband, screenwriter Frank Davis, she moved to California in 1935; with Davis she had two children.
Slesinger was responsible for the screenplays, among others, of The Good Earth (1937) and, at the end of her life, she adapted A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1946) with Davis, which won them an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.
During the era of the Popular Front, Slesinger was a supporter of the American Communist Party. Her name was among those included on the letter denouncing the Dewey Commission's investigation of the Moscow Trials, and she also endorsed the CP-initiated call for the Third American Writers' Congress in 1939.
However, like many other leftist intellectuals of the time, Slesinger grew disillusioned with the Soviet Union in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939.
The Death and Legacy of Tess Slesinger
Tess Slesinger died from cancer in Los Angeles on the 21st. February 1945 at the age of 39.
The children from her second marriage are Peter Davis, who is the writer, filmmaker and director of the Academy Award-winning documentary Hearts and Minds (1974), and Jane Davis, a wellness and mind-body specialist.
In James T. Farrell's novel Sam Holman (1983), there are thinly-veiled fictional portraits of many prominent New York intellectuals; the character of Frances Dunsky is based on Tess Slesinger.
The Works of Tess Slesinger
(a) Books
-- The Unpossessed (1934) - novel
-- Time: the Present (1935) - short story collection
-- On Being Told That Her Second Husband Has Taken His First Lover and Other Stories (1971).
(b) Screenplays
-- The Bride Wore Red (1937)
-- The Good Earth (1937)
-- Girls' School (1938)
-- Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)
-- Remember the Day (1941)
-- Are Husbands Necessary? (1942)
-- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1946).
