The New Yorker Magazine

December 28, 1963, the complete issue in exceptional shape.

Garrett Price’s delightful cover turns a single red schoolhouse and its neighboring tree into a miniature calendar: twelve successive scenes carry them through snow and bare branches, spring rain and blossoms, the full green abundance of summer, autumn color, and finally back into winter.

Here are a few highlights from this issue, with the entirety of the contents detailed further down:

Only weeks before the Beatles’ first American visit, Thomas Whiteside talks with their young manager Brian Epstein, who has come to the United States to arrange the group’s three February appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Epstein describes the extraordinary Beatlemania already sweeping Britain, where the four young men from Liverpool have broken entertainment records and become the most fervently idolized performers in the country. It is a marvelous little piece of Beatles history caught at precisely the moment before America discovered what was coming.

Donald Barthelme contributes “A Shower of Gold,” his wonderfully strange fiction about a financially strapped sculptor who agrees to appear on an absurd television program called Who Am I?, while John O’Hara supplies the considerably darker “Zero,” an adulterous domestic drama played out on a bitter sub-zero Pennsylvania night. Han Suying explores astrology, fortune-telling, divination and the effort to outflank the future throughout Asia; Jonathan Miller examines television’s extraordinary response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; and Janet Flanner sends a wide-ranging Letter from Paris encompassing Paul Signac, French politics, theatre and cultural life.

The Complete and Utter Contents of This Issue

with grateful acknowledgment to Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

NOTES AND COMMENT

Daniel Lang remembers Senator Herbert H. Lehman, who has died at eighty-five, reflecting on his probity, philanthropy, seriousness of purpose and old-fashioned courtesy, and recalling his willingness to stand against McCarthyism, defend Eleanor Roosevelt, and oppose his political benefactor Franklin D. Roosevelt over the Supreme Court-packing plan.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

“Beatle Man” — Thomas Whiteside, with D. Lowe
An interview with Brian Epstein, the twenty-nine-year-old manager of the Beatles, who has come to America to arrange the Liverpool group’s three forthcoming appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Epstein discusses the phenomenal British success of the Beatles, the “Liverpool Sound,” the Cavern, Mersey Beat, and the extraordinary Beatlemania surrounding his four young clients.

“Ladies and Stocks” — Jane Kramer
Kramer attends one of Bache & Co.’s special investment seminars for women on Lexington Avenue, conducted by broker Harriet Bell, where the assembled ladies learn about stocks, investment, and Benjamin Franklin’s useful observation that money can beget money.

“Hollywood Pavilion” — Susan Lardner
A luncheon at the Time & Life Building unveils plans for the Hollywood Pavilion at the forthcoming New York World’s Fair. Former actor George Murphy heads the organization producing it; the entrance is to be a replica of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, with replicas of movie sets and a Hollywood museum beyond. Speakers include Maureen O’Sullivan, Louis Galen, and William E. Potter.

“New Store” — Geoffrey T. Hellman
Hellman visits D/R International, an unusual new store occupying a five-story house on East 57th Street, and talks with its president, architect Benjamin Thompson, about the store, Thompson’s career, and his work with Walter Gropius and the Architects’ Collaborative.

Hortense Behr and Burton Bernstein
An exchange overheard in Central Park, where a stout dowager admonishes her drooping toy poodle: “I told you not to talk to strangers!”

Eugene Feldman and Burton Bernstein
A sign spotted by a motorist at a service station in Medford Lakes, New Jersey, reassuringly announces: “Erudite Mechanic On Duty.”

“Expiatory” — Moore Phillips and Gerald Jonas
The disciplinary essay of a fifth-grade student who misbehaved during a field trip to the United Nations and has now apparently grasped the magnitude of his offenses, among them talking too loudly and hitting other people on the head with a pickle.

INCIDENTAL INTELLIGENCE

Joan Wachtel and John McCarten
Under the “You Name It, We’ve Got It Division,” the discovery that there is a St. Patrick’s Semi-Military Academy in Harriman, New York.

FICTION

“Zero” — John O’Hara
In sub-zero weather in the Pennsylvania town of Mountain City, Dick Pfeister waits for a late trolley carrying Eva Novak, who has been to Philadelphia for an abortion. Both understand how anxious Dick is to be rid of her, but Eva needs more money. When he finally reaches home, his wife Emily questions his late return and accuses him of whoring; she ultimately realizes that Dick wants to be dead and free—not merely of her but of the other woman as well—and that what he has done is already destroying him more effectively than her vindictiveness ever could.

“A Shower of Gold” — Donald Barthelme
A financially strapped sculptor named Peterson agrees to appear on an “absurd” television program called Who Am I? He watches two contestants being ridiculed with a lie detector before taking his own turn and preempting the emcee’s questions with genuinely ridiculous material. Along the way Barthelme’s characteristically peculiar universe encompasses existentialism, an art dealer who wants to cut sculptures in half to make them easier to sell, Coward Shoes, Olivetti, Charles de Gaulle, and a cat-piano.

POETRY

“The Card Party” — Muriel Spark
A poem beginning “Sisterlike, pacified by cakes and tea,” with bridge and death among its subjects.

“The Ice Skin” — James Dickey
A poem beginning “All things that go deep enough / Into rain and cold,” concerned with death.

“In the Facility Building” — Gene Baro
A poem beginning “At the end of the empty corridor,” set within the world of colleges.

ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS

“The Harmonies of Heaven” — Han Suying
A fascinating examination of astrology, fortune-telling and other forms of divination throughout Asia, and of their influence on medicine, politics, publishing and education. Han Suying describes countries maintaining official astrologers at public expense, political events delayed until an auspicious date can be determined, and publications devoted to the business of outflanking the future. Particular attention is given to the Chinese Astrological Calendar, an extraordinary compendium of agriculture, medicine, household lore and cosmic guidance, and to the larger effort to harmonize astrology, astronomy, ritual, ancient animistic religion, the material world and human life into a cosmic unity.

THE CURRENT CINEMA

“War Is Hell, Yes Indeed” — Brendan Gill
Gill reviews The Victors and Love on a Pillow (Le Repos du Guerrier).

LETTER FROM PARIS

Janet Flanner
Flanner reports on a centenary retrospective of the paintings of Paul Signac at the Louvre and ranges outward into Signac’s life and family, French political history and the career of Communist leader Marcel Cachin. Her wide-ranging dispatch also encompasses The Deputy (Le Vicaire), Rolf Hochhuth, Peter Brook, Marcel Proust, the Prix Goncourt and contemporary Parisian theatre and cultural life.

TELEVISION

“Views of a Death” — Jonathan Miller
Miller evaluates television coverage of the events following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, arguing that the President’s death forced television, however briefly, into maturity.

MUSICAL EVENTS

Winthrop Sargeant
Sargeant writes about the Metropolitan Opera, with Joan Sutherland, Sandor Konya, Mario Sereni, Justino Diaz, Russell Christopher, and conductor George Schick among the performers discussed.

BOOKS

Anthony West
West reviews The Red Lances by Arturo Uslar Pietri, translated by Harriet de Onís, and When the Wolves Howl by Aquilino Ribeiro.

CARTOONS

Frank Modell
An aged man rides downward on one escalator while a grinning baby travels upward on the adjoining escalator.

Eldon Dedini
A clergyman trying on a new suit regards himself in the mirror as the salesman explains, “Notice how the drooping-shoulder cut gives you that air of deep humility.”

Whitney Darrow, Jr.
A wife determinedly wires her husband to a lie detector as he asks, “Edna, don’t you feel you’re taking something fine from our marriage with these lie-detector tests?”

Saul Steinberg
A cat watches one of Steinberg’s wonderfully improbable creatures: a drawing that is half bird and half hand.

James Stevenson
A beggar holds a sign asking for “a little something” for Fred Boker while a passerby observes, “Good man, Boker. Damn shame about his losing his job at Kenyon & Eckhardt.”

Lee Lorenz
At a New Year’s Eve nightclub party, a scantily costumed chorus girl kisses a woman’s husband, prompting the wife to ask, “What do I get for my fifteen-dollar minimum?”

George Price
A huge multigenerational household crowds around a dining-room table: “We merged to save through volume buying.”

Dana Fradon
An older man addresses a young woman in a restaurant: “Miss Harper, how would you like to be on the cover of our house organ?”

Anthony Taber
Two flowers share a vase: a fresh flower bends toward a mirror while its wilted companion, nearly bereft of petals, turns away.

Warren Miller
The lawn of a Florida home is filled with birdhouses shaped like New York City landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building: “For God’s sake, Harry, why don’t we just move back?”

Barney Tobey
A policeman telephones his sergeant from a riotous New Year’s Eve street celebration: “It’s nothing, Sarge. Just want to wish you a Happy New Year.”

Charles Saxon
A daughter prepares her father for meeting her boyfriend: “Promise me, Dad. Don’t ask him what his prospects are. Ask him how much longer he has to go in school.”

Robert Kraus
A banker addresses a small boy: “I’m awfully sorry, but we’re trying to discourage small accounts.”

FASCINATING VINTAGE ADVERTISEMENTS

A vintage print ad for Parliament cigarettes, with an elegant model in black eveningwear, jeweled earrings and long white gloves against a brilliant blue background, promoting Parliament’s recessed filter.

A superb Westinghouse Transit Expressway advertisement by Paul Rand, promoting a proposed futuristic commuter system with service every two minutes, even at three in the morning. Rand turns the Transit Expressway into an enormous stylized alarm clock, incorporating a photograph of the automated transit cars into its face—a terrific piece of mid-century graphic design.

A full-page color Ford Thunderbird advertisement, “People who Thunderbird move in a special atmosphere,” showing the new Thunderbird dramatically posed on a misty coastal overlook, with an inset view of its interior.

A full-page color United Airlines advertisement, “Hawaii now... United makes it easier to go—only $100 from California,” with a large portrait of a Hawaiian woman wearing flowers and smaller scenes of golf and outdoor dining beneath the palms.

And many more fascinating period advertisements throughout this complete original issue.