Beginning on January 19, 1919 and running on the Society pages under a six-column headline of “Real, Live, Human Interest Stories About Omaha People” the Omaha Bee ran a series of articles about Omaha’s Eligible Bachelors. My eye was first drawn to this feature by the caricatures that accompanied most (but not all) of the stories. These images featured a photographic head combined with an illustrated body giving the illusion that these men were bobbleheads.
The author was Abraham Robert Groh, a graduate of the University of Nebraska, and in 1919 a 39-year-old bachelor working as a Special Writer for the Bee. Many of the featured bachelors were nearly the same age, and so I speculate he was trying to find wives for his friends (and possibly himself).
The first featured bachelor was Harry S. Bryne and the story ran under the subhead “Just Think of It Girls He’s Still Running Loose: He Likes Dances and Theaters, Too — Oh, Boy! What a Chance!” The accompanying editor’s note says “This is the first of a series of stories of eligible Omaha bachelors which will run on this page each Sunday. Some day they’ll not be bachelors.”
So what made someone an Eligible Bachelor in 1919? Like Bryne, it helped to like music, theater, and dance. Gerald Wharton was described as “a devotee of Terpsichore” (the Greek Muse of dance). William R. Lovely played the guitar, and Nathan Bernstein was “a twanger of the mandolin,” while Harry Cockrell was the composer of two famous lullabies “Open Your Hand and Close Your Eyes” and “The Sleep Man’s Coming.” Jean Duffield “is a composer of music, too. ‘To Spring’s Blue Eyes’ is one of his successes. He is just waiting for the inspiration to compose another song entitled ‘To _____s Blue Eyes.’ Insert your own name in the blank space and, if your eyes aren’t blue, change that to the correct color.”
Randall K. Brown (pictured above), Harry A. Koch, and Elmer A. Cope were all praised for their fashion sense. Brown “is a ‘quiet’ dresser in all respects except as pertains to shirts. But his shirts! Say, boy! Nothing quiet about them; in fact, they are boisterous, sometimes a perfect riot. He likes ’em bright, pyrotechnic. He’s especially happy when he can get something on the order of an Italian sunset.” “None can wear a dress suit or a Tuxedo with more grace and aplomb than he (Koch),” writes Groh, and “Elmer is debonair, a ‘hale fellow well met,’ a boon companion outside of business hours, a club man.”
Almost all were “club men” with a long list of memberships, such as Bernstein who belonged to six: Omaha Hebrew club, Omaha Athletic club, Masons, Scottish Rite Masons, B’nai B’rith, and the Stationary Engineers union. The Country Club, the Field Club, the Omaha Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Ak-Sar-Ben court were also frequently mentioned. Judges, lawyers, and politicians topped the list of occupations, and some, like Charlie Saunders were listed as F.F.N. (from a First Family of Nebraska). Almost all talked about what kind of car they owned – could it be because the Bee had a new Automobile Section?
So close to the end of World War I and the return of servicemen from Europe, I expected this column to be filled with returning solders. But of the 46 bachelors featured, only 3 of them reported military service. Charles F. McLaughlin (above middle) “was commissioned a captain of artillery.” Yale C. Holland (above right), who “never went to Holland or Yale” “joined the army of Uncle Sam in August of last year and graduated from the Camp Taylor officers’ training school as a first lieutenant.” Dr. Henry M. Fitzgibbon (above left) went “overseas with the 28th division.”
Groh’s aim may have been to help his friends find brides, but some of the things he wrote may have had the opposite effect. Of Harry B. Zimman, Groh wrote, “Most of his evenings are spent either in addressing public meetings or in reading at home. He can sit up through the night, absorbed in some ‘dry’ old report on municipal affairs that most people would look at only with a shudder.”
Frank Woodland’s “‘bosom has never felt a flutter,’ said one of his intimates. ‘It is made of marble. If Maxine Elliott, Lillian Russell, Billie Burke and Mary Pickford were to come walking down Farnam street together and pass Frank, he wouldn’t turn an eye toward them.’ Some men wear their hearts on their sleeves and some do not. Frank is probably one of the do-nots.”
And Robert Patrick was quoted as saying of finding a wife, “No, I’m past the age for that and I’m too fat.”
In the penultimate article about the Rev. Carl Worden, Groh wrote, “It is true . . . that next year is leap year. And the beginning of that year of feminine opportunity is less than two weeks away, girls!” After one more column, either all of Omaha’s eligible bachelors had been featured, or the Bee decided to leave it up to leap year.
So what of the prediction that “some day they’ll not be bachelors”? Of the men that I could easily trace, 16 remained unmarried throughout their lives while 13 married – some as early as 1920. Groh married Nata Prescott in 1928.