A Halloween Dance, 1919

Dennison's Bogie Book was a series of Halloween decoration and party guides published by the Dennison Manufacturing Company, whose primary business was paper products (including plain crepe paper and a variety of specific decorative items) beginning in 1909 and continuing near-annually for at least a couple of decades.  The contents are somewhat hilarious by modern standards, but one has to admire the creativity of the company's marketing staff in adapting paper products for everything from table decorations to hats to entire costumes. 

The original books are collector's items now, and quite expensive, but several of them are freely available online. 

The 1919 edition, whose cover is shown at left (click to enlarge), features a whole page of "Innovations for the Dancing Party" on page 26.  Some of them are quite clever while some are quietly horrifying in a grimly amusing way.  But if you want to put on a Halloween dance in the style of the late 1910s, there are enough tidbits here to make it work.  The rest of the book is also a helpful guide to decorating a room or a refreshment table, making party hats for one's guests, and creating invitations.  There's even a short ghost story.  I'm just going to stick to the dance-specific parts, but the entire book may be seen at Hathitrust for those who wish to delve into the rest of it.

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First up, we have the dance cards.  These are actually quite clever.  A bottom layer was distributed first, with twelve numbers like those around a clock and delineated spaces around the edge for twelve names.  The guests first filled in this part with their partners' names, just like a normal dance card.  Then a top layer, in the form of a paper pumpkin with a clock hand extending from its "nose" and a notch in the top the size of the spaces for names, was given out.  This was attached to the bottom layer with some sort of fastener that allowed the layers to rotate independently.  The bottom layer was rotated one hour (space) for each dance, making each name visible in turn.  

There was no provision for extra dances on the card; presumably partner selection for those would be ad hoc.

The pumpkin-face top layer was (of course!) available for purchase from Dennison (Cut-out No. H47), and a pattern for bottom layer would be sent upon request.  The writers of the Bogie Book also recommended making a slim crepe-paper rope to hang the cards around each dancer's neck, which strikes me as Dennison's marketing department trying way too hard.  One could save effort by simply using a regular cord of some sort.

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A few party favors, presumably for cotillions (dance party games) but possibly just as party swag, were suggested:

I believe that the first was some kind of noisemaker.  The second seems to have been a hand fan.  The third was described as a box for a picnic-style lunch made "most attractive" by decoration as shown in the picture.  The Dennison marketing department and I clearly have different definitions of attractive.

Naturally, all of these would have been made from Dennison paper products.  A pattern for the lunch box and descriptions of the favors -- I assume that included instructions on making them -- would have been sent upon request.

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Three cotillion-like games were suggested.  The first was a "matching up" game in which tiny stickers were handed out with matching pairs of directions about where on one's face one should place them: under the eye, in the center of the chin, etc.  I imagine the effect would have been rather like the small facial patches, or artificial beauty marks, used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (as discussed here).  Once everyone had placed their sticker, the guests would roam around looking for the other person with a matching placement.  Presumably, once they had found each other, they would dance together.  That doesn't square with having actual dance cards, but I suppose this game could have been used for an "extra".

And now we get to the fun part: two games for cutting in, each being progressive, meaning that they are mixers starting with one gentleman cutting in, the displaced gentleman going on to cut in on another couple, and so on.

One of the games was relatively harmless: the gentlemen were given paper bags.  While most couples danced, an extra gentleman blew up his paper bag and hit another gentleman on the back with it to claim his partner.  That gentleman then blew up his own bag and went to find another couple to cut in on, etc., etc., etc.

The other game was not one I would find enjoyable in a modern context.  It had a similar setup, with most couples dancing and one gentleman entering to start a chain of cutting in, but in this case he would be a "gun man" carrying a toy pistol and "holding up" a couple in order to steal the lady.  The suggested mask and hat, shown at left, were (naturally!) made of Dennison crepe paper, and the gun man would pass them on to the now-partnerless gentleman, along with his pistol, to continue the game. Fortunately, that hat is silly-enough looking (by modern standards; apparently in the 1910s pointy Halloween hats were all the rage) to make the whole thing less menacing and more fun.  I still would not care for it, myself.

The Bogie Book did not specifically mention it, but I suspect Dennison would have been happy to send a pattern for the hat and mask.  It's a wonder they didn't suggest making the toy pistol out of crepe paper as well.

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That concludes Dennison's 1919 suggestions for a Halloween dance.  Were I to throw such an event, I would adopt the clever pumpkin-clock dance card and the face stickers but probably try to come up with substitute games for cutting in.  I might try the hand-fan or noisemaker favors, but other cute Halloween things would be equally easy.  I'm not even going to consider that lunchbox.

Comments

[Susan de Guardiola]

A friend send me a link to this fabulous video of someone who actually applied the material from the 1923 Bogie Book!

Thanks, Erica. :)