Origins of Nickname “Double Dubuque” for L.A.

The following dialogue between Fred MacMurray (NEFF) and Barbara Stanwyck (PHYLLIS) caught my attention while recently watching the 1944 film noir classic Double Indemnity:

NEFF
Where did you pick up this tea drinking? You’re not English, are you?

PHYLLIS
No. Californian. Born right here in Los Angeles.

NEFF (smirking)
They say native Californians all come from Iowa.

Dubuquers should easily recognize the humor and irony in this allusion to their home state. During the mid-to-late 1940s, Rufus Blair, a publicist for Paramount Pictures, the same studio that produced Double Indemnity, popularized the phrase “Double Dubuque” to describe Hollywood.

In the 40s, Blair’s dispatches containing the latest Hollywood gossip and rumors appeared in newspapers across the U.S., including the Chicago Daily Tribune and Washington Post. Blair wryly listed “Double Dubuque” as the dateline for each of his reports.

On June 9, 1949, the Chicago Daily Tribune explained that Blair was “a former Chicagoan” whose “Double Dubuque” characterization of Hollywood was used in “an admixture of awe, derision, and nostalgia.”

More about Rufus Blair appeared in the Los Angeles Times on March 10, 1987:

Jack Hirshberg, an old-time Hollywood press agent, writes that Blair was also one of that glib breed — a San Francisco newspaperman who was lured south in the 1930s to do national publicity for Paramount.

“Rufus was never taken in by Hollywood,” Hirshberg says. “His irreverence for the sham he, himself, helped create in order to build audiences for the studio’s films and stars was one of his many endearing points.

“Rufus was first of all a newspaperman. . . . His wit was sharp, his typewriter articulate. Rufus was a lovely man. He died two or three years ago in San Francisco.”

Well, at least he got out of Double Dubuque.

Although Rufus Blair popularized “Double Dubuque” as a nickname for Hollywood, he probably was not the first to use it. Newspaper columnist Matt Weinstock reportedly wrote a book in 1945 entitled Double Dubuque, Fables and Foibles of Los Angeles. I cannot verify that such a book exists, but I have requested a copy of Weinstock’s 1947 book My L.A. via interlibrary loan.

Unverified claims that comedian W.C. Fields coined the phrase “Double Dubuque” have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, for example in the column “The TV Scene” by Cecil Smith on January 16, 1964, and in “Putting Down Town” by Ray Hebert, December 14, 1981. W.C. Fields starred in several movies produced by Paramount.

Baltimore journalist H.L. Mencken is frequently cited as inventor of the phrase “Double Dubuque” as an epithet for Los Angeles. Mencken savaged L.A. in his writings, describing it as “nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis” and “the capital of American idiots,” and by claiming that “there were more morons collected in Los Angeles than in any other place on Earth.” But if H.L. Mencken ever called L.A. “Double Dubuque,” I have not been able to find the original source or quotation.

Some scholars assert that Los Angeles was called “Double Dubuque” as early as 1900. For example, see Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions by Edward W. Soja (2000) page 123, or Michael Engh, S.J. in Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s edited by Tom Sitton and William Deverell (2001) page 202.

These scholars say Los Angeles was dubbed “Double Dubuque” and “Iowa by the Sea” because of the large numbers of “middlebrow” and “homogeneous” Iowans who settled there around 1900. But again, they do not provide original sources or citations.

Negro Waiting to Leave Dubuque, Iowa

Photo: Negro waiting for freight train to leave Dubuque, Iowa by John Vachon, April, 1940. Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.

I recently finished Professor Chaichian’s White Racism on the Western Urban Frontier. This book is a disturbing chronicle of nearly 200 years of white-on-black racism in Dubuque, from Iowa Black Codes to an early lynching, segregation in public schools, housing, and employment, refusal of service by hotels and restaurants, harassment and racial profiling by police, and so on.

Professor Chaichian argues that race relations should be considered within social, political, and economic contexts. For example, incidents of racism in Dubuque increased during three periods of economic turmoil:

• In the 1840s and 1850s, as Dubuque evolved from a frontier lead-mining camp into growing Midwestern city, the population of African Americans dropped from 8.0% to 0.3%
• In the 1920s and 1930s, when rural farms and locally owned businesses succumbed to industrial monopolies, thousands attended Ku Klux Klan rallies in Dubuque
• In the 1980s and 1990s, during a period of de-industrialization and de-unionization, a rash of cross-burnings in Dubuque gained national attention

Prof. Chaichian also examines Dubuque’s German-Irish polarization, discrimination against Catholics and immigrants, anti-German sentiment during the World Wars, the closing of the Dubuque Packing Company, and Highway 151 construction through Dubuque’s Little Dublin and Flats neighborhoods.

White Racism includes a lengthy bibliography; two sources I plan to read soon are Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye Frontier by Robert R. Dykstra and Warriors into Workers: the Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City [Dubuque] by Russell L. Johnson.

One could argue that the publication of Prof. Chaichian’s book is in itself an important milestone, hopefully a turning point, in the history of race relations in Dubuque. Community leaders and policymakers should refer to White Racism when thinking about the future of race relations in Dubuque, and area high school and college teachers should include Prof. Chaichian’s book in curricula on Dubuque history.

Just as race relations should be studied within social, political, and economic contexts, attempting to understand race relations is vital to understanding local history.

A Chic and Vivacious Woman

In the fall of 1964, Dubuque goodwill ambassador Mary Regina Hayford assumed the role of “Little Old Lady” and traveled to New York City on a mission to fight the perception of her hometown as being the epitome of Midwestern provincialism.

When asked if Mrs. Hayford would be invited to the offices of The New Yorker, a bemused spokesman for magazine politely declined. “We just have never gone in for this kind of thing,” he explained.

Neil Sheehan, “Little Old Lady From Dubuque Seeks to Change Town’s Image,” New York Times, September 26, 1964, page 33.

Pussy-Words of Manhattan Sophisticates

When Harold Ross and his colleagues boasted in 1925 that their new literary magazine The New Yorker would not be “edited for the old lady in Dubuque,” TIME ridiculed the claim as “pussy-words of Manhattan sophisticates.” An excerpt:

Dubuque, population 39,141, produces wagons, coffins, clothing, boots, river steamboats, barges, torpedo boats, was once rated the fourth important manufacturing centre in the U. S. It has a notable public library, an insane asylum, a business college. To an old lady in Dubuque there was sent a copy of The New Yorker. She was asked by telegram for an opinion. Replied she:

“I, and my associates here, have never subscribed to the view that bad taste is any the less offensive because it is metropolitan taste. To me, urbanity is the ability to offend without being offensive, to startle composure and to deride without ribaldry. The editors of the periodical you forwarded are, I understand, members of a literary clique. They should learn that there is no provincialism so blatant as that of the metropolitan who lacks urbanity. They were quite correct, however, in their original assertion. The New Yorker is not for the old lady in Dubuque.”

From “The New Yorker” in TIME, Monday, March 02, 1925.

Category: Dubuque, Iowa

There are 87 pages in the “Dubuque, Iowa” category at Wikipedia, most notably Dubuque, Iowa and History of Dubuque, Iowa.

White Racism on the Western Urban Frontier

Currently reading:

Mohammad A. Chaichian, White Racism on the Western Urban Frontier: Dynamics of Race and Class in Dubuque, Iowa (1800-2000), Africa World Press, 2006.

While at the University of Dubuque from 1986-1993, Professor Chaichian taught a course called “Sociology of Dubuque.” He’s now at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Here is an excerpt from a recent Telegraph Herald article about Professor Chaichian’s work:

“Analysis of race relations in Dubuque can serve as a case study with much wider applications at the national level,” Chaichian said. Census data about racial and ethnic composition shows that “Dubuque is neither unique nor an exception to the rule,” he added.

Although African-Americans have accounted for less than one percent of Dubuque’s demographic makeup for much of the city’s history, it is “anticipatory racism,” or fear of non-whites moving in that has fueled most racially-based incidents and attitudes, he said.

From Mary Nevans-Pederson, “Professor: Racism in Dubuque ebbs, flows,” Telegraph Herald (Dubuque), November 29, 2006, p. A1.

Visually Diverse

More from Flickr, Bradley Spitzer’s photoset, Dubuque, Iowa.

Bradley writes, “On Saturday, September 30th I visited Dubuque, Iowa and had a good time exploring the city with a camera in tow. I could definitely see myself living there someday; it is a visually diverse city with a growing culture/design/art community.”

Old World Header Image

This blog’s header image is Grandmother with grandson, Germany, early 50s, posted to Flickr by John Copleston, alias Very Good with Computers.

The image, while not directly related to Dubuque, is a good representation of Dubuque’s mystique, very Old World and very German, yet not without humor.

I’d really like to use Todd Ehlers’ photo, 1976 Dubuque Mother, or maybe 1950s: Mom Gulps a Cold One while Grandma Watches, but I’d need to get Todd’s permission first.

Viva Dubuque

Welcome to the Dubuquer, a blog about the mystique of Dubuque, Iowa.

The title is derived from The New Yorker, a magazine of which founder Harold Ross famously delcared in the 1920s, “. . . is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.”

Runner-up blog title: Viva Dubuque, taken from the October 25, 1992 New York Times article by J.M. Fenster, “Move Over, Vegas: Viva Dubuque; Casinos are cropping up everywhere from mountain saloons to Mississippi riverboats.”