1. Furnas, J. C., “… And Sudden Death,” Reader's Digest, 08 1935, p. 22.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 21.

3. These statistics are cited in ibid. (This compares with approximately 50,000 deaths per year in the early 1980s.) The article was mentioned almost everywhere the subject of traffic safety came up in the media in 1935–36. See, for example, the box that accompanied its publication in Scholastic, 10 5, 1935, p. 15Google Scholar; mention in Fortune magazine's survey on speed regulation, April 1936, p. 220: “‘And Sudden Death’ in the Reader's Digest struck the fear of God into the automobile industry”; and reference in “Transportation,” Time, 08 12, 1935, p. 21.Google Scholar Also, Time commented on the fact that news writing about auto accidents began to emulate Furnas's style, employing the scare tactic as a tool for social reform. See “Crusading Realism,” Time, 09 30, 1935, p. 53.Google Scholar

Judges handed out copies of the article to traffic offenders. The Simon and Schuster reprint reached a circulation of 3 million. A “March of Time” enactment was filmed, and Paramount made a screen version in 1936. See “And Sudden Death,” Time, 06 29, 1936, p. 220.Google Scholar

For an academic treatment that mentions the article and analyzes the highway-safety campaigns of this period, see Gibbons, John W., ed., Highway Safety and Traffic Control, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 320, 11 1958Google Scholar, esp. the historical background presented in Damon, Norman, “The Action Program for Highway Safety,” pp. 15–26.Google Scholar

Furnas's next article on the subject of highway safety appeared in Rural Progress, 03 1936Google Scholar, entitled “Death's Harvest Time.” He linked the increased fatalities on rural roads to the seasonal upswings of tourism. This article was illustrated by a cartoonist's version of Death on the Ridge Road from which the subtleties of Wood's artistic puzzle were purged, the reference to death being made blatant by a roadside graveyard.

4. Furnas, J. C., “… And Sudden Death,” Scholastic, 10 5, 1935, pp. 15–16.Google ScholarScholastic was also regularly running short stories by Sinclair Lewis at this time. The connection between Lewis and Wood is explored more fully below.

5. Furnas, , in Reader's Digest, p. 26.Google Scholar

6. Cole Porter eventually purchased the painting. A collector of art and particularly interested in American artists of the 1930s, he was given to visiting Grandma Moses and presenting her works to friends as Christmas cards. Death on the Ridge Road passed from his estate to Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, after his death in 1964. See Schwartz, Charles, Cole Porter: A Biography (New York: Dial Press, 1977).Google Scholar

7. Brown, Hazel E., Grant Wood and Marvin Cone: Artists of an Era (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1972), p. 93.Google Scholar

8. Garwood, Darrell, Artist in Iowa: A Life of Grant Wood (New York: W. W. Norton, 1944), p. 176.Google Scholar See also Brown, Hazel's book and Dennis, James M., Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture (New York: Viking Press, 1975).Google Scholar

9. Kuspit, Donald B., “Regionalism Reconsidered,” Art in America, 07–08 1976, p. 65.Google Scholar

10. Dennis, , p. 212.Google Scholar

11. Craven, Thomas, “Grant Wood,” Scribner's Magazine No. 101, 06 1937, 16.Google Scholar

12. The “wedge” shape of the storm on the right horizon is similar to the storm shape in Curry, John Steuart's painting Line Storm (1934).Google Scholar Grant Wood admired the drama in Curry's work and referred to Line Storm as his best. See Wood, Grant, “John Steuart Curry and the Midwest,” Demcourier No. 11 (04 1941), p. 4.Google Scholar Wood's interest in Curry also seems to assure that he looked at the Fortune articles, cited in notes 35 and 47, which were illustrated by Curry.

13. The majority of those I asked did not think the vehicles would collide. Several of these respondents had traveled on two-lane roads in Iowa, northern Louisiana, and the Palouse country of Washington. Perhaps having survived many near misses gives one an optimistic view of the painting. The use of the painting with Furnas's article indicates that the scene must have been considered somewhat anxiety-producing for audiences in the 1930s.

14. Rinard, Park and Pyle, Arnold, Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by Grant Wood (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1935), p. 4.Google Scholar

15. Dennis, , pp. 212–15.Google Scholar

16. Wik, Reynold M., Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describes how mechanization changed rural life.

17. See Wood, Grant, “Revolt Against the City,”Google Scholar in Dennis, , pp. 229–35.Google Scholar Wood's regionalist theory is remarkably reminiscent of Josiah Royce's influential 1902 address at the State University of Iowa on the evils inherent in “mass culture.” See Royce, Josiah, “Provincialism,” in The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, 2, ed. McDermott, John J. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press), 1067–88.Google Scholar See also, Frank Luther Mott's discussion of the impact of Royce on regionalism in literature at the University of Iowa. He believes that Royce “planted the seed” of the Midland journal. See Mott, Frank Luther, Time Enough: Essays in Autobiography (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1962), p. 124.Google Scholar

18. Alloway, Lawrence, “The Recovery of Regionalism: John Steuart Curry,” Art in America, 07–08 1976, p. 71.Google Scholar

19. On the concept of layering, see the discussion of Erwin Panofsky's hierarchy of subject matter in Marling, Karal Ann, “A Note on New Deal Iconography: Futurology and the Historical Myth,” Prospects, 4 (1979), 421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Marling discusses the relationship of the mythical past and orientations toward the future in New Deal murals.

For an insightful treatment of future orientations in John Steuart Curry's late-1930s murals for the Kansas state capitol, see Kendall, Sue, “John Steuart Curry's Kansas Pastoral: The Modern American Family on the Middle Border,” in Czestochowski, Joseph S., John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood: A Portrait of Rural America (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1981), pp. 34–39.Google Scholar

20. Sigmund and his wife were seriously injured in the accident and spent some time in the hospital in Anamosa, Iowa (Cedar Rapids Gazette, 08 7, 1933, p. 1).Google Scholar During their recuperation artists at Wood's Stone City Art Colony put together a scrapbook with sketches and small paintings as a gift to the Sigmunds. Included was a sketch by Wood entitled Repose—a humorous drawing of a reclining nude female figure in pretzel-like twists. Signed by the artist, it bore the promise: “To be carved in Stone City Limestone.” (Correspondence with Jay Sigmund's son Sigmund, James B., 08 3, 1982.)Google ScholarRepose and the scrapbook are in the Sigmund family's collection.

21. Hake, Herbert V., Iowa Inside Out (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 117–18.Google Scholar In the 1830s Congress appropriated money for a military road from Dubuque to Iowa City. Furrows were plowed side by side to mark the road. It was beaten down by the wagons of many pioneers and became known as “The Great Road.” See also the discussion in Carter, Paul A., Another Part of the Twenties (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 9–14.Google Scholar

22. This restoration was given media coverage, for example, in American Home, 01 1937Google Scholar (“Grant Wood's Old House,” pp. 64–66)Google Scholar, and evidently earned Wood some income as well when it was used in an advertisement for Masonite. See Collier's, 11 21, 1936, p. 71.Google Scholar

23. Brown, , p. 68.Google Scholar

24. Quick, Herbert, Vandemark's Folly (New York: A. L. Burt, 1921).Google Scholar On the “farm novel,” see Meyer, Roy W., The Middle Western Farm Novel in the Twentieth Century (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1965).Google Scholar

25. Quick, , pp. 51–52, 79.Google Scholar

26. Mott, , pp. 137–38.Google Scholar Wood and Mott's friendship is documented in several other places, for example, in Garwood's biography.

27. Mott, Frank Luther, The Literature of Pioneer Life in Iowa (Iowa City: State Historical Society, 1923).Google Scholar

28. Baigell, Matthew, “Grant Wood Revisited,” Art Journal No. 26 (Fall 1966), pp. 117–18.Google Scholar

29. Wood, , “Revolt,” p. 234.Google Scholar

30. Dennis, , pp. 122–27.Google Scholar

31. Carter, , p. 9.Google Scholar

32. Wanda Corn also discusses the importance of Sigmund in Wood's life in her definitive essay on American Gothic, “The Birth of a National Icon: Grant Wood's American Gothic,” in Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H. W. Janson (New York: Abrams, 1981).Google Scholar

33. Sigmund, Jay, The Ridge Road (Cedar Rapids: Prairie, 1930), p. 75.Google Scholar

34. Lewis, Sinclair, Free Air (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1919).Google Scholar See discussion in Carter, , p. 10.Google Scholar

35. “The Great American Roadside,” Fortune, 09 1934, pp. 53–63, 172–77.Google Scholar

36. Wood, , “Revolt,” p. 233.Google Scholar Italics added.

37. See Carter's discussion of this, pp. 8–14. See also Belasco, Warren James, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979)Google Scholar, and Flink, James J., The Car Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975).Google Scholar

38. It seems that Lewis succeeded in the nearly impossible task of finding two names that had never been given to a real car. See Glasscock, C. B., A Motor History of America (Los Angeles: Floyd Clymer, 1937).Google Scholar Wood's “sedan” in the painting suggests a foreign model, as does the name “Gomez-Deperdussin.” Compare it, for example, to the 1933 Panoramique of France. This car caused a stir at the Paris Auto Show of 1933 because of its modern aerodynamic styling and unique windshield. It is pictured in Wherry, Joseph H., Automobiles of the World (New York: Chilton, 1968).Google Scholar

39. See, for example, Jewell, Derek, ed., Man and Motor: The Twentieth Century Love Affair (New York: Walker, 1967)Google Scholar, a montage of the twentieth-century “love affair” with the car. See esp. pp. 96–111 on the artist and the automobile, including an artist's representation of the imaginary car Fitzgerald “dreamed up” for The Great Gatsby.

40. Dettelbach, Cynthia Golomb, In the Driver's Seat: The Automobile in American Literature and Popular Culture (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976), p. 5.Google Scholar

41. Brown, , p. 87.Google Scholar

42. Pyle's wreck was reported in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, 07 14, 1934, p. 7.Google Scholar The quotation is from Garwood, , p. 176.Google Scholar

43. Keppel, Frederick P., “The Arts in Social Life,” Recent Social Trends in the United States: Report of the President's Research Committee on Social Trends (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933), p. 977.Google Scholar From 1933 through 1940 Ford regularly used the services of industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. See Meikle, Jeffrey L., Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925–39 (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1979), p. 14.Google Scholar

44. Business Week, 12 9, 1933, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

45. Among the writings of these designers, Geddes, Norman Bel's Horizons (Boston: Little, Brown, 1932)Google Scholar is a classic. See also Meikle, 's book and Bush, Donald A., The Streamlined Decade (New York: George Braziller, 1975).Google Scholar

46. Business Week, 07 14, 1934, p. 21.Google Scholar In this same article the statement is made that aerodynamic streamlining has no effect until speed exceeds 75 miles per hour, which of course, the streetcars and buses could not attain. But the streamlining was “in accord with the times” and gave cars a “modernappearance.” See also Carter, , p. 127.Google Scholar

47. “Mr. Ford Doesn't Care,” Fortune, 12 1933, pp. 62–69, 121–34.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., p. 65.

49. See Wik, esp. illustrations.

50. Sloat, Warren, 1929: America Before the Crash (New York: Macmillan, 1979), p. 2.Google Scholar See also Wik, chap. 11.

51. Nye, David F., Ignorant Idealist (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1979).Google Scholar

52. Wik, chap. 6.

53. Sloat, , pp. 258–59.Google Scholar

54. For example, Ford sued the Chicago Tribune for its treatment of his response that Benedict Arnold was a novelist. See Wik, , pp. 51–55.Google Scholar See also the critical essay by Wilson, Edmund, “Detroit Motors,” in his The American Earthquake: A Documentary of the Twenties and Thirties (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958), pp. 214–48.Google Scholar

55. “Mr. Ford Doesn't Care,” p. 134.Google Scholar

56. Craven, , p. 22.Google Scholar

57. Lewis, , p. 114.Google Scholar

58. Mickey Mouse Movie Stories (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1931).Google Scholar See also Finch, Christopher, The Art of Walt Disney (New York: Abrams, 1973)Google Scholar, and Disney, Walt, Magic Moments (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1973), esp. pp. 107–19Google Scholar, which include photo reproductions from the 1936 cartoon “Mickey's Rival.”

59. “International Harvester I: Supremacy,” Fortune, 09 1933, pp. 20–32.Google Scholar

60. See, for example, The Saturday Evening Post, 05 19, 1934, p. 3.Google Scholar

61. Business Week, 07 14, 1934, p. 21.Google Scholar

62. Ibid.

63. Wood, , “Revolt,” p. 229.Google Scholar

64. Lewis, , p. 67.Google Scholar

65. Spruance did a “critique” of the 1930s in a series of prints that included automobile and highway imagery. Windshield (07 1939)Google Scholar projects a future landscape of death and desolation through a car windshield. Reflected in the rearview mirror is an agrarian landscape in the manner of Wood or Thomas Hart Benton. See Zigrosser, Carl, The Artist in America: Twenty-four Close-ups of Contemporary Printmakers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942).Google Scholar Zigrosser commends Spruance for “working in the present,” although it has its costs for an artist's reputation. For the artist's own conception of his work, see Spruance, Benton, “The Place of the Printmaker,” Magazine of Art, No. 30 (10 1937), pp. 614–18.Google Scholar

66. Royce, , p. 1072.Google Scholar