Talk:Poppy Cannon

Untitled
Apparently Poppy Cannon was:
 * the second wife of Walter Francis White, notable for being the white wife of a black leader of the NAACP
 * a 1950s cookbook author see
 * the food editor of the Ladies Home Journal? See http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0066209730&tc=ai
 * are the details mentioned here authentic?

Sounds like a remarkable and notable person to me.

Presumably the 1950s Poppy Cannon is not the same person as the 1980s costume designer [* the set and constume designer, because of the difference in dates... -- Karada 00:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Then perhaps this should be turned into a disambig page? The subject of the existing article could be mentioned then, just not linked to. -- Fr a ncs2000 [[Image:Gay flag.svg|25px|  ]] 00:48, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Poppy Cannon the food writer certainly seems to be the one who is most commonly referenced on the web, so I don't think we need any form of disambig unless the more recent Poppy Cannon becomes notable enough to have her own article.

One web-based source describes Cannon (the food writer) as having died by suicide, by jumping from the window of her Fifth Avenue apartment. However, I cannot find any other source to confirm this, so I have removed this from the article. This unverfied report, combined with the fact that she would now be over 100 years old if still alive, suggest that she is quite probably not with us anymore. Can anyone confirm a date of death, or show that, as of 2006, she is still alive? -- Karada 08:19, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Year of birth
The Yale University link seems to give her year of birth as 1907. Where is the 1905 date from? Is it more reliable? -- GRuban 13:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've changed the date to match. -- Anon.

Poppy Cannon's Death
Poppy Cannon did die by committing suicide. She jumped out of the fifth story window as commented above. This event was referenced in "Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America" by Laura Shapiro, copyright 2004 by Penguin Books.

This page just says, "She died in a fall from the 23rd floor balcony of her apartment at 10 Park Avenue in New York City" as though that's something that happens all the time. It needs, at least, more explanation. Webmanoffesto (talk) 19:03, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

I really question whether Poppy Cannon is Anne Fogarty's sister
The sources simply do not support this. For one thing, the fashion designer Anne Fogarty's parents were Robert and Marion Whitney - nothing at all like Gruskin. However, this book states that Anne's sister was Poppy Cannon without explaining the surname disparity. Something really does not add up here. It seems obvious that Anne's sister Poppy Whitney must be a completely separate Poppy to Poppy Gruskin? A mystery needing resolving, I think... Mabalu (talk) 04:16, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

As per this source Poppy/Lilian Gruskin was the eldest of four children, born Lillian Gruskin in Cape Town, South Africa, on August 2, 1905 to Robert and Henrietta Gruskin. They moved to Kittening, Pennsylvania, 1908, where her father ran a store. As per this source, and the aforementioned book above, Anne's parents were Robert and Marion Whitney, she was the youngest of four, and was born and lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania''. Robert Whitney was an artist.

So, did Robert and Henrietta Gruskin change their name to Whitney, and in Henrietta's case did she take the name Marion? The New York Times - Apr 2, 1975 obituary on Poppy says, (in snippet view) "Miss Cannon, the oldest of three daughters of Marian and Robert Whitney, ... " There are NO Google news archve hits linking Poppy Cannon to the name Gruskin, and a Google News search for Fogarty and Gruskin (two very distinctive surnames) only brings up five hits, all lists of names. As sources go, you'd tend to assume that Yale know what they're talking about, but the lack of corroboration for the Gruskin link is confusing. My guess - which can ONLY be speculation - is that the Whitneys were originally called Gruskin (as per the Yale bio) and changed their name to Whitney for whatever reason, with Henrietta also changing her first name. Mabalu (talk) 02:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Revisiting this 4 years later, I have looked up both Poppy and Anne on Newspapers.com and I see two articles from 1958 and 1968 that state explicitly that the two women are sisters. For example, in 1968, Poppy is described as wearing one of her sister's designs in the Pittsburgh Courier, 2 March 1968, page 11, and in the San Bernardino Sun, page 24, 20 April 1958, a biography of Anne explicitly describes how Anne followed her sister to New York. There are other passing references to their being sisters, so I guess they are definitely related. However, that doesn't explain why the background details are so different for the two women, including the weird parental surname difference and the mother's name being totally different for both. So there's still some mystery there. Mabalu (talk) 23:57, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Please follow the link to the New York Times obit, which someone editing the article has likely read, as it gives the apartment's floor level as the 23rd. it also states as fact that the women were sisters. http://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/02/archives/poppy-cannon-white-69-dead-writer-was-authority-on-food.htm

Actio (talk) 02:51, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Further ref.: https://www.geni.com/people/Poppy-Cannon-White-Gruskin/6000000015526159584 Actio (talk) 00:37, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * User:Actio, thanks for that. The link to the archived obituary does not work for me. While it seems a logical assumption that the Gruskins changed their names, is there anything to confirm/clarifies that they definitely did so? Changing one's name from Henrietta Gruskin to Marion Whitney is a pretty major change/decision. Not disagreeing or arguing, as I think this makes sense, and fits my conclusions above, but just wish I had been able to find something to make it clearer, and the problem with the sources is that they don't mention Anne at all, so without all this original research on our parts, we may be right, but we can't really support with cites... All we have to go by are all the assertions that Poppy and Anne were sisters, but conflicting information on their parentage, and although it seems obvious that there was a name change at some point, we can't prove this - and the genealogy records don't link Anne to Poppy at all... It's all VERY confusing. Mabalu (talk) 11:11, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I feel for your frustration over this issue, User:Mabalu but I haven't been able  solve it, except to say that Jews moving to the US have frequently decided upon a name change, particularly in the generation of the Gruskins. Jews, after all, had last names (family names) imposed on them only a few hundred years ago, during the Diaspora.

Meanwhile, here's this (but without Anne): "Poppy Cannon was born Lillian Gruskin in Cape Town, South Africa, on August 2, 1905, the eldest of four children of Robert and Henrietta Gruskin. She came with her parents to the United States in 1908 and settled in Kittening, Pennsylvania, where her father ran a store. She won a scholarship to Vassar College and eventually became a journalist, food editor of Ladies’ Home Journal, House Beautiful, Town and Country, and Mademoiselle, and the author of several cookbooks, including The Can Opener Cookbook, The Bride’s Cookbook, The Presidents’ Cookbook, Aromas and Flavors of the Past and Present (with Alice B. Toklas), and a memoir of her fourth husband, A Gentle Knight: My Husband Walter White. She first married Carl L. Cannon, who became Acquisitions Librarian at Yale in 1931, and bore a daughter Cynthia. Her second husband, the Norway-born Alf E. Askland, an investment counselor and the father of her only son, Jon Alf., died in 1939. In 1941 she married Charles Claudius Philippe, an executive at the Waldorf Hotel, whom she divorced in 1949 and with whom she had a daughter, Claudia. She died in New York in April, 1975." http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/blogs/african-american-studies-beinecke-library/2009/06/02/walter-francis-white-and-poppy

You might consider contacting the Beinecke Library at Yale? Actio (talk) 21:36, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I think we've worked out what has happened and explained it in both articles as best as possible. As far as I'm concerned, the mystery is pretty much solved, so if anyone else wants to make an issue out of it being largely original research or not verified in "reliable sources", then they can do their own fact-chasing. Mabalu (talk) 10:32, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

links
None of the links are live, except footnote number 1, which I had just added. Actio (talk) 00:34, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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 * Added archive https://archive.is/20010210222035/http://www.hometoharlem.com/Harlem/hthcult.nsf/notables/walterfranciswhite to http://www.hometoharlem.com/Harlem/hthcult.nsf/notables/walterfranciswhite
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051231151734/http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/archive/2004/06/highlt.html to http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/archive/2004/06/highlt.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060306061353/http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0066209730&tc=ai to http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0066209730&tc=ai
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061001151617/http://www.daguerre.org/resource/dagnews/1999/06-29-99.html to http://www.daguerre.org/resource/dagnews/1999/06-29-99.html

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Reverting capitalization of the 'w' in "white woman"
As a newer Wikipedian, I'm not sure this merits adding an entry on the Talk page, but just want to err on the safe side. I was reading about Poppy and found this line: "some of whom viewed White's marriage to a White woman as a betrayal". The capitalization of "White woman" is confusing in part because her husband is named "White," and capitalizing "White" in the description of race is not the norm. The anonymous user who capitalized the 'w' in "White woman" explains their edit: "capitalized "white" to render it equal to "Black"....please,let us abjure neo-racism".

I looked up the Wikipedia Manual of Style and found this thread. I have not encountered other articles on Wikipedia which capitalize "White" in describing race, so I reverted the 'w' here to lower-case. findapanda (talk) 05:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)