SS Normandie Postcard - Lawrence Dennis Provenance

This SS Normandie postcard was mailed to Lawrence Dennis, the famous author and radical intellectual, in 1938. It was found among a number of the author's personal papers held in a private ephemera collection. I profiled a different piece of Dennis' ephemera in an earlier post. After a serving in the U.S. Foreign Service, Dennis went on to a distinguished career as an author and intellectual--always a controversial figure, he was indicted in 1944 under the Smith Act.

The SS Normandie was launched on October 29, 1932--the largest object ever set in motion by man at the time. Like Dennis, the Normandie's career took an odd turn due to World War II. It was called into Allied Service in 1942.