Re: Bright comet in the mid 1930's

Comet 1936 II (Peltier) is the best candidate we found.  Leslie C. Peltier,
discovered 1936 II at mag. 9 on the evening of May 14, 1936.  By early July 
it was naked-eye visible in Cassiopeia.  The 3rd mag. comet with a 5 deg. 
tail,started to move swiftly southwards by months end, and reached maximum
brightness (mag. about 2.9) around time of closest approach (12 million 
miles)to the Earth on August 4.

Soon afterwards, it quickly became high in the sky for southern observers,
still naked eye visible but fading.  You can find a short article by John
Bortle in Sky&Telescope, August 1986, p. 202.  Here are osculating orbital
elements for Epoch 1936 Jul. 11, from Brian Marsden's catalogue:

Perihelion date = 1936 July 8.9552
Perihelion distance: q = 1.099868 AU
e = 0.991775

Ascending Node  = 134.2431 deg.
Arg. perihelion = 148.4711 deg.
Inclination     =  78.5497 deg.

Below we give an approximate ephmerides.  Positions are given for 0000 UT..
Right ascencion and Declination are for 1950 Equinox.  _r_ is the distance
Comet-Sun in Astronimical Units.  _delta_ is the distance Comet-Earth in
Astronomical Units.  _E_ is the enlongation from the Sun in degrees.
Note that the m1 magnitudes are just guesses, and were made to fit the 
rough
data available.

  date     R.A. (1950) Dec.         r       delta       E       m1

 6  5      0 11.70   +72  3.3     1.2294    1.3022      63      7.5
 6 10      0 12.00   +71 34.2     1.1959    1.2249      64      7.2
 6 15      0 10.78   +71  1.6     1.1668    1.1412      65      7.0
 6 20      0  7.98   +70 23.7     1.1424    1.0512      67      6.7
 6 25      0  3.51   +69 37.2     1.1232    0.9554      69      6.4
 6 30     23 57.20   +68 37.9     1.1096    0.8543      72      6.1
 7  5     23 48.78   +67 18.5     1.1018    0.7485      76      5.8
 7 10     23 37.73   +65 26.7     1.1000    0.6389      80      5.4
 7 15     23 23.34   +62 38.0     1.1043    0.5269      85      5.0
 7 20     23  4.64   +58  0.0     1.1145    0.4146      93      4.6
 7 25     22 40.53   +49 27.4     1.1305    0.3062     104      4.0
 7 30     22 10.04   +31 38.7     1.1519    0.2135     125      3.3
 8  4     21 33.07   - 3 21.3     1.1784    0.1698     164      2.9
 8  9     20 51.47   -38 58.2     1.2094    0.2109     156      3.4
 8 14     20  9.45   -56 58.4     1.2445    0.3048     134      4.4
 8 19     19 31.89   -65  4.6     1.2832    0.4172     122      5.2
 8 24     19  1.95   -69  3.2     1.3251    0.5360     114      5.9
 8 29     18 40.32   -71 11.4     1.3698    0.6571     109      6.5
 9  3     18 26.22   -72 25.7     1.4168    0.7787     104      7.0
 9  8     18 18.43   -73 11.7     1.4659    0.8998     100      7.4
 9 13     18 15.79   -73 42.0     1.5166    1.0198      97      7.9

We hope this is still useful information for you.
All the best for your observing!
Cheers,

Alfredo and Catarina