1927 – Old Magazine Articles

A War Correspondent Remembers With Anger (Current Opinion, 1922)

A single paragraph review of Sir Philip Gibbs’ (1877 – 1962) book, More That Must Be Told. The book was written as a sequel to his previous volume which cataloged the many blunders and assorted outrages of the Great War, Now It Can Be Told (1920). The reviewer wrote:

Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War – none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.

A War Correspondent Remembers With Anger (Current Opinion, 1922) Read More »

‘Why I Live in Paris” by a Former American Soldier (American Legion Monthly, 1927)

This piece was penned by an anonymous expatriate, a former American soldier of the Great War who went into some detail comparing life in 1920s Paris to the life he knew in America, and he is quite funny about it. He described a Paris that Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald didn’t talk about.

Back in America I sincerely thought that my hometown had the worst telephone system in the world. This was a colossal error…

Click here to read about the fall of Paris…

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Prohibition – Chicago Style (The Chicagoan, 1927)

By 1927 it was common knowledge to every Chicago-based journalist that any reporter who wrote truthfully or seemed in any way outraged by the business practices of Al Capone – and others of his ilk, was likely to be found face down in Lake Michigan. The writer who penned this piece probably had that fact in mind while sitting at the typewriter; it is not an apology for the Chicago gangsters, it simply implies that they are established, the police are complicit – so get used to it. The writer then begins to explain how the bootlegging and distribution business operated – some of the up-and-coming hoods of the day must have been gratified to read that there was plenty of room for advancement within each organization.

A history of Chicago vaudeville can be read here…

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‘Film Cannot Be Art” (The Dial Magazine, 1927)

In this article, a 1920s critic forthrightly states that the primitive state of movie cameras renders them unfit as capable tools with which art can be created. He expands on his remarks by pointing out that 1920s film technology generally will never be able to render thought-provoking plots or articulate narratives until some necessary advancements are made in the field.

Another anti-silent film article can be read here…

-an additional article from the 1920s defaming silent film can be read here…

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Just Another Classified Ad from Dixie… (The Nation, 1927)

The attached file is a digital facsimile of a classified ad that was once posted in a Georgia newspaper long after the Emancipation Proclamation was passed into law. The editors at THE NATION saw fit to title the notice as an interesting little advertisement when they reproduced it six months later on their pages. Yet, for the Southerners who set the type-face, applied the ink, delivered the paper and subscribed, the ad was typical of so many other classifieds that had appeared during the past one hundred and fifty years, and it was not, as the Yankees put it:

…the request of someone who never heard of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Just Another Classified Ad from Dixie… (The Nation, 1927) Read More »

Christ is Big Box Office (The Literary Digest, 1927)

This is a review of one of the first movies to tell the story of Jesus, The King of Kings, which was directed by one of Hollywood’s earliest seers: Cecil B. DeMille (1881 – 1959). The film was genuinely adored in all circles; one critic gushed:

Cecil B. DeMille’s reward for The King of Kings will be in heaven…

Click here to read about the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb.

Christ is Big Box Office (The Literary Digest, 1927) Read More »

1920s Road Rage (The American Magazine, 1927)

Is it possible for a person to drive an automobile and remain a human being?

Do gasoline and courtesy mix?

Can you tell me why Ottis Throckmorton Whoozies, secretary of the Golden Rule Society, will smile sweetly, lift his hat and say graciously, ‘I beg your pardon. I’m really awfully sorry. Please excuse me,’ when he accidentally steps on a strange woman’s foot in a theater lobby, yet will lean out and make faces at his own grandmother if she fails to slow up her flivver and allow him to ‘cut in’ on a congested highway?

There’s something about a windshield that distorts a man’s outlook on life.

Click here to read about Lincoln, the joke teller.

1920s Road Rage (The American Magazine, 1927) Read More »

Rebel General John McCausland: the Terror of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (The Nation, 1927)

This small notice from The Nation marked the death of General John McCausland (1836 – 1927), C.S.A.. Much to the disappointment of the town elders residing in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, McCausland (pardoned by President U.S. Grant) escaped the hangman and outlived every last Confederate general ever put in the field.

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The Anti-Asian Immigration Laws of 1924 (The Nation, 1927)

The Immigration Act of 1924 denied admission to the United States to wives of American citizens if these wives are of a race ineligible for citizenship. Hindus, Chinese and Japanese are ineligible. Hence the curious and cruel fact that while an Oriental merchant with his wife may enter America, the wedded wife of an American-born citizen is held at the coast for deportation.

The Anti-Asian Immigration Laws of 1924 (The Nation, 1927) Read More »

WINGS: Directed by William Wellman (Life Magazine, 1927)

Appearing in an issue of [the old] Life Magazine, that was almost entirely devoted to the 1927 American Legion convention in Paris, was this Robert Sherwood review of the blockbuster silent film Wings. Directed by an American Air Corps veteran, William Wellman (1896 – 1975), Wings was the only silent film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (at that time the category was titled Most Outstanding Production).

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