Click Magazine

Articles from Click Magazine

Duke Ellington: Twenty Years in the Spotlight (Click Magazine, 1943)

The top man in Negro music climbed on the bandwagon when he and his band played a hot spot called the Kentucky Club. That was twenty years ago, in New York City’s Harlem. This year, Duke Ellington (1899 – 1974) made another debut, at Carnegie Hall, goal of the great in music…Piano lessons bored Ellington when he was six years old. He never learned to play conventionally, but he was only a youngster when his flare for improvisation reaped attention and landed him a job in a Washington theater…one by one, his compositions hit the jackpot: ‘Mood Indigo’, ‘Sophisticated Lady’, ‘Ebony Rhapsody’, ‘Solitude’, ‘Caravan’.

Ellington calls his work Negro Music, avoids the terms ‘jazz’ or ‘swing’.

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‘The Grapes of Wrath” (Click Magazine, 1940)

The attached article is illustrated with three color photos from the set of the movie, this short article details why The Grapes of Wrath (Twentieth Century Fox, 1940) was such a different movie to come out of Hollywood and explains how thoroughly both the art and costume departments were in their research in depicting the migrant Okies in their Westward flight:

Realism, keynote of the book, was the keynote of the picture. Henry Fonda, who plays Tom Joad, lived for weeks among the Okie farmers from Oklahoma to understand their problems…

As a result of Steinbeck’s literary efforts, medical aid was offered to California’s migrants – Click here to read about it


Click here to read a 1935 article about the real Okies.


Perhaps Steinbeck saw this 1938 photo-essay while writing his novel?

John Steinbeck became a war correspondent in 1943.

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A Report on the War Reporters (Click Magazine, 1944)

A well-illustrated 1944 article by Leonard Lyons pertaining to the assorted wartime experiences of ten American war correspondents:


• Martin Agronsky for NBC News

• Vincent Sheean with The N.Y. Tribune

• Henry Cassidy of the Associated Press

• Bob Casey of the Chicago Tribune

• John Gunther of The Chicago Daily News

• Jack Thompson of The Chicago Tribune

• Cecil Brown of CBS News

• W.L. White of the Associated Press

• Quentin Reynolds of Collier’s Magazine

• Cyrus Schulzberger with the NY Times

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Sunglasses Make Their Mark in the Fashion World (Click Magazine, 1939)

Although sunglasses had slowly inched their way forward in popularity since the late Twenties, the attached article declared that by 1939 sunglasses were officially recognized as a full-fledged fashion accessory when the Hollywood stars Joan Bennet and Hedy Lamar began to sport them around town.

Like T-shirts and khaki pants, it would be W.W. II that would provide sunglasses with a guaranteed spot on fashion stage for the next sixty-five years.


Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.

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John Garand: Inventor of the M1 Garand (Click Magazine, 1944)

Attached is a Click Magazine photo essay of one of the seldom remembered heroes of W.W. II: John C. Garand – the gunsmith who tripled the firepower of the American foot soldier.


In 1939, a German spy almost succeeded in delivering the blueprints of the Garand rifle into the blood-soaked hands of his Nazi overlords: read about it here.


Click here to read about the Japanese Zero.

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‘What Kind of Women are the WAACs?” (Click Magazine, 1942)

They’re career women, housewives, professionals, factory hands, debutantes. They’ve taught school, modeled, supported themselves, as secretaries, salesgirls, mechanics. Single and married, white and colored, between the ages of 21 and 45, they’re corresponding with a beau, in Ireland, a husband Australia, or the ‘folks back home’ in Flatbush. But varied as their background may be, they’ve enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) with a common purpose: to get behind America’s fighting men and help win a lasting peace.

When well-versed in army-administrative methods, the WAAC will cause the transfer of 450 enlisted men to combat areas each week. It realizes full-well its responsibility and has dedicated itself to the idea that the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps will prove itself equal to the opportunity.

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Six Color Photos of 1940 Manhattan (Click Magazine, 1940)

If you’ve been wandering the internet hoping to get some idea what the fair isle of Manhattan looked like on 1940s color film, then your search is over (for a little while). These color images first appeared in a 1940 issue of Click Magazine and you will get a glimpse of the Bowery, Broadway, and Fifth Avenue -there are also two color pictures of New York at night for all of you wanted to see what the door man at El Morocco wore or the club-crawlers in Harlem.

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