Collier’s Magazine – Page 13 – Old Magazine Articles

He was Too Tough on Businesses
(Collier’s Magazine, 1938)

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was well-known for cracking wise about the members of the American business community, such as stock brokers, speculators, company functionaries and the leading corporate executives during the Great Depression – believing that there actually could be an economy worth saving if they didn’t exist. Throughout the Thirties the New Deal launched numerous tax laws and assorted other pieces of legislation that served only to stymy competition, raise prices and slow all economic growth. The editors of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE published this spirited and rational defense of corporate America in 1938 and it is attached herein:

American business, whatever its limitations, has produced a better living for more people than any other system of production… The American big-business system has fed people better and more generously. It has provided more convenient and more wholesome shelter. It has distributed vastly more of the mechanical aids to civilized living.

Click here to read about FDR’s tax plan from 1935.

Barbusse Described the Winter Trenches
(Collier’s Magazine, 1917)

The war has changed many things, and it may have altered conceptions of military smartness as well. For from Paris, the home of ‘mode’ and ‘chic’, comes a daily fashion hint from the front that is upsetting. It is from Henri Barbusse (1873 – 1935), author of the novel Under Fire (Le Feu, 1916) and describes the winter costumes of a squad of French Territorials:

Hides, bundles, blankets, pieces of cloth, knitted hoods, woolen caps, fur caps, mufflers, wound around or worn like turbans, headgear knit and double knit, coverings and roofings of tarred, oiled or waterproofed capes and cowls, black, or all colors once of the rainbow; all these cover the men obliterating their uniforms as well as covering their skins, making them look immense and cumbersome…

Forties Ski Mode
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

Clipped from the pages of a 1948 issue of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE were these four color pictures of skiers loafing about the slopes in a place that had just recently been discovered for such purposes; it was called Aspen, in Colorado.

You will no doubt notice that there is no real difference between the skiing togs worn by either gender; both wore only wool, jaunty ski sweaters and pegged trousers.

Click here if you would like to read the entire article about Aspen in 1948; there are additional color photographs.

The Four Horsemen and Knute Rockne in His Own Words
(Collier’s Magazine, 1930)

An article written by one of the grand old men of football and one of the game’s most legendary coaches: Knute Rockne (1888 – 1931). Before there was the NFL, there was only college football and it was football pioneers like Rockne who brought out the excitement of the game, generating such enthusiasm for the sport and creating a fan-base that grew steadily throughout the century. Just as Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs had The Hogs in the Eighties, Knute Rockne was famous for a group of players in the Twenties called the Four Horsemen (Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Elmer Layden, and Jim Crowley), and that is who the coach wrote about on the attached pages:

Individually, at first, they were just four compact youths, no better than football’s average…Within a season they became famous – the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame…They amazed even their own coach

General Dai Li: ”The Himmler of The East
(Collier’s, 1946)

Kind words are written herein by Lt. Commander Charles G. Dobbin regarding the Himmler of the East, General Dai Li(1897 – 1946), founder of China’s secret police under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887 – 1975). Written in 1946, this reminiscence concerns the tight cooperation that existed between General Li’s guerrilla units and the American military (Sino-American Co-Operative Organization: S.A.C.O.) during the later years of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Dobbins emphasized how deeply General Dai Li’s intelligence operatives were able to circulate during the period in which U.S. Rear Admiral Milton Mary Miles commanded the S.A.C.O. troops.

The Battle of Heartbreak Ridge
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

There is a set of rocky hills close to the 38th Parallel that came to be known as Heartbreak Ridge in the Fall of 1951. It came to pass when a plan was made to secure these hills for the U.N Forces – they thought this would be done in one day – but it continued for a full month. At long last, the 23rd Regiment of the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division finally wrested Heartbreak Ridge from a numerically superior enemy on October 12 – and in so doing, lost half their strength (1,650 men).

The Sten Gun
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

The Sten gun was hastily created after the catastrophic retreat from Dunkirk when it was widely believed that the invasion of England was inevitable. The British Home Guard requested an easily produced sub-machine gun that could be quickly assembled and easily used by those who have never had any firearm training whatever. Dubbed the ten dollar gun, the Sten gun met all these requirements and more; over four million of them were manufactured throughout the Forties and although they were never used to defend the British Isles, they were parachuted en masse to the partisan armies in Europe.

The attached article is illustrated with six images and tells the story of the Sten Mark II and the small Canadian factory that produced them. Interesting stories are told and there are pictures of cute Canadian girls.

The Hungarian Uprising of 1956
(Collier’s Magazine, 1957)

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Though leaderless when it first began, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the USSR’s forces drove Nazi Germany from its territory at the end of World War II.

He was a Dirty Campaigner…
(Collier’s Magazine, 1952)

FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, wrote a series of articles concerning his own presidency that appeared on the pages of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE throughout the spring of 1952. The sixth installment was devoted to his 1932 reelection bid against FDR and the Roosevelt Hoover remembered was an under-handed campaigner who surrounded himself with liars and all sorts of other aids and speechwriters who took liberties with the truth in all matter’s involving the record of Hoover’s administration.

CLICK HERE to read about President Hoover and the Bonus Army…

A W.W. II Hero Speaks Out About Heroes and Heroism
(Collier’s, 1945)

Carlton Rouh was awarded the M.o.H. for performing numerous acts of courage on the South Pacific island of Peleliu during the September of 1944; in this article he speaks bluntly about the nature of heroes and the discomfort they experience when being praised in a nation that was so deeply in need for such men.

Click here to read about another W.W. II Medal of Honor recipient.

The Abusive Occupying Army
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

This editorial lends credibility to Andrei Cherny’s 2007 tome, The Candy Bombers, in which the author states that there was no love lost between the Berliners and the occupying American army in the immediate aftermath of the German surrender:

Stories keep coming back to this country about American soldiers sticking up Berlin restaurants, or beating up German citizens, or looting German homes. How much of this stuff goes on, we don’t know. We do know that some of it goes on, and that any of it is too much. Not that we believe in sobbing unduly over the German people, they let themselves be razzle-dazzled into the war by Hitler and his mobsters.

Stalin’s Successor, Georgi Malenkov, Forced to Resign
(Collier’s Magazine, 1955)

Crocodile tears were shed for Georgi Malenkov (1902 – 1988), a buddy of Stalin’s who was forced to resign as Soviet premier a few weeks earlier on the grounds that he had failed to produce any memorable reforms in agriculture (Nikita Khrushchev had drawn up a laundry list of additional Malenkov failings as well). The author sweetly pointed out that the Premiere was not to blame; after all,the entire system of government had been schemed by a dreamer who intended his utopia to be built in Germany or Britain.

Click here to read about Stalin’s Five Year Plan.

Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio…

The Fashion Group
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

At the time this article appeared on the pages of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE, the Fashion Group was already over twenty years old and in need of more office space.

Established in 1928 by the crowned-heads of the American fashion industry, it was decided that the dominate fashionistas ‘needed a forum, a stage, or a force to express and enhance a widening awareness of the American fashion business and of women’s roles in that business. This article points out that there were present in that room on that historic day a smattering of women who toiled in the vineyards as fashion journalists and collectively it was understood that the two groups very much relied upon each other.
The Fashion Group was established in order to:

judge trends by watching sales figures, which indicate which fashions are on the wane and which are gaining favor. They travel around to see what we do, and therefore, what we need.

Today, the Fashion Group has offices in every major American city as well as branches in the fashion capitols of Europe, South America and Asia.

Two Important Rivers in the Cold War Struggle
(Collier’s Magazine, 1952)

Two continents apart, the Yalu and the Rhine wind down to the sea. But in the continuing struggle of freedom against Communism, they share the common roll of destiny.

Of the two rivers, perhaps the Yalu is of more immediate concern, for behind its 500 miles of coursing waters stand the bulk of the Red forces under Red China chief Mao Tse-tung… Few people had heard of the Yalu until the Korean War began. But it gained world-wide prominence in November, 1950, when 200,000 Chinese Reds came pouring across its bridges to aid the North Koreans as they retreated before UN troops…

‘Don’t Count on Germany to Fight”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

Not too long after the end of World War II, the French, British and Americans found that they had to assemble a coalition of nations (NATO) that would be willing to fight the Soviets for what was believed to be an even bigger rumble in the future – but after losing two enormous wars, West Germany refused to join.

Adele Simpson and Her Fashions
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

On the matter of the American fashion designer Adele Simpson (1904 – 1995), it must be remembered that she was a prominent player in American fashion for many decades; a woman who had been awarded both a Coty Award (1949) as well as a Neiman Marcus Award (1946). Her creations were highly sought after by the crowned heads of both Europe and Hollywood.

Click here to read about wartime fabric rationing in the 1940s.

Edwige Feuillère Gets Liberated
(Collier’s, 1946)

A 1946 article in which the beloved French actress Edwige Feuillère (1907 – 1998) is personified as the epitome of wounded French Glamor returned to it’s rightful place following the hasty retreat of those nasty Huns from the boulevards of lovely Paris:

Edwige Feuillère, France’s Number One actress, is wearing evening clothes again – and all fashionable Paris rejoices. It is a sort of symbol, the blooming of the lovely Edwige into full-panoplied formality. For she, along with most women of France, abstained from festivities and the clothes that go with them throughout the war.

Boris Karloff: Gentle Monster
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

Adorned with photos of the famous movie-monster-actor mowing his lawn and kissing his wife, this COLLIER’S MAGAZINE article tells the tale of how an English boy named William Henry Pratt became a famous Hollywood actor named Boris Karloff (1887 – 1969). This piece was originally conceived in order to promote the actor’s appearance on Broadway in the roll of Jonathan in Arsenic and Old Lace. The writer makes it quite clear to all that the show-biz career did not in any way come easily to Karloff and involved years of truck driving and traveling about performing in summer-stock theaters throughout the whole of North America before he was able to make a name for himself as a bit actor in the silent films of Hollywood.

Click here to read about the vulgar side of Erroll Flynn.