Collier’s Magazine

Articles from Collier’s Magazine

The Domino Theory (Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

In 1951, N.Y. Governor Thomas Dewey (1902 – 1971) made a fact-finding trip to French Indochina (Vietnam), and as impressed as he was with the French command, he wrote urgently in this Collier’s article of his belief in the Domino Theory – Indochina, Thailand and Burma were the Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia:

The Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia is the cornerstone of our Pacific defenses. And Indochina is the cornerstone of the cornerstone.

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Absolute, Total Morons on the Home Front (Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

If you’re one of those types who tend to feel that Americans aren’t as smart as they used to be, this is the article for you: attached is a collection of quotes generated by eight home front dullards who were asked the question:

Do you know what you are fighting?

They all understood that their nation had just finished it’s second year fighting something called Fascism but were hard-pressed to put a thoughtful definition to the term:

A Kansas cattle raiser defined Fascism as ‘…the belief in a big industrial enterprise. Anyone who thinks that way is Fascist-minded.

Additionally, it is fun to see the pictures of all the assorted noobs who made such ridiculous statements.

Absolute, Total Morons on the Home Front (Collier’s Magazine, 1943) Read More »

Here Comes Denim (Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

Nine months into the war the American fashion industry awoke to discover that one of the most sought after cottons being purchased domestically was denim.


Denim was first seen in 1853, worn by the men who panned for gold in California. When faced with hard labor, this sturdy twill had proven its worth again and again, and when the American home front recognized that there was a great deal of work to be done in the fields and factories if the war was to be won, they slipped on jeans and denim coveralls and saw the job through.


Who on Sixth Avenue could have known back then that denim would be the main-stay in American sportswear for decades to come?


A far more thorough history of blue jeans can be read here.

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Princess Elizabeth During the Second World War (Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

A printable article (excerpted from a longer one) outlining what exactly Princess Elizabeth II was up to during World War II:

…and it was decided that Elizabeth must not enlist in anything, that her training for the throne was of the first importance. But Elizabeth felt that she would be a slacker and carry about an inferiority complex for life. So for a year, relentlessly, she persisted. Just before her nineteenth birthday, her father gave in…

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I Still Believe in Non-Violence’ by Mahatma Gandhi (Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

In the face of history’s most brutal war, as men the world over live by the rule of kill or be killed, India’s leader preaches a gospel of never lifting a weapon or pulling a trigger. Here he tells why:

The principle of non-violence means, in general terms, that men will deliberately shun all weapons of slaughter and the use of force of any kind whatsoever against their fellow men…Are we naive fools? Is non-violence a sort of dreamy wishful thinking that has never had and can never have any real success against the heavy odds of modern armies and the unlimited application of force and frightfulness?

I Still Believe in Non-Violence’ by Mahatma Gandhi (Collier’s Magazine, 1943) Read More »

Irving Thalberg: Hollywood’s Boy Wonder (Collier’s Magazine, 1924)

An article covering the early career of twenty five year-old Irving Thalberg (1899 – 1936): legendary Hollywood executive and movie producer, whose natural abilities in the Dream Factory catapulted his meteoric rise to greater power, leaving a long string of hits and well-admired film productions in his wake before pneumonia got the better of him twelve years after this article went to press.

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Dachau (Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

Attached is Martha Gellhorn’s (1908 – 1998) very disturbing eyewitness account of the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Poland:

Nothing about war was ever as insanely wicked as these starved and outraged naked, nameless dead. Behind one pile of dead lay the clothed healthy bodies of the German guards who had been found in this camp. They were killed at once by the prisoners when the American Army entered.


The man primarily responsible for delivering the innocent into the ovens of the death camps was Obergrupenfuehrer Albert Ganzenmüller click here to read about him…

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Walt Disney’s Artists and the Making of ‘Bambi’ (Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

For the production of Snow White (1938), the Disney artists had gone to great lengths in order to properly portray the manner in which young women move; these efforts were rewarded at the box-office to such a high degree that the same devotion was applied to the study of deer anatomy in their efforts to create Bambi (1942).

We had to remember, that Disney has a ruthless fidelity to the physical scene, to the truth of nature, even when he may seem to be distorting nature.

Click here to read more articles about Disney animation.

Walt Disney’s Artists and the Making of ‘Bambi’ (Collier’s Magazine, 1942) Read More »