Coronet Magazine – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

Anticipating A Robert Kennedy Presidency
(Coronet Magazine, 1968)

Three months prior to the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, the editors of CORONET MAGAZINE posed the question: ‘Will Bobby make a great President?’ Or even a good one? What would his policies be? The numerous assorted answers were all enthusiastically positive – the one that stood out came from the perennial contrarian of the time:

‘The inevitability of Bobby’ comes just after that of death and taxes, say Conservative quipster William F. Buckley, only half in fun.

Henry Dreyfuss
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Attached is an article about the work of the American industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904 – 1972):

At 43, Henry Dreyfuss is enormously successful, a fact which he makes every effort to conceal… In designing a typewriter, he measured the fingers of hundreds of typists. In creating a new chair for plane or train, he doesn’t settle for the fact that the chair simply seems comfortable. He hires an orthopedic surgeon to advise.

Industrial design was barely getting started when the 1929 Depression struck. America’s economic collapse may have meant calamity for millions of people, but for designers it spelled golden opportunity. Savage competition became the rule. To stay in business, a manufacturer had to give his products new utility, new eye-appeal…

‘The Strange Story Behind GONE WITH THE WIND”
(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

What was the real origin of Gone with the Wind? Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949) referred to a simple incident in her childhood. One afternoon, her mother took her on a buggy ride through the countryside around Atlanta, showing her all the once proud plantation homes that stood in crumbling shame from the Civil War, and others that were symbols of revival and progress. The impression never left her. Gone with the Wind, she said, was the story of Georgians who survived and those who didn’t.

In this article a book reviewer questions why anyone thought the novel was so great.

Letters from Vietnam
(Coronet Magazine, 1967)

[Here is] a portrait of the war by those who know it best – the men at the front… In these affecting pages are the unadorned voices of men and women who fought – and, in some cases, fell – in America’s most controversial war. They bring new insights and imagery to a conflict that still haunts our hearts, consciences, and the conduct of our foreign policy.

Douglas Chandler of Illinois
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

Douglas Chandler (1889 – ?) was one of several American expatriots to make radio broadcasts on behalf of Adolf Hitler and company. Believing that he was somehow providing a valuable service for the Free and the Brave, he smugly titled his radio program, ‘Paul Revere’.

Moholy-Nagy and the New Bauhaus
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

This unprepossessing place is the American survivor of a great international movement, the Bauhaus of Dessau, which filled the world with tubular chairs and sectional sofas. The Bauhaus, like so many other things German, drew Hitler’s ire because it was too intellectually independent. Hitler dissolved it in 1938…Some fragments of Bauhaus fled to America. Dr Laszalo Moholy-Nagy escaped with some remnants of students’ work and saught refuge in Chicago. There, in his concrete warehouse, Moholy-Nagy’s movement has taken root.

They do the oddest things…A chair might just be a double loop of shellacked plywood. It is steamed and shaped so that it has a seat, and a back, and stands on the floor…It doesn’t look like much of a chair. It will do the job for which chairs are sold.

The Crew of the Enola Gay Fifteen Years Later
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

The men of the Enola Gay were hand-picked experts, chosen for intelligence, emotional stability and discipline, qualities they have put to good use in their post-war careers. Four remained in the service (one died in 1953) and the others are all successful in their business carees. They earn above-average salaries, all but one are married and they have 26 children among them. None of them has been to Japan since the war, and few have met since separation.

The Bombers Speak
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

Appearing in a 1960 issue of Coronet Magazine was this piece that revealed the assorted introspective perceptions of the crew of the Enola Gay.

In the fifteen years that had past since the dropping of the Atomic bomb these are the personal thoughts that were produced after years of sober reflection concerning their part in one of the preeminent events of the last century:

After 15 years the scene over Hiroshima is still sharp and clear to them, and though they disagree on details, they are unanimous on the point of whether they’d do the same things again.

German Letters from Stalingrad
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

When 22 divisions were cut off by the Russians at the gates of Stalingrad, the Nazis had to rely on air transport for contact with the surrounded troops. One mid-December day a German cargo plane was shot down on its way from the ringed divisions. The wreckage yielded some three hundred letters from doomed soldier of der Fuehrer. The Soviets selected and published a typical one:

It is hard to confess even to myself, but it seems to me that at Stalingrad we shall soon win ourselves to death.

Click here to read an assessment of the late-war German soldier…

The Woman Who Didn’t Want to Dress Like Jackie…
(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

This unique (and thankfully humorous) voice lets us know how widespread The Jackie Look was in the America of the early sixties – but she will have non of it:

I am accepting all offers – including Confederate money – for my Jackie Kennedy wardrobe of sleeveless ‘avant-garde’ dresses and pill-box hats. I’ll even throw in a necklace or three of pearls. If you insist, and I hope you do, I’ll also add my French cookbook and my water-color set… I have had it. I just don’t want to look like Jackie Kennedy. The competition is becoming far too keen.

We recommend: Jackie Style

Guess Whose Coming to Hollywood…
(Coronet Magazine, 1959)

The Coronet entertainment writer was quite correct when he identified Sidney Poitier (1927 – 2022) as the first actor of African descent to earn beaucoup bucks and achieve leading-man status in dramatic rolls in Hollywood. Born and raised in the Bahamas, Poitier’s predecessors in the film colony were many, but they were all song and dance men. The attached column clearly outlines what made Poitier such an actor apart.

Before there was Sidney Poitier, there was Farina…

The Age Progression of President Lincoln
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)

Ever since the age of photography began, one of the semi-official pastimes of the American people involves taking note of the rapid facial decay of their assorted presidents while in-office – and as the collected photographic portraits of Abraham Lincoln clearly indicate, no one will be naming a skincare product after him any time soon, however, the aging process that effected his face so dramatically has been the subject of Lincoln admirer’s through the years, and some are collected in the attached article.

Addressing the ”Negro Problem”
(Coronet Magazine, 1949)

Like the article posted above, this essay serves as further evidence that the immediate post-war years in America were ones in which the foundations for the civil rights movement were established; foundations on which the civil rights leaders of the Sixties and Seventies would rely upon to guarantee the forward momentum of the movement.

The attached article pertains to the necessary work that was being done by the National Urban League.

Upon reading this piece, we’re sure you’ll recognize that the author knew full well that the article should have been titled, The Answer to the White Problem.

Donna Reed as Mary Bailey
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

A profile of the Hollywood actress Donna Reed (born Donna Belle Mullenger: 1921 – 1986), who will foreve be remembered for her portrayal of the character Mary Bailey in the Frank Capra film, It’s a Wonderful Life(RKO, 1947).

This interview was published as one more publicity element that was created to promote her television program, The Donna Reed Show (ABC, 1958 – 1966), that was launched a year and a half earlier, and serves as a nice summary of her life and career up until 1960. Reed refers to her earliest days growing up on a family farm in Iowa, her salad years as a maid, librarian and community college student in Los Angeles and her deepest frustrations with pin-headed casting agents who placed her in limited rolls for so many years.

Sex During the Second World War
(Coronet Magazine, 1955)

At the beginning of World War II, our army was a mixture of callow boys and and domesticated men. The older men were homesick for wives and children…There were plenty of lonely wives, too, and it soon became evident that a fair number of them were committed to the belief that continence was bad for women.

Marriage vows were one of the unsung casualties of the Second World War: by 1944 many married women who hadn’t seen their drafted husbands in years began producing babies; you can read about that here…

In 1943 a woman on the home front introduced a sexual component that she believed would bring an end to the problem of industrial absenteeism – click here to read about her idea…

A Christian Defends Atheists
(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

Following the close of the Second World War America took a good look at herself and slowly began to clean house. Assorted magazines and newspapers began to publish articles about various injustices that seemed to be overlooked during the previous centuries in order that remedies could be found and national integrity restored. When this column was sent to the printer it was a time when numerous states barred atheists from holding elective office, serving as a court witness or work as a school teacher. All of this was taking place in spite of the fact that the census bureau records indicated that as many as 36.6% of the U.S. citizenry had no affiliation with any religious institution.

Another article about an outstanding Episcopal bishop can be read here…

The John Powers Modeling Agency
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

They sip your favorite coffee, drive your dream car, display the latest fashions, show you how to cook a waffle: they are potent forces in the scheme of American advertising. Their faces and figures adorn the covers of countless magazines…often they develop into stars of the cinema. They come from all over America to an office on Park Avenue, New York, where a quiet, discerning man named John Robert Powers appraises their charms and schools them for the job of selling sables to society or groceries to the great American housewife.

Beginning in the mid-Twenties and spanning the years leading up to the late Forties, John Robert Powers (1892 – 1977) created and maintained the first modeling agency in New York City (if not the world) and during the Forties, the Powers Agency grossed over five million dollars a year. Attached are nine photos of the most popular fashion models he represented in 1941; a unique breed of woman known at the time as Powers girls.

Adapting Hebrew for the Modern Age
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

A fascinating read about how the previously embalmed language of Hebrew had been dusted off and born anew for the modern era. Hebrew in 1948 (the year that the U.N. recognized Israel as a nation) was largely seen as an inaccessible tongue known only to scholars – had existed for the past 4,000 years with a scant 8,000 words: this would now change as the language was permitted to live and grow once more. Today it is believed that Hebrew has between 60,000 and 150,000 words and that there are as many as 9 million people who speak the language worldwide.