Coronet Magazine – Page 7 – Old Magazine Articles

Shavian Witticisms
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Myriad are the clever epigrams that have been attributed to the famed Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) – and attached you’ll find additional chestnuts to add to the list. These particular ones recall the bon mots he tossed out while prattling-on with various assorted glitterati of his day; yapers like Clare Boothe Luce, Orson Welles, Judith Anderson and tennis champ Helen Wills.

The Optimist’s Joseph Stalin
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

During the Second World War in the United States it would have been an act of treason for a journalist to write a slanderous profile about any of the leaders of the allied nations who were beset against the Axis powers. Not only would the writer face grave charges, but so would his editor and publisher. However, this does not mean that the editors of Coronet Magazine had to go so far over the top as to publish this article by the Soviet cheerleader Walter Duranty (1884 – 1957) of The New York Times.

From Amazon:

Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow

Ernest Hemingway of Time Magazine
(Coronet Magazine, 1953)

Some wise old wag once opined that by the time W.W. II came along, Hemingway was far too fascinated by his own public image to have ever been an effective war correspondent. However, it should be remembered that he had looked war in the face on many occasions – the Second World War was the seventh conflict that he witnessed as a war reporter. Prior to working as a war correspondent for Time and Collier’s during the Second World War, Hemingway had written for a number of other outlets in six other conflicts.

‘The Low State of High Society”
(Coronet Magazine, 1958)

Another article by a highbred, woebegone, blue-blood who, plagued by a boatload of distinguished primogenitors and over-burdened by a lavish trust fund – to say nothing of a bad case of affluenza, could take no more of it; she broke-down and scribbled the attached expose in hopes that the whole highfalutin’ plutocracy would come crashing down on top of all those icky, pompous know-it-alls.

Life for America’s so-called social aristocrats is colorless and uninspired. Our education, now that I look back at it, seems to have produced a frightening number of properly mannered, emotionally passive and intellectually sterile young snobs… This training is not easily overcome.

Gosh. We thought only Howard Zinn wrote like that.

The Segregated U.S. Army
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

Here is a segment from a longer article that tells the sad story about racial segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces. The small portion that is attached here tells of a secret group of fifty army researchers who were dispatched to the European front and

interviewed thousands of [White] soldiers about their attitudes toward Negro platoons fighting experimentally within their divisions.

Their findings proved that to these front-line respondents, the experimental platoons were truly their equal. In 1948 this research was showed to President Truman, who signed Executive Order 9981, thus bringing to an end racial segregation within the ranks of the U.S. Military.

The U.S. Navy was the biggest offender

The Coup of 1963
(Coronet Magazine, 1964)

The outcome of the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis was seen as a largely tasteless affair by the brass caps in Moscow. They believed Premiere Khrushchev and his diplomatic bungling left the U.S.S.R. in a weaker position and they wanted him out, pronto. Numerous men in the Soviet Army and within the Kremlin united in a plot to force him out. The Premiere proved himself a master at seeing through such intrigue; he stopped the coup dead in its tracks with a boatload of key arrests and executions which then knocked the remaining confederates off their game, sending them hither and yon.
Ten months later the Kremlin forced Khrushchev into retirement.

How Dangerous is Red China
(Coronet Magazine, 1967)

This article concerns the observations of a Japanese diplomat who was privileged to tour a Chinese Army base. He spoke at length about all that he saw during his tour and used his surveillance, mixed with his general knowledge of China, to understand what their general capabilities would be in the event of war. When asked what was most impressive about the Chinses military, the diplomat replied:

The mining. They explained that the antipersonnel mine is their most unusual weapon, developed primarily to sap the enemy’s morale.

Tom Treanor of the L.A. Times
(Coronet Magazine, 1944)

War correspondent Tom Treanor (1914 — 1944) of The Los Angeles Times was billed by writer Damon Runyon as one of the four best reporters developed in this war.:

Landing in Cairo just about the time Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was approaching Alexandria, Treanor went to the British to obtain an accreditation certificate as a war correspondent. But since the British didn’t know him they wouldn’t accredit him. Undaunted he went out and bought a set of correspondent’s insignia for 70 cents, borrowed an army truck, and made a trip to the front and back before the British realized he was gone. They stripped him of his illegal insignia, but in the meantime Tom had obtained material for several ‘hot’ columns. Treanor was killed in France shortly after this column went to press.

Stalin’s Nine Point Plan
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)

Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953) is credited as the author of the attached article, Russia’s Plan for World Conquest, and it outlines all the various methods Soviet agents can subvert and curry-favor among the various youth and labor groups that are based in the industrialized democracies of the West:

…here is the Russian Dictator’s nine point program for world conquest, taken from his recorded writings, which are now on file in the Stalin Archives of the National War College in Washington, D.C. Italicized sentences have been inserted throughout the article in order to point up Stalin’s plan in the light of today’s crucial events. [ie. the Korean War]

As Lenin has said, a terrible clash between Soviet Russia and the capitalist States must inevitably occur…Therefore we must try to take the enemy by surprise, seize a moment when his forces are dispersed.

Click here to read about Soviet collusion with American communists.

A Song and Dance Man on Guadalcanal
(Pageant Magazine, 1952)

Four years after his stellar performance as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939), Hollywood actor and comedian Ray Bolger (1904 – 1987) was performing in many parts of the war-torn Pacific islands on a USO tour for thousands of very grateful GIs and Marines. Attached is a two page reminiscence about one particular Guadalcanal performance, the men he met and the Hell they paid in the years that followed

‘Burial at Sea”
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)

This is a short anecdote that recalled a slice of life on board a USN troop ship as it ferried men from one bloody atoll to the next. The two speaking parts in this drama were both officers who butted heads regularly until they understood that what united them was the welfare of the
dying young men returning from the beaches who had given their last full measure.

To read articles about W.W. II submarines, Click here.

Mad Magazine
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

When Mad Magazine first appeared on newsstands in 1952 it was immediately recognized as something quite new in so far as American satirical magazine humor was concerned. The earliest issues were produced in comic book format with almost all content produced by its founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman (1924 – 1993); by 1955 the magazine’s lay-out was altered to its current form. From its earliest days, Kurtzman and his publisher, William Gaines (1922 – 1992), began receiving unsolicited gags from many of the finest writers and performers on radio and TV. This article lists some of the scandals (both foreign and domestic) that the magazine inadvertently generated.

Glenn Miller
(Coronet Magazine, 1954)

Ten years after the death of Big Band legend Glenn Miller (1904 – 1944), it was found that his record sales were going through the roof at 16,000,000 per annum, and Hollywood had attempted to cash-in on his memory by releasing a (bland) Technicolor bio-pic, appropriately titled, The Glenn Miller Story(Universal) – with Jimmy Stewart starring in the title roll. The band leader’s popularity was obvious to everyone in 1944, when he was killed in the war, but no one could have predicted this.

The Returned P.O.W.
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)

Merchant Marine William T. Mitchell, having been locked-up for three and half years in a Japanese POW camp, recalled those terrible days intermittently as he explains what it was like to return to a changed America. One of the amusing stories concerned a time when his captors assembled the camp to announce [falsely] that movie stars Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin had been killed:

The Nips had lied to us, and I fell for it. You believe anything – almost – when you’re cut off from your home.

Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
(Coronet Magazine, 1939)

Here is a profile of a very young Al Hirschfeld (1903 – 2003) – long-time NY Times caricaturist.

Sam Rosenman: FDR’s Right Arm
(Coronet Magazine, 1944)

Samuel Rosenman (1896 – 1973) was an attorney, judge and a highly placed insider within the ranks of the Democratic Party, both in Albany and the nation’s capital. It was Rosenman who helped articulated many of FDR’s policies, wrote numerous executive orders and conceived of the moniker New Deal. He was the first lawyer to hold the position White House Counsel and he was an indispensable advisor to Roosevelt throughout the course of his New York governorship as well as his presidency.

Bananas, Anyone?

Here is the skinny on the Bananas and Skim Milk Diet – also known as the Magic 888 – still in use today, the reducing plan is a crash diet designed to remove five pounds within three to four days.

Johnny Mathis
(Coronet Magazine, 1957)

Here is a moving account of the meteoric rise of Johnny Mathis (b. 1935) – from an impoverished child of the San Francisco slums to the last of the great-American crooners.

Johnny Mathis is just 23 years old , though he appears a hungry , vulnerable 17. When he sings a romantic ballad in high falsetto, his large eyes gaze out over the heads of the audience as if in search of someone.