Pageant Magazine

Articles from Pageant Magazine

Unpopular Charles Lindbergh (Pageant Magazine,1952)

Written twenty years after the event, this article recalls that period when the Lindberghs returned to America after living in Europe for three years. While abroad, Americans were disturbed to read in the press that he chose to keep company with the Fascists of Germany and Italy; after a while American editors found his behavior so unimpressive, they chose not to write about him any longer. Upon his return, prior to the World War II, Lindbergh joined an isolationist movement called the America First Committee. It was at these functions when he began to make assorted racist comments in his speeches – remarks that the press corps could no longer ignore.

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Escape from East Berlin (Pageant Magazine, 1967)

Lenin went to his grave believing that he had established a nation where a worker’s labor would be fairly compensated – a land free from want; but this was not the case. The Soviet Union, and all its assorted satellites, was in actuality, a police state where people longed to get away from all the free stuff that was offered – thousands of people successfully escaped while many others died trying. The country he created was one in which the word escape was frequently uttered – which brings us to this article – it concerns cars and how they were able to be refashioned in such a way as to conceal the East Germans who wished so badly to get away to the West – and it is very well illustrated.

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N.Y. Artists Discover Loft-Living (Pageant Magazine, 1960)

A new day dawned in Manhattan real estate history at the end of 1961 when the city elders agreed to abandon their bureaucratic jihad (a fire code issue) to evict artists from all those assorted run-down ateliers located around lower Broadway.


These were the upper floors of hundreds of old downtown business and manufacturing buildings (most over a century old) that were characterized by their heavy masonry proliferating with faux loggias, balustrades, entablatures and rows of delicately fluted columns – all scattered throughout Tribeca, SoHo and Chelsea. The artists called them Lofts.


As far as we can figure out, this was the first time in history that anybody seemed to care where an artist lived and worked.

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A Profile of ”Mr. America” (Pageant Magazine, 1955)

WHO, WHAT, AND WHY is the average American [man]? What does he eat? What does he wear? What does he worry about? These questions and more like them have taken us on a long journey through the realm of statistics. Out of the discoveries of the Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau and Dr. Gallup’s polls, we’ve succeeded in piecing together an uncommon portrait of the common man.

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How One School Turned Itself Around (Pageant Magazine, 1961)

When the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in the Autumn of 1957 it shocked the American people and set in motion an event that was quickly labeled the Sputnik Crises. Almost at once, school boards all across the fruited plane resolved to improve their math and science programs in order to ensure the blessings of liberty for generations yet unborn.


One of these institutions was Laguna Beach High School in Southern California and the attached article, Turning Bad Schools into Good Schools, will tell you about the various steps they had taken in order to alter their curriculum and the prevailing campus culture as well.


We were gratified to learn that some fifty-odd years later, Laguna Beach High is still one of the finest schools in the country.


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With the War Came Medical Innovations (Pageant Magazine, 1945)

Four years of global carnage did not simply usher in an era of more destructive weaponry for the inhabitants of Earth to ponder; it also gave cause for tremendous improvements in medical care. This 1945 article anticipated a much better world that would be created from the smoldering remains of Europe and Asia – a world that was better prepared to address the health requirements of the diseased and the burned. The medical advancements that were forged between the years 1939 through 1945 saw remarkable improvements in surgery and anesthesia and brought new light on how the medical establishment understood blood and the treatment of venereal disease.


CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…

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Hitler’s Final Days (Pageant Magazine, 1960)

This article pieces together the last few days of Hitler’s bunker experiences – who was there, how did he pass his time and the subjects he addressed. All the matters discussed herein was gleaned from the intelligence agencies of the three victorious armies that marched into Berlin during the Spring of 1945. The author goes into some detail as to whether he and his entourage could have escaped on foot plane or tank and rules each one out categorically. He further examines the possibility as to how this same group could have escaped to Argentina by submarine or air – and rules these possibilities out as well (the author, however, omits the possibility that they could have escaped through the elaborate tunnel system below the streets of Berlin).

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America’s Ever-Changing Mind: 1929 – 1952 (Pageant Magazine, 1953)

In an effort to show how American thought can vary between decades, a retired pollster from the Gallup organization collected the data gleaned from various opinion polls that were launched between 1929 on up through the dawn of the Atomic Age in order to show what a different people we had become. The topics that were addressed were


• Racial tolerance


• Taxes


• Women in the work place


• Labor unions


• Women smoking

• Bathing Suits

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How the Soviets Would Have Attacked (Pageant Magazine, 1950)

There wouldn’t be any warning.


Long-range Soviet bombers attempt to knock out our key industrial targets by atomic bombing. Some fly the 4,000, miles from Murmansk across the roof of the world to our East Coast; others strike from bases in Eastern Siberia at California and the Midwest… Simultaneously, organized sabotage breaks out in aviation plants, shipyards, power stations, etc., to complement the work of the bombers.

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