Photoplay Magazine – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

Realistic Training for ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
(Photoplay Magazine, 1931)

Prior to reading this PHOTOPLAY article we were convinced that Oliver Stone’s Vietnam war film, PLATOON (1986) was the first production of it’s kind to actually take the effort to school all cast and extras as to the horrors of war; however it seems that this unique distinction goes to All Quiet on the Western Front.

In this interview the seven leading cast members discuss how the making of that movie disturbed each of them in profound ways:

We went into that picture a group of average wise-cracking fellows. We didn’t come out that way…

A small notice has been added that announced that the movie had been banned in Austria.

A 1929 review of the book can be read here

Edith Head on Paris Frocks
(Photoplay Magazine, 1938)

A telegraph from Hollywood costume designer Edith Head (1897 – 1981) to the editorial offices of PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE listing various highlights of the 1938 Paris fashion scene. Not surprisingly, it reads like a telegram:

Paris says:

• Long waistlines, short flared skirts, fitted bodices, tweeds combines with velvet, warm colors…

• Hair up in pompadours piles of curls and fringe bangs.

• Braid and embroidery galore lace and ribbon trimmings loads of jewelry mostly massive.

• Skirts here short and not too many pleats more slim skirts with slight flare.

The great Hollywood modiste wrote in this odd, Tarzan-english for half a page, but by the end one is able to envision the feminine Paris of the late Thirties.

Click here to read about physical perfection during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

In the attached PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE article, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911 – 2004), the Hollywood actor who would one day become the fortieth president of the United States (1981–1989), gives a tidy account as to who he was in 1942, and what was dear to him:

My favorite menu is steaks smothered with onions and strawberry short cake. I play bridge adequately and collect guns, always carry a penny as a good luck charm…I’m interested in politics and governmental problems. My favorite books are Turnabout, by Thorne Smith, Babbitt, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the works of Pearl Buck, H.G. Wells, Damon Runyon and Erich Remarque.

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

Cosmetic Surgery in 1930s Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Published in a 1930 fan magazine, this article tells the story of the earliest days of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:

Telling the actual names of all the stars who have been to the plastic surgeon is an impossible task. They won’t admit it, except in a few isolated instances…It is only lately that a few of them are beginning, not only to to admit that they’ve had their faces bettered, but to even go so far as to publicly announce it.

Click here to read more articles from PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE.

Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.

Rumors of Hitler’s Favorite American Comedy Team?
(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)

The amiable Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. penned the attached article and it was written at a time in his life when the man simply had to know what movie was the preferred darling above all others for the hideous Adolf Hitler – so after some hard-charging investigative journalism, he discovered that Hitler would scurry-away with Herman Goering in order to yuck it up in the dark while watching his fave non-Aryan comedy team. Who do you think it was?

Hitler might have liked American movies, but there was one thing American he didn’t like: German-Americans drove him crazy.

Click here to learn about Stalin’s favorite movie.

Afternoon at Terry-Toon Studios
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

PHOTOPLAY’s Frances Kish spent some time with the animators at Terry-Toon studios and filed this report detailing all the efforts that go into the production of just one Terry-Toon film:

The major animator begins begins the work. The thin white paper he uses for his drawings has holes punched at the top, like pages for a loose-leaf note book…The figures are about three inches high…

Hollywood’s Enigma
(Photoplay Magazine, 1938)

Although this article was written at a time when the television screen was a mere eight by eleven inches square, culture critic Gilbert Seldes addressed the question as to whether or not movies and radio will be voted off the island in favor of the television broadcasting industry.

International Movie Star – Mickey Mouse
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Although Euro Disney would not be opening until 1990, this article by Hollywood costume designer Howard Greer implied that it would have done quite well had they opened eighty-six years earlier:

You know everyone in Hollywood? they asked. I blushed modestly and admitted that I did.

Don’t you want to know about the stars? I went on.Shall I tell you about Garbo?

‘A smile passed across their faces.’
‘Garbo? Yes, we like her. But the star we ‘d love to know everything about is – Mickey Mouse!’

Cosmetic Surgery in Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Published in a 1930 Hollywood fan magazine, this is the story of the earliest plastic surgeons and the rise of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:

Telling the actual names of all the stars who have been to the plastic surgeons is an impossible task. They won’t admit it, except in a few isolated instances…It is only lately that a few of them are beginning, not only to to admit that they’ve had their faces bettered, but to even go so far as to publicly announce it.

Hollywood’s Case Against Monogamy
(Photoplay Magazine, 1938)

Technologies change, power changes, tastes change, but if anything has remained a constant in the West coast film colony it has been the fickle romantic tastes of all the various performers, directors and producers who toil in the vineyards of Hollywood. An old salt once remarked that if a Hollywood marriage lasts longer than milk it can be judged a success; with this old saw in mind, a wise anthropologist sat down, put pen to paper and seriously attempted to understand mating habits of Hollywood, California.

Click here to read a 1938 memoir by a Los Angeles prostitute.

Charlie Chaplin: the Man
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Attached is a three page article about Charlie Chaplin that first appeared in 1930 and contains far more information about the man than you might possibly care to know:

He is a splendid boxer and a keen boxing fan…He plays bridge well…He loves traveling and dislikes flying…He likes to be alone…He likes to talk…He swears now and then…He did not go to school…

Lew Ayres at Twenty
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Here is a profile of the actor Lew Ayres (1908 – 1996) that was published, quite coincidentally, shortly before the release of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Universal):

Naturally a great deal depends on the outcome of this picture. Lew is not the type that will go on for years as a moderate success. He will either be a tremendous hit or or a failure.

Click here to read about Lew Ayres and his status as a conscientious objector during the second World War.

Red Tactics in Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1940)

American political parties have not been the only folks to visit Beverly Hills – hat-in-hand; Soviet-backed Reds have done it, too. This 1940 article goes into some detail explaining all the various false fronts that American Communists would erect in order to attract Hollywood’s empathetic pretty boys – a tribe that is so easily separated from their wealth. Once an actor was hooked, they were steadily relied upon by the Reds to cough-up the do-re-mi without question; if they didn’t – they got the works.

Walter Winchell has already passed on to Washington documentary evidence proving that thousands of dollars contributed by Hollywood to innocent-sounding organizations eventually wound up in the hands of Communist leaders. Police and other investigatory groups have gone about accumulating evidence of the conspiracy.

One of the many Communist-front advocacy groups that milked Hollywood of much of its wealth was called theIndependent Citizen’s Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions; actress Olivia de Havilland was one of their willing dupes until she worked with the FBI and helped to bring them down.

Rube Goldberg on Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Hired to write dialogue for the king makers at Twentieth Century Fox, cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1890 – 1970) jotted down his impressions of 1930s Hollywood.

The chief mogul did all the ordering and I must say that he knew food. The lavish way in which he ordered bore out some of the glittering tales I had read about the grandeur of the movies. I think I ate six helpings of caviar and four tenderloin steaks. I wanted to make them believe I was no slouch myself.

If you would like to read a Rube Goldberg interview from 1914, click here.

Is Hollywood Red?
(Photoplay Magazine, 1947)

Despite the catchy title, Novelist James M. Cain, did not even attempt to answer the question as to how lousy Hollywood was with dirty Reds, however he did spell out that there were enough of them in the industry to bring production to a halt, if they ever cared to do so. Cain’s article encourages both the executive class and the pinko-wordsmiths to walk the middle path and keep the cameras rolling.

Click here to read a review of James M. Cain’s novel, The Butterfly.

Emily Post on Society Language
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

At the tail-end of a very long interview concerning the problems with Hollywood movies, Emily Post (1872 – 1960), America’s high-priestess of good manners, was asked just one more question – this one involved the English language and here is Emily Post’s 1939 list of what to say and what not to say.

• Don’t say ‘brainy’ – say, ‘clever’.
• Don’t say ‘wealthy’, say ‘rich’.
• Don’t say ‘Charmed or pleased to meet you’, say ‘how do you do’.
• etc, etc, etc.
Emily Post had so many opinions…

1930s Golf Attire
(Photoplay Magazine, 1934)

The attached 1933 and 1934 photos will give some indication as to what golf clothes looked like during the early Thirties. Depicted in the first image are four actors of the Hollywood tribe: Adolphe Menjou (clad in plus-fours), a slovenly Johnny Weismuller, Bruce Cabot and Richard Arlen.

Full-cut trousers were the rule of the day, as can clearly be seen in the second photo that was indifferently ripped from the browning pages of Delineator Magazine, which also shows a smashing linen shirtwaist dress that was worn on the Bermuda links.

Her Favorite Movies
(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)

The cinematic tastes of ER II are, like the sovereign herself, deep and complicated. A vast number of geeks employed by this website were sent forth far across the deep green sea in order to find out what her favorite movies are, and we were not at all surprised to learn that she favors the James Bond films. Contrast those movies with the earliest of her film choices and you will be able to trace her development through the years – another article on this page makes clear that she enjoyed the Shirley Temple series – but hold the phone: the attached article from THAT SAME YEAR indicates that she enjoyed A DIFFERENT MOVIE AS WELL!