Pic Magazine

Articles from Pic Magazine

Puerto Ricans Arrive (Pic Magazine, 1955)

In the early Fifties many of the people from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico decided to pack their bags and move to New York City. Overnight, it seemed, a portion of Harlem came to be known as Spanish Harlem – where hastily assembled mambo dance halls could be found among restaurants serving the exotic cuisine of the Caribbean. There were also complications that emerged with the new comers that are addressed in this 1955 article:

Today, however, there is a forceful change taking place, an influence so great that New York City officials have forecast a startling racial shift within a few years and are already making plans for meeting this switch…

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The Show-Biz Blood of Cecil B. DeMille (Pic Magazine, 1941)

At the age of 63, after 44 years in show business, Cecil B. De Mille is still producing. He can’t stop and he probably never will. He is first, last and all the time a showman. The show business is in his blood, and whether he is on a set or taking his leisure at home, his heart and mind are in the theater. He loves to have people around him so that he can play a part, for consciously or unconsciously, he is always acting… C.B.’s father was an actor and playwright, and later a partner of David Belasco. His mother was an actress, and later a very successful play agent.


The article goes into more depth outlining De Mille various triumphs in silent film and his work on The Squaw Manstyle=border:none.

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A Monopoly on Radio Talent? (Pic Magazine, 1941)

This article will cue you in to a 1941 dust-up between the FCC and the biggest radio broadcasters in America.

Apparently CBS, NBC and the Mutual Broadcasting System were in cahoots, united behind a scheme to fix the prices they had to cough-up in order to pay all the various assorted musicians and acting talents they needed to hire if they were to attract their radio audiences. The feds got wind of the plan and smelled a rat:

The big radio networks are currently worried by the Federal Communication Commission’s accusation that they are talent monopolists, part of the FCC’s blanket charge that the radio chains constitute a trust within the broadcasting industry…

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Building the Suburban Dream (Pic Magazine, 1955)

The author Thomas Hine pointed out in his 1986 tour-de-force, Populuxestyle=border:none, that by the time the Eisenhower years rolled around, suburban houses were growing in size, as is typified in the attached article that was created to sell the plans for a 1,290 square foot piece of suburban splendorstyle=border:none. Gone were the days of the little boxes that dotted the countryside throughout the late Forties and early Fifties; these newer and larger domiciles were built in the shapes of U or L and the most popular models were built in the Ranch House style with attached garages (gasp!).

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Robert Best of South Carolina (Pic Magazine, 1943)

On July 26, 1943, in the same U.S. Federal Court that tried the American poet Ezra Pound (in absentia) for treason, Robert H. Best (1896 – 1952), formerly of the Associated Press, was also convicted on the same charges. What Iva Toguri (the alleged Tokyo Rose) was believed to have done for Hirohito, and what Pound did for Mussolini is what Best did for Adolf Hitler: he had broadcast Nazi radio propaganda.


You might also care to read about the American Bund.

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