Vanity Fair Magazine

Articles from Vanity Fair Magazine

Lt. Colonel Charles Whittelesey in the Vanity Fair Hall of Fame (December, 1918)

Unlike the Vanity Fair magazine that we find on our newsstands, the Vanity Fair published under the steady hand of it’s first editor, Frank Crowninshield (1872 – 1947), was able to recognize that military heroes are a rare, three-dimensional breed, composed of an uncommon variety of testicular fortitude. Indeed, some years back, Israel went to the effort of giving IQ tests to the heroes of the Six Day War (1967) and they were not surprised to find that all of them tested in the higher ranges of their populations. The W.W. I U.S. Army hero Crowninshield saluted on the attached page was the commanding officer of a brave group of men called the Lost Battalion.



Click here to read more about the heroism of Major Whittelesey.

Dada in Germany (Vanity Fair, 1922)

A segment from a longer article on the origins of Dada by the father of Dada. This column pertains specifically to how the movement took root in Germany as a result of the First World War.

Giacomo Puccini (Vanity Fair, 1915)

A two page profile of the fifty seven year-old opera composer, Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924). Published at a time when his most popular work was behind him, the article centers on the composer’s career; from Puccini’s first opera, La Ville (1884) to his most recent, The Little Wooden Shoes.

A Profile of Cartoonist Rube Goldberg, Cartoonist and Quack-Inventor (Vanity Fair, 1914)

In the attached 1914 magazine profile, Joseph Edgar Chamberlin (1851 – 1935) asked, Who is Goldberg? and then jumped right in and proceeded to answer that question. However, the reader should understand that in 1914 it simply did not take very long to give the answer. With so much good work yet to come, this article outlined the cartoonist’s earliest employment record while making clear that he was already well known for his invention gags, which had already appeared in many papers across the United States.


If you would like to read a 1930 article written by Rube Goldberg click here.

Click here to see an anti-New Deal cartoon that Goldberg drew in 1939.

Artist Jacob Epstein Drafted… (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1918)

In 1918, the London-based American expatriot sculptor Jacob Epstein was living life to the fullest and enjoying all the benefits his talents had provided him. He had no intention of joining the army of his adopted country and had successfully avoided the draft since the outbreak of the war. However in 1918, conscription caught up with him. Epstein hated the idea of joining the colors, believing that the military would kill his creative soul, but this article puts a nice spin on all that.

John Singer Sargent in 1914 (Vanity Fair, 1914)

The attached VANITY FAIR article announced that the numero uno society portrait painter of the Gilded Age, John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925) was swearing-off portrait commissions in order to concentrate on water color. Little did he know that he would be back at it in a few years painting whole boat-loads of general officer portraits when he was named as one of the Official British War Artists.

The Evolution of Golf Clothes (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

Oddly, this essay has more to do with the evolution of golf from a shepherd’s pastime to the sport of kings, however there are some references made to the evolution of golf clothing:

Royalty did, however, dress up the game. It gave us the brilliant garments that golf captains wear in Britain. When I first went abroad I thought that I had never seen more splendid creatures. And the modern golf costume is a thing of mode and cut…

Serge De Diaghilev’s Balet Russe (Vanity Fair, 1915)

A one page review by Edward Louis Bernays (1891 – 1995) writing under the nom du flak Ayhern Edwards in order to remove all suspicion that he was in reality the P.R. man who had been hired by Serge De Diaghilev (1872 – 1929) to smooth the way for his troupe as they toured the fruited plain throughout 1915. Strangely, he had nothing terribly critical to point out.

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