Recent Articles – Page 111 – Old Magazine Articles

1913 American Films
(”Our Times”, 1936)

As the rosy fingered dawn came upon America in 1913 it found Douglas Fairbanks, the man who would soon be Silent Hollywood’s fair haired boy, wowing the crowds on Broadway. The play, Hawthorne of the U.S.A., starred Fairbanks in the title roll and closed after 72 performances; he was also married to a woman who wasn’t named Pickford – but rather named Anna Beth Sully, who had sired his namesake. Life was good for the actor and he wouldn’t turn his gaze West for another two years. By contrast, his future bride, Mary Pickford (né Gladys Smith, 1892 – 1979) had been prancing before the cameras since 1909 and by the time 1913 rolled around had appeared in well-over 100 short films and earned the nickname Little Mary.

A Profile of Mahatma Gandhi
(The Independent, 1921)

Attached is a 1921 account of the anti-colonial struggles waged by the forty-eight year old Mahatma Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi (1869 – 1948). This well-illustrated article from THE INDEPENDENT touched on Gandhi’s popularity among the Indian people of all faiths, his various boycotts and acts of non-cooperation as well as comments made by his admiring British adversaries.

A Profile of Mahatma Gandhi
(The Independent, 1921)

Bauhaus Exhibit Smeared by Critics
(Art Digest, 1939)

With all the best wishes in the world, it is impossible to suppress the feeling that there is something essentially heavy, forced and repellent in most of the Bauhaus work. They are under suspicion of being modern for the sake of being modern and not because of any necessities of their system of living.

-so wrote the well-respected art critic Henry McBride (1867 – 1962) in response to the groundbreaking 1938 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, Bauhaus 1919 – 1928. McBride did not mince words in expressing his belief that the Bauhaus was not a genuine art school and that the MoMA showed poor judgment by lamenting it’s passing. McBride is remembered as having been a longtime advocate of modernism, a champion of the 1913 Armory Show, and supporter of the new and untried, but for him, the Bauhaus represented the art of the poseur.

Bauhaus Exhibit Smeared by Critics
(Art Digest, 1939)

The Streamlining of Cars
(Creative Art Magazine, 1936)

Industrial designer Egmont Arens (1889 – 1966) wrote the attached design review covering the American cars of 1937:

Perhaps it was just one of life’s little ironies that overtook the automobile manufacturers a year ago. In their zeal to provide what they called ‘streamlined’ design, they took the tear-drop for their model, and the results were tearful indeed – to the sales managers. For they all looked alike…

The word ‘Streamlining’ got everybody a little confused, I am afraid, and off the track. Here was a term out of aerodynamics, invented to describe a solid shape that moves easily through fluid mediums, as the wings and fuselage of an airplane. The human eye responded gratefully to the flow of line prescribed by the laws of physics, and thus streamlining became synonymous with modern beauty. Industrial designers sprang up at every hand, and their main business was ‘streamlining’.

Read about the Great Depression and the U.S. auto industry…

America’s First Trench Raid
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

An account of the first all-American trench raid of the First World War. The correspondent noted that the raid, which took place in the Loraine Sector, spanned forty-seven minutes from start to finish.

The participating unit was not named.

Remembering the Americans Who Didn’t Make It to Paris
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

YANK correspondent Saul Levitt was eyewitness to all the merriment that kicked-in when Paris was liberated. Regardless of the gaiety, he could not forget all the American blood that had so liberally been spilled during the previous weeks:

Despite all the bottles of champagne, all the tears, and all the kisses, it is impossible for those of us who are here to forget that we are here for the men of the American divisions who died or were wounded on the way to Paris… for all of those men who started out toward Paris but are not here to see it. We are here for the men of the 48 states who dream of home, and for whom the freeing of Paris is the way home.

Click here to read about the celebrations that took place in Paris the day World War One ended.

Donald Budge: 1940s Tennis Champ
(Stage Magazine, 1939)

An article about Donald Budge (1915 – 2000), an American tennis champ active in the late 1930s who was ranked the World’s Number 1 player for five years, first as an amateur player and then as a pro. This article appeared in print in 1939, when the player’s best days were behind him.

Sniper Mask
(The Great War, 1918)

As if simply having to be mindful of wind velocity and camouflage was not enough to occupy the thoughts of your average World War I German sniper, some were burdened to a further degree by having to affix this half-inch steel sniper mask to their faces…

Hiding A Military Error
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

This 1946 article puts a nice face on a subject that both American diplomats and military men were eager to hide from the world – the issue involving a total lack of military preparedness. The journalist reported on the military’s push to bulk-up the reserves to an acceptable level, but the real story was that all branches of the armed services were on a recruiting drive for more men (and women) to make up for the fact that the post-war deployment program had drastically reduced the combat effectiveness of practically every unit. Under heavy pressure from civil authorities to save money, military planners failed to retain the services of numerous combat veterans to train the newest recruits. This partially explains the lack of accomplishments attained by the earliest divisions deployed to halt the North Korean advances in 1950.

Supplying Tobacco to the AEF
(America’s Munitions, 1919)

Cigarette smoking was far more prevalent in the United States after the First World War than it was in earlier days; this is largely due to the free cigarettes that were widely distributed among the nations soldiers, sailors and Marines during that conflict – and this is the subject of the attached article. It was written by Benedict Crowell (1869 – 1952), who served as both the Assistant Secretary of War and Director of Munitions between 1918 and 1920 – and although his column informs us that numerous tobacco products were dispersed throughout the ranks on a seemingly biblical scale, he does not touch upon the tragic topic of the addictions that soon followed (contrary to popular belief, the American medical establishment had their suspicions about tobacco long before the war).

Replacing American Combat Uniforms
(The Official Record, 1922)

The World War I American uniform data attached herein answers the question as to how often Doughboy uniforms would wear out and need replacing. This information was all transcribed by U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps and published in a book titled THE OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD WAR (1922).

The World Wide Military Expansion
(The Literary Digest, 1935)

A 1935 magazine article which presented a table of statistics regarding the the European military expansion and then concluded by stating:

It seems fair to offer the opinion that a major war is likely within the next ten years because the pressure of rising armament expenditure promises to be so great as to develop the explosion that bound to come.

In 1940 former W.W. I Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote an editorial in which he condemned the leaders of Europe for procrastinating rather than dealing with Hitler when Germany was still weak.
Click here to read it.

The KKK in Federal Court
(The Literary Digest, 1928)

Attached is a two-page article about that day in 1928 when the KKK stood before Judge W.H.S. Thomson in a Federal Court in Pittsburgh:

A Daniel has come to judgment, in the opinion of many a newspaper writer, when a Federal judge in a formal opinion read the bench delivers a denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan in terms as strong as any of the private enemies of that organization have ever used. Federal Judge W.H.S. Thomson, in concluding that complicated KKK trial, remarked that the Klan was an ‘unlawful organization’ coming into court ‘with filthy hands after open and flagrant violation’ of the law…

CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.

Fashions from the Last Summer of the War
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1918)

Six very fine fashion drawings illustrate what was generally perceived to be the chic silhouette during the August of 1918.

There may be some women who can get along without satin frocks, but it is exceedingly doubtful..

The Deserters from the U.S. Army
(See Magazine, 1948)

Illustrated with seven photographs, article was written some three years after the close of the war and reported on the efforts of the Allied Armies and local police authorities globally to track-down some 10,000 deserters from the U.S. Army. In the mid-fifties the Department of the Army had estimated that the total number of deserters from all branches of the American military added up to 21,000, but in 1948 the army was happy just to find these 10,000 men: the numeric equivalent of an entire division.

The article is composed of short, choppy paragraphs that present for the reader some of the more interesting stories of World War II desertion. A good read.

A German Dissident Recalls His Incarceration
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

Locked-up for having run an underground newspaper in the Third Reich, this is the harrowing story one dissident’s experiences in the Nazi concentration camps:

What a relief it would be to take that uniformed scoundrel by the throat, throw him on the floor, pay him back for his beating, yell ‘You dog! You swine!’

•Read about the American reporter who became a Nazi…•