This column recalls the earliest women to serve in the House and Senate (although the tenure of Senator Rebecca Latimer Felton was oddly excluded):
In 1916, the first Congresswoman was elected. She was Miss Jeannette Rankin (1880 – 1973), a Republican from Montana. On her first day in the House, war was declared; she voted against it. The next Congress had no women.
There can be no doubt that at some point between the appearance of this brief notice and the release of Gone with the Wind, culture critic Gilbert Seldes (1893 – 1970) was won-over to the side that believed sound-movies were the way to go- but in 1929, he wasn’t buy’n it.
Some observations of the earliest Doughboy experiences were recorded in a letter home by this anonymous A.E.F. lieutenant during the Summer of 1917. He was unusually interested in the French architecture and rustic culture that surrounded him but also noted the deeply depressed German P.O.W. laborers, his food and the different treatment between officers and men.
Printed posthumously, the attached article was written by British Lieutenant Colonel Charles A Court Repington (1858 – 1925) as he recalled his conversations with French Field Marshals Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), Joseph Joffre (1852 – 1931) and a number of other French statesmen about the First World War during a series of chats that took place in the autumn 1924.
Although the author of this article, educator Cedric Fowler, does not offer a name for the subject he is proposing, it will not take you very long to recognize it as social studies. Fowler argued that the text books available at that time were more suited to the Nineteenth Century than the tumultuous Thirties, ignoring all the various hot topics of the day that would have made subjects such as history, geography and civics come alive for those students who were enrolled at the time of the Great Depression.
Life has become more complex for young Americans since the time of their fathers and grandfathers, and educational method has become more complex and more comprehensive with it… The work of Dewey, Thorndike and a score of other authorities has liberated the schoolroom from its stuffy atmosphere, has made it possible for it to become an ante-room to adult life.
This letter is very short and was composed by a German soldier who is simply identified as a socialist. Writing to his wife from the war-torn Eastern European front in Moldavia, he describes what the man-made Hell of industrial war was like – the gas shells, the grenades, the ceaseless rattle of machine guns and the never ending groans of the wounded. The soldier concludes that if only the kings who were responsible for the war could witness this carnage for only fifteen minutes, then surely the war would end.
Click here to read about the foreign-born soldiers who served in the American Army of the First World War.
American audiences came to know Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993) when she was teamed up with Gregory Peck for the 1953 William Wyler production Roman Holiday (Paramount) – but the king makers of Hollywood sat up and took notice of her a year earlier, when she appeared in the European comedy Monte Carlo Baby (briefly reviewed herein). This movie was pretty quickly forgotten – and today Monte Carlo Baby cannot be found on DVD or cassette, and the film’s producer, Ray Ventura (1908 – 1979), is primarily remembered for his talents as a jazz pianist.
The editors of STAGE MAGAZINE were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident.
The editors of STAGE MAGAZINE were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident.
Published ten months after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, Vice-Admiral Ross T. McIntire, Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, reminisced about Roosevelt’s illness and his observations of the man:
The Pearl Harbor attack put a pressure on the President that never lifted.
With the flower of American youth fighting and dying on land and sea, he looked on any sparing of himself as a betrayal…
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