Recent Articles – Page 120 – Old Magazine Articles

Gassing The Germans (American Legion Weekly, 1922)

This is the story of the First Gas Regiment. It was organized at American University (Washington, D.C.) in August of 1917 and arrived in France in time to disperse noxious gas all over the Germans as they launched their March offensive in 1918:

Company B of the First Battalion was the outfit that participated in the first show. The attack was launched on a two-mile front extending from Lens to Hill 70 near Loos, and held by the Canadians… It was a tough job. The nature of the work was graphically described by a Yankee buck, who said in a moment of disgust: ‘This is a job for grave diggers, hod carriers and piano movers, instead of chemists, pipe fitters and mechanics.

Mickey Rooney, RIP (Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

In 1940 Mickey Rooney (né Joe Yule, Jr.; b. 1920 – 2014) had replaced Shirley Temple as the number one box-office draw, after having steadily performed before the cameras from the age of six onward. Rooney had been jockeying for first place since he began playing the title roll in the Andy Hardy films just two and a half years earlier.

With the onslaught of the Second World War the sands of Hollywood shifted beneath his feet, creating a plethora of new stars and the need for different sorts of films – from that point on he only appeared in supporting rolls. In 1982 Rooney remarked:

When I was 19 years old, I was the number one star of the world for two years. When I was 40, nobody wanted me. I couldn’t get a job.

Excursions Into Hunland (Vanity Fair, 1918)

An American fighter pilot of the R.F.C., Lieutenant E.M. Roberts, gave this account of the deadly game of Boche-hunting above the clouds:

I noticed he was going down a little, evidently for the purpose of shooting me from underneath. I was not quite sure as yet that such was really his intention; but the man was quick…he put five shots into my machine. But all of them missed me.

I maneuvered into an offensive position as Quickly as I could, and I had my machine gun pelting him…The Hun began to spin earthward.

Charlie Chaplin Joins With Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith to Form United Artists (Film Daily, 1939)

Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Chaplin joined forces with three other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:

[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.

Charlie Chaplin Joins With Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith to Form United Artists (Film Daily, 1939)

Clothing for Fox Hunters and Wall Streeters (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

A glance at the 1921 wardrobe enjoyed by those fashionable fellows who were part and parcel of that Wall Street clique who might today be called the one percent.

The reviewer also devoted some column space to classic fox hunting attire and Chesterfield overcoats,hunting tweeds,wing collars and men’s suit from the early Twenties.

1918: An Armistice Remembrance (American Legion Monthly, 1936)

St. NAZAIRE, 1918. It was eleven in the morning when we first heard the news. A piercing whistle from one of the steamers in the harbor, a sudden blast so loud and so startling that even the nurses in their rest camp in La Baule fifteen kilometers away could hear it…L’ARMISTICE EST SIGNÉ…by noon the entire town was outdoors; a truck load of German prisoners rolled past, apparently quite as happy as the rest of us.

The Demands of the 1918 Armistice (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

Attached herein are the terms of the 1918 Armistice as they appeared in the official newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces:

The complete official translated text of the Armistice conditions to which the German plenipotentiaries set their signature is herewith reproduced:

1.) Cessations of operations by land and in air six hours after the signature of armistice.

II.)Immediate evacuation of the invaded countries…

etc, etc, etc…

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Her Armistice Poem (American Legion Weekly, 1921)

At 11:00 a.m., November 11, 1918, an American woman volunteer was toiling away at her Service of Supply base in Tours when peace broke out all over the place. When she was asked to recall that moment three years later for the editors of THE AMERICAN LEGION WEEKLY – she wrote down the attached verses –

Arranged Marriages to Seal the Peace in the Balkans (Dress and Vanity Fair Magazine, 1913)

When the attached article first appeared in print the Balkan War (1912 – 1913) was over, however some of the swells of Europe put their crowned heads together and collectively came up with the best Medieval plan they could think of in order to insure the promise of peace in the region.

It was agreed that the Czar’s daughter, Grand Duchess Olga (1895 – 1918), would wed Serbia’s Crown Prince Alexander (1888 – 1934); while the Czar’s second daughter, Grand Duchess Tatiana (1897 – 1918) was promised to Romania’s Crown Prince Charles (1893 – 1959). All concerned felt that Romania’s Princess Elizabeth (1894-1956) and Crown Prince George of Greece (1890 – 1947) would make a simply splendid couple (they divorced in 1935).