Recent Articles

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.

Nazis Against the Christian Churches (Ken Magazine, 1939)

As pastor of the little Austrian church, the good father was happy until Nazis swallowed the country, mistreated his Jewish converts and threw many of his colleagues into the dreaded concentration camp of Dachau. Shocked, he attempted to preserve a fragmentary picture of events for posterity – and found himself in Dachau. Similar episodes, which are today common throughout Nazidom, only succeed in stiffening the Catholic fight against Nazism.

Jewish Population Growth in New York (The Independent, 1921)

Attached is a spirited article that gives an account of the Jewish population surge in 1920s New York. Even as early as 1921, nearly half of the Jews in all of North America lived in that city and every fourth New Yorker was a Jew.


Click here to read about the Jewish population growth in the Unites States during the 1920s.

Is Bobby Jones Losing Interest in Golf? (Literary Digest, 1929)

The two page article attached herein addresses the meteoric rise of the American golf legend Bobby Jones (1902 – 1971). Said to have been a child prodigy in the game, he made his mark early, winning the 1923 U.S. Open against Bobby Cruickshank (1894 – 1975) at the age of 19. Trophies came to him effortlessly during the course of the following six years and, judging from the question posed above, the golf journalists were right: Bobby Jones was losing interest in the game – he would leave competitive golf the following year.

Max Beckman Since the War (Art Digest, 1946)

Max Beckmann (1884 – 1950), having fled to Holland from his native Germany in order to escape Hitler, arrived in New York shortly after the end of the war and wasted no time in securing an aggressive dealer eager to arrange liasons between him and the the post-war dollar.

The first exhibition of Max Beckman’s work since 1941 is currently being held at the Bucholz Gallery in New York. Director Kurt Valentin has assembled for this event important examples of Beckman’s brush dating from 1939 to the present…Among the many drawings particularly remembered are a satirical ‘Radio Singer’ and a tongue-in-cheek ‘Anglers’, along with ‘Head Waiters’.

He Posed for Auguste Rodin (People Today Magazine, 1955)

Sixty years before this article was published, Libero Nardonne, who posed for the Rodin’s celebrated sculpture, The Kiss (1885), enjoyed a life as one of the most popular artist’s model in all of Paris – at a time when the greatest artist’s in the world were residences of that famous burg. Jump forward to 1955 and you would find him a broke and broken man who lived on the streets – nonetheless, he showed the American photographers through the art museums to point out all the masterpieces he had played a part in creating.

The Marx Brothers & the Joke Development Process (Stage Magazine, 1937)

A late Thirties article by Teet Carle (the old publicist for MGM) on how the brothers Marx figured out which gag created the biggest laughs; a few words about how the movies were tested in various cities prior to each release and how assorted jokes were recited to all manner of passersby for their effect.

Click here to read a 1951 article that Harpo Marx wrote about Groucho.

False Hope for 1937 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Perhaps it was the practice of magazine editors during the Great Depression to instruct their reporters to find hope where none existed; that must have been the case for this article. The unnamed journalist who wrote this slender column reported on a few rare cases involving real jobs with real salaries being offered to recent graduates; the reporter wished to believe that this was a sign that the end was nigh – but these few jobs were flukes. The author saw economic growth where there really wasn’t any at all, however he certainly made the case for its existence. The title link posted above leads to a passage from FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depressionstyle=border:none by Jim Powell that explains the true situation that existed in 1937, when unemployment stood at 20 percent by Summer.

Defending the Mentally Ill (America Weekly, 1945)

Here is a short notice from a Catholic weekly crediting the editors of THOUGHT magazine for having printed a 1940 protest lodged by the German Cardinals Faulhaber (Munich) and Bertram (Breslau) for the obscene Nazi practice of murdering mental patients.

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