Recent Articles – Page 150 – Old Magazine Articles

The Big Band Scene (Yank Magazine, 1945)

In this article,YANK MAGAZINE correspondent Al Hine summed-up all the assorted happenings on the 1945 Big Band landscape:

The leading big bands now are Woody Herman’s, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton’s. Benny Goodman, who broke up his own band for the umpteenth time, is a featured performer in Billy Rose’s super revue, ‘The Seven Lively Arts’, but the maestro is said to be thinking of turning over his Rose job to Raymond Scott and making another stab at the band business.

The Pajama Ascendency (Literary Digest, 1923)

The pajama is ascending to glorified heights. Long the black sheep of polite private life, this garment has been elevated to the four hundred…Men are drugging their senses with batik designs in sleeping apparel and inhaling the stimulation of contrasting shades in underclothes.

What the well-dressed man will wear when going to bed is one of the burning topics of the immediate future…By and large, the thirst for color permeates the accessory field from linen to lingerie. The picture might be said to be complete. Man has achieved his zenith.

Read about a pajama fashion innovation that never quite caught on…

A Failure to Spread the Word (Coronet Magazine, 1951)

Here is a classic story about the failures in global communication during the pre-Twitter era. This article explains how there was a fifteen hour lag between the Japanese surrender and the time in which Tokyo heard that their offer had been accepted by the Allies.

In the midst of a routine radio-teletype conference between GHQ officers in Manila and the War Department in Washington, the teletype suddenly began printing:

‘Stand by for important message **** from Marshall to MacArthur ****you are hereby notified of Japanese capitulation ****’

It all centered on one skanky, bullet-pocked, bomb-damaged Radio Operations Room in Manila.

That 1960 Look for Men (Pageant Magazine, 1960)

Some call it the Mad Men Look, others may simply label it that late 50s/early 60s look – but either way high praise should be dolled out to costume designer Katherine Jane Bryant who so skillfully brought these fashions to the attention of millions of men through her work on the T.V. show Mad Men (AMC).

For those lads pursuing an advanced degree in pulling-off that look in their daily attire, we recommend this handy list of fashion’s Do’s & Don’ts from 1960.

Much Talk of White Waistcoats, Shoes and Shirts (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

When the smoke cleared following the close of that dreadful unpleasantness that spanned the years 1914 to 1918, there remained much work to do; bodies to be buried, cities to be rebuilt. Men and nations prepared to face the new realities that came with the new social structure; many weighty subjects had to be addressed that had been ignored for so long a time. The most pressing of these topics was deciding which was the proper combination of white waistcoat and dinner jacket? In an age of industrial slaughter, which was more suitable: double-breasted or single-breasted? and what of ties, shoes and overcoats?

Commander of the Lost Battalion (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

The following article presented a brief account of the deeds of Major Charles W. Whittlesey of the 308th Infantry Regiment ( Seventy Seventh Division) and why he was nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Shortly after the war Whittlesey would commit suicide.

In December of 1918, Lt. Colonel Whittelesey was highly praised in VANITY FAIR …

Samuel Goldwyn, Producer (Coronet Magazine, 1944)

Screen scribe Sidney Carroll put to paper a serious column about the productive life of Samuel Goldwyn (1879 – 1974) and all that he had accomplished since he co-founded Hollywood (along with Cecil B. De Mille) in 1913:

He has done many remarkable things in 30 years. He has made as many stars as any man in the business; he was the first to make feature-length films; he was the first to bring the great writers to Hollywood… Goldwyn is the greatest maker of motion pictures ever to come out of Hollywood [with the exception of The Goldwyn Follies (1938)].