Attached is a map of the 48 states that will show you which regions of the country produced the greatest number of healthy men who passed their Selective Service physical examinations. You will also learn which parts of the nation provided men who could not pass this examination.
The Healthiest American Men and the Draft of 1917 (U.S. Gov. 1931) Read More »
In 1913 a very strong, anti-Federalist step was taken to amend the Constitution and alter the manner in which U.S. Senators were to be selected and replaced in the event of vacancies. The 17th Amendment was passed: it guaranteed that senators would no longer be elected from within the legislative bodies of the state governments, but would be elected directly by the citizens of their respective states, just as the representatives are. Historian Everett Kimball pointed out in this article how the 17th Amendment altered the very nature of the U.S. Senate.
The Popularly-Elected Senate (American Legion Weekly, 1920) Read More »
The attached three page article about John Wayne appeared at the very doorstep of the Fifties – the decade that was uniquely hisown. The uncredited Hollywood journalist who wrote this column was doing so in order to announce to the reading public that Wayne was coming remarkably close to being the top box office attraction:
Wayne reached this eminence by turning out film after film for 18 years. Working with a steady, un-nervous strength for four studios: Republic, RKO, Argosy and Warner Brothers. – he shifts back and forth between Westerns, sea-epics and war pictures. With each movie he makes (most of them re-hashes of of standard action-film plots, but a few of them film classics), his fans grow.
John Wayne (Quick Magazine, 1949) Read More »
All told, the animated cartoon series Tom and Jerry would be awarded seven (7) Academy Awards before Oscar’s attention turned elsewhere.
This 1946 article sings the praises of Fred Quimby (1886 – 1965), the animation producer who ran the shop at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio between the years 1937 and 1954:
Doff the cap to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Fred Quimby, producer of Tom and Jerry’, the only cartoon stars to have copped the coveted Oscar for two consecutive years. Even the distinguished Donald Duck has only been Oscarized once.
‘Tom and Jerry‘ reflect in broad comedy the faults and foibles of human beings, even as you and I. Here we have a thoroughly egotistical cat and a very shrewd mouse… a cartoon representation of the eternal conflict between HERO and VILLAIN. Toma always hopes to outwit Jerry who symbolizes the underdogs of the world.
This short notice appeared in The Lion’s Roar, which was the monthly publicity rag for M.G.M. Studio.
Second Oscar for Tom and Jerry (The Lion’s Roar, 1946) Read More »
A smattering of opinions on the subject of VJ Day (they all seemed to have been in favor of it) were offered up by a collection of Rome-based American soldiers composed of assorted hues and ranks.
VJ-Day in Rome (Yank Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Alfonso XIII of Spain (1886 – 1941) is remembered as a pretty level-headed guy, but non the less, it was news items like this one that made Karl Marx first dip his nib in the inkwell…
Alfonso XIII and his Typewriter (Popular Mechanics, 1914) Read More »
Attached are excerpts from a few 1929 British newspapers that condemned all efforts made in Hollywood to produce talking pictures; one snide reviewer went so far as to insist that rather than calling the films talkies, they should be referred to as dummies:
The majority of films in the future will be made stupidly for stupid people, just has been the case with the silent movies for twenty years…
Some British Opinions About the First Talking Movies (Literary Digest, 1929) Read More »
A column from a 1937 issue of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE included these two seemingly random tales from the life of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The brief remembrance on the second page is a bitter-sweet story about young Eleanor and her mother’s vision of her as a hopelessly plain-looking girl.
Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.
The First Lady’s Story (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) Read More »
A review of Harold Nicolson’s 1921 biography, Paul Verlaine. Numerous aspects of Verlaine’s life and poetry are discussed as are the roots of French Symbolism.
Harold Nicolson on Paul Verlaine (Current Opinion, 1921) Read More »
An appreciative essay celebrating the work of Guillaume Apollinaire (born Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky: 1880 – 1918) by the high-brow art critic Paul Rosenfed (1890 – 1946).
For Apollinaire possessed the perfect adjustibility of the born poet. He would have found himself much at home in any environment into which he would have been born, whether it would have been one of pampas and herds and lonely hamlets, or one of concrete, newspapers, war and steel.
A Profile of Guillaume Apollinaire (Vanity Fair, 1922) Read More »
