Recent Articles

Jerome K. Jerome on Books (Literary Digest, 1906)

Jerome K. Jerome (1859 – 1927) was a British author and playwright from one of the sillier tribes who is best remembered for his humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1889). In the attached interview, the humorist laments that the novels in his day (as opposed to our own) so seldom inspire any real use of the mind:

Books have become the modern narcotic. China has adopted the opium habit for want of fiction. When China obtains each week her ‘Greatest Novel Of The Century’, her ‘Most Thrilling Story Of The Year’, her ‘Best Selling Book Of The Season’ the opium den will be no more needed.


From Amazon: Three Men in a Boatstyle=border:none

Jerome K. Jerome on Books (Literary Digest, 1906) Read More »

Jimmy Stewart: Four Years in Hollywood (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

Hollywood scribe Wilbur Morse, Jr. wrote this 1939 magazine profile of Jimmy Stewart (1908 – 1997). At the time of this printing, Stewart had dozens of stage credits and had been working in films for only four years; one year later he would be awarded an Oscar for his performance in PHILADELPHIA STORY:

Booth Tarkington might have created Jim Stewart. He’s ‘Little Orvie and Billie Baxter’ grown up ‘Penrod’ with a Princeton diploma.

The appeal of James Stewart, the shy, inarticulate movie actor, is that he reminds every girl in the audience of the date before the last. He’s not a glamorized Gable, a remote Robert Taylor. He’s ‘Jim’, the lackadaisical, easy-going boy from just around the corner.

Jimmy Stewart: Four Years in Hollywood (Photoplay Magazine, 1939) Read More »

Military Buildup in the USSR (Literary Digest, 1935)

Premier Vyacheslav M. Molotov (1890 – 1986) pictured the Soviet Union as a lusty young giant strong enough to defend itself from both the East and the West in the keynote speech of the Seventh All Union Congress of Soviets, the Soviet Parliament.

In proof of this claim it was shown that in the last two years the Soviet Government had increased the strength of the Red Army from 562,000 men in 1932 to 940,000 in 1934.


Read about all the various international treaties that the Soviet Union violated…

Military Buildup in the USSR (Literary Digest, 1935) Read More »

Isaac N. Lewis and the Lewis Machine Gun (1912)

A 1912 magazine article concerns machine gun inventor Isaac N. Lewis and his machine gun, the Lewis gun. The Lewis Gun played a major roll during the First World War, having been purchased in large quantities by the British/Commonwealth armies. Written just two years prior to the slaughter, this article is about U.S. Army experiments with the Lewis Gun when it is mounted on aircraft. As the article makes clear, the Lewis Gun was the first machine gun to have ever been fixed to a plane.

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The Career of Lilian Gish (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Attached is a decidedly pro Lilian Gish (1893 – 1993) article concerning the silent film actresses‘ meteoric rise under the direction of D.W. Griffith, her mediocrity when paired with other directors and her much appreciated march on Broadway.

Lilian Gish is the damozel of Arthurian legend, tendered in terms of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Her heroines perpetually hover in filtered half-lights, linger in attitudes of romantical despair. They forever drift farther from reality than the dream, and no matter how humble their actual origins, the actress invariably weaves them of the dusk-blues, the dawn-golds of medieval tapestries.

Click here if you would like to read an article in which Lillian Gish recalls her part in Birth of a Nation.

Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

The Career of Lilian Gish (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942) Read More »

London Society, 1915 (Vanity Fair, 1915)

Five months into the general unpleasantness going on across the Channel had transformed London into a very different city, and sadly, it was the leisured classes that had to shoulder most of the burden:

London is well worth living in these troubled days if only for its contrasts…The gloom of the streets, the sinister play of the searchlights, the abnormal hour at which the theatres open and and the public houses close, the fact that half the male population is in khaki and the other half would like to be, that Society is wearing Noah’s Ark clothes and that to buy a new hat is a crime, that there are no dances, no dinners, no suppers, no premieres, no shooting, no no posing, no frivolity, nor idling, it’s rather quickening, you know. But the searchlights have absolutely killed all practical romance.

London Society, 1915 (Vanity Fair, 1915) Read More »

Lt. Colonel Fremantle at Gettysburg (W.C. Storrick, 1951)

Lt. Colonel Frementle (1835 – 1901), a member of the Coldstream Guards, was a guest of the Army of Northern Virginia during the Gettysburg campaign. After the Battle of Gettysburg, he returned to England and published Three months in the Southern Statesstyle=border:none. The following is a vivid extract, describing a part of the battle from the Southern lines:

The position into which the enemy had been driven was evidently a strong one. His right appeared to rest on a cemetery, on the top of a high ridge to the right of Gettysburg, as we looked at it.

General Hill now came up and told me he had been very unwell all day, and in fact he looks very delicate. He said he had had two of his divisions engaged, and had driven the enemy four miles into his present position, capturing a great many prisoners, some cannon, and some colors; he said, however, that the Yankees had fought with a determination unusual to them.

Lt. Colonel Fremantle at Gettysburg (W.C. Storrick, 1951) Read More »

The Career of Lilian Gish (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Attached is a decidedly pro Lilian Gish (1893 – 1993) article concerning the silent film actresses‘ meteoric rise under the direction of D.W. Griffith, her mediocrity when paired with other directors and her much appreciated march on Broadway.

Lilian Gish is the damozel of Arthurian legend, tendered in terms of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Her heroines perpetually hover in filtered half-lights, linger in attitudes of romantical despair. They forever drift farther from reality than the dream, and no matter how humble their actual origins, the actress invariably weaves them of the dusk-blues, the dawn-golds of medieval tapestries.

Click here if you would like to read an article in which Lillian Gish recalls her part in Birth of a Nation.

Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

The Career of Lilian Gish (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942) Read More »

Sweet Words for Maestro Toscanini (Stage Magazine, 1938)

Arturo Toscaninistyle=border:none
(1867 – 1957) is believed to have been the greatest conductor of the Twentieth Century. He was bestowed with a ‘Palm Award’ by the well-meaning swells at the now defunct Stage Magazine during the summer of 1938. This article appeared during a time when a Palm Award, granted by such a crew was a reliable form of social currency and would actually serve the highly favored recipients in such a grand manner as to allow them brief respites at dining tables found at such watering holes as New York’s Stork Club. Nowadays, one Palm Award and one dollar and fifty cents will afford you a ride on the Los Angeles City subway system (one way).
The attached article explains why Maestro Toscanini had met all requirements for this award.

Sweet Words for Maestro Toscanini (Stage Magazine, 1938) Read More »