Recent Articles

File Sharing
(United States News & World Report, 1948)

This is the story of how Russia got military secrets from the United States during W.W. II. It is a story that has little to do with the spy ring that congressional committees are trying to prove existed during the war period (The Gouzenko Affair: read about it here) . But it does throw light on the methods and purposes of the so-called ‘spy ring’.

Military information was going to Russia as a matter of routine, by official channels, on an organized basis, all during the period when United States Communists and their friends were supposed to be spying out bits of information to send… As an ally of the U.S. in the war against Germany, Russia had free access to far more information than the so-called ‘spy ring’ claims…

Jane Russell Sur la Plage…
(Pic Magazine, 1941)

When these eight pictures of Hollywood actress Jane Russell (1921 – 2012) were snapped in the spring of 1941, she wasn’t up to much. She was studying acting at Max Reinhardt’s Theatrical Workshop in Los Angeles and more than likely waiting for her seven year contract with Howard Hughes to expire. The film that she’d made with him the previous year, The Outlaw, would not [be widely] distributed for some time and so we imagine that she jumped at the chance to put on a bathing suit and clown around on the beach when she got the call from the boys at PIC MAGAZINE. With the onslaught of the Second World War, she would be doing much of the same sort of posing for the pin-up photographers.


In the attached photo-essay, the PIC editors went out on a limb and called her one of America’s greatest beauties.

Sing Sing Prison: Home of the Bad New Yorkers
(Click Magazine, 1938)

Sing Sing Prison was where the vulgar New Yorkers of the criminal variety spent much of their time:

Murderers and felons, rogues and embezzlers, an average of 2750 of them inhabit Sing Sing Prison at Ossining, N.Y. on the bank of the Hudson River. Theirs is a world apart. A world of gray stone walls and steel bars. When the gates clang shut behind them they enter upon a life scientifically regulated by Warden Lewis E. Lawes (1883 – 1947)…CLICK MAGAZINE takes you inside the grim walls and shows you what happens to the convicted criminal from the day he is committed to Sing Sing Prison until the day he leaves as a free man.

This is a photo-essay that is made up of twenty-five black and white pictures.

Read about the religious make up of Sing Sing Prison in the Thirties.

Where Glamour and Tennis Met: Nancy Chaffee
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

This article is about Nancy Chaffee (1929 – 2002), another California-born tennis champion of the post-war era. Chaffee had once been ranked as the fourth-place women’s tennis champ in all the world, winning three consecutive national indoor championships (1950-1952). She first came to view in 1947 playing alongside the men on the U.S.C. tennis team (there was no women’s team at the time). The year before this article appeared on the newsstands, Chaffee made the semi-finals at Forrest Hills, her record at Wimbledon can be read here

Gowns
(The Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

The fashionable gowns will be one of two extremes: pencil slim or big skirted like a puff ball. Whatever its cut, its color may be anything from soft dove grey to something called satan red. Fabrics are rich and lustrous, particularly the nontarnishable metallic materials. Newest is aluminum, colored gold or silver and woven into lame or onto rayon or even wool in gleaming designs.

Public Murals: the Art of the 1930s
(Literary Digest, 1935)

A quick read on the subject of that uneasy union that existed between art and industry during the 1930s. References are made to the work of muralists Dunbar D. Beck (1902-1986), Arthur Watkins Crisp (1881 – 1974), Kenneth B. Loomis, Charles S. Dean and Charles Louis Goeller (1901 – 1955).

Modigliani in Paris
(Gentry Magazine, 1955)

Modigliani came to Paris from Italy in the propitious year of 1906, start of a decade of art in which every contemporary movement germinated…When he became acquainted with Romanian sculptor Brancusi in 1909, the impact of the meeting gave his work a new direction…

Constantine Brancusi
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

An appreciative five paragraph essay saluting the Modernist sculptor Constantine Brancusi (1876 – 1957), accompanied by one black and white image of the artist’s work, The Doves. Much of the review concerns the poor relationship Brancusi had with Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917) who
had been his teacher in earlier days.

Poiret Wraps and Coats
(Vogue Magazine, 1919)

By the time these images in American VOGUE hit the streets, the fashion house of Paul Poiret (1879 – 1944) was very much on the decline. Following the close of the First World War the designer was never able to regain his pre-1914 status. With the restlessness of the Twenties came the demand for a new mood in fashion and Coco Channel (1883 – 1971) became the new champion of Paris Fashion. Poiret closed his doors ten years after these photos were printed.


Read about the 1943 crochet revival

‘The Plainsman” by Cecil B. DeMille
(Stage Magazine, 1937)

Why should a director risk it all with some anonymous film critic when a he is given the chance to review his own movie? With this thought in mind, Cecil B. DeMille (1883 – 1959) typed up his own thoughts concerning all his hard work on the 1937 film, The Plainsman, which starred Gary Cooper:

I think ‘The Plainsman’ differs from any Western we have ever seen for many reasons


– it is at this point in the article that DeMille rattles-off an extended laundry list
of reasons that illustrate the unique qualities of his Western. One of the unique aspects of the film mentioned only by publicists concerned the leading man Garry Cooper, who, being a skilled horseman from his Montana youth, chose to do most of his own riding stunts in the film, including the shot where he rode hanging between two horses.


Click here to read a 1927 review of Cecil B. De Mille’s silent film, King of Kings.

Scroll to Top