Recent Articles

Color Television: Hand Maiden to Art… (Art Digest, 1945)

Attached you will read a 1945 editorial written by the art critic Clayton Boswell, who articulately expressed the great hope that the art world had emotionally invested in color television:

This is what the art world has been waiting for – in the meantime struggling with the futility of attempting to describe verbally visual objects over the air. Now art on the television will be on par footing with music. And what radio has done in spreading the appreciation of good music will be duplicated with fine art…Then indeed will Andrew Carnegie’s dream of progress through education come true.

Color Television: Hand Maiden to Art… (Art Digest, 1945) Read More »

Inequality For Female Barflies (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

This column concerns a 1937 bill sponsored by New York State Senator Edward Coughlin. The senator’s bill provided for the arrest of any woman who stood at or in front of the bar of any club, hotel or restaurant licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Coughlin held that any woman found guilty of this pastime should be charged with disorderly conduct. A few other states were also attracted to this legislation; it passed a year later only to be repealed in the early Sixties.


Click here to read about that moment in 1920 when American Women attained the vote.

Inequality For Female Barflies (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) Read More »

Post-War Germany Struggled Under the Versailles Treaty (The Independent, 1921)

A 1921 column that clearly pointed out all the hardships created for Germany as a result of the Versailles Treaty.


The framers of that agreement could never have envisioned that the post-war landscape they designed for Germany would be pock-marked with such a myriad of frustrations – such as the border skirmishes between Germany and Poland, inflation, famine, the Salzburg Plebiscite and such harsh reparation payments that, when combined with all the other afflictions, simply served to create the kind of Germany that made Hitler’s rise a reality.


Another article about the despondency in 1920s Germany can be read here…

Post-War Germany Struggled Under the Versailles Treaty (The Independent, 1921) Read More »

‘STAY HOME!” (Hollywood Magazine, 1929)

The advent of talking pictures has enormously increased the number of those who vision a fairyland of fame and fortune if they can only reach Hollywood… Rumor had it that voice was important for the new Talkies, and every female whose misguided family had ‘cultivated’ Mamie’s vocal resources, usually without the faintest reasonable excuse, realized where her destiny lay. The rush was on… Several organizations in Hollywood find it possible to send girls back home before the tragedy point is reached… Periodically the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce broadcasts warnings.

‘STAY HOME!” (Hollywood Magazine, 1929) Read More »

Fatty Arbuckle Has Something to Say… (Motion Picture News, 1919)

An interview with the famous silent film comedian, Fatty Arbuckle, as it appeared in a forgotten Hollywood trade magazine. Accompanying the interview are eight lines of biographical information pertaining to his Hollywood career as it stood in the year 1916. This short profile first appeared in The Studio Directory of The Motion Picture News and will serve to answer some of the questions readers might have concerning his career, before it took it’s tragic turn.


If you would like to read about the films of the Thirties, click here.
Click here to read about physical perfection during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Fatty Arbuckle Has Something to Say… (Motion Picture News, 1919) Read More »

Fatty Arbuckle Has Something to Say… (Motion Picture News, 1919)

An interview with the famous silent film comedian, Fatty Arbuckle, as it appeared in a forgotten Hollywood trade magazine. Accompanying the interview are eight lines of biographical information pertaining to his Hollywood career as it stood in the year 1916. This short profile first appeared in The Studio Directory of The Motion Picture News and will serve to answer some of the questions readers might have concerning his career, before it took it’s tragic turn.


If you would like to read about the films of the Thirties, click here.
Click here to read about physical perfection during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Fatty Arbuckle Has Something to Say… (Motion Picture News, 1919) Read More »

Cover Girls (Coronet Magazine, 1948)

By 1948 the business of fashion modeling had developed into a $15,000,000-a-year industry. This article examines just how such changes evolved in just a ten year span of time:

American advertising struck pay dirt when it discovered the super salesgirls whose irresistible allure will sell anything from a bar of soap to a seagoing yacht…Always there was the secret whisper of sex. For women it was, ‘Be lovely, be loved, don’t grow old, be exciting’… For men it was, ‘Be successful, make everyone know that your successful, how can you get women if your not successful?’

The importance of attractive girls in our economy was stressed by John McPartland when he discussed modern advertising in his recent best seller, Sex in Our Changing World (1947).


Legendary fashion designer Christian Dior had a good deal of trouble with people who would illegally copy his designs; click here to read about that part of fashion history.

Cover Girls (Coronet Magazine, 1948) Read More »

Fascism At It’s Peak (Time Magazine, 1923)

A dictatorship can last forever, if properly managed. It is my task to provide a mechanism that will endure and to have the various parts of this mechanism running without friction; then after I am gone it will be able to run itself. A dictatorship must answer the purpose for which it was introduced. Certainly the Fascist regime will last a very long time… Socialism works on the principle that all are equal, but Fascism knows we are far from equal. Take the great masses of human beings. They like rule by the few.

Fascism At It’s Peak (Time Magazine, 1923) Read More »