Recent Articles – Page 44 – Old Magazine Articles

Guess Whose Coming to Hollywood…
(Coronet Magazine, 1959)

The Coronet entertainment writer was quite correct when he identified Sidney Poitier (1927 – 2022) as the first actor of African descent to earn beaucoup bucks and achieve leading-man status in dramatic rolls in Hollywood. Born and raised in the Bahamas, Poitier’s predecessors in the film colony were many, but they were all song and dance men. The attached column clearly outlines what made Poitier such an actor apart.

Before there was Sidney Poitier, there was Farina…

Communists in Germany
(Literary Digest, 1921)

Communist uprisings in Germany are blamed on Moscow by a practically unanimous Berlin press, and some newspapers flatly accuse the Russian official representative in Berlin, a Mr. Kopp, and his staff, of being the instigators of these disturbances, and so demand their expulsion.

The First Wave
(Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Down ramp!‘ shouted the coxswain from the elevated stern.

Down it came with a clank and splash. Ahead – and it seemed at that moment miles off – stretched the sea wall. At Lieutenant Crisson’s insistence we had all daubed our faces with commando black. I charged out with the rest, trying to look fierce and desperate, only to step into a shell hole and submerge myself in the channel. Luckily my gear was too wet and stinking to put on so I was light enough to come up.

This Newsweek journalist was the only allied war correspondent to have witnessed the derring-do of those in the first wave.

Does Smoking Really Cause Cancer?
(United States News, 1953)

Some time ago we posted an article from 1921 about legislation that the U.S. Congress was considering concerning the prohibition of cigarettes (Click here to read about that) we thought that the cat was out of the bag at that time as to the fact concerning the connection of smoking and cancer. But we were wrong. The 1953 article attached herein concerns four doctors who appeared before Congress in an appeal for federal funding for cancer research. They made it clear that research was indicating that there was a clear link between smoking and cancer, but more exploration was needed.

In 1921 there was talk in Congress of outlawing cigarettes – you can read about it here

Click here to read about one of the greatest innovations by 20th Century chemists: plastic.

‘A Plan to Make Chinese Canadians”
(Literary Digest, 1929)

A brief column from an American magazine that lucidly explained the mounting frustrations within 1920s Canada concerning the influx of Chinese immigrants to that country.

Click here to read about the Canadian POWs who collaborated with the Nazis.

The Return of the Coldstream Guards
(The New Red Cross Magazine, 1919)

To-day was a great day in London. The Guards’ Division was inspected by the King at Buckingham Palace and had a triumphant march to welcome them home…East End and West End rubbed shoulders to-day and showed the same respect for each other that not so long ago they had shown in the trenches.

Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.

Prohibition And Our Northern Neighbor
(Time Magazine, 1923)

When the architects of Prohibition were planning their dry fairyland they always knew that the weak spot in their scheme was going to be the vast borderlands that separate the United States from Canada and Mexico.
The attached article from 1923 outlines the concerns President Coolidge’s administration had regarding Prohibition law enforcement along the Canadian frontier.

German Boy Soldiers in Captivity
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A fascinating article reporting on the Baby Cage, the Allied prisoner of war camp that held some 7,000 boy soldiers of the German army, ages 12 through 17.

In light of the fact that so manyGerman youths had been indoctrinated from their earliest days in Nazi dogma and then dumbfounded to a far greater degree within the Hitler Jugend system, the Allied leadership post-war government believed that this group needed to be instructed in the ways of tolerance before being let loose into the general population.

Click here to read about the Nazi indoctrination of German youth.

Addressing the ”Negro Problem”
(Coronet Magazine, 1949)

Like the article posted above, this essay serves as further evidence that the immediate post-war years in America were ones in which the foundations for the civil rights movement were established; foundations on which the civil rights leaders of the Sixties and Seventies would rely upon to guarantee the forward momentum of the movement.

The attached article pertains to the necessary work that was being done by the National Urban League.

Upon reading this piece, we’re sure you’ll recognize that the author knew full well that the article should have been titled, The Answer to the White Problem.

Albert Einstein Magazine Interview
(Literary Digest, 1935)

A year and a half after departing Germany, Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) vogued it up for the cameras at a meeting for the scientific community in Pennsylvania where he answered three very basic questions concerning his research.

A small, sensitive, and slightly naive refugee from Germany stole the show at the winter meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science, which closed at Pittsburgh last week. Not only the general public and newspapermen, but even the staid scientists forgot their dignity in a scramble to see and hear the little man, Albert Einstein, whose ideas have worked the greatest revolution in modern scientific thought.

Albert Einstein Magazine Interview
(Literary Digest, 1935)

General Grant Recalled Meeting Lincoln
(National Park Service, 1956)

A short paragraph from General Grant’s memoir recalling the the first private interview with President Lincoln, on the occasion in the early spring of 1864 when he was given command of all the Federal armies.

In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted…

Click here to read about a dream that President Lincoln had, a dream that anticipated his violent death.

F. Scott Fitzgerald at Twenty-Five
(The American Magazine, 1922)

At the peak of his fame, F. Scott Fitzgerald penned this opinion piece for a popular U.S. magazine:

For one thing, I do not like old people – They are always talking about their experience, and very few of them have any! – But it is the old folks that run the world; so they try to hide the fact that only young people are attractive or important.

Nighttime Tank Battle
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Canadian war correspondent M.H. Halton reported from the Egyptian desert concerning one of modern war’s most dramatic spectacles – [a] battle of tanks in the dark.

American Illiteracy in 1920
(Time Magazine, 1923)

The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:

Can you read and write?

Five million men and women of America responded:

We cannot!

The Work of J.D. Salinger
(The Hibbert Journal, 1964)

A Literary journal’s review of The Catcher in the Rye as well as the short stories contained in Salinger’s collection Franny and Zooey.

The Great War and It’s Influence on Feminine Fashion
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

The military influence on feminine fashion predates the conflict of 1914-1918 by a long shot and the evidence of this is undeniable. These 1918 fashion illustrations show the influence that the war was having on American designers during the final year of W.W. I.

Click here to read about the fashion legacy of W.W. I…

To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…

Click here to read about the origins of the T-shirt.

Hitler’s Man in Delhi
(Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897 – 1945) spent much of the Twenties and Thirties brainstorming with Gandhi and Nehru as to how best they might secure sovereignty for their beloved India. By 1939 Bose broke ranks with his fellows at the Indian National Congress, believing that British rule would end a good deal quicker if the Indians signed on with the Axis.