Recent Articles – Page 63 – Old Magazine Articles

The Invention of Rayon
(Literary Digest, 1937)

This magazine article reported on the Miracle Fabric of the 1930s: rayon – and rayon cannot be deleted from any study dealing with Thirties fashion any more than the word polyester can be separated from a discussion of 1970s fashion. The article presents a history of the fabric but makes it quite clear that the fabric was immediately embraced by all the fashion houses at that time.

Read about the 1930s revival of velvet.

Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms of 1937.

Union General James Harrison Wilson
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

Attached is the review from a respected literary journal concerning the autobiography of Brigadier General James Harrison Wilson (1837 – 1925). Under the Old Flag Wilson is today best remembered as the U.S. Army cavalry officer who captured the Confederate President Jefferson Davis in his flight from Richmond. Following the Civil War, where he rose rapidly in the army hierarchy and finished as brigadier general, Wilson continued to play important rolls in the U.S. military; serving during the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion

Women War Workers
(Pic Magazine, 1943)

Attached is a photo-essay from a 1943 issue Pic Magazine illustrating the roll women played in a California bomber factory.

Click here to read about the women war workers of W.W. I.

Exploited Farm Labor During World War II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

This 1947 Collier’s article, Heartless Harvest by Howard Whitman makes clear the sad story of migrant agricultural laborers who picked the fruits and vegetables for the Americans of the Forties:

A new crop of Okies, estimated in the millions, is wandering about the country, following the crops they pick. To get their story the author traveled 9,000 miles through 17 states, toiling in the fields. Here he describes working and living conditions you wouldn’t believe could be tolerated in America today.

Anticipating America’s Unique Relationship With Israel
(Literary Digest, 1917)

Some thirty-one years prior to the official establishment of Israel as a nation, one columnist could read the tea leaves well enough to see that the United States would serve as the protectorate of the young country.

Click here to read a 1933 magazine article concerning the rise of secularism in American society.

The Optimist’s Joseph Stalin
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

During the Second World War in the United States it would have been an act of treason for a journalist to write a slanderous profile about any of the leaders of the allied nations who were beset against the Axis powers. Not only would the writer face grave charges, but so would his editor and publisher. However, this does not mean that the editors of Coronet Magazine had to go so far over the top as to publish this article by the Soviet cheerleader Walter Duranty (1884 – 1957) of The New York Times.

From Amazon:

Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow

‘The Low State of High Society”
(Coronet Magazine, 1958)

Another article by a highbred, woebegone, blue-blood who, plagued by a boatload of distinguished primogenitors and over-burdened by a lavish trust fund – to say nothing of a bad case of affluenza, could take no more of it; she broke-down and scribbled the attached expose in hopes that the whole highfalutin’ plutocracy would come crashing down on top of all those icky, pompous know-it-alls.

Life for America’s so-called social aristocrats is colorless and uninspired. Our education, now that I look back at it, seems to have produced a frightening number of properly mannered, emotionally passive and intellectually sterile young snobs… This training is not easily overcome.

Gosh. We thought only Howard Zinn wrote like that.

‘The Problem People”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

These assorted color photographs of the Japanese-American internment camp at Manzanar, California helped to illustrate this 1942 COLLIER’S MAGAZINE article by Jim Marshall as to what Manzanar was and was not, who was there and how it operated:

All we can do here is prove that we are good sports and good Americans, and hope that people will respect us and our problems.

The Segregated U.S. Army
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

Here is a segment from a longer article that tells the sad story about racial segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces. The small portion that is attached here tells of a secret group of fifty army researchers who were dispatched to the European front and

interviewed thousands of [White] soldiers about their attitudes toward Negro platoons fighting experimentally within their divisions.

Their findings proved that to these front-line respondents, the experimental platoons were truly their equal. In 1948 this research was showed to President Truman, who signed Executive Order 9981, thus bringing to an end racial segregation within the ranks of the U.S. Military.

The U.S. Navy was the biggest offender

‘The Lady and the Plane”
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

In the June, 1920 issue of British Vogue, an anonymous correspondent tried her hand at prophecy:

As surely as the woman of yesterday was born to ride in a limousine, the woman of today was born to fly an aeroplane.

-that said, we have higher hopes for the women of the 21st Century – however, a year earlier, the Vanity Fair writer charged with covering all aspects of motoring, both horizontal and vertical, penned this enthusiastic article and filled it with the names of many of the women aviators who were at that time, striving to make new records in aviation history; it must have been a very exciting time in history to experience (except for the dental care).

Silk Disappears From The Shelves
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Five months before The United States entered the war, the government in Washington had foresight enough to remove silk from the consumer market. Silk would be badly needed for the manufacturing of parachutes and gunpowder bags.

More about silk on the W.W. II home front can be read here…

The Coup of 1963
(Coronet Magazine, 1964)

The outcome of the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis was seen as a largely tasteless affair by the brass caps in Moscow. They believed Premiere Khrushchev and his diplomatic bungling left the U.S.S.R. in a weaker position and they wanted him out, pronto. Numerous men in the Soviet Army and within the Kremlin united in a plot to force him out. The Premiere proved himself a master at seeing through such intrigue; he stopped the coup dead in its tracks with a boatload of key arrests and executions which then knocked the remaining confederates off their game, sending them hither and yon.
Ten months later the Kremlin forced Khrushchev into retirement.

The Stewardship of General MacArthur
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

The attached article is about the governance of
General Douglas MacArthur (1880 – 1964) over conquered Japan following the close of World War II and was written half way through the American occupation period by the well-respected American journalist George Creel (1876 – 1953). The article clarifies what regime change meant for post-war Japan and the roll that MacArthur’s creed and character played in the process.

Click here to read about the 1918 portrait of General MacArthur painted by Joseph Cummings Chase.

The Concentration Camp Revolts
(Pageant Magazine, 1966)

The doomed Jews of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor did not all die like sheep. Many perished like lions in little-known uprisings against the Nazis – and some even blew up the grisly ovens and gas chambers.

The P-47N
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

A printable one page article that expounds on the evolution of the P-47 Thunderbolt through varying stages of development into the fuel-efficient juggernaut called the P-47N. Remembered in the World War II annals as the dependable escort of the B-29 Super fortresses that bedeviled the axis capitals during the closing months of the war.

No sacrifice was made in ammunition, guns or protective armor to provide the P-47N with this long range. It still carries eight 50.-caliber guns, four in each wing. It also can carry 10 five-inch rockets which pack the destructive power of five-inch artillery or naval shells.

Veronica Lake
(Click Magazine, 1944)

The attached magazine article is a profile of Veronica Lake (1922 – 1973) who was characterized in this column as an artist at making enemies.:

One of the most acute problems in Hollywood is Veronica Lake. Where, and at what precise moment her time-bomb mind will explode with some deviation from what studio bosses consider normal is an ever-present question. Hence, the grapevine of the movie industry always hums with rumors that unless Miss Lake ‘behaves’, she will no longer be tolerated, but cast into oblivion.

Her response was eloquent.

Hollywood Stylists vs the Fashion Industry
(Click Magazine, 1938)

The attached article from 1938 heralded a new day in the fashion industry where fashion magazines would no longer be relied upon to set the trends in clothing; henceforth, that roll would only be played by movie actresses in far-off Hollywood.

It was Hollywood movie stars who introduced sunglasses to the world of fashion…

Joe Rosenthal on Iwo Jima
(Collier’s Magazine, 1955)

Associated Press combat photographer Joe Rosenthal (1911 – 2006) wrote the attached article ten years after snapping the world famous image of the four U.S. Marines and one Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima. In five pages, he explains the remarkable impact that the photo had on the American psyche as well as the popular culture on the American home front, both during the war and afterward. Rosenthal was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for capturing on film one of the greatest events of W.W. II and briefly explains that the three surviving men who participated in the event were thrust into fame for years afterward.

•Read our article about the treason of Ezra Pound.•