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Interviews: 1912 - 1960, Recent Articles

Celebrity Wedding: Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz
(Photoplay Magazine, 1941)

Attached you will find a small illustrated notice from the shameless gossips at PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE reporting on the surprise 1941 wedding that took place between Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz.

PHOTOPLAY acknowledged the nay-saying Hollywood romance prophets who predicted doom for the union of these two Rhumba Stars – but in the end, they were right: Lucy and Desi divorced in May of 1961.

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Golf History

Sporty Golfing Pants: Pleated Knickers
(Magazine Ad, 1922)

These pleated golf knickers anticipated the full-cut trouser craze of the thirties, however, soon many golfers (both on and off the field) would be wearing the very full-cut pleated knickers known in the day as plus-fours. Plus-fours were one of any number of men’s fashion trends which originated with the masculine fashion-muse the Edward VIII (1894 – 1972).

Living the Life (Pageant Magazine, 1957)
1957, Pageant Magazine, Recent Articles, Suburbia

Living the Life
(Pageant Magazine, 1957)

This is the new suburban America… It has developed since the Second World War. It is within hollering distance of a big city but has a definite will of its own. Its people are youngish and their numbers growing. To find out what goes on in such a community, PAGEANT MAGAZINE made a study of one typical postwar suburb: Levittown, Long Island. It has 82,000 people, fairly young; the town is 12 years old and still growing fast. What happens there [each year] is typical of the new American ‘normal’:


• Average Income: $6,100.00


• Deaths: 304


• Births: 2,760


• Divorces: 101


• HS Graduates: 285


• College-Bound Graduates: 60


• Auto Accidents: 355

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Design

A Design Crit by Frank Lloyd Wright
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1947)

When the architectural community howled in protest upon hearing that the firm of Wallace Harrison (1895 – 1981) was commissioned to design the United Nations Center in 1947, the editors of SCRIPT MAGAZINE dashed-off to ask Frank Lloyd Wright to pick up his quill and ink-up his arguments against the project.

Wright, a bitter foe of skyscrapers and cities, voiced his disapproval in the attached article. Those who are familiar with the high esteem in which Frank Lloyd Wright held himself will not be surprised that he referred to himself entirely in third person throughout this entire article!


Frank Lloyd Wright was a member of the Unitarian religion…

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1946, Women Pilots

The WASPs of W.W. II

The WASP program, for as such the Women Airforces Service Pilots became known, was begun in August, 1943. In addition to providing women fliers who could take over certain jobs and thereby release their brothers for front-line duty, the program was designed to see if women could serve as military pilots and, if so, to serve as a nucleus of an organization that could be rapidly expanded…The women who took part in the pilot program proved of great value to their country, flying almost every type of airplane used by the AAF, from the Thunderbolt fighter, to the C-54 transport, they flew enough miles to reach around the world 2,500 times at the Equator.

The WASPs were fortunate enough to have pioneering aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran (1906 – 1980) serve at their helm.

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Trench Warfare

Night Patrol in the Trenches

Mr. Junius B. Wood, correspondent of the CHICAGO DAILY NEWS with the A.E.F. recently spent a week in the sector held by the American Army Northwest of Toul. He lived the life of a Doughboy, slept a little and saw a lot. He spent his days in and near the front line and some of his nights in No Man’s Land. Here is the second and concluding installment of his story, depicting life at the front as it actually is…

Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford

Pickford & Fairbanks Join Forces with Chaplin & Griffith to Form U.A.
(Film Cavalcade, 1939)

Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks linked arms with two other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:

[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.

Interviews: 1912 - 1960, Recent Articles

Theda Bara: 1920s Sex Symbol
(Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

An enthusiastic review of the Hollywood silent film, The Tiger Womanstyle=border:none (1917) starring the first (but not the last) female sex symbolstyle=border:none of the silent era, Theda Bara (born Theodosia Burr Goodman; 1885-1955). This very brief review will give the reader a sense of how uneasily many men must have sat in their chairs when she was pictured on screen. Theda Bara retired in 1926, having worked in forty-four films.

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1940s Fashion

Down With Christian Dior and His New Look!
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

This West-coast fashion critic believed that the fashions of Christian Dior stood firmly in opposition to the optimistic, Twentieth Century casual elegance of Claire McCardell (1905 – 1958) and Adrian (1903 – 1959), preferring instead to spin

the feminine figure in the unconventional manner, trying to make her look good where she ain’t. He seeks the ballet dancer illusion – natural, rounded shoulders, too weak to support a struggling world…Her waist is pinched in an exaggerated indentation, the better to emphasize her padded hips…There are butterfly sleeves, box pockets, belled jackets, and barreled skirts, suggesting something like a Gibson girl, or whatever grandmother should have worn.

Click here to read more 1940s articles about Christian Dior and his New Look.

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