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Britain Buries Her Own (Literary Digest, 1919)
1919, Cemeteries, Recent Articles, The Literary Digest

Britain Buries Her Own
(Literary Digest, 1919)

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Aside from scanning and posting vast numbers of historic magazine articles, the only other activity that has heightened our sense of inner tranquility has been our various walks through British and Commonwealth World War I graveyards. They are truly unique and beautiful gardens that can be appreciated on a number of different levels and it was not surprising to learn that many of the finest aesthetic minds in Britain had a hand in their creation.


This article, printed six months after the last shot was fired, is about the Imperial War Graves Commission (now called The Commonwealth War Graves Commission) and their plans as to how the dead of the British Empire were to be interred.


Click here to read about a 1920 visit the grave of poet Rupert Brooke.

1945, The Enola Gay, Yank Magazine

Paul Tibbets of the ENOLA GAY
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

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A one page interview with Paul Tibbets (1915 – 2007) and the crew of the ENOLA GAY as they recounted their historic mission over Hiroshima during the closing days of World War Two. Paul Tibbets remained in uniform long after the war and eventually retired as an Air Force General. When he died during the fall of 2007 it was revealed that he preferred there not be a memorial service, nor any marker identifying his grave in order to deprive protesters of a staging ground. His ashes were sprinkled over the North Atlantic.


What if the Atomic Bomb had never been invented? When would the war have ended?

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The Cop Who Beat Mickey Cohen (Coronet Magazine, 1960)
1960, Coronet Magazine, Interviews: 1912 - 1960

The Cop Who Beat Mickey Cohen
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

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No matter how difficult the truth may seem, it cannot be ignored that between the years 1950 and 1966, criminals residing in the city of Los Angeles felt extremely ill-at-ease and entirely unsafe. This was due, in no small part, to the fact that the police chief of that city was a fellow by the name of William Big Bill Parker (1905 – 1966), a tireless officer who would not suffer hucksters, mobsters, thugs and dope heads with anywhere near the same level of patience enjoyed by today’s senior officers of the LAPD.


The count has been lost in the mists of time as to whether he frustrated more Mafiosi than civil libertarians or whether it was the other way around, but this six page article makes mention of the numerous controversial methods that the Chief deployed in his efforts to protect and serve.


Click here to read a news piece about a Hollywood blackmail scam that Micky Cohen had going in 1949.

Charlie Chaplin's Brother (Motion Pictur Magazine, 1916)
1916, Charlie Chaplin Articles, Motion Picture Magazine

Charlie Chaplin’s Brother
(Motion Pictur Magazine, 1916)

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It must have been a slow news week when the industrious reporters at MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE opted to write this piece about Sydney Chaplin (1885 – 1965),businessman, aviator, actor,(thirty-four films between 1914 and 1928) and occasional business partner to his younger super-star brother, Charlie:

Charlie Chaplin is small and thin. Sidney is tall and husky. Charlie is dark, with curly hair like a boy. His big brother is light, and looks like a big lumberman. Here is contrast indeed. Their natures are as different as the natures of a flee and a bee. To see them together one would not take them brothers…

Three years after this article was published, Syd Chaplin would started the first domestic airline company in the United States: The Syd Chaplin Airline, Co., which he saw fit to close when the U.S. government began to regulate pilots and all commercial flight ventures.

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Lindbergh's Movie Contract (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)
1939, Charles Lindbergh, Photoplay Magazine

Lindbergh’s Movie Contract
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

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This article originally appeared in a well-known Hollywood fan magazine and was written by Lindbergh’s pal and business partner, Major Thomas G. Lanphier (1890 – 1972). It concerns the story of how one of the most ambitious movies of all times, starring America’s hero, Charles Lindbergh, was not made. The story goes that in 1927, the Lone Eagle signed a $1,000,000.00 Hollywood contract to make a movie about the history of aviation and would not be persuaded to do otherwise by any of his flying-peers, who all tended to believe that no good could come out of it. Slim finally saw the light and was released from his contractual obligations by non other than William Randolph Hearst (1863 – 1951):

Mr. Hearst asked no questions… He brought out the contract and tore it up in Lindbergh’s presence.
You are as much a hero to me, as to anyone else in the world…

Click here to read more articles from Photoplay Magazine.

Interviews: 1912 - 1960, Recent Articles

A Child’s Interview With Charles Dickens
(The Literary Digest, 1912)

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Kate Douglas Wiggins recalled her childhood train ride in the 1840’s in which she was able to have a chat with one of her favorite author, Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870), as he traveled the United States on a reading tour.

‘Of course, I do skip some of the very dull parts once and a while; not the short dull parts but the long ones.’ He laughed heartily. ‘Now that is something that I hear very little about’ he said’.

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1915, Miscellaneous, Vanity Fair Magazine

Charles Baudelaire
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1915)

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British poet and literary critic Arthur Symons (1865 – 1945) wrote about the Nineteenth Century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) more as a subject of art rather than an influential wordsmith:

Few modern poets have been more frequently drawn, and few have better repaid drawing, than Charles Baudelaire.

Among the list of artists who created likenesses of the poet were his fellow dandy Edouard Manet (1832 – 1883), the photographer Etienne Carjat (1828 – 1906) and an obscure sculptor named Zachari Astrue, who created the poet’s death mask.

Cedric Gibbons: Production Designer (Creative Art Magazine, 1932)
1932, Creative Art Magazine, Hollywood History

Cedric Gibbons: Production Designer
(Creative Art Magazine, 1932)

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Throughout film history there have been many men and women who have toiled in the Hollywood vineyards as art directors, but none have ever matched the level of high productivity as Cedric Gibbons (1893 – 1960). Indeed, he is remembered as the dean of art directors who stood head and shoulders above all others during Hollywood’s Golden Age; between 1912 and 1956 there were hundreds movies that bore his thumbprint – winning Oscars for 39 of them (he was also one of the aesthetes who designed that award).


Illustrated by four photographs of his sets from the early Thirties, the attached article appeared mid-way through his career:

At the Metro-Goldwyn studios in Culver City, just a few short miles from Hollywood, Mr. Gibbons rules supreme as art director. He is at the head of an intricately organized group of technical experts and artisans, numbering nearly two thousand individuals, and is responsible for the artistic investiture and pattern of some fifty or more feature films per annum.


Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Directionstyle=border:none

Meet Ann Fish: Conde Nast Illustrator (Vanity Fair, 1919)
1919, Manners and Society, Recent Articles, Vanity Fair Magazine

Meet Ann Fish: Conde Nast Illustrator
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

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Some ninety-three years ago, Fish was the name scribbled on those unique cartoon illustrations that could be found throughout VOGUE (both American and British) and VANITY FAIR. The editor of American VOGUE between the years 1914 and 1952, Edna Woolman Chase (1877 – 1957) called this English cartoonist brilliant and began running her drawings from her earliest days in that office; her full name was Ann Fish and this article will tell you all we know about her.

This most cosmopolitan of living black-and-white satirists has never stirred from England in all her days. She has never especially extended herself as a spectator of the London life which she so amusingly depicts. She has never gazed on Fifth Avenue.

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A Letter from the Trenches (New York Times, 1915)
Letters, Recent Articles, The Bonds of the British Empire

A Letter from the Trenches
(New York Times, 1915)

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An interesting letter written during the opening weeks of the war by a Canadian officer stationed with a British Guard regiment. The letter is filled with earnest enthusiasm:

We are all one in aim, in spirit and in that indefinable quality of loyal co-operation which holds together the British Army fighting against enormous odds in France, as it binds together the British Empire by bonds not less strong because they are invisible.

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Immigration Restrictions in Canada
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

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In 1917 an American newspaper reported that Canada, heeding the protests of it’s most impoverished citizens, moved to restrict the flow of the immigrants to their shores:

The commissioners say that in Canada, as in Australia, there is a strong current of opposition to immigration as it is now carried on, particularly among the wage earners in the cities. It is recognized that the development of the land is of prime consideration and that the tide of immigration into the cities has created a surplus, whereas the rural communities have suffered.

KEY WORDS: Immigration History Canada,Poor Immigrants 1917,Immigration Policy Canada,Canada Immigration, Australia Immigration, History Immigration,North American Immigration History,Canadian Immigration Restrictions 1917

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A.E.F. Facts and Deployment Information (Times Literary Supplement, 1921)
1921, The Times Literary Supplement, World War One

A.E.F. Facts and Deployment Information
(Times Literary Supplement, 1921)

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The attached essay reviews a colossal history written by a veteran of the U.S. First Infantry Division, Captain Shipley Thomas: The History of the A. E. F.style=border:none
– for those who are looking for some knowledge concerning what the American Army was up to during the last six months of the War (it was bloodiest period) the review makes for a good read.

Click here to read about the high desertion rate within the U.S. Army of 1910.


Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.

British Snipers on the Western Front (The English Review, 1920)
1920, Recent Articles, Snipers, The English Review

British Snipers on the Western Front
(The English Review, 1920)

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Written by Major E. Penberthy, former Commandant of the British Third Army Sniping School, this is an account of the training and organization of snipers as they functioned within the British Army at the time of the Great War.

In the early days of the war, when reports of German ‘sniping’ began to be published, it was commonly considered a ‘dirty’ method of fighting and as not ‘playing the game’.

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