Author name: editor

'I'm No Communist'' (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)
1948, Blacklisting, Photoplay Magazine

‘I’m No Communist”
(Photoplay Magazine, 1948)

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Months after his appearance as a spectator at the House Committee on Un-American Activities, actor Humphrey Bogart wrote this article for the editors of Photoplay Magazine addressing the topic of communist infiltration in the Hollywood film industry:

In the final analysis, this House Committee probe has had one salutary effect. It has cleared the air by indicating what a minute number of Commies there really are in the film industry. Though headlines may have screamed of the Red menace in the movies, all the wind and the fury actually proved that there’s been no Communism injected on American movie screens.

Removing God from the Public Schools | Creating Secular Public Schools 1945 | McCollum v. Board of Education
1945, Education, Newsweek, PM Tabloid, Recent Articles

Kicking God Out of the Schools
(Newsweek Magazine & PM Tabloid, 1945)

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A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized.


Posted herein was one of the first of many articles concerning what would come to known as the landmark Supreme Court case McCollum v. Board of Education (1948): the court decided in her favor.


Click here to read about Darwin in the schools.

Orson Welles Magazine Article 1941 | Orson Welles in the 1940s
1941, Direction Magazine, Interviews: 1912 - 1960

The Wunderkind: Orson Welles
(Direction Magazine, 1941)

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his brief notice is from a much admired American magazine containing many sweet words regarding the unstoppable Orson Welles (1915 – 1985) and his appearance in the Archibald McLeish (1892 – 1982) play, Panic (directed by John Houseman, 1902 — 1988).

The year 1941, Ano Domini, was another great year for the boy genius who seemed to effortlessly triumph with all his theatrical and film ventures. At the time this appeared in print, Welles was filming The Magnificent Ambersons, having recently pocketed an Oscar for his collaborative writing efforts in Citizen Cane. Highly accomplished and multi-married, no study of American entertainment is complete without mention of his name. The anonymous scribe who penned the attached article remarked:

No pretentiously shy Saroyan courtship of an audience about Welles! He really loves his relation to the public. He doesn’t flirt with it.

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Political Advertising Article | The Selling of the President Summary and Review | Political Advertising on Television
1970, Advertising, Pageant Magazine, Recent Articles

Modern Political Advertising
(Pageant Magazine, 1970)

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The Selling of the President is about the role of television in the Republican efforts to elect Richard Nixon president in the 1968 election. Written over forty years ago by Joe McGinnis (1942 – 2014), the book was an instant classic as it addressed the matter of packaging a candidate for a political contest in the same manner products are promoted for the marketplace:


McGinnis concludes that ‘On television, it matters less that [the candidate] does not have ideas. His personality is what the viewers want to share…’

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LITTLE BELOW THE KNEE CLUB 1948 | Popular Opposition to CHRISTIAN DIOR NEW LOOK
1948, Recent Articles, See Magazine, The New Look

Jihad Against ‘The New Look’
(See Magazine, 1948)

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A former fashion model, Bobbie Woodward, was outraged when she awoke that morning in 1947 to find that the hidden hairy hand that decides which direction the fashion winds will blow had given the nod to some snail-eating Frenchman who stood athwart fashion’s unspoken promise to continue the skirt hem’s march ever-upward. Wasting no time, she quickly marshaled other equally inclined women and formed The Little Below the Knee Clubs, which spread to forty-eight states (as well as Canada) in order to let the fashion establishment know that they would not be forced into wearing this fashion juggernaut known as The New Look.


The attached SEE MAGAZINE article serves as a photo-essay documenting the collective outrage of these women and their doomed crusade against Christian Dior.

One 1947 fashion critic believed that the New Look suffered from a split personality. Click here to read her review.

The King Tiger Tank (U.S. Dept. of War, 1945)
1945, Compiled by the U.S. Dept. of War, Recent Articles, Weapons and Inventions

The King Tiger Tank
(U.S. Dept. of War, 1945)

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This article is illustrated with a photograph of the King Tiger tank and accompanied by some vital statistics and assorted observations that were documented by the U.S. Department of War and printed in one of their manuals in March of 1945:

The king Tiger is a tank designed essentially for defensive warfare or for breaking through strong lines of defense. It is unsuitable for rapid maneuver and highly mobile warfare because of its great weight and and low speed…The King Tiger virtually is invulnerable to frontal attack, but the flanks, which are less well protected, can be penetrated by Allied antitank weapons at most normal combat ranges.

The American answer to the Tiger was the M26 Pershing Tank; read about it here.

If you wish to read about the only German tank of World War I, click here.

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Japanese-Americans in Manzanar Relocation Camp 1942 | Japanese-Americans Removed from Los Angeles 1942 | Japanese-Americans Farmers Interred at Manzanar 1942
1942, Japanese-American Internment, Recent Articles, The American Magazine

The Outcast Americans
(American Magazine, 1942)

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Economically, the departure of the [Japanese-Americans] presented no particular problem in the cities… But it was different in the country. [They] had owned or controlled 11,030 farms valued at $70,000,000. They had produced virtually all the artichokes, early cantaloupes, green peppers and late tomatoes, and most of the early asparagus. They owned or controlled the majority of wholesale produce markets and thousand of retail vegetable stands. When they disappeared, the flow of vegetables stopped. Retail prices went up. Many vegetables vanished entirely. There were rumors of a food shortage.

A Veteran Against War (Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, 1938)
1938, Recent Articles, Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, Writing

A Veteran Against War
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1938)

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Writer Paul Gerard Smith (1894 – 1968) was a U.S. Marine in World War I and in 1938, when he saw that another war with Germany was simmering on the the front burner he put a Fresh ribbon of ink in the typewriter and wrote this editorial which he titled, An Open Letter to Boys of Military Age. His column is a cautionary tale advising the young men of his day to make their decisions thoughtfully before committing themselves to such a dangerous undertaking as war. Smith advised youth to examine the causes for the war, verify whose commercial interests will be served in victory and only if –


you find that America and the future of America is threatened – then go and kick Hell of the enemy, and God be with you.


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


CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…

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Gone With The Wind Book Review 1937 | Gone With The Wind as Popular Literature
1937, Recent Articles, Scribner's Magazine, Twentieth Century Writers

A Bewildering American Phenomenon
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1937)

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This well-read writer recalls the great novels leading up to the publication of Gone With The Wind (1936). Along the way, she lists some of the many foibles of The Great American Reading Public – in the end she recognizes that she shouldn’t have been surprised at all that the historic romance was an all-time-best-seller and that Margaret Mitchell was awarded a Pulitzer.

Prohibition Era Prisons Filled with Women (American Legion Weekly, 1924)
1924, Prohibition History, Recent Articles, The American Legion Weekly

Prohibition Era Prisons Filled with Women
(American Legion Weekly, 1924)

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Four and a half years into Prohibition, journalist Jack O’Donnell reported that there were as many as 25,000 women who had run-afoul of the law in an effort to earn a quick buck working for bootleggers:

They range in age from six to sixty. They are recruited from all ranks and stations of life – from the slums of New York’s lower East Side, exclusive homes of California, the pine clad hills of Tennessee, the wind-swept plains of Texas, the sacred precincts of exclusive Washington… Women in the bootleg game are becoming a great problem to law enforcement officials. Prohibition agents, state troopers and city police – gallant gentlemen all – hesitate to embarrass women by stopping their cars to inquire if they are carrying hooch. The bootleggers and smugglers are aware of this fact and take advantage of it.


Verily, so numerous were these lush lassies – the Federal Government saw fit to construct a prison compound in which to incarcerate them; you can read about that here…

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Black Tuesday Stock Market Crash | 1929 stock market crash primary source article
1946, Coronet Magazine, Recent Articles, The Great Depression

The Crash
(Coronet Magazine, 1946)

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This is an article about the 1929 stock market crash – it was that one major cataclysmic event that ushered in the Great Depression (1929 – 1940). It all came crashing down on October 24, 1929 – the stocks offered at the New York Stock Exchange had lost 80% of their value; the day was immediately dubbed Black Thursday by all those who experienced it. When the sun rose that morning, the U.S. unemployment estimate stood at 3%; shortly afterward it soared to a staggering 24%.

In every town families had dropped from affluence into debt…Americans were soon to find themselves in an altered world which called for new adjustments, new ideas, new habits of thought, a new order of values. The Post-War Decade had come to its close. An era had ended. The era that followed was was the polar opposite of the one that had just gone down in flames: if the Twenties are remembered for confidence and prosperity, the Thirties was a decade of insecurity and want. The attached essay was penned by a popular author who knew the era well.


Yet, regardless of the horrors of The Crash, the United States was still an enormously wealthy nation…

William F Buckley on BARRY GOLDWATER | BARRY GOLDWATER magazine article | Republican Philosophy Examined
1961, Coronet Magazine, Interviews: 1912 - 1960, Recent Articles

The Father of American Conservativism
(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

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Barry Goldwater (1909 – 1998) was the Republican presidential candidate for 1964, and although he lost that contest by wide margins to Lyndon Johnson, his political philosophy has played a vital roll in shaping the direction of American conservative thought. William F. Buckley, Jr. explained why in this article.


In 1887 The New York Times reviewed the first english edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it…

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