Author name: editor

Traveling to the Lincoln - Douglas Debate (National Park Service, 1956)
1956, Abraham Lincoln, The National Park Service

Traveling to the Lincoln – Douglas Debate (National Park Service, 1956)

By /

Stephen Douglas (1813 – 1861), Lincoln’s Democratic rival in the contest for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois, was a popular figure with a great deal of political capitol who enjoyed wide spread fame throughout much of the fruited plain; this all contributed to a robust ego which would not suffer anything less than traveling to the debates in a grand style. By contrast, Honest Abe traveled in economy class, packed among the masses (although as a railroad lawyer, he certainly could have afforded better).

This short paragraph (accompanied by a photograph of both men) was written by a friend of Lincoln who recalled his train ride with the (losing) candidate as he made his way to Ottawa, Illinois, the site of the first debate.

Edwige Feuillère Gets Liberated (Collier's, 1946)
1946, Collier's Magazine, Hollywood History

Edwige Feuillère Gets Liberated (Collier’s, 1946)

By /

A 1946 article in which the beloved French actress Edwige Feuillère (1907 – 1998) is personified as the epitome of wounded French Glamor returned to it’s rightful place following the hasty retreat of those nasty Huns from the boulevards of lovely Paris:

Edwige Feuillère, France’s Number One actress, is wearing evening clothes again – and all fashionable Paris rejoices. It is a sort of symbol, the blooming of the lovely Edwige into full-panoplied formality. For she, along with most women of France, abstained from festivities and the clothes that go with them throughout the war.

1937, Hollywood History, Photoplay Magazine

The High and the Mighty and the Movies They Loved(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)

By /

Royalty and rulers of the world are movie fans. The cinema tastes of the great are disclosed for the first time in this article.

Listed in the attached 1937 Hollywood fan magazine article are the names of the favorite movies of Gandhi, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hirohito, Roosevelt and many more.

Click here to read about happy Hollywood’s discovery of plastic surgery…

Anti-Plagerism Legislation Introduced (Photoplay Magazine, 1916)
1916, Photoplay Magazine, Silent Movie History

Anti-Plagerism Legislation Introduced (Photoplay Magazine, 1916)

By /

Attached is a small column that credited U.S. Representative Charles Hiram Randall (1865 – 1951) of Los Angeles for having proposed legislation before Congress that sought copyright protection for the benefit of scenario writers in Hollywood:

Congressional Randall [Prohibition Party] of California has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives for the protection of scenario authors, by providing for the issuance of a copyright on the scenario upon reciept of two typewritten copies to the proper department in Washington.

U.S. Propaganda Pamphlets Dropped on the Hun (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)
1919, Recent Articles, Stars and Stripes Archive, The Stars and Stripes

U.S. Propaganda Pamphlets Dropped on the Hun (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

By /

This is a swell read, written in that patois so reminiscent of those fast talking guys in 1930s Hollywood movies. One of the many reasons I find this era so interesting has to do with the fact that the war coincided with that mass-media phenomenon called advertising – and this article pertains exactly to that coincidence. This column was printed shortly after the war in order to let the Doughboys in on the existence of a particular group within the A.E.F. that was charged with the task of dumping propaganda leaflets all over the German trench lines:


Propaganda is nothing but a fancy war name for publicity and who knows the publicity game better than the Yanks?

A Puttee Cartoon (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)
1918, Recent Articles, The Stars and Stripes, U.S. Army Uniforms of World War One

A Puttee Cartoon (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

By /

The Doughboys were grateful to be issued European spiral-puttees in place of their canvas gaiters -which did them no good whatever in the dampness of Northern Europe; however, as the attached W.W. I photographs so clearly indicate (as does this cartoon by Walgren), not many Yanks were as proficient at wrapping them as the upper brass had hoped.

The Third Anniversary of Verdun (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)
1919, Stars and Stripes Archive, The Stars and Stripes

The Third Anniversary of Verdun (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

By /

1919 marked the third anniversary of the Battle of Verdun and the grounds were still littered with the dead, surrounded by a tons of equipment, lying in open fields pock-marked by thousands of high explosive shells:

Spring will come to France next month, but Spring will not come to the field of Verdun. Already the grass is green on the broad stretches of Champagne; in the Vosges the snow patches linger only in the stubborn shelter of rocks that bar the sun,; but there is no portent of resurrection in all the stretch of churned up gravel marking the line of forts that protect the citadel of the Meuse from the Northeast…the shell holes are filled with clear water, and between them course new born brooks, sublimating in crystal pools from which no man would dare drink.

Scroll to Top