1916 – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

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

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.

New York Fashions for Spring
(Strauss Magazine Theatre Program, 1916)

Before it was called Playbill it was called the Strauss Magazine Theatre Program and Cora Moore was their fashion critic. During the early spring of 1916 Mrs. Moore took a serious look at the fashion parade on Fifth Avenue and recognized that much of it had been seen before. She offered no thoughts as to why so much from the past was being borrowed but she liked it just fine nonetheless.

Paul Thevenaz: Rhythmatist Painter
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

A one page article regarding Swiss-born painter Paul Thevenaz (1891 – 1921) and his thoughts on the relationship between dance and modern painting. The article is accompanied by four of his portraits; the sitters were Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky, the Comtesse E. De Beaumont and Comtesse Mathieu De Noailles.The profile was written by the novelist Marie Louise Van Saanen.

Read a 1937 article about another gay artist: Paul Cadmus.

Robert Henri
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

A VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE profile of the American painter Robert Henri (1865 – 1929):

Robert Henri does not sympathize with the artists who throw their work in the face of the public with a ‘There, take it or leave it.’ Indeed, he has an almost hieratic belief in the power of the fine arts, not merely to delight, but to improve, to uplift and to educate the masses.

Click here to read further about the 1913 Armory show.

Augustus John on the British Homefront
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

A war-time interview with the Welsh painter Augustus John (1878 – 1961).

Sniper Scopes Compared
(Literary Digest, 1916)

By enlarge, this article is a mildly technical piece that compares the German sniper scopes used during W.W. I to those of the British; happily, the amusing part of this essay is contained in the opening paragraph in which a British Tommy returning from the front, is quoted as exclaiming:

German snipers are better shots than the English because their rifles have telescopic sights that are illuminated at night.

Men’s Clothing for the Spring of 1916
(Strauss Theater Magazine, 1916)

Twelvemonth ago, the war had sobered ‘le monde ou l’on s’amuse’ like an icy douche. Europe rang with the clump of tramping feet. Forked lightening seemed to lurk in the sky. In club cars of limited trains and smoke rooms of trans-Atlantic liners heads were put together and the air was as tense as a fiddle string… Fashion tipsters, with long ears and short sight, said that the world would put on black, and style was knocked in the head, and look for the deluge, and so on ‘ad nauseum’.

Shopping for the Well-Dressed Golfer
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

While so many European men were suffering on the Somme and at Verdun, some American fellows were having a swelligant time on the golf links; beautifully attired in linen golf clothes that are pictured in the accompanying attachment.

Gaudier-Brzeska
(Literary Digest, 1916)

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891 – 1915) was an avant-garde sculptor of the Vorticist school. Prior to the war he resided in London and broke bread with the talented Bohemians of that burg, and this article is composed of snippets of text from a remembrance written by his close friend, Ezra Pound.

David Lloyd George
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

An article that served to introduce American readers to the new British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George (1863 – 1945), who replaced the incompetent wartime leader Herbert Henry Asquith (1852 – 1928):

People had began to doubt whether or not Mr. Asquith had ‘the will to win’ the necessary determination to make all things work together to that end. There was no doubt in the case of Lloyd George. He had supported credit, he had supplied ammunition, he had inspired general confidence, he had reconciled the irreconcilable. The question arose whether or not the box seat on the coach of state should not be given to him.

The article concentrates primarily on the radical instinct and liberal leanings of Lloyd George, who is often remembered as the Prime Minister who laid the foundations of the British nanny-state.

In 1940 Lloyd George wrote an editorial in which he condemned the leaders of Europe for procrastinating rather than dealing with Hitler when Germany was still weak Click here to read it.

The Experiences of a Bombardier in the Young French Air Corps
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

In this letter from the artist Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1884 – 1949) the fellow explains thoroughly his thoughts and adventures as a bombardier in a Vosin bi-plane; experiences which contrast greatly with his days in the trenches and he writes well on the feelings of loneliness that an aviator can experience at 2000 feet.

For those who are interested in learning about the living conditions and daily life of World War One pilot officers this article can only help you.

Women Win Office in 1916
(The Nation, 1916)

A brief account of the 1916 November elections in the United States and how well women candidates fared, particularly in the West where gains where strongest:

The continued election of women to minor offices may be taken as showing that suffrage has increased the number of those from whom fit choices can be made.

1924 was a very important year for American women in politics…

The Tennis Blazer
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

This article dates to a the dear, dead days when tennis balls were white and landscapers (rather than diesel machinery) were relied upon to make tennis courts; it was also a time when the abilities of a skilled tailor were required for tennis clothing. These court-side stylists would not simply monitor the drape of tennis trousers but they would anticipate the unspoken needs of their tennis dandies – and in so doing, the tennis blazer was born.

Anti-Plagerism Legislation Introduced
(Photoplay Magazine, 1916)

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.

World War I Fashions: Summer, 1916
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

Ignoring the general unpleasantness taking place outside of town, the taste-makers of Paris soldiered-on as best they could, creating garments for the summer of 1916 that were both original and feminine and bore the mark of Paris’ characteristic opulence.

Click here to read about the New York fashions of 1916.

The Critics of the Russian Ballet
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

Man of letters and all-around swell-guy Frank Moore Colby (1865 – 1925) had a good time reading the flowery writing of the Ballet Connoisseurs who write for the New York papers…

New Portrait Busts by Jo Davidson
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

This single column reported on the 1916 busts that were created by the American sculptor Jo Davidson (1883 – 1952), during his tour of war-torn Europe.
By the end of the Twentieth Century, much of his work would be in the collections of many of the finest art museums, such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the U.S. Senate Art Collection and the National Statuary Hall, both in Washington.

Seussue Hayakawa
(Photoplay Magazine, 1916)

The attached article is about Sessue Hayakawa (1889 – 1973), the first Asian actor to achieve star status in Hollywood:

No, Sessue Hayakawa, the world’s most noted Japanese photoplay actor, does not dwell in a papier-mache house amid tea-cup scenery. He is working in pictures in Los Angeles, and he lives in a ‘regular’ bungalow, furnished in mission oak, and dresses very modishly according to American standards.