Articles from 1922
VANITY FAIR’s Edmund Wilson (1895 – 1972), reported his view on Dada as it existed in Paris, the influence of Jazz and the art of Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963). The article is subtitled:
The Influence of Jazz and Americanization of French Literature and Art
While debating the 1922 issue of benefits to be paid to the American W.W. I veterans, this record of salary and the post-war benefits paid by the other combatant nations was distributed to members of Congress.
While debating the 1922 issue of benefits to be paid to the American W.W. I veterans, this record of salary and the post-war benefits paid by the other combatant nations was distributed to members of Congress.
I predict increasing ferment and unrest throughout all Islam; a continued awakening to self-consciousness; an increasing dislike for Western domination.
So wrote Lothrop Stoddard (1883 – 1950), an author who was very much a man of his time and tended to gaze outside the borders of Western Civilization with much the same vision as his contemporary Rudyard Kipling, seeing the majority of the world’s inhabitants as the white man’s burden. Yet, for all his concern on the matter of Anglo-Saxon hegemony, he seemed to recognize the growing discontent in Islam, even if he was some sixty years early.
This new form of illusion cannot be called an art. Without the magic of the human voice, without the reality of the human form, lacking in color sound and poetry the film is purely an ocular illusion, an effect of light.
Another anti-silent film article can be read here…
Click here to read a 1939 article about an alumni organization for the pioneers of silent films.
Not pacifists, but soldiers, have signed what several editors term one of the most striking and remarkable appeals for peace that have come to their tables.
Veterans of the 1914-1918 slaughter called for their respective governments to oppose territorial aggrandizement and demanded that an international court be established to outlaw war; following the establishment of said court, the immediate effort to disarm and disband sea and air forces and destroy the implements of warfare should begin. The American Legion Commander-in-Chief, Alvin Owsley (1888 – 1967), was among the signators.
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
A couple of years after the membership lists of the Ku Klux Klan had swelled to record levels, and just seven years after a chic Hollywood film director made a movie that ennobled their crimes,the Administrative Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America issued a statement which served to distance the Protestant churches from that hate-filled organization.
From Amazon: Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930
An in-depth interview with the great silent film comedian Harold Lloyd (1893 – 1971) accompanied by a seldom seen picture of the man WITHOUT his glasses (he didn’t really need them).
One blogger read the attached article and wrote the following:
I’ve never read this before – it’s great. It’s always good to hear Harold’s own thoughts on his films; I enjoyed his description of the stunt he did in on top of the locomotive at the mouth of an approaching tunnel in the film Now or Never. It’s a spectacularly funny gag, but we sometimes forget the effort that went into these scenes; Harold was one comedy star who was prepared to suffer for his art!
Prior to the creation of cosmetic surgery, with odd procedures like tummy tucks and butt lifts, there was Helena Rubenstein (1871 – 1965), who had a long and stunning career in the cosmetic business and who is remembered for once having said:
There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.
In this interesting 1922 interview, the matron saint of cosmetics made some very bright remarks on the issue of beauty, glamor and vanity.
When the Five O’Clock Whistle Blows in Hollywood is attached;
it appeared in VANITY FAIR eight years after Hollywood was declared the film capital of the world.
This single page cartoon was created by one of the great American caricaturists of the Twenties: Ralph Barton, and all the kingpins of the young empire are depicted (among others): Douglas Fairbanks, Marry Pickford, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels, Bill Hart, Wallace Reed, Gloria Swanson, Nazimova, Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Fatty Arbuckle and the writer Rupert Hughes.
Lording above them all, and represented simply by jodhpurs and riding boots, stands the founder of the feast – Cecil B. DeMille (and his brother).
