1929 – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

The Women’s Air Derby: Santa Monica to Cleveland
(Literary Digest, 1929)

To those of us living in the digital age, the concept that the pilots of an airplane race should be segregated by gender in order to compete seems just like a dictate from Sharia law – but for our great-grandfathers, it made perfect sense. This article is about the Women’s Air Derby of 1929, which had a list of women pilots that read like the Who’s Who of 1920s women aviation.

Amelia Earhart was one of the competitors.

The Rebirth of the Corset?
(The Nation, 1929)

This article is an editorial by an anonymous scribe at THE NATION who responded to a fashion article that appeared in the 1929 pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES declaring that skirts and dresses would once again sweep the floor, sleeves would button at the wrist and the corset was making a comeback after so many years on the lam:

There is in this genuine cause for mourning. It is too bad that modern women should again be salves to fashion; it is a pity that the female form, happily free of entanglements for half a dozen years, is in a fair way to go back to them.

Is Bobby Jones Losing Interest in Golf?
(Literary Digest, 1929)

The two page article attached herein addresses the meteoric rise of the American golf legend Bobby Jones (1902 – 1971). Said to have been a child prodigy in the game, he made his mark early, winning the 1923 U.S. Open against Bobby Cruickshank (1894 – 1975) at the age of 19. Trophies came to him effortlessly during the course of the following six years and, judging from the question posed above, the golf journalists were right: Bobby Jones was losing interest in the game – he would leave competitive golf the following year.

Prohibition Killings
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1929)

Two sources have been combined on one printable page in order to assess the body count that was created as a result of the murders that the prohibition laws had wrought. The complete number is not here – just the last four years:

1933, the year Prohibition was rescinded, seemed to have been the bloodiest year in this study – with 12,123 people murdered (being 9.6 per 1000,000 souls). The numbers began to drop from there: 1934 through 1936 saw a steady decline in urban homicide.

ZMC-2: The First All Metal Airship
(Literary Digest, 1929)

1929 saw the creation of the U.S. Navy airship ZMC-2, the first metal dirigible (aluminum alloy) of its kind:

Heretofore, the trend in dirigible construction has been toward larger and longer ships; the egg-shaped ZMC-2 can withstand the buffeting of the winds much better than her larger and more unwieldy sister ships.

Built by the Aircraft Development Corporation (Detroit), ZMC-2 was in use by the U.S. Navy until her retirement, in 1941.

Babe Ruth Ranks and his Peers
(Literary Digest, 1929)

The ten best players that Babe Ruth can pick from the major leagues go into an unofficial diamond hall of fame. Ruth started picking these teams as a result of a clubhouse argument…

That there has been no prejudice is best shown, I think, by the fact that I have named six men from the National League and only one from my own league, the American…I haven’t named a single man from my own club, the New York Yankees, the men who play alongside me day after day through the season.

A Census of Skyscrapers
(Literary Digest, 1929)

Egged on by the 1929 completion of the Chrysler building, the curious souls who ran the New York offices of THE LITERARY DIGEST were moved to learn more about skyscrapers, both in New York as well as other parts of the U.S. and We were surprised to learn that as of 1929

50 percent of the buildings in New York from 10 to 20 stories and 60 percent of those over 20 stories are located between 14th and 59th streets.

This article also presents statistical data concerning the number of tall buildings that could be found throughout the 1920s United States.

The Year of Sound
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1929)

The oddballs who read old Hollywood magazines from the year 1929 seem to all be in agreement that these magazines all shared the same frenzied, enthusiastic energy; something new and wonderful and unpredictable had been introduced and it was going to cause an enormous shake up in every movie capitol under the sun: sound.

But it was in the past year that the newest art, that of the silent drama, like prehistoric Man, stood up on it’s hind legs and began to talk. Like prehistoric man, it talked badly at first. But soon it’s words came a shade more fluently, and gradually they began, when arranged, to make a small degree of sense.

Read about the first talkie movie star: Mickey Mouse…

Rudy Vallee: ‘Vagabond Lover’
(Film Spectator, 1929)

It is not surprising to think that one of the first sound movies to be made had to consist of a plot that involved a musical number, and when put to the task of writing his review of VAGABOND LOVER (1929: RKO Pictures) the well respected film critic Welford Beaton dished-out some lukewarm opinions concerning it’s star, crooner/teen-idol Rudy Vallee (1901 – 1986):

The laddie’s face is set in a sort of perpetual sorrow which, added to the fact that he seldom looks the camera in the eye, makes him seem like the wraith of some calamity walking through the scenes. Only the voice is virile…