Articles from 1931
Preferring not to be found face-down in the Chicago River, this journalist wrote a very middle-of-the-road sort of article about Al Capone following the thug’s 1931 conviction on tax evasion.
The well-loved Christian author Helen Walker Homan wrote this very charming essay about Saint Peter:
Saint Peter knows that the very fact that he, of all the Apostles, has been the most frequent subject of jokes by mankind, is only an added proof that he has been the most beloved of mankind.
Click here to read a second article about the great migration.
A short notice compiled from figures collected at the end of 1928 showed that Germany was the all-time global-champion when it came to suicide:
In that year 16,036 persons in Germany committed suicide. This is an average of 44 a day or 39 for each 100,000 persons in the country…
Written at a time when it was widely recognized that the silent film era had finally run it’s course and talking pictures were here to stay, the film critic for the Sunday Express (London) stepped up to the plate and heaped praise on the Hollywood film colony for having produced such an abundance of sorely-needed comedies which allowed Europe to get through some difficult times:
While German films were steeped in menacing morbidity and Russian films wallowed in psychopathic horrors; while Swedish film producers turned to Calvinistic frigidities, and Britain floundered in apologetic ineptitude…Hollywood’s unfailing stream of fun and high spirits has kept the lamp of optimism burning in Europe.
Heaven knows that the average American had it tough during 1931. The Great Depression was coming down hard on them – but the harshest blow came from our neighbor to the North who rejected our manner of spelling!
When this interview appeared on the newsstands, Jean Harlow (1911 – 1937) had fifteen credits under her belt (most of them short films) and only six years left until she would assume room temperature as a result of kidney failure. Written by the PHOTOPLAY reporter Leonard Hall (who would like us to believe that he was a Hollywood studio psychiatrist), this is a light and breezy two page interview conducted at the New Yorker Hotel at a time when that establishment appealed to Hollywood Royalty.
Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.
[President Hoover’s Secretary of Labor, William N. Doak] placed the number of aliens now illegally residing in the United States at 400,000. Of this number he thought 100,000 were subject to deportation… The illegal entries were made, he said, under the quota laws of 1921 and 1924, the larger part coming through Mexico and Canada, while ship’s deserters amounted to about 11,000>
To a regular cinema-goer in the era of silent films, attendance at the motion-picture playhouse today is a continuously disturbing experience…The discovery that the shadowy images of the screen could be made articulate was as fruitful for exploitation to the captains of the cinema industry as was the realization that women would wear long skirts to the couturiers. …Paramount alone has already announced 243 releases for next season, double the number issued this year, and other companies are following suit.
Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.
Two remarkably brief paragraphs concerning the required military training of the average American Doughboy throughout the course of America’s blessedly short participation in the First World War:
The average American soldier who went to France received six months of training in this country before he sailed. After he landed overseas he had two months of training before entering the battle line. The part of the battle line that he entered was in a quiet sector and here he remained one month before going into an active sector and taking part in hard fighting.
Click here to read a 1918 magazine article about the Doughboy training camps.
In a statement for the month of December, President Green of the Federation of Labor placed the number of unemployed at about 5,000,000; estimated that incomes of wage earners had declined over $6,000,000,000 in the past year and said about 50 percent of trade union members had had to lower their standard of living because of lowered incomes.
Prior to reading this PHOTOPLAY article we were convinced that Oliver Stone’s Vietnam war film, PLATOON (1986) was the first production of it’s kind to actually take the effort to school all cast and extras as to the horrors of war; however it seems that this unique distinction goes to All Quiet on the Western Front.
In this interview the seven leading cast members discuss how the making of that movie disturbed each of them in profound ways:
We went into that picture a group of average wise-cracking fellows. We didn’t come out that way…
A small notice has been added that announced that the movie had been banned in Austria.
A 1929 review of the book can be read here
Prior to reading this PHOTOPLAY article we were convinced that Oliver Stone’s Vietnam war film, PLATOON (1986) was the first production of it’s kind to actually take the effort to school all cast and extras as to the horrors of war; however it seems that this unique distinction goes to All Quiet on the Western Front.
In this interview the seven leading cast members discuss how the making of that movie disturbed each of them in profound ways:
We went into that picture a group of average wise-cracking fellows. We didn’t come out that way…
A small notice has been added that announced that the movie had been banned in Austria.
A 1929 review of the book can be read here
A diagram pulled from a 1931 U.S. Government study indicating the number of soldiers in the American Army each month from 1917 through 1919, and the number of Doughboys who were deployed in Europe.
Click here to read an interview with the World War I American fighter pilot Eddy Rickenbacker.
Attached is a map of the 48 states that will show you which regions of the country produced the greatest number of healthy men who passed their Selective Service physical examinations. You will also learn which parts of the nation provided men who could not pass this examination.
Attached is a graph comparing the amount of time it took for both the British Army and the American Army to have 2,000,000 soldiers on the Western Front during World War One:
The British sent to France many more men in their first year in the war than we did in our first year. On the other hand, it took England three years to reach a strength of 2,000,000 men in France and the United States accomplished it in one half the time.
