Justice Charles Evans Hughes
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
More articles about FDR Supreme Court scheme can be read here…… KEY WORDS: Justice Charles Evans Hughes magazine article,Justice Charles […]
1937
Articles from 1937
New York City Bars at Four in the Morning…
(Stage Magazine, 1937)
Tickled by the New York laws that prohibited bars from serving spirits between the hours of 4:00 to 8:00 a.m., this correspondent for Stage Magazine, Stanley Walker, sallied forth into the pre-dawn darkness of a 1937 Manhattan wondering what kind of gin mills violate such dictates. He described well what those hours mean for most of humanity and then begins his catalog of establishments, both high and low, that cater to night crawlers.
For something a shade rougher, more informal, smokier: Nick’s Tavern, at 140 Seventh Avenue South [the building went the way of Penn Station long ago], dark and smoky, with good food and carrying on in the artistic traditions of the old speakeasies.
Click here to read about the arrest and conviction of New York’s high society bootleggers.
The Five Wealthiest Counties
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
During the summer of 1937 the U.S. Census Bureau released the data that was compiled by it’s business department concerning the payrolls dolled out by the nation’s wealthiest industries in 1935. The information gleaned from these payrolls indicated which were the five richest counties in the country based on personal income. These small municipalities could be found in two Eastern states, two Mid-Western states and one Western state.
Jump ahead to our own time and you’ll learn how much the game has changed: today the top five wealthiest counties in the United States are all located in the Maryland and Virginia Suburbs that lie just outside the District of Columbia!
‘Noses, Eyes, Chins”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Practicing throughout the Thirties and Forties, fashion photographer Arthur O’Neil took time out from his glamorous day to explain to an inquiring journalist what his requirements are when looking for a fashion model:
The prettiest girls, according to O’Neil, are between 16 and 28 and come mostly from the Middle West…
A Soviet Need to Update
(The Literary Digest, 1937)
While strong on land and in the air, [the Soviet Union] is weak on the water. Most Russian ships are World War or pre-War in origin, and many of her best vessels are in the Baltic, facing Germany, or in the Far East, where Japan looms up.
Military Buildup in Switzerland
(Literary Digest, 1937)
Little Switzerland will not be caught as Belgium was in 1914. The ‘Isle of Peace’, home of the League of Nations that was to forge all nations of the world together into a chain of amity, is fortifying her frontiers to the tune of war-rumbles. The army and air forces are being expanded in preparation for that ‘inevitable’ war Europe seems to be resigned to. She realizes that the only way to preserve her peace is to be prepared to fight for it.
A Swiss statesman, in an interview with correspondents, summed up his individual reaction, which probably holds good for the majority of the population, when he said:
War will come. We will try to stay out at any price, save our liberty. The moment a foreign soldier crosses our border, we will fight.
And you may rest assured that we shall fight to the last man.
Federal Housing
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
At present the Federal Housing Administration is sponsoring the building of more than 1,000 small demonstration houses in as many cities, with the cost to range from $2,500 to $3,500. It is the belief of the belief of the FHA that 71.2 percent of American families have incomes permitting the purchase of homes costing less than $5,000.
Yet, regardless of the degradation of the Great Depression, the United States was still an enormously wealthy nation…
The Hollywood Leg Gag
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Here is a 1937 article that reminds us that there wasn’t anything left to chance or improvisation under the old studio system:
One of the oldest newspaper publicity devices is the ‘leg display’. Resorted to chiefly by actresses whose press agents want them to break into print, it consists of nothing more than arriving in New York aboard an ocean liner and letting news photographers do the rest.
The adoration of the Feminine Leg began some twenty yeras earlier with the flappers; click here to read more on this topic…
The Era of the Dictators
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
If necessity can be called the mother of invention, then deep public dissatisfaction can be called the mother of the authoritarian or ‘totalitarian’ state. In Europe, the [First] World War resulted in post-war conditions that walked arm-in-arm with profound social change. The aftermath was a great political and economic headache that grew slowly in intensity until it lead people to embrace anything that promised a cure… In Europe there are no less than 11 nations operating under systems far removed from democracy as we know it in this country.
Mickey Mouse Banned in Yugoslavia
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Due to a highly involved and convoluted Mickey Mouse comic strip plot that we can’t possibly begin to understand in the least – but in 1937 managed to offend the crowned heads of the Karađorđević Dynasty in far-off Yugoslavia, all matters Mickey (films, books, comics, etc) were soon banned from the kingdom.
Farmers in Flight
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
A report from the regional directors of the Resettlement Administration (an arm of the FDR’s Department of Agriculture) stated that:
15,000 farmers have moved out of the Dakotas, Western Kansas and Eastern Montana, leaving soil which because a aridity or exhaustion could not yield any crop… [Having moved to the states of the Pacific Northwestern] Some of them are squatting in shacks and makeshift dwellings made of tree branches, stray boards [and] strips of tin.
Her Favorite Movies
(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)
The cinematic tastes of ER II are, like the sovereign herself, deep and complicated. A vast number of geeks employed by this website were sent forth far across the deep green sea in order to find out what her favorite movies are, and we were not at all surprised to learn that she favors the James Bond films. Contrast those movies with the earliest of her film choices and you will be able to trace her development through the years – another article on this page makes clear that she enjoyed the Shirley Temple series – but hold the phone: the attached article from THAT SAME YEAR indicates that she enjoyed A DIFFERENT MOVIE AS WELL!
Social Washington During the Depression
(Literary Digest, 1937)
Washington Society, long shackled, kicked the lid off last week, swung into the most dazzling season it has had since the Depression spawned bread lines, and knocked the wealthy back on their heels.
Money is spinning again; hostesses are plotting major campaigns; diamonds and pearls are coming out for renewed display; caviar and terrapin reign supreme once more…
Click here to read about American high society during the Depression years.
The Marx Brothers & the Joke Development Process
(Stage Magazine, 1937)
A late Thirties article by Teet Carle (the old publicist for MGM) on how the brothers Marx figured out which gag created the biggest laughs; a few words about how the movies were tested in various cities prior to each release and how assorted jokes were recited to all manner of passersby for their effect.
Click here to read a 1951 article that Harpo Marx wrote about Groucho.
I936 Saw A Wee-Bit of Prosperity
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
This article sums up the income data that was collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce and published in June of 1937. The report stated that
The national income increased in 1936 by a larger amount, absolutely and relatively, than in 1935. Income produced rose to 63.8 billion dollars, an increase of 8.8 billion dollars, an increase over the 1935 total.
A chart has been provided.
Click here to read about the economic disaster that 1937 was
False Hope for 1937
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Perhaps it was the practice of magazine editors during the Great Depression to instruct their reporters to find hope where none existed; that must have been the case for this article. The unnamed journalist who wrote this slender column reported on a few rare cases involving real jobs with real salaries being offered to recent graduates; the reporter wished to believe that this was a sign that the end was nigh – but these few jobs were flukes. The author saw economic growth where there really wasn’t any at all, however he certainly made the case for its existence. The title link posted above leads to a passage from FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression
Polish Jews Face Dismal Future
(Literary Digest, 1937)
The old-style pogroms which made the life of Polish Jews a nightmare under the Czars have died out, yet the terror of Antisemitism still haunts their three million men, women and children, one-tenth of the country’s population.
Now they are a race apart, isolated, according to Sholem Asch (1880- 1957), a Yiddish writer who recently visited the country, like lepers. Young women in the Warsaw Ghetto look like dried skeletons, he says. Rickety children save scraps of bread from their free school lunches to feed their parents at night.