Collier’s
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1938)
From Scribner’s on-going series from 1938, Magazines That Sell came this brief history of the crowd-pleasing weekly, Collier’s (1888 – 1957).
1938
Articles from 1938
‘Class Magazines”
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1938)
This article looks at the rise of Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and House & Garden – recognizing them as highly unique publications for their time. Special attention is paid to publisher Condé Nast and his meteoric rise during the early 20th Century.
The class magazines exude an aura of wealth and their circulations, therefore, are limited. They cater to the fit though few and they do this with slick paper, excellent illustrations and a sycophantic reverence for Society – at thirty-five to fifty cents a copy.
Click here to read about Fortune Magazine…
Threat of Nationalizing
(Liberty Magazine, 1938)
In the winter of 1938, when one of FDR’s anointed Brain Trusters made an off-the-cuff remark that the Federal Government would take over industry if the economy did not turn around, it must have alarmed many of the industry captains and sent the stock market through the floor. It also moved the eccentric Bernarr MacFadden (1868 – 1955) to put a fresh ribbon in his typewriter and have at it:
The present administration has made a ghastly failure of the business management of this government. It has increased the national indebtedness at the rate of five to ten million dollars every day. It has added more than twenty thousand million dollars to our national debt, and it probably has twenty million or more of our citizens on the dole, or in charity jobs, which is the dole in another form.
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Thoughts On Hitler
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
For the sixth time in his life, Ken Magazine‘s far-flung correspondent, W. Burkhardt, found himself cast in the roll as guest of the deposed king of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 – 1941). After exchanging pleasantries, their conversation turned to weightier topics, such as contemporary German politics and it was at that time that Ken‘s man in Doorn recognized his moment:
Suddenly, sensing a chance I may never have again, I pose the question:
And yourself, Sire, what do you think of him?
Nichts!
Click here to read about the fall of Paris…
The Okies and the Dust Bowl
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
The other half of California’s 200,000 migratory workers are farmers who trekked from the dust bowl area; they found work on farms, but not farming; it’s seasonal piecework, like in a mill. Each Oklahoma nomad dreams of a cottage and a cow, but he’s just sitting on a barbed wire fence. With the publicity over, the government has forgotten the dust bowl refugees. At Depression depth, a man might make $8 a week; now, $5 is lucky. They are the bitterest folk in America; blood may flow…
Click here if you would like to read a 1940 article about the the finest movie to ever document the flight of the Okies: The Grapes of Wrath.
The Imperial Wizard
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
Fat, shrewd-smiling, garrulous Old Doc Evans (Hiram Evans, 1881 – 1966) is still Emperor and Imperial Wizard, but he’s now apparently only fronting for a Big Boss who has some sensational new plans which have already begun to click. Once again the Klan is holding hands with politicians all over the country, but the hand-holding is being done under the table. The big drive begins in May
The Oscars: Hollywoods Self-Adoration Fest
(Stage Magazine, 1938)
A tongue-in-cheek magazine article from 1938 about The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and their annual gala devoted to over-confidence, The Oscars. Written eleven years after the very first Academy Award ceremony, and published in a magazine that catered to New York theater lovers, the article was penned by an unidentified correspondent who was not very impressed by the whole affair but managed to present a thorough history of the award nonetheless.
Director Frank Capra was awarded his third trophy at the 1938 Oscars…
Where the Stars Shopped…
(Photoplay Magazine, 1938)
ONE MILE EAST of Sunset Plaza was a Hollywood hangout called Schwab’s Drugtore – read about it here…– from Amazon:Read
‘Americans All”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)
In an effort to keep the writers and actors of the Works Progress Administration busy, FDR’s Department of the Interior produced a 26-part radio program intended to prove that America could never have become so great without the contributions of all the various hyphenated groups that make up the country. On Sunday afternoon throughout much of 1938, Americans could gather around their radios, if they had them, and hear their identity groups being praised by the Government: African-Americans tuned in on December 18th; the WASP show was on December fourth.
Their Freaky Religion
(Literary Digest, 1938)
Last spring the Third Reich recognized a third official state religion: a neo-pagan cult based on Thor, Wotan, Siegfried and the old Nordic gods. It was especially favored by ultranazis and by Hitler’s black-shirted bodyguards, the Schutzstaffel or S.S. corps. The other two official German religions are Catholic and Protestant Evangelical, whose proponents today are deadlocked in combat with the up and coming neopagans.
Labor Abuses in the South
(Focus Magazine, 1938)
Many of the back-handed dealings that would be addressed in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath are illustrated in the attached photo-essay titled, Slavery in America. This article is about the cruel world of the Deep South that existed in the Twenties and Thirties. It was an agrarian fiefdom where generations of White planters and factory owners practiced the most un-American system of exploitation and feudalism that developed and was perpetuated from the chaos wrought by the Civil War and Reconstruction. It was a nasty place where the working people of both races labored under conditions of peonage and bone-crushing poverty with no hope in sight.
Click here to read more about the American South during the Great Depression.
The Maginot Line Will Save Us
(Literary Digest, 1938)
The Maginot Line will permit calm French mobilization, experts say, in the event of a crisis. It may be noted, from a study of these forts on a map, that the chief point of concentration is approximately opposite the reoccupied Rhine zone. The Paris newspaper, Le Soir, says that no army can break down the Maginot Line.
Click here to read an article about French confidence in the Maginot Line.
The Red Caps
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
The history of the African American baggage handlers called Red Caps is a sad story in American social history. The Red Caps had been around since the 1890s and they were assigned the task of carrying luggage to and from trains and taxis; this article points out that in the Thirties, one of every three of them had a college degree:
Red Caps did not go to college to learn how to be Red Caps. Their problem is a racial one. To the white, a job toting luggage is a poor way to eke out an existence. To the black, red capping is one of the ‘big’ fields open. The white man who works as a porter can do nothing else, as a rule; the Negro almost invariably can do something else but can’t get it to do.
Dorie Miller was an African-American hero during the Second World War, click here if you would like to read about him.
Elmer Wheeler, Word Chemist
(Literary Digest, 1938)
For ten years it has been Elmer Wheeler’s profession to find out for his clients what words, spoken across the counter, will sell merchandise. It is shrewd psychology applied to a neglected link in the chain of business…:
Don’t ask if, ask which. Don’t ever give the customer the choice between something and nothing.
Wheeler knows he alone is not the gate keeper of successful sales pitches – he recalled seeing a blindman with a sign reading, It’s spring, and I am blind.
Life in Hitlerland
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
It’s a prison or a concentration camp if they catch you tuned in on a forbidden radio program in Hitlerland. And they will take your driver’s license away if even once you are overheard making a careless or joking remark that could be interpreted as ‘out of sympathy with the spirit of the new state’. So even in the apparently private little world bounded by the turning wheels of your own closed car, you must think long and hard like a badgered witness under cross-examination, before you dare open your mouth…
Click here to read what life was like in Mussolini’s Italy in 1938…
Only Über-Blondes Need Apply…(Ken Magazine, 1938)
This article covers a weird Nazi scheme to create the future rulers of the Reich. It is such a bizarre plan and it seemed to us that if it weren’t true, we would have had to rely on Robert Ludlum to dream it up for us:
The idea took root in the fertile brain of Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, also known as the ‘Limping Devil’…’Heroes are both born and trained’, is the Nazi slogan. The future leaders are taken under the government’s wings at the age of ten.’
-and over a period of about twelve years they would have been dragged around from one Harry Potter-style-castle to another being schooled in Nazi dogma and all other assorted Nordic pagan weirdness and then, after having jumped through a number of additional Teutonic hoops, they would be posted in top government positions.
A fascinating look into the queer thinking of the Nazi hierarchy.
A second article about the Adolf Hitler Schools can be read here
CLICK HERE to read about the beautiful Blonde Battalions who spied for the Nazis…
Re-Touching the Pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
Perhaps, one day in that perfect world we seem to be rushing to, all cameras will automatically delete our blemishes, correct our tailoring flaws and add muscle tone as needed to each imperfect image; but until that time, we, like the Duke of Windsor and all manner of other celebrity, must rely on the charitable instincts of the fourth estate. This article pertains to bad pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the courtesy that was, for the most part, extended to them to make them appear just a little bit more glam than they otherwise appeared. The article is illustrated with one bad photograph and one retouched (Photoshopped) image of the couple, so that we might all know what the editors were up against:
Immediately after their marriage Edward and Wally posed for the newsreels. When their pictures were flashed on American screens, Wally was seen to have a large mole on the left side of her face and the Duke stood revealed with a much-wrinkled and worried countenance…
Re-Touching the Pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
Perhaps, one day in that perfect world we seem to be rushing to, all cameras will automatically delete our blemishes, correct our tailoring flaws and add muscle tone as needed to each imperfect image; but until that time, we, like the Duke of Windsor and all manner of other celebrity, must rely on the charitable instincts of the fourth estate. This article pertains to bad pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the courtesy that was, for the most part, extended to them to make them appear just a little bit more glam than they otherwise appeared. The article is illustrated with one bad photograph and one retouched (Photoshopped) image of the couple, so that we might all know what the editors were up against:
Immediately after their marriage Edward and Wally posed for the newsreels. When their pictures were flashed on American screens, Wally was seen to have a large mole on the left side of her face and the Duke stood revealed with a much-wrinkled and worried countenance…