1939 – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

The appeal of James Stewart, the shy, inarticulate movie actor, is that he reminds every girl in the audience of the date before the last. He’s not a glamorized Gable, a remote Robert Taylor. He’s ‘Jim’, the lackadaisical, easy-going boy from just around the corner.

The above line was pulled from the attached article which was one of the first widely read profiles of Jimmy Stewart (James Maitland Stewart 1908 – 1997). Written four years after his arrival in the California dream factory and printed during the same year as his first encounter with the director Frank Capra in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, this article reveals that Stewart had a small town upbringing and was essentially the same character he played in It’s A Wonderful Life.

Booth Tarkington might have created Jim Stewart. He’s ‘Little Orvie and Billie Baxter’ grown up ‘Penrod’ with a Princeton diploma.

From Amazon: It’s a Wonderful Life: Favorite Scenes from the Classic Film

Oscars for 1938
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Attached is short report listing some of the highlights of the 11th Academy Awards ceremony that was held on February 23, 1939 in downtown Los Angeles:

• Director Frank Capra received his third Best Director statue for You Can’t Take It with You
.
• Walt Disney was awarded an Oscar for the best animated short film, Ferdinand The Bull – in addition to a special award for his innovative work on
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

• The Best Screenplay Oscar went to Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw for his efforts on Pygmalion.

An amusing, if blasphemous, article about the 1938 Oscars can be read here…

Adolf Hitler: Millionaire
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

Der Fuhrer boasts of his impecuniosity, but the fact is that royalties from his book, Mein Kampf and investments in German real-estate and industrial firms make him one of Germnay’s wealthiest men. This money is deposited throughout Europe in 15 bank accounts under three names…

The March of Time: Newsreel Journalism
(Film Daily, 1939)

The attached magazine article first appeared in the long-forgotten Hollywood trade rag Film Daily and concerns the 1930s newsreel production company The March of Time:

Since the beginning of the motion picture, the newsreel has been recognized as a vital medium of public information. Movie goers demand it. But, by the very nature of its technique and the swiftness with which it brings today’s events to the screen, the newsreel can give little more than headline news. And so it has created among movie-goers a desire to see more.

It was this desire ‘to see more’ that led the founders of ‘The March of Time’ to launch their new kind of pictorial journalism…The first issue appeared in some 400 theaters throughout the United States on February 1, 1935.

Sunglasses Make Their Mark in the Fashion World
(Click Magazine, 1939)

Although sunglasses had slowly inched their way forward in popularity since the late Twenties, the attached article declared that by 1939 sunglasses were officially recognized as a full-fledged fashion accessory when the Hollywood stars Joan Bennet and Hedy Lamar began to sport them around town.

Like T-shirts and khaki pants, it would be W.W. II that would provide sunglasses with a guaranteed spot on fashion stage for the next sixty-five years.

Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.

Japanese Spies on the West-Coast
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

A 1939 magazine article that reported on the assorted activities of Japanese spies operating around the Tijuana/San Diego region (their presence was well-documented by the Mexican military in addition to the F.B.I.).

A year and a half before the Pearl Harbor attack, Naval Intelligence sold a Japanese agent some bogus plans of the naval installation – more about this can be read here.

The Great Depression and American Communists
(Click Magazine, 1939)

This photo-essay tells the story of the radical elements within the United States during the later period of the Great Depression – all of them were directed and financed by Georgi Dimitrov (1882 – 1949) in far-off Moscow. The leaders of the American Communist Party USA (CPUSA) were William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, and Ella Reeve Bloor.

In 1944, the city of Seattle, Washington elected a communist to the U.S. House of Representatives, click here to read about him…

Click here to learn how thoroughly the FBI had infiltrated the CPUSA.

Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who pontificated on every street corner during the Great Depression…

Click here to read about the tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression…

From Amazon: Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Union Party, 1932-1936,

MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939)

The art that Hitler has exiled as ‘degenerate’ is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe’s twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.

The article lists the purchased works.

Click here to read about the Nazi Art Battalions…

MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939)

The article lists the purchased works.

Click here to read about the Nazi Art Battalions…

MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939)

The article lists the purchased works.

Click here to read about the Nazi Art Battalions…