1939 – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

The Wonderful World of Adjectives
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

To grammarians, a verb is the strongest part of speech, but not to radio advertisers. In a survey of 15 national radio programs, the entertainment weekly VARIETY has found that adjectives receive the most voice emphasis and the most repetition. On one program, 28 adjectives were spoken in 15 minutes.

Click here to read about how the mass-marketing techniques of the W.W. I era was used to promote KKK membership…

‘The Tenth Man”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

This is a light history of the African-American people; weak in some spots, informative in others, it’s greatest value lies in telling the story of Blacks in the Thirties.

Because the colored race comprises almost a 10th of the population of the United States, sociologists sometimes refer to the Negro as ‘the Tenth Man.’ As such, he is little known to the other nine. Yet there are 12,500,000 colored persons in the nation – black, brown and some so white that 10,000 pass over the color line every year to take up life as whites.

No, Joe Biden, U.S. Relations With Germany Were Bad Before W.W. II
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

During the Presidential debate of October 22 (2020) Vice President Biden remarked that the American diplomatic corps made nice with Hitler up until the German invasion of Poland – the attached article from 1939 refutes this statement:

Eight months prior to the day when W.W. II would commence, diplomatic relations between Berlin and Washington got ugly; the carefully controlled German press declared that matters between the two camps were at their lowest point since 1917. Hitler’s diplomats demanded apologies and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee clarified the American position by stating that the American people have a general dislike for Fascism. The Department of the Navy announced that it was expanding its presence in the Atlantic.

The Man Behind Mussolini
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This short, slanderous profile of Italy’s Victor Emmanuel III (1869 – 1947) is accompanied by a caricature of the potentate:

He chose Mussolini in 1922 in preference to dictatorship by Premiere (Luigi) Facta, aided him in attaining supreme power…Hasn’t had any choice about anything since.

‘Cash and Carry”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Cash and carry was a diplomatic trade policy set in place by the FDR administration; it was crafted during a special session of the U.S. Congress on September 21, 1939, as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Act of 1937, by which belligerent parties would purchase only non-military goods from the United States so long as the client states in question paid in cash at the time of purchase and assumed full responsibility for transportation. The 1939 Cash and carry revision allowed for the purchasing of military arms to belligerents on the same cash-and-carry basis. The purpose of the policy was to maintain neutrality between the United States and European nations while giving aid to Britain by allowing them to buy non war materials.

Shortly after the 1940 election, British Prime Minister Churchill told FDR that Britain could no longer afford to buy military supplies under the code of cash and carry and a new agreement needed to be agreed upon. The President then persuaded Congress to swap cash-and-carry with Lend-Lease – a new piece of legislation that granted the president authority to sell, exchange, lend, or lease war materiel to any nation whose defense was vital to U.S. security.

Ignaz Paderewski
(Stage Magazine, 1939)

Here is an article on the last American concert tour of Polish pianist (and composer, diplomat and politician) Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1860 – 1941). The article concentrates on the amount of money pulled-in by the performer, both on this tour as well as previous ones; his legendary generosity and his monumental reputation.

Click here to read more about Paderewski and other pianists of 1915…

Click here to see what the first car radios look like.

Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
(Coronet Magazine, 1939)

Here is a profile of a very young Al Hirschfeld (1903 – 2003) – long-time NY Times caricaturist.

Munchkin Gossip
(Stage Magazine, 1939)

From the Hot From Hollywood page in STAGE MAGAZINE came this tidbit reporting on the curious events taking place on the sets of ‘The Wizard of Oz’:

The cast was extraordinary, from the stars Frank Morgan, Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley to Toto, the Carin Terrier. But of them all, the most utterly enchanting were the midgets, two hundred and twenty-five of them, with their doll faces, their plastered hair that looked as though it had been painted on their heads, the little felt flowers that grew out of their shoes, the bells that jingled from their sleeves. They, of course, were in costume for the good little Munchkins.

Another article about this incredible film can be read here…

The W.P.A. Arts Projects Closed Due to Communist Tampering
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This 1939 magazine article addressed the matter of the communist organization Workers Alliance perverting the arts organizations that operated within the Federal Works Projects Administration (WPA), thus forcing the government agency to close:

When the arts projects of the WPA were instituted, many capable and culturally progressive individuals throughout the country hailed them as a banner raised against the gloomy depression sky to form a rallying point for youthful and ambitious artists whose task it was to carry the torch of aesthetic advancement on to that future time when we envisaged the return of ‘prosperity’…yet the obvious control of the arts projects by the communist party through its stooge, the Workers Alliance has forced the hand of Congress to abolish the agency.

CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.

A Profile of Shirley Temple
(Film Daily, 1939)

As a phenomenon in the history of the show business and among all children, Shirley Temple (1928 – 2014) stands as absolutely unique. For four successive years she has led all other stars in the film industry as the number one box office attraction of the world. But Shirley’s influence has been wider than this – there is no country in the world, both civilized and uncivilized where at some time or another her pictures have not been shown.

In a few weeks Shirley’s fan mail reached avalanche proportions, with with the result in her next film, Bright Eyes, Shirley was starred. The old contract was torn up and the Temples were given a new one.

Hugh Harmon & Rudolf Ising: Animators
(Film Daily, 1939)

A short account regarding Hugh Harman (1903 – 1982) and Rudy Ising (1903 – 1992) who were a team of Oscar winning animators best known for founding the animation studios at Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In the last decade the animated cartoon has developed from its early grotesque form to its present lofty state and this development is really a miracle in art and achievement in entertainment… The significance of the animated cartoon can be realized only when we consider its world wide appeal and power of influence.

The same year this article went to press, Harmon-Ising produced their much admired anti-war cartoon, Peace on Earth.

Musslolini And The Pope: Friction
(Newsweek Magazine, 1939)

On June 29, 1931, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical letter that condemned Italian fascism’s “pagan worship of the State” and “revolution which snatches the young from the Church and from Jesus Christ, and which inculcates in its own young people hatred, violence and irreverence.” The Pope irritated Mussolini to a further degree by labeling the Italian Fascist government as anti-Catholic after Il Duce put the kibosh on numerous Catholic youth organizations throughout the land. A Truce was agreed upon but as Mussolini grew closer to the Nazis later in the decade, and the battle reemerged.

African-Americans During the Great Depression
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Written during the later years of the Great Depression, these columns summarize the sad lot of America’s Black population – their hardships, ambitions, leadership, and where they tended to live.

When the Depression struck, Negroes were the first to lose their jobs. Today, 1,500,000 colored adults are unemployed.

A 1938 article about the hardships of the Southern States during the Great Depression can be read here…

Click here to learn about the origins of the term Jim Crow.

A Military Genius?
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This is a small segment from a longer article on this site that can be read here.
Just months prior to the start of the Second World War, this anonymous correspondent asked, Is Hitler a strategic genius? For much of the following year many of Europe’s anointed would find themselves asking much the same question; but this reporter was not impressed with the man one jot and wished his readers to keep in mind that throughout the slaughterous environment provided by the Entente Powers of the 1914 – 1918 war, Hitler was entirely unable to rise above the rank of corporal – in spite of the fact that his regiment was losing a sergeant each day.

From Amazon: Hitler’s First War.

The Growth of the German Airforce
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

Published four months before Germany’s attack on Poland (September 1, 1939), this article outlines Hermann Goering’s efforts to build the Luftwaffe from scratch, the creation of various flight schools, the Luftwaffe collaboration with the Hitler Youth organization, and his aspirations to out-class the air forces of the United States and Britain. The article also addresses the business dealings of American manufacturers Boeing and Douglas Aircraft had with the German Luftwaffe.

Click here to read about the corrupt American corporations that aided the Nazi war machine during the 1930s.

Military Buildup in Germany
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

The German Army is the greatest enterprise in the world. It has a million employees on it’s payrolls, the active officers and soldiers, and, at a conservative estimate, feeds another million workers in the munitions industry. Actually the army employs all of Germany. Military needs alone determine the way of life in the besieged fortress into which 80 million Germans have more or less willingly formed themselves.

The German economist who made the rearmament possible was named Hjalmar Schacht, click here to read about him…

A Cartoonist Slams FDR
(Click Magazine, 1939)

Rube Goldberg (1883 – 1970), one of the iconic, Grand Master ink slingers from days of yore, applied his signature thought pattern to presidential politics in the creation of the attached FDR cartoon. Unlike President Roosevelt, Goldberg recognized that the New Deal was naive in their belief they could create and fund numerous government agencies that bedevil small businesses, reduce productivity, and fix prices while expecting the whole time that the national economy would bloom as a result.

The Free Speech Dilemma
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

The antisemitic radio ramblings of Father Charles Coughlin (1891 – 1979) prompted the brain trust of the nascent radio world to ponder deeply the differences between hate speech and free speech and where their responsibilities rested in the matter.