1939 – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

Horst Wessel: Nazi Martyr
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This 1939 article from Ken Magazine lays out the real story of the life and death of Nazi storm trooper Horst Wessel (1907 – 1930) – not the one believed by the fascists he left behind:

In Germany, 1930, a pimp killed another pimp for cutting in on his girl’s territory. The slain pimp was a Nazi named Horst Wessel. Then Hitler came into power, and propagandist Goebbels, in need of a ‘Hell-rouser’, dreamed up the Wessel legend, made him an official Nazi martyr-saint.’

Bauhaus Exhibit Smeared by Critics
(Art Digest, 1939)

With all the best wishes in the world, it is impossible to suppress the feeling that there is something essentially heavy, forced and repellent in most of the Bauhaus work. They are under suspicion of being modern for the sake of being modern and not because of any necessities of their system of living.

-so wrote the well-respected art critic Henry McBride (1867 – 1962) in response to the groundbreaking 1938 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, Bauhaus 1919 – 1928. McBride did not mince words in expressing his belief that the Bauhaus was not a genuine art school and that the MoMA showed poor judgment by lamenting it’s passing. McBride is remembered as having been a longtime advocate of modernism, a champion of the 1913 Armory Show, and supporter of the new and untried, but for him, the Bauhaus represented the art of the poseur.

Bauhaus Exhibit Smeared by Critics
(Art Digest, 1939)

Donald Budge: 1940s Tennis Champ
(Stage Magazine, 1939)

An article about Donald Budge (1915 – 2000), an American tennis champ active in the late 1930s who was ranked the World’s Number 1 player for five years, first as an amateur player and then as a pro. This article appeared in print in 1939, when the player’s best days were behind him.

Nazis Against the Christian Churches
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

As pastor of the little Austrian church, the good father was happy until Nazis swallowed the country, mistreated his Jewish converts and threw many of his colleagues into the dreaded concentration camp of Dachau. Shocked, he attempted to preserve a fragmentary picture of events for posterity – and found himself in Dachau. Similar episodes, which are today common throughout Nazidom, only succeed in stiffening the Catholic fight against Nazism.

Paul Terry: The Other Animator
(Film Daily, 1939)

A short profile on Paul Terry, torn from the pages of a prominent Hollywood trade rag:

During Paul Terry’s notable career in the film industry, he has produced more than 1,000 pictures. In October of the current year he celebrates 25 years of continuous work in the cartoon field, which he helped to pioneer.

Today, the fountain of Terry-Toons is a thoroughly modern studio in New Rochelle, employing some 130 hands, all skilled in the imparting of life, voice and voice expression to the characters created on the drawing boards.

Richard Julius Hermann Krebs Under the Nazi Boot
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

A first-hand account as to the daily goings-on at Hitler’s Plotzensee Prison.
Written by Jan Valtin (alias of Richard Julius Hermann Krebs: 1905 – 1951), one of the few inmates to make his way out of that highly inclusive address and tell the tale. Krebs was a communist in the German resistance movement who later escaped to New York and wrote a book (Out of the Night
) about his experiences in Nazi Germany.

The prisoner who has served his sentence is usually not released; he is surrendered to the Gestapo for an indefinite term in one of the concentration camps, preferably Sachsenhausen or Buchenwald. Incurable hard cases are sent to Dachau…

Growth and Expansion at the Walt Disney Company
(Film Daily, 1939)

Herein is a 1939 article from a defunct Hollywood trade magazine marking the construction of a 20 acre facility for the Disney studio in Burbank, California:

By 1930, the Walt Disney studio had grown in fantastic fashion. Instead of the 25 employees of 1929, there were now 40 people…By the end of the year there were 66 employees…In 1931 the total number of personnel had jumped to 106…When ‘The Three Little Pigs’ came along in 1933, the studio had grown 1,600 square feet of floor space in 1929, to 20,000 square feet. A hundred and fifty people were now turning out the Disney productions… In 1937, all the employees were still jostling each other… From around 600 employees in the summer of 1937, the organization had grown to almost 900 by the winter of 1938.

One Cartoonist’s View of Depression Era Hollywood…(Ken Magazine, 1939)

A full page drawing of the sound stage-spangled Hollywood landscape picturing all the usual suspects – the Hollywood glory girls, studio yes-men and sub-literate European starlets -all sweltering beneath the intense heat of the occidental sun.

Click here to see cartoons about the silent movie culture.

Click here to read historic magazine articles about American animated films.

Television with All It’s Possibilities
(Stage Magazine, 1939)

There wasn’t a single soul in 1939 would have imagined that television would be the sort of venue that would allow millions of strangers to see Tyra Banks get a breast exam, but that is the kind of institution it has become.

STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Alan Rinehart was astonished that so much dough was being invested in such a young industry, yet he recognized that T.V. was capable of much good, but was also capable of generating the kind of banality that we’re used to.

What then, will be the entertainment value of television?…What’s to be the entertainment? Why should we tune in? Will we get more than we will on the radio?…The revolutionary idea about television is that the medium has been developed before the art. It’s as if the piano had been invented before music, or paint and canvas before drawing.

Lindbergh’s Movie Contract
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

This article originally appeared in a well-known Hollywood fan magazine and was written by Lindbergh’s pal and business partner, Major Thomas G. Lanphier (1890 – 1972). It concerns the story of how one of the most ambitious movies of all times, starring America’s hero, Charles Lindbergh, was not made. The story goes that in 1927, the Lone Eagle signed a $1,000,000.00 Hollywood contract to make a movie about the history of aviation and would not be persuaded to do otherwise by any of his flying-peers, who all tended to believe that no good could come out of it. Slim finally saw the light and was released from his contractual obligations by non other than William Randolph Hearst (1863 – 1951):

Mr. Hearst asked no questions… He brought out the contract and tore it up in Lindbergh’s presence.
You are as much a hero to me, as to anyone else in the world…

Click here to read more articles from Photoplay Magazine.

Emily Post on Manners in the Movies
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

A 1939 magazine interview with America’s Mullah of manners, Emily Post (1872 – 1960) who was asked to give some criticism on the way etiquette is displayed on screen. She did not hold back; letting Hollywood have both barrels, La Post articulately opined about the poor choice of words the actors are required to spout, how humorously enormous so many of the living room sets always appear to be and how thoroughly inappropriate too many of the costumes are:

According to Miss Post, the worst offense committed against good manners is that of pretentiousness. She says, ‘Good manners are the outward expression of an inward grace. You can’t get them any other way. Probably that is why Shirley Temple, in that very first feature picture of hers, had charm that few can equal.’

Sometimes the mistakes Hollywood makes are not too serious, but usually they are ludicrous, and far too often they set bad examples for millions of ardent movie-goers.

Technicolor
(Film Daily, 1939)

Technicolor – conceived at Boston Tech and born in a rail way car in 1917, attained its majority, properly enough, 28 years later when Dr. Herbert Thomas Kalmus, president and founder, received the 1938 Progress Award from the Society of Motion Picture Engineers at its annual convention.

The story of Technicolor begins in 1915 when Dr. Kalmus and his associates became interested in a color process. Dr. Kalmus’ task was to find a suitable name, and, a Boston Tech man himself, he combined Technique, the engineering school’s class annual, and Color and so was born Technicolor.

Click here to read a about a particularly persuasive and

highly effective W.W. II training film…

Jimmy Stewart: Four Years in Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

Hollywood scribe Wilbur Morse, Jr. wrote this 1939 magazine profile of Jimmy Stewart (1908 – 1997). At the time of this printing, Stewart had dozens of stage credits and had been working in films for only four years; one year later he would be awarded an Oscar for his performance in PHILADELPHIA STORY:

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

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.