1940

Articles from 1940

The Biz
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

Pulled from the business section of a 1940 issue of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE was this list of Hollywood statistics that should be of interest to all you old movie fans. If you’ve ever wondered how the Dream Factory fared following the Great Depression, you can stop scratching your head bone – herein you will learn how many souls were on Hollywood’s payroll, how many movies did the town make each year (give or take), what percentage of global film production was turned out by Hollywood and how many American movie theaters were there in 1940.

The Great Native-American Athletes of the Early 20th Century
(American Legion Magazine, 1940)

Idolized, publicized, dramatized, picturesque members of a fast diminishing aboriginal race, they were the white man’s heroes. But the white man’s adulations and his indulgences helped write ‘finis’ prematurely on the records of some of them even as his vices quickened the racial degeneration of their stock.

Sockalexis, Thorpe, Bender, Longboat and Meyers! There were scores of other notable Indian athletes from ’93 to 1915, but the names of those five were household words in the early days of the new century.

Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians
(American Legion Magazine, 1940)

This football article recounts the glory days of Jim Thorpe (1888 – 1953) and his Carlisle football team as well as a number of other Native-American jocks of lesser fame who were active in other sports during the same time period.

A remarkable all-around athlete, Jim Thorpe at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania was a whiz at reversing his field or skirting an end, and there was bonecrunching power behind his charges into the line. He could punt with any of them and was a good drop kicker. But it was as a place kicker that he was really tops. He rarely missed one.


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The Designs of Gustav Jensen
(Coronet Magazine, 1940)

High-Ranking in the roll-call of New York’s industrial designer is a six-foot Dane with the voice of a Viking. Gustav Jensen is an artist, whether he is talking, eating, or performing Herculean labors in cleaning out Plebeian Stables. The creed of the industrial designer is that every implement of modern life can be made into a work of art. Jensen has pursued this creed to fabulous extremes. He has designed kitchen sinks, that have been compared to Renaissance caskets, and he meditates for months before he designs a doorknob….


The article is illustrated with eleven photographs; the image on the right shows Jensen’s design for a table model radio: The radio is a miracle. It should look like a miracle, remarked the designer.

The War in Winter
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

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Lloyd George on the Nazi Blitzkrieg
(Click Magazine, 1940)

In this article, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863 – 1945) lambasts the leaders of Britain and France for blundering their way into the Second World War having failed to cut Hitler off at the knees on any number of previous occasions:

It is just over twenty-one years ago that France and Britain signed the Armistice with Germany which brought to an end the bloodiest war in history. They are now fighting essentially the same struggle… It is no use keeping up the pretense that things are going well for the democratic cause. We are suffering not from one blunder, but from a series of incredible botcheries. It is a deplorable tale of incompetence and stupidity.

Lloyd George singled-out Chamberlain with particular contempt, while presenting his thoughts about Hitler and Mussolini, the German Blitzkrieg and Soviet neutrality

In Defense of Modern Architecture
(Coronet Magazine, 1940)

Living, as he did, at a time when the average American homeowner was more inclined to prefer a ranch house over a machine for living that those vulgar, snail-eating European modernists were capable of creating, American architect George Frederick Keck (1895 – 1980) saw fit to write this spirited defense on behalf of modern design. Playing the part of a modernist missionary seeking to convert the heathens, Keck argued that his tribe of architects – with their understanding of contemporary building materials and respect for simplicity – were suited to create a better standard of living for one and all.

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