Articles from 1941
A few weeks before this article went to press, actor Jimmy Stewart had been told by the hardy souls at the U.S. Army induction center that he was ten pounds under weight – too light for a man of his stature (6’4). A few visits to Chasens, among other assorted Hollywood eateries and he was all set to qualify as the first Hollywood star to enter the U.S. Army Air Corps.
During the summer of 1941, the Nazis closed all nine of the Christian Science churches in the city of Berlin.
The attached article is by novelist Richard DeWitt Miller (1910 – 1958) who assembled a number of anecdotes and first-hand accounts from people of various backgrounds who had all experienced singularly unique moments in their lives that were unworldly; happenings that could only serve as evidence that there exists a life after this one.
Five months before The United States entered the war, the government in Washington had foresight enough to remove silk from the consumer market. Silk would be badly needed for the manufacturing of parachutes and gunpowder bags.
More about silk on the W.W. II home front can be read here…
In writing the attached article for Collier’s, FDR made his feelings clear that he felt a deep sense of urgency to alleviate the collective pain spreading across the nation as a result of the Great Depression. Believing that it was the Supreme Court that was prolonging the agony of the American unemployed, FDR quickly began to examine all his options as to how he could best secure a majority on the court:
Here was one man, not elected by the people, who by a nod of the head could apparently ify or uphold the will of the overwhelming majority of a nation of 130,000,000.
Time would not allow us to wait for vacancies. Things were happening.
Click here to read about American
communists and their Soviet overlords.
To read the U.S. magazines and newspapers printed in 1941 is to gain an understanding as to the sixth sense many Americans had in predicting that W.W. II would soon be upon them – and this article is a fine example. One month before Pearl Harbor the editors of AMERICAN MAGAZINE ran this column about Lauretta Schimmoller (1902 – 1981) who established the Aerial Nurse Corps of America, which, at that time, was composed of over 400 volunteers:
All air-minded registered nurses, they stand ready to fly with medical aid to scenes of disaster…Now established on a nation-wide scale, ANCOA, with its 19 national chapters, has already handled more than 3,000 emergency cases.
April 1917 was Britain’s blackest month in the [First] World War… March 1941 seemed in many ways another grim month like April, 1917, perhaps even worse. Once more Britain faced peril on the sea – a danger which struck home deeper than any defeat of their armies on foreign soil… Not only German U-boats but German battle cruisers have crossed to the American side of the Atlantic and have already sunk some of our independently routed ships not sailing in convoy. They have sunk ships as far west as the 42nd meridian of longitude.
A 1941 article by the screenwriting, piano playing novelist Eliot Paul (1891-1958) who put-forth a sincere effort to define that popular 1940s music known as Boogie-Woogie.
Paul went to great lengths explaining the roots of Boogie-Woogie, the origin of the term and the finest performers and composers of the music:
First, one can say that Boogie-Woogie is an authentic, soul-satisfying genre of piano music, native to America and for which America is indebted to the Negro people…If you ask Al Ammons (1907 — 1949), one of the foremost exponets of boogie-woogie, what boogie-woogie is, he would smile, his eyes would light up, and probably he would say:
‘Man! It scares you‘
-and it does. There are deep reasons why it tugs at our memories and slumbering instincts.
Printed just twelve years before he would receive a National Book Award for his tour de force, The Invisible Man, celebrated wordsmith Ralph Ellison (1914 – 1994) wrote this review of Negro fiction for a short-lived but informed arts magazine in which he rolled out some deep thoughts regarding Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Zora Neil Hurston and assorted other ink-slingers of African descent:
It is no accident that the two most advanced Negro writers, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, have been men who have enjoyed freedom of association with advanced white writers; nor is it accidental that they have had the greatest effect upon Negro life.
Click here to read a 1929 book review by Langston Hughes.
CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.
When you examine the 14 images in the attached article about California surfing in the Forties you’re quite likely to come away believing that the stale surfing comedy Beach Blanket Bingo
