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
This article was written to mark the 100th anniversary of Punch and in so doing gives a very pithy history of the magazine and its editorial mission:
Yet, as a true chronicler of the times, Punch‘s volumes read more like a century-long history of England, and the magazine is never more on its mettle than during periods of crisis.
In this article, the controversial author and prominent chemist, Otto Eisenschiml (1880 – 1963), recalled the events that unfolded at Ford’s Theater as Lincoln lay dying. A good deal of information is dispensed concerning the physical damage that was wrought by Boothe’s derringer (pictured) – as well as the various life-prolonging measures that were implemented by the 23 year-old doctor who was first on the scene.
This article is composed of a couple of paragraphs recalling the damages caused to American shipping as a result of the U-Boat menace on the East Coast of the United States during the First World War. Written at a time when the U.S. was once again having to deal with the same threat, this time by Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891 – 1980), the journalist wished that Henry J. James, the author of German Subs In Yankee Waters
be properly credited for having devised many of the more successful countermeasures.
Statistically, Anderson is the the 12th most common surname in the United States and there are 894,704 Americans who bare this last name. The name stems from two sources: Scottish and Scandinavian. Both are derived from the Greek word Andreas, which means strong, manly or courageous.
In America today there are many Andersons high in achievement, some of them still spelling their name Andersen, who were born in Sweden, Norway or Denmark. This article broadly outlines the great and famous Andersons, the ones who have walked the halls of Congress, thrived in business, written the books, preached from the pulpits and fought the wars.
Oddly, very little column space is devoted to the infamous Andersons (ie. Confederate thug Bloody Bill Anderson).
The most common last name in the English speaking world (except Canada) is Smith – read about it…
An article written by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 – 1945) in which he rants on about all the triumphs of his first two terms, repeating in several places how much better his administration was than the one that preceded him, how popular he was with the voters and emphasizing throughout that the Federal Government had tremendous potential as a force for good during the Great Depression, but it’s efforts were blocked at every turn:
For a dead hand was being laid upon this whole program of progress – to stay it all.
It was the hand of the Supreme Court of the United States…former Supreme Court Justices McReynolds, Van Devanter, and Butler, whose judgments were all consistently against New Deal measures.
Click here to see an anti-New Deal cartoon.
With her characteristic disregard for the unreasonable mandates of the prevailing fashion police hanging out for all to see, Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) scoffed with the deepest irreverence at the males of the species for being so thoughtless and blind in matters sartorial. Pointing out that men, who she compared to mice, don’t have to wear ties, hats, heavy leather shoes or anything else that makes them uncomfortable, but do so purposelessly and out of fear…
Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.
This column by Andrés Iduarte (1907 – 1984) addressed the popularity of Los Indios in the arts of Latin America throughout the 1930s. What came to be known as the pro-Indian movement in the U.S. of the 1960s was a political development in the counter-culture of that era, but thirty years earlier it was a trend in the arts of Latin America. Andrés Iduarte covered the contributions of painters, poets, novelists and sculptors who were all of Native descent south of the Rio Grande (FYI: Brazil is not mentioned in this article).
Here is a film review from DIRECTION MAGAZINE that discussed many of the forthcoming movies of 1941 and how they so rarely depict American culture in an accurate light:
In bringing back the usual revelations from a trip through the Middle West, I want to repeat the oft-declared amazement that American films… reflect the barest minimum of the American scene in these United States. The rare attempts of the Grapes of Wrath and Primrose Path to seek and show new dramatic settings, are the exceptions that prove the rule of formula.
Many of the American films of 1941 are listed herein and the article can be printed.
