The Church in Occupied Norway
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)
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1941
Articles from 1941
The Earliest Days of Training
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)
Up by bugle at 5:45 in subfreezing temperature. Breakfast – boiled oatmeal, French toast and syrup, toast, jam, coffee. At 7:30 began ‘psychological test’ for mental alertness (typical question: An orange is a broom, bat, flower, or fruit?). Received complete uniforms. Try-on period after lunch resulted in many misfits, much swapping and revival of old crack about there being only two sizes in the Army – too big and too small…
America Prepares…
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1941)
By late November, 1941, only children and the clinically optimistic were of the mind that America would be able to keep out of a war – as you’ll be able to assume when you read the attached article that appeared on the newsstands just ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It extolls the industrial prowess of the United States as the country prepared for war:
• William S. Knudson (1879 – 1948), Director of the OPM, declared U.S. arms output will soon ‘assure Hitler’s defeat’. Proof of this claim was seen in the celebration in New Haven, Connecticut, of one company’s production of it’s 10,000th machine-gun within a year of the time the contract was signed to build a plant.
• The launching of the 35,000-ton battleship INDIANA at Newport News, Virginia, the third battleship to come off the ways this year, indicated the increased tempo of defense production, which Admiral Land, of the Maritime Commission, said neared ‘superhuman’.
WHAT IF – Hitler Had Been Killed?
(Click Magazine, 1941)
It must have been a slow news week when the CLICK MAGAZINE crew approached three of the busiest editors in the the U.S. and Britain asking them how they would break the news if Hitler were to be killed tomorrow?
Every editor we queried agreed that when it happens, the death of Adolf Hitler will sell more papers than any other news event of the Twentieth century…All agreed that Hitler’s death would not end the war; two out of three guessed he would die violently.
The leftest publisher Ralph Ingersoll knew right away that Hitler would die by his own hand.
The article is illustrated with facsimile printings of the headlines and how each paper believed the dictator would die – it was an academic exercise, but a fun read, nonetheless.
Her Arrival
(American Magazine, 1941)
An article that celebrated the well-received performance of Diana Barrymore in her stage debut in the New York play, The Romantic Mr. Dickens:
The critics marshaled such adjectives as ‘vibrant,’ ‘vivid,’ ‘beautiful’, and ‘confident’ to describe the ‘best Barrymore debut in years.’
Cecil B. DeMille Tries his Hand at Radio
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
At the age of 63, after 44 years in show business, and ten years as director of the Lux Radio Theater
Cecil B. DeMille Tries his Hand at Radio
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
At the age of 63, after 44 years in show business, and ten years as director of the Lux Radio Theater
Celebutantes & GIs
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
They’re not with the U.S.O. but the barracks-happy GIs were delighted to see them just the same.
‘A Message to the White Collar Class”
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
A very self-conscious column regarding the American class structure.
The Show-Biz Blood of Cecil B. DeMille
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
At the age of 63, after 44 years in show business, Cecil B. De Mille is still producing. He can’t stop and he probably never will. He is first, last and all the time a showman. The show business is in his blood, and whether he is on a set or taking his leisure at home, his heart and mind are in the theater. He loves to have people around him so that he can play a part, for consciously or unconsciously, he is always acting… C.B.’s father was an actor and playwright, and later a partner of David Belasco. His mother was an actress, and later a very successful play agent.
The article goes into more depth outlining De Mille various triumphs in silent film and his work on The Squaw Man
Men’s Suits in the Summer of 1941
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)
If you’ve been wondering what the stylish Yankee beaus of yore used to wear during the Summer of 1941 when they plopped themselves down to read about the British occupation of Syria or the Nazi siege of Leningrad, then you can stop looking because we have the article right here – it is the summer fashion forecast from COLLIER’S MAGAZINE of May 24, 1941 – illustrated with no fewer than three color images:
The newest color for vacation clothes is parchment, one of the natural tan shades. Don’t be afraid that you’ll look like a member of the street-cleaning department in a white linen suit. Even the Duke of Windsor wears one. It is ideal for vacation wear, as the jacket may be worn with colored slacks, the trousers with other light weight jackets…. For week-end and vacation wear you can choose from tropical worsteds, Palm Beach cloth, tropical weight flannels, linen, seersucker and tropical weight tweeds.
The Star of THE OUTLAW
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
Here is well illustrated article (16 images) from the set of THE OUTLAW (1941) that celebrates the arrival of the young, curvaceous Jane Russell (1921 – 2011).
One Editor’s Obsession
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
It seemed to have made no difference to the editors of PIC MAGAZINE how dark and thick the clouds of war were that encircled the United States one month prior to the Pearl Harbor attack – they ran yet another puff piece on Jane Russell five months after they had published their last puff piece on Jane Russell.
A Monopoly on Radio Talent?
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
This article will cue you in to a 1941 dust-up between the FCC and the biggest radio broadcasters in America.
Apparently CBS, NBC and the Mutual Broadcasting System were in cahoots, united behind a scheme to fix the prices they had to cough-up in order to pay all the various assorted musicians and acting talents they needed to hire if they were to attract their radio audiences. The feds got wind of the plan and smelled a rat:
The big radio networks are currently worried by the Federal Communication Commission’s accusation that they are talent monopolists, part of the FCC’s blanket charge that the radio chains constitute a trust within the broadcasting industry…
Men’s Straw Hats from the Early Forties
(From a 1941 Magazine Ad)
Attached are pictured six straw hats from a 1941 color ad promoting the Stetson Straws that appeared on the glossy pages of one of the more bourgeois American magazines just seven and a half months prior to the day when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and the bad-old days of World War II kicked-in for that rare breed of man known as homo-Americanus.
There can be no doubt that the fun-loving fashion-fan who was pictured sporting these organic chapeaus would soon find himself wearing one of Uncle Sam’s over-laundered denim stitch-brims, peeling potatoes and remembering wistfully the day that this ad was shot.
We hope he survived the carnage.
China’s Industrial Cooperatives
(The Commonweal, 1941)
A 1941 magazine article by Delbert Johnson that reported on the unprecedented success of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives during the earliest period of the Japanese occupation:
Industrial cooperation in China, which was no more than a paper plan three years ago, today is a nation-wide movement that has cast a blight upon Japan’s economic aspirations in Asia and is providing the people of China a new means of salvation against aggression.
The plan for the Indusco movement came into being during the dark days of the spring and summer of of 1938…Seemingly, China was doomed to economic strangulation if not to military defeat. But a handful of Chinese and foreign visionaries’ thought otherwise. They knew that time, area and population all would work to China’s advantage in any prolonged struggle.
Model Children
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)
The children whose pictures you see on the advertising pages of national magazines often launch their careers when they are scarcely larger than their social security numbers. Blonde or brunette, freckled or glamorous, these famous boys and girls help sell you everything from automobiles to safety pins. As accustomed to to a camera as a top-flight movie star, they enjoy their work partly because it satisfies their fondness for ‘make-believe’.
Nice work if you can get it. But the maestros of the modeling agencies, John Robert Powers and Harry Conover, emphasize the fact that finding juvenile models is a difficult assignment.
The French Army in Africa
(The Commonweal, 1941)
Attached is a history article concerning the various organizations that made up the French Colonial Army in Africa:
Before and during the World War, all the different races serving in the French Army were excellently officered by subalterns and non-coms born in North Africa, but of European ancestry: by sons of immigrated colonists of French, Spanish and Italian extraction.
The late Marshal Lyautey used to say of these sons of European settlers: ‘Their knowledge of the ways of the natives is priceless, because they have assimilated it from childhood. In the native regiments, they constitute a human concrete, which keeps together men of antagonistic races and beliefs’