1942 – Page 10 – Old Magazine Articles

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

In the attached PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE article, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911 – 2004), the Hollywood actor who would one day become the fortieth president of the United States (1981–1989), gives a tidy account as to who he was in 1942, and what was dear to him:

My favorite menu is steaks smothered with onions and strawberry short cake. I play bridge adequately and collect guns, always carry a penny as a good luck charm…I’m interested in politics and governmental problems. My favorite books are Turnabout, by Thorne Smith, Babbitt, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the works of Pearl Buck, H.G. Wells, Damon Runyon and Erich Remarque.

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

The Betrayal of French Jewry
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

The Nazis quickly extended the dread Nuremberg laws to the occupied territory. Jews lost jobs, businesses, property, liberty, even their lives. They were flung into primitive concentration camps and deported to Polish ghettos. And with them the Nazis brought the usual wave of Jewish suicides.

‘Hollywood Hangout”
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Schwab’s Pharmacy was like many other well-heeled American pharmacies of the Forties – it filled prescriptions, sold cigars, served three squares a day at their counter and cracked-wise with the clientele. What made it different was that many of the customers were among the most glam movie stars of the time. Located on Sunset Boulevard, west of Hollywood, in an area known as Sherman:

It’s the one place in Hollywood where screen biggies like Robert Taylor, Gene Tierney and Marlene Dietrich drop in and out all day and make themselves at home.

The D-Day Landing Crafts
(Click Magazine, 1942)

If you ever wondered why The National W.W. II Museum is located in New Orleans rather than West Point, Annapolis or the nation’s capitol – the answer can be spoken in two words: Andrew Higgins. Higgins was the innovator who designed and manufactured the landing crafts that made it possible for the Allied forces to land on all those far-flung beaches throughout the world and show those Fascists dogs a thing or two. His factory, Higgins Industries, was located on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans and it was for this reason that the museum board of directors chose to doff their collective caps, and erect their repository in his home town.

Attached is a five page photo-essay about Higgins and all that he was doing to aid in the war effort.

John Cage
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Los Angeles Nisei at Santa Anita Racetrack
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1942)

Attached is a eye-witness account of the Los Angeles Issie and Nisei populations after having been removed from their homes and detained at Santa Anita racetrack prior to their transfer and subsequent incarceration at Manzanar, California.

There are more than 6,000 Japanese housed in the stables which once accommodated 2,000 horses…Each stall has had a room built on in front with doors and windows and the floors have been covered with a layer of asphaltum which seems to have killed the odors.

This article, laced throughout with subtle undertones of condemnation, was written by a Hollywood screenwriter named Alfred Cohn (1880 – 1951) who is largely remembered today for having written the adaptation for the Al Jolson movie The Jazz Singer (1929).

Paulette Goddard in Uniform
(Click Magazine, 1942)

Paulette Goddard (1910 – 1990) is pictured in color wearing an all-purpose uniform designed by the Hollywood stylist Irene (Irene Lentz, 1900 – 1962). The actress was a sporadic volunteer, having appeared in four films throughout 1942.

The Barrymore Girl
(Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

When LIFE MAGAZINE ran a cheese cake picture of Diana Barrymore (1921 – 1960) on the cover of their July 31, 1939 issue, the quick-witted editors at COLLIER’S were not to be outdone, so they ran this interview three years later. A color photo of the actress is provided in which she sports that remarkable Barrymore chin.

Ode to the Hollywood Agent
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

The literati have all agreed: there is no doubt that if Shakespeare were alive today he would live in Beverly Hills, California. He would dwell in a 1930s split-level Persion-conversion, probably on Palm or Roxbury. As a well-compensated screenwriter he would churn-out the standard plots that were expected of him: fish-out-of-water dramadies, romcoms, and (under assorted pen names) a few reality shows; and like the poet whose work is attached, he would write about matters unique to Southern California -valet parking, Cobb Salads -and in this case the Hollywood agent.

This poem was written by Sydney King Russell (1898 – 1976), who, like Shakespeare, knew that if you’re going to write a poem about Hollywood agents, you’ll need to crack open the ol’ rhyming dictionary to see what rhymes with ten percent.

Charlie Chaplin W.W. II Radio Address
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Within the toasty-warm confines of the attached PDF lie the text of a speech that Chaplin delivered over the war-torn airwaves in 1942. Wishing only to encourage the citizenry of London and Washington, D.C. to be of stout heart in their battle against the Fascist powers, Chaplin’s address was titled, Give Us More Bombs Over Berlin.

Germany’s Dictated Peace Terms for the World
(Omnibooks Digest, 1942)

During the opening months of 1941 Nazi Germany was positively drunk with power; their army seemed able to march wherever it chose and all of Europe was trembling. Foreign correspondent for the Hearst papers, H.R. Knickerbocker (1898 – 1949), pointed out that on April 29, 1941 the Axis forces had printed, what he termed, a trial balloon on the pages of The Japan Times Advertiser that clearly indicated the peace terms that were acceptable to them.

Joseph Cummings Chase: Soldiers All
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1942)

Joseph Cummings Chase (1878 – 1965) was an American painter who’s name is not likely to be associated with World War I artists but, like Sir William Orpen, he had a comfortable place within fashionable circles and he, too, was commissioned to paint portraits of the anointed within his nations military establishment. This article appeared in 1942 and primarily concerns the W.W. I portrait that Chase painted of Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur during the closing days of the war:

Joseph Cummings Chase is without doubt one of the world’s greatest portrait painters, and as luck would have it, he was in Paris when World War I began, at which time the Government commissioned him to paint the Distinguished Service Cross men, both enlisted men and officers, wherever he could catch up with them; some in dugouts, some in trenches, and some behind the lines.

Click here to see a few trench war images by German Expressionist Otto Dix.

Click here to read a 1942 article by Rockwell Kent on the proper roll of American artists during wartime.

The Career of Lilian Gish
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Attached is a decidedly pro Lilian Gish (1893 – 1993) article concerning the silent film actresses‘ meteoric rise under the direction of D.W. Griffith, her mediocrity when paired with other directors and her much appreciated march on Broadway.

Lilian Gish is the damozel of Arthurian legend, tendered in terms of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Her heroines perpetually hover in filtered half-lights, linger in attitudes of romantical despair. They forever drift farther from reality than the dream, and no matter how humble their actual origins, the actress invariably weaves them of the dusk-blues, the dawn-golds of medieval tapestries.

Click here if you would like to read an article in which Lillian Gish recalls her part in Birth of a Nation.

Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

The Career of Lilian Gish
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Click here if you would like to read an article in which Lillian Gish recalls her part in Birth of a Nation.

Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

Rockwell Kent: Artists of Democracy
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

The U.S. had only been actively engaged in World War II for five months when the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) felt the impulse to write about the unique roll an artist must play when a democracy goes to war:

The art of a democracy must be, like democracy itself, of and by and for the people. It must and will reflect the public mood and public interest…Awareness of America, of its infinitely varied beauties and of its sometimes sordid ugliness; awareness of the life of America, of its fulfillments and its failures; awareness, if you like, of God, the landscape architect supreme – and political failure: of the promise of America and of its problems, art has been, or has aimed to be, a revelation. It is for the right to solve these problems our way that we are now at war.