1946 – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

Statism
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

Not long after the free world had conquered fascism, the long twilight struggle against Communism commenced. Stalin’s Soviet Union had refused to comply with the treaties it had previously agreed to and was occupying North Korea and many of the Eastern European countries that the Nazis had invaded. Furthermore, Stalin was was funding armed insurgencies in Greece, Vietnam and China. In an effort to help define the tyranny that is Communism, Pathfinder ran this column that defined Communism as Statism and explained it in simple terms.

Rob Wagner’s Script
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946)

Written by one of the underpaid ink-slingers who toiled silently on the corner of Dayton and Rodeo Drive, is the skinny on that unique magazine published in Beverly Hills, California between the years 1929 through 1949, Rob Wagner’s Script. It was an exceptional magazine that took courageous stands on a number of moral issues, such as the wartime incarceration of Japanese-Americans. As a product of Los Angeles it not only addressed a good many issues involving Hollywood but also published the writings of Walt Disney, Dalton Trumbo, Ray Bradbury and Charlie Chaplin. From a graphic stand-point it was, perhaps, a bit envious of the New Yorker, but Script also laid claim to a number of fine cartoonists; Leo Politi (1908 – 1996) worked for a time as the magazine’s Art Director. In the late Forties Salvador Dali contributed cover illustrations. We recommend that you read the attached article and suggest that you surf over to Wikipedia for additional history concerning this magazine.

Paris Is Back!
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Having no foresight as to the fashion juggernaut that would commence in one year with the appearance of Christian Dior’s New Look, the journalist puts all her credibility in one basket by declaring that all eyes are on the French fashion designer Madame Marcelle Dormoy. Much ink is spilled concerning the bleakness that clouded fashionable Paris during the occupation and the difficulty all fashion houses experienced in 1946 securing suitable fabric for their creations (at black-market prices).
The writer recovered some of her street-cred anticipating the meteoric career return of the well-loved French film actress Edwige Feuillère (1907 – 1998), who is personified herein as the epitome of French Glamour returned.

Click here to read a 1946 article about Le Corbusier.

”Why We Lost”
(Prevent W.W. III Magazine)

Playing monday morning quarterback in his holding cell, military genius Hermann Göring took some time out from doing absolutely nothing in order to explain how Germany (Hitler in particular) screwed the pooch.

Reforms in Post-Fascist Japan
(United States News, 1946)

Speaking of naive: when I was privileged to visit Japan in 2011 I actually believed that there would be a few native-born women who would recognize that I was an American and step forward to express some measure of gratitude for my country’s part in granting Japanese women the right to vote. I’m still waiting – however, it is important for all of us to remember that in the immediate aftermath of the war, our occupying forces introduced American values to the Japanese and they have thrived as a result:

General MacArthur has ordered the Japanese Government to provide for freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, and of worship. ‘Thought control’ by the secret police is to be a thing of the past.

‘Our Balance Sheet In Japan”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Here is an honest report card concerning the first six months of the American occupation of Japan. The list of things that we did successfully at that point were considerably shorter than the list of our failings. Much is said concerning the Japanese deep state and their resistance to the new order.

Pvt. Lloyd McCarter on Corregidor
(GI Joe Magazine, 1946)

We’re sure that Pvt. Lloyd McCarter of Takoma, Washington would have undoubtedly preferred to have been anywhere else but the island of Corregidor during the February of 1945, but there were no other legal options open to him at the time. This proved to be bad luck for some thirty Japanese soldiers who happened to have been in that same zip code.

Un-Americanism
(The American Magazine, 1946)

New York’s Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman (1889 – 1967) wrote the attached editorial explaining why Marxism was the polar opposite of everything Americans holds dear:

My sole objective in writing is to help save America from the godless governings of totalitarianism…if you believe with me that freedom is the birthright of the great and the small, the strong and the weak, the poor and the afflicted, then you would be convicted as I that [Socialism] is the antithesis of American Democracy.

Click here to read another argument opposed to socialism.

Rita Hayworth
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946, American Magazine, 1942)

A 1946 article from Script, a semi-chic Beverly Hills magazine (it went belly-up in 1949), explaining just how it came to pass that a sweet, little Brooklyn girl named Margarita Carmen Cansino became Rita Hayworth (1918 – 1987):

Then came reincarnation. Rita discarded her Spanish name, gave away her dancing costumes, did something to her hairline, stuck a y into her mother’s family name (Joseph Haworth, same family, toured with Edwin Booth) and so on to the big time and ‘Cover Girl’ and ‘Tonight and Every Night’.

So the girl with a Spanish father and an Anglo-Saxon mother becomes the typical American girl to thousands of American soldiers abroad, and that, too, is as it should be.

Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

Defining the Left and the Right
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

Surprisingly, these definitions outlining Left and Right in American politics are almost accurate descriptions for our own day, but they still fall short in a number of areas – yet, wouldn’t it be amazing if they still sufficed after all the numerous tremors that have served to rearrange the sociopolitical landscape during the past sixty years?

When the largely agricultural province of Saskatchewan (Canada) began their flirtation with socialism they, too, started with laws involving insurance – car insurance! read about it here…

The WACs
(Think Magazine, 1946)

The Women’s Army Corps (WAC), first organized as an auxiliary May 14, 1942, became ‘regular army’ a little more than a year later…They were secretaries and stenographers for generals. They operated switchboards which kept communications alive throughout the European theater of operations…Their keen eyes and quick fingers made them expert as parachute riggers. They became weather experts [charting the aerial routes for the long-range bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force].

140,000 women served as WACs – – although this article stated that there were only 100,000.

The Women of the U.S. Coast Guard
(Think Magazine, 1946)

From the icy sweeps of Alaska to the tropical Hawaiian Islands, trimly clad girls in the dark blue of the Coast Guard SPARS have served since their organization was founded in 1942 to fill the shore posts of men at sea.

Communications and radio work were an important phase of their duty. Another field in which SPARS were exceptionally active was aviation, with young women in navy blue working in control towers, instructing fledgling fliers via the Link trainer, and parachute riggers…SPARS were also required to familiarize themselves with weapons.

Ranking woman officer is Captain Dorthy C. Stratton (1899 – 2006), Director of the Women’s Reserve, appointed on November 24, 1942).

Charles Lindbergh Goes to War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

When America entered the Second World War, Charles Lindbergh reached out to President Roosevelt and expressed his desire to serve; in light of the fact that Lindbergh had made numerous trips to Germany and met with Goering on several occasions, the President cordially declined his offer. However, these liaisons did not exclude him from working in the private sector for one of the many defense contractors, which is precisely what he did.

These two articles were written by an Army Air Corps colonel shortly after the war recalling his unexpected brush with Lindbergh when he was serving in New Guinea. The United Aircraft Corporation had hired the Lone Eagle to serve as a technical observer in the Pacific, where he could study the combat performance of the P-38 fighters. The articles served to expose to the American people that Lindbergh had performed a variety of patriotic tasks far beyond his corporate job description:

My God! He shouldn’t go on a combat mission, when did he fly the Atlantic? Must have been in 1927 and he was about twenty-five then. That would make him at least forty-two years old, and that’s too old for this kind of stuff.

The First N.Y. Exhibit of Paris Art Made During the Occupation
(Art Digest, 1946)

Recent paintings from Paris have been brought to New York by Pierre Matisse (1900 – 1989) and are now on view at his 57th Street Gallery [at the Fuller Building]. Represented are the Pierre Bonnard, Jean Dubuffet, Andre Marchand, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault.

Meet Andrei Gromyko
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

When this magazine profile of Andrei Gromyko (1909 – 1989) appeared on the newsstands in 1946, the man was already a mainstay in the State Department Rolodex. Anyone who came of age during the Cold War (1947 – 1991) will certainly recognize his name, because as Foreign Minister for the Soviet Union (for 28 years), Gromyko was without a doubt one of the architects of the Cold War.

The attached article outlines Gromyko’s career highlights up to the Summer of 1946 when he was posted as the first Soviet Ambassador to the newly established United Nations.

FDR’s Doctor Speaks
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Published ten months after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, Vice-Admiral Ross T. McIntire, Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, reminisced about Roosevelt’s illness and his observations of the man:

The Pearl Harbor attack put a pressure on the President that never lifted.

With the flower of American youth fighting and dying on land and sea, he looked on any sparing of himself as a betrayal…

From Amazon:

FDR’s Deadly Secret

FDR’s Doctor Speaks
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

The Pearl Harbor attack put a pressure on the President that never lifted.

With the flower of American youth fighting and dying on land and sea, he looked on any sparing of himself as a betrayal…

From Amazon:

FDR’s Deadly Secret

Montgomery’s Quarrel with Eisenhower
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

One of the many now-it-can-be-told stories of the early post-war period had to be that friction that existed on the SHAEF staff between British General Bernard Law Montgomery and General Eisenhower. It is recalled herein by the noted English war correspondent Alan Moorehead (1910 — 1983).