1947 – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

The Arabs Mobilize
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

From a guarded high-walled villa in Alexandria, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (1895 – 1974), exiled fifty-three year-old Grand son of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem craftily directs the affairs of the 1,200,000 Palestinian Arabs.

In the Mufti’s web, the strands of potential organized resistance include two rival ‘youth organizations’, the al-Najjada and the Al-Futawa and the ‘mobile elements’ of the secret Muslim Brotherhood, which is a sort of Middle Eastern Ku Klux Klan. The precise figures of their strength are elusive, but combined they may comprise something like 50,000 men and boys.

Mohammad Nimr al-Hawari, thirty-eight-year-old leader of the Najjada told me, ‘We believe in force’.

Exploited Farm Labor During World War II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

This 1947 Collier’s article, Heartless Harvest by Howard Whitman makes clear the sad story of migrant agricultural laborers who picked the fruits and vegetables for the Americans of the Forties:

A new crop of Okies, estimated in the millions, is wandering about the country, following the crops they pick. To get their story the author traveled 9,000 miles through 17 states, toiling in the fields. Here he describes working and living conditions you wouldn’t believe could be tolerated in America today.

William Saroyan’s Reminiscence of Combat Photographer Robert Capa
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

Dramatist and author William Saroyan (1908 – 1981) treated the readers of ’47 MAGAZINE with a number of his anecdotes concerning his close wartime friendship with W.W. II photographer Robert Capa.

They all involve alcohol.

Click here to read an anecdote about Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War.

Gaudalcanal to Bougainville and the Progress of the U.S. Navy
(Dept. of the Navy, 1947)

With the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, United States and Japanese carrier strength became nearly equal. At the same time the news that the Japanese advance was creeping down the Solomons and commencing the construction of an airfield on Guadalcanal made it advisable to undertake a limited offensive in the South Pacific.

Read about the Battle of Leyte Gulf…

A Review of the Whole Show
(The Commonweal, 1947)

It seems so odd that that the House Un-American Activities Committee that convened to examine the communist influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry lasted only nine days – yet it is one of the most well-known of all the Congressional committees in the history of the republic. That said, we have posted one journalist’s summary of all the hearings:

Former investigations of this kind were mainly concerned with what people had done or not done; this investigation set a precedent by being concerned about what people thought.

What Did the Germans Think of Their Occupiers?
(Prevent W.W. III Magazine, 1947)

By the time this article appeared on paper, the defeated Germans had been living among the soldiers of four different military powers for two years: the British, the French, the Russians and the Americans – each army had their own distinct personality and the Teutonic natives knew them well. With that in mind, an American reporter decided to put the question to them as to what they thought of these squatters – what did they like most about them and what did the detest most about them?

The Germans did not truly believe that the Americans were there friends until they proved themselves during the Berlin Blockade; click here to read about that…

The Best Years of Our Lives
(Photoplay Magazine, 1947)

The post-World War II film The Best Years of our lives (1947) is attached herein, reviewed by the senior editor of Photoplay:

Of all the films released since August 1945 it best dramatizes the problems of men returning from war and of their families to whom they return…It eloquently preaches the need for veterans to do their share in the adjustment between home and soldier and between employer and returning worker. It eloquently preaches against the ugly attempts of the few to incite in these chaotic days race and religious hatreds. And it eloquently preaches the truth that physical disability need not cripple a man’s soul or his opportunities.

The Boy Scouts of America
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

When this article first appeared, the Boy Scouts of America, as an institution, was barely thirty-five years old:

The truth is that never in the history of mankind has a simple idea – an idea, incidentally, born in South Africa – so seized the imagination of boys the world over as has Scouting.

Both Boy Scots and Girl Scouts were active in the Japanese-American internment camps during W.W. II. Click here to read about that subject…

’47 Magazine
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

’47 Magazine was established in March of 1947 and it was their intention to change their name with the calendar year, year by year and on through the succeeding decades. We have in our vast periodical library a few copies of ’48 Magazine – but that is as far as they got before they were voted off the island.

It was a terrific magazine – and many of the names on their board of directors are recognized as some of the best literary minds that America had produced in the mid-Twentieth Century. But, as you’ll see when you read the attached manifesto (they called it a Statement of Intent, but I think that they really wanted to call it was a manifesto) they deeply desired to create an arts magazine that was entirely free of accountants, advertisers, lawyers, agents and, ultimately, profits; so they weren’t around very long.

The Feuding Dorsey Brothers
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Brought up in Pennsylvania, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey had a harsh taskmaster in the form of their father:

Thomas Dorsey was a self-taught musician who earned $10 a week in the coal mines and a few dollars extra by giving music lessons. When Thomas Francis Dorsey [his second son] was born in 1905, the father made up his mind that his sons would be musicians, or else!

While still in knee-pants, both learned all the wind instruments before specializing in the saxophone and trombone, respectively… The boys mother, Tess Langton Dorsey, often was distressed by her husband’s rigid disciplining of her sons. To miss a day’s practice meant a licking.

Inasmuch as the Dorsey brothers may have been united in their efforts to please their father, their union ended there. Much of the article pertains to their opposing temperaments and the skyrocketing career that both enjoyed as a result of their mutual desires to out-do the other. It wasn’t until the old man’s death in 1942 that their competition subsided.

The Soviet Life Style
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

The standard of living in Russia has never been very high, but even despite his natural stoicism, the average citizen feels he has a good reason to be disgruntled with his life… Like any other totalitarian state, the Soviet state has done its best to paint a larger than life-size picture of its citizens. It likes to describe them as steel-hard heroes with an inflexible will, living for nothing but the great ideal of a Communist future, laughing at difficulties, gaily grasping with hard ship – a continent of Douglas Fairbankses. This is just a bit too good to be true, and the last one to be taken in by it is the average Russian.

Air Pollution Becomes a Problem
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

This news article was penned a year and a half after the end of W.W. II and it concerns the steps various industrial cities were taking to limit the amount of pollutants that factories belched into the air daily. A year later, the Republican-lead Congress would pass an important piece of legislation titled the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.

2013 marked the first time that the industrial powerhouse of China finally recognized that air pollution in the Beijing area exists and it is a problem. China regularly emits the lion’s share of green house gasses (a whopping 23.5%).

‘A Red Is a Red is a Red”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

The Cold War was not often seen as a subject for poetry – but that didn’t stop a popular versifier like Berton Braley (1882 – 1966). He took a look around at the post-war world and saw plenty subjects that rhymed:

You’ll meet, methinks, a lot of pinks
Whose statements are dogmatic
That Communists are Liberals
And really Democratic;
But when you hear that type of tripe
Keep this fact in your nut
– That Communists are Communists and nothing else but!

His poem went on for three more stanzas…

The Trial of Franz von Papen
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

Franz von Papen (1879 – 1969) was born into the German nobility; he worked as a diplomat, a politician and during both World Wars he served as an intelligence officer in his nation’s army. During the Third Reich von Papen was appointed Vice Chancellor under Adolf Hitler. This article concerns the period in von Papen’s life when, after having been acquitted earlier by the international tribunal, he found himself once more on the docket for another misdeed.

Franz von Papen had an IQ that measured 134 – click here to read about the strangely high IQs of the other lunatics in Nazi leadership…

To Live in Occupied Tokyo
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1947)

A breezy account of American occupied Tokyo as reported by a literary magazine:

Regardless of the festivities, the War Crimes Trials proceed as usual and the accused sit with earphones listening intently as the defense presents the China Phase.
Japan seems to be striving toward Democracy, their interest in government affairs has broadened, and the voting in the national elections showed their arousal.

Should you like to read how the city of Kyoto fared during the Second World War, click here.

‘A Letter to Germany” by Thomas Mann
(Prevent W.W. III Magazine, 1945)

Not too long after the close of the war, exiled German author Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955) was invited to return to Germany. Walter von Molo, a German writer, who during the Nazi regime remained and worked in Germany, sent the invitation to Mann as an Open Letter in the name of German intellectuals. Attached an excerpt of the writer’s response.

Ho Chi-Minh on the March…
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

A 1947 article reporting on the French desire to maintain their colonies in Indo-China, and their conflict with a Moscow-trained revolutionary Marxist (and Paris-trained pastry chef) named Ho Chi-Minh (1890 – 1969).

Click here to read about American communists and their Soviet overlords.

A Grateful Immigrant Speaks
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

An article by Atomic Age immigrant Juanita Wegner testifying as to her undying gratitude that she should be permitted to live in a nation with so many freedoms. Having spent much of her life on the run from the Fascists of Austria, Italy and Argentina, Wegner stated:

For all my life I’ve wanted to be an American. I’ve dreamed about it, studied, worked for it…I’ve been an American for only a few days. But if I could have one wish it would be to go up to everybody I meet and say: ‘Aren’t we lucky to have this chance! Let’s never forget it.’