1947 – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

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.

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

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.’

A Review of Memorial by Christopher Isherwood
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

A review of Christopher Isherwood’s (1906 – 1986) semi-autobiographical novel, Memorial, which was placed in post-World War I Britain:

The plot of Memorial can be discussed very briefly: it doesn’t have one. It doesn’t need one. It is entirely fascinating, not a dramatic sequence of events, but an increasingly intimate understanding of a state of affairs…The book proceeds, not forward in time, but inward by layers. Isherwood has a wonderful gift of getting inside people.

A 1947 Review of THE BUTTERFLY by James M. Cain
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

Appearing in the Beverly Hills literary rag, Rob Wagner’s Script was the 1947 review of The Butterfly by James M. Cain (1892 – 1977):

I have not read Cain’s older books to confirm this impression, but offhand I would say that ‘The Butterfly’ is second to ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, among his longer things, as an exhibition of his peculiar talents…This work concerns itself with incest. Technically, no incest is committed, but a marriage is made and consummated between two people, one of whom supposes that she is the other’s daughter…

From Amazon: The Butterfly

COMMAND DECISION Book Review
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

Command Decision, the World War II novel by William Wister Haines (1908 – 1989), was written from the point of view of a general officer and the Allied effort to destroy the Nazi jet fighters before the Luftwaffe could muster the initiative and get the upper hand; the novel was based upon the author’s own wartime experiences serving with the American 8th Air Force in Europe during the Second World War. Haines enjoyed much critical and popular success when the book was released; a 1947 Broadway production ran for 409 performances and a film adaptation premiered in 1948 starring Clark Gable (who also served in the 8th Air Force).

Click here to read the 1947 book review of a William Saroyan war novel.

Stalin and His Cronies
(Pageant Magazine, 1947)

Here is an expose that revealed the hypocrisy of Stalin and the Soviet party members – who spoke of the inherit nobility of the laboring classes and the triumph of the worker’s paradise while they lived like the czars of old:

The children of the country’s rulers already regard themselves as the hereditary aristocracy… The absence of a free press and consequently, of public criticism, allows them to retain this psychology even beyond their adolescence.

‘The Strange Death of Heinrich Himmler”
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Here is an eyewitness account of the suicide of Heinrich Himmler as told by Major John C. Schwarzwalder, a former member of the intelligence division of the U.S. Army Services Forces:

…At the end of the search an army doctor told Himmler to open his mouth. The prisoner did so, but Himmler bit down. The doctor withdrew his finger hastily. Himmler then ground his teeth together and swallowed hard. Some say he smiled grimly. In another second he was on the floor writhing in agony…