1949

Articles from 1949

Mildred Gillars of Maine
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

How many times have we heard an actress or actor say, What the Heck, it’s work – plenty (if I had a nickle for every time… etc.). No doubt, this was the thought that tarried through the airy head of Mildred Gillars (né Mildred Elizabeth Sisk) when she agreed to broadcast Nazi propaganda from the heart of Germany on a radio program titled, the Home Sweet Home Hour (1942 – 1945). However, due to the fact that two witnesses must testify in order to prove the charge of treason, she was convicted in Federal Court for having performed in a 1944 Berlin Radio broadcast called Vision of Invasion. The Federal jury found her not guilty of committing seven other treasonous acts. Gillars served 12 years in Federal prison and was released during the Summer of 1961.

Socialism Bad
(The American Magazine, 1949)

It seems difficult to imagine, but this opinion writer felt America leaning toward socialism as far back as 1949:


While the people look more and more to Washington to do everything under the sun for them, the Federal Government hasn’t been discouraging them at all. On the contrary, the Administration has been repeatedly asking for more and more powers to use when it may see fit.


He is sympathetic to their feelings, but cautions his readers that Marxism looks alluring on the printed page – but it will simply lead to serfdom in the end

The Hiss-Chambers Case
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

This is a report concerning how the Hiss/Chambers perjury trial was proceeding before the jury. The journalist pointed out that Hiss’ attorney, Lloyd Paul Stryker, was repeatedly making slanderous remarks about the character of Whitaker Chambers – an indication that the facts were simply not on the side of the defendant.

Judith Coplon in Federal Court
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

FBI agents arrested Judith Coplon (1921 – 2011: Soviet code name Kompid) on March 4, 1949 in Manhattan as she met with Valentin Gubitchev, a NKVD official employed at the United Nations, while carrying what she believed to have been secret U.S. government documents in her purse. Hoover’s G-Men FBI were certain that Coplon, a secretary at the Federal Justice Department, was colluding with the Soviet agents in Washington but to prove their case conclusively would compromise an ongoing counter-espionage project called the Venona Project. The failure to prosecute this case successfully began to shed doubt upon the FBI director and his credibility in matters involving Soviet spy-catching.– read about that here…


Years later Coplon’s guilt was made clear to all when the Venona cables were released. However our laws mandate that it is illegal to try a suspect twice for the same crime and she was released.

The Japanese Death Ray?
(Quick Magazine, 1949)

An odd dispatch from W.W. II appeared on the pages of a 1949 issue of QUICK MAGAZINE declaring that the weapons laboratories of Imperial Japan had been developing a ray gun throughout much of the war. When they realized that the jig was up they tossed the contraption in a nearby lake.


What worked considerably better than the Death Ray was hi-altitude hydrogen balloon-bombs that the Japanese let-loose on the Western states at the end of the war – click here to read about them…

The Birth of the Slip Dress
(Quick Magazine, 1949)

One Autumn evening in 1949, New York fashion model Anna-Lee Daniels and her gay boyfriend, Henry, took it upon themselves to demonstrate just how chic ladies’ undergarments were becoming. Recognizing that the latest slips were so minimal in their design – appearing much like the dresses flappers were often seen wearing back in the day It was soon decided that the two should step out for a night on the town – with young Anna-Lee sporting the slip – just to see if anyone caught on.

Gettysburg: an Epilogue
(Coronet Magazine, 1949)

An article that looks back at some of the lost opportunities squandered by both armies, wondering if the outcome might have been different had their importance been recognized and properly exploited.

At Gettysburg, the heat broke at last, and rain fell on July 4. As doctors and ambulances moved onto the scene, neither retreating Confederates nor jubilant Northerners recognized the great issue that had been decided on that field. Only a few sensed that the twilight of the Confederacy had come.


Read an article about how Victorian fashion saved a life during the Civil War.

Soap Operas Come to Television
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

The short-lived soap opera These Are My Children was the brain-child of Irna Phillips (1901 – 1973) and it is no matter that the daytime drama lasted less than a year on Chicago’s WMBQ – the significance of the program rests in the fact that it was the first soap opera to be seen on American television screens:

Last week television caught the dread disease of radio: soapoperitis… ‘These Are My Children’, however is no warmed-over radio fare. To make sure of this, Miss Phillips and director Norman Felton built the first episodes backward… Whether [a] soap opera on television can coax housewives to leave their domestic duties [in order] to watch a small screen was a question yet to be answered.

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