1949

Articles from 1949

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.

The Bomb in Soviet Hands
(Quick Magazine, 1949)

During the opening week of October, 1949 President Harry Truman announced that the Soviet Union had exploded its own nuclear weapon. Americans were deeply shocked and wondered aloud as to what this would mean – Would the peacetime draft call be doubled?

…Russia had caught the U.S. flatfooted. For the first time in history every American looked straight down the gun barrel of [a] foreign attack.


The pace of the Cold War picked up soon after this event took place.

Advertisement

Campus Fashions for Autumn
(The Diamondback, 1949)

Designing women are working toward the return of the chemise dress, the raccoon coat, the slicker rain coat, the ankle bracelet, multiple chains of beads, etc. Anything they have forgotten, your imagination may safely supply.

Important in high fashion this year are the scissors skirt, long and impossibly tight, the winged collar, featuring a neckline that juts off at a terrific angle, the bat collared suit – which looks more like a cartwheel than a costume. One can happily assume that these creations will never take on the campus…. Safer predictions are that the campus co-ed will take to tweed suits, especially those trimmed in velvet…

The Two Lincoln Inaugurations
(Inaugural Program, 1949)

Callously torn from the binding of the 1949 inaugural program were these pithy paragraphs describing the somber moods of both Lincoln inaugurals. The anonymous author noted that

when Lincoln delivered his Inaugural Address, four future Presidents of the United States stood on the platform near him: Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Benjamin Harrison.


To read the text of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, click here .

Advertisement

The Destruction of the Shenandoah
(Coronet Magazine, 1949)

Pieced together from the captain’s log as well as various first-hand observations that were called to mind by the 29 surviving crew members, this article presents a blow-by-blow account as to how the U.S. Navy dirigible Shenandoah was overwhelmed by turbulent winds over Eastern Ohio and torn in two.

As they climbed into the hull, the ship began spinning counter-clockwise on its keel, then lifted its nose and shot upward. Girders groaned and wires snapped. Then came a crunching, sickening roar as the girders parted. The ship had broken in two. Another rending crash and the control car plunged earthwards, carrying Lt. Commander Landsdowne and seven other men to their death.

Design for Modern Living
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

In an attempt to define modernism for a broad audience, architect/designer Alexander Girard curated the Exhibition for Modern Livingstyle=border:none that was housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts during the winter of 1949. It was a ground breaking exhibit that brought modernism down from the mountain and allowed people to see that modern design was intended to make life more pleasant:

Modern design implies shape for use, simplicity, new forms to utilize new materials, easier housekeeping, and honest expression of mass production… Up the richly carpeted ramp, viewers walk up to a dining room done by Alvar Aalto; past two studies Bruno Mathsson and Jean Risom and a bedroom and living-room representing a variety of designers; then up another level to a space furnished by Charles Eames; and finally to a small balcony overlooking George Nelson’s living area. The quiet simplicity of the rooms and the gentle tones of symphonic music have people talking in whispers. Sighed one woman: ‘I’d like to live here.’

Advertisement

Design for Modern Living
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

In an attempt to define modernism for a broad audience, architect/designer Alexander Girard curated the Exhibition for Modern Livingstyle=border:none that was housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts during the winter of 1949. It was a ground breaking exhibit that brought modernism down from the mountain and allowed people to see that modern design was intended to make life more pleasant:

Modern design implies shape for use, simplicity, new forms to utilize new materials, easier housekeeping, and honest expression of mass production… Up the richly carpeted ramp, viewers walk up to a dining room done by Alvar Aalto; past two studies Bruno Mathsson and Jean Risom and a bedroom and living-room representing a variety of designers; then up another level to a space furnished by Charles Eames; and finally to a small balcony overlooking George Nelson’s living area. The quiet simplicity of the rooms and the gentle tones of symphonic music have people talking in whispers. Sighed one woman: ‘I’d like to live here.’

Design for Modern Living
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

In an attempt to define modernism for a broad audience, architect/designer Alexander Girard curated the Exhibition for Modern Livingstyle=border:none that was housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts during the winter of 1949. It was a ground breaking exhibit that brought modernism down from the mountain and allowed people to see that modern design was intended to make life more pleasant:

Modern design implies shape for use, simplicity, new forms to utilize new materials, easier housekeeping, and honest expression of mass production… Up the richly carpeted ramp, viewers walk up to a dining room done by Alvar Aalto; past two studies Bruno Mathsson and Jean Risom and a bedroom and living-room representing a variety of designers; then up another level to a space furnished by Charles Eames; and finally to a small balcony overlooking George Nelson’s living area. The quiet simplicity of the rooms and the gentle tones of symphonic music have people talking in whispers. Sighed one woman: ‘I’d like to live here.’

Japanese Nationalists
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

This article tells the tale of the Japanese Nationalist Masaharu Kageyama (1910 – 1979), a fellow who, in the political landscape of U.S.-occupied Japan, seemed rather like the late Mussolini of Italy: always remembering the storied past of a Japan that no longer existed. Kageyama was something a flat-Earther, choosing the road of the Japanese Nationalist, he held that Emperor Hirohito was indeed divine and that the Fascist vision of an East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was achievable, even in 1949.

Advertisement

The Soviets Get the Bomb
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

A news column that is appropriately drenched in the gravitas of the day because it announced that the short-lived age of atomic security that brought W.W. II to a close had come to an end. A new epoch had arrived at 11:00 a.m., September 23, 1949, when President Harry Truman announced


We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR.


With nuclear bombs must come a nuclear strategy:
click here to read about that…

A Look Back at the Berlin Air-Lift
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

Last week, after the Russians announced they would lift the blockade on May 12 [1949], the airlift took a bow and added a modest nod at the 324-day record:


• 189,247 flights;

• 1,528,250 tons delivered;

• best day’s work: April 16 with 12,947 tons hauled in 1,393 flights.


– [and if the West had not chosen to answer the Soviet challenge in Berlin] there might never have been an Atlantic Pact or a Western German state. The Communists might have gone amok in France and Italy. Russia might have won the Cold War in the first heat.

Towards a Nuclear Strategy
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

Here is the Pathfinder Magazine article about Air University; established in 1946 by the U.S. Department of War in order to train senior American Air Force officers to serve as strategic thinkers in the realm of national security. In 1949 that meant conceiving of ways to implement a successful strategy in which the Soviet Union would be defeated with nuclear weapons:

At AU’s apex is the Air War College. To its senior officer-students the question of destroying an enemy’s will to resist is grimly real. Killing ten million citizens of an enemy nation is no haphazard problem to the Air War College. In the statistics of modern war, a loss of approximately 4% of a nation’s population saps its will to resist…


Six months after this article was first read, the Soviets tested their first Atomic bomb; click here to read about that event.

Advertisement

Dale Carnegie on Winning Friends and Influencing People
(Collier’s Magazine, 1949)

Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1955) was a phenomenon unique to American shores; he was a publishing marvel whose book How To Win Friends and Influence People has sold over fifty million copies since it’s first appearance in 1937.
Similar to his contemporary Napoleon Hillstyle=border:none
(1883 – 1970), Carnegie was one the preeminent self-help authors of the last century who recognized that success can be found within all of us if we simply know how to harness those elements properly. He had a strong belief that the powers of self-determination can be mastered in one’s ability to communicate clearly, and his followers are legion.


This article coincided with the printing of his second book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), and explains the author’s philosophy –


… be a good listener, talk in terms of the other man’s interests, and make the other person feel important.

‘I Flew for Israel”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1949)

A veteran of our Air Force with Jewish blood tells why he fought for Israel and why the Israelis, hopelessly outnumbered, won the war with the Arabs. His experiences taught him that the Palestinian Jews have been badly treated by the outside world and he says, ‘The people of Israel are the most democratic in the world’

Cole Porter
(Pageant Magazine, 1949)

– a CD from Amazon: KEY WORDS: Cole Porter Magazine Article,Cole Porter biography,Cole Porter Newspaper Article,Cole Porter composer,Cole Porter KISS

Advertisement

Scroll to Top