Articles from 1950
When this profile first appeared in 1950, the column’s subject, Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976), was generally seen as a tin-horn dictator and Stalinist dupe. It wouldn’t be long before he would be widely recognized as one of the greatest mass-murderers in world history.
The arrests of David Greenglass (1922 – 2014: Soviet code name Kalibr) and Alfred Slack (1905 – 1977: Soviet code name El) were the result of the FBI having arrested and interrogated a vital Soviet courier a month earlier: Harry Gold (1911 – 1972: Soviet code name Arno). When Gold began to sing, the spies began to fall like leaves of autumn day. This quick read concentrates on Gold’s fellow chemist, Slack, who had been passing along information to the Soviets since the mid-Thirties, however between the years 1944 and 1945 Slack had been assigned to work in Oak Ridge Tennessee with the Manhattan Project. Greenglass had also been on the Manhattan project, and he was a far bigger catch.
On June 25, 1950 ten divisions of North Korean infantry invaded South Korea. In its narrowest sense, the invasion marked the beginning of a civil war between peoples of a divided country. In a far larger sense, it represented a break in tensions between the two dominant power blocs that had emerged from the Second World War. These well-illustrated pages appeared in Quick Magazine two weeks after the hostilities commenced and serves to summarize the events in Washington and at the United Nations. Within the first twelve hours of the war President Truman committed U.S. air and naval forces to the defense of South Korea and signed a bill to widen the draft pool.
The Korean War ended in 1953. Click here to read about the military results of that war.
Without a doubt, the strongest impulse to buy the earliest televisions came from sports fans. The deep lust in their hearts to witness their favorite sporting events as it happened, free of a bar tab, was a strong one – and the television industry loved them right back. This glorious trifecta consisting of viewers, TV networks and team owners not only altered the way America watched sports, it totally transformed sports itself. Author Steven D. Stark put it nicely in his book Glued to the Set (1997):
Television has changed the sports landscape — changing everything from the salaries, number of teams, and color of uniforms, to the way that fans conceive of sports and athletes alike,
A couple of paragraphs from a popular fashion industry trade magazine that pointed out that the white cotton knit crew-neck garment we call the T-shirt came into this world with the name quarter sleeve and had it’s origin in the U.S. Navy where it earned it’s popularity and soon spread to other branches of the U.S. military during the mid-to-late 1930s. When the war ended in 1945 the T-shirt was the only element of the uniform that American men wanted to keep.
There was another fashion innovations of W.W. II, click here to read about it…
No one perhaps has done as much as the British writer who calls himself George Orwell to persuade former fellow-travelers that their ways lie in some direction other than the Stalinist party line.
So begin the first two paragraphs of this book review that are devoted to the anti-totalitarian elements that animated the creative side of the writer George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair: 1903 – 1950). The novel that is reviewed herein, Coming Up for Air, was originally published in 1939 and was reviewed by Pathfinder Magazine to mark the occasion of the book’s first American printing in 1950.
An article written at a time when L.A. was a very different city – with a population of merely ten million, the city’s detractors often called it Iowa by the sea; today they compare it to the Balkans:
The point is that in [1950] Los Angeles the individual leads his own life and plays his own games rather than lose himself vicariously in the capers of professionals.
Click here to read about the San Fernando Valley.
The Duke’s influence on men’s fashion throughout the Western hemisphere is undeniable and it is highly likely that there are a number of bucks in your life who loaf about town entirely ignorant that they are wearing the togs that he first introduced.
The attached is a 1950 article from an American fashion trade magazine that lists a number of fashion innovations first sported by the Duke of Windsor, illustrated by seven photos.
From the pages of THE DIAMONDBACK, the student newspaper of the University of Maryland, came this surprising article that listed numerous denunciations concerning the various ways that the state of Maryland had failed time and again to educate their African-American youth.
‘Separate but equal’ facilities are a myth in Maryland. No Negro school in the state compares with the University of Maryland, which is for white students only.
There is only one retail establishment in the world that is able to boast that they had retained the patronage of both Thomas Jefferson and Andy Warhol, and that would be Brooks Brothers.
Diplomats and prize fighters, dukes and bankers, Cabinet members and theatrical luminaries stroll every day through the ten-story building on Madison Avenue. The sight of Secretary of State Dean Acheson trying on a new overcoat, or Clark Gable testing a new pair of shoes, or the Duke of Windsor undecided between a red or green dressing gown causes scarcely a flurry. The reason is simply that the store itself is a national legend, as noted in its own right as any of its patrons.
The attached five page article lays out the first 132 years of Brooks Brothers. It is printable.
– from Amazon:
Brooks Brothers: Generations of Style, It’s About the Clothing
The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded ‘taps’. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war.
This is a remarkably brief history of the W.P.B. restrictions on American necktie manufacturers during the Second World War.
Although there is black-out during the war years, the attached charts will give you a sense of the preferred suiting colors both before the war and upon it’s immediate conclusion. The pointy-headed soothsayers who attempt to predict which colors men will buy were very surprised to find that in the aftermath of World War II, American men were quite eager to buy browns and khaki-colored suiting after all.
The Chinese foray into Korea resulted in the coming together of numerous politicians in Washington in order to boost Army spending by $41.8 billion dollars, with an additional $1 billion designated for nuclear warfare preparedness. Assorted branches of the military increased the draft pool and lowered their admission standards. New Jersey Representative Charles Eaton(R) gravely stated:
We face the greatest danger of extinction since the nation was founded.
The President has asked all Americans to keep their eyes open for spies and subversives and to report them to the FBI. Who would you start looking for?
The attached paragraphs tell the story of General Patton’s famous prayer for battle weather – who authored it and how many men recited it.
That prayer [and the accompanying Christmas] greeting were typically Patton. They [read as if they] were [pulled] from the Old Testament rather than the New and had the ring of Joshua and David at their militant best.They were not written for a soft time but for their occasion; they were words to make men strong – and they did.
FDR’s D-Day prayer can be read here
The attached article is a segment from a longer one about the history of Brooks Brothers and it confirms that the Great Emancipator was one of their customers, as were the Union Army Generals Grant, Sherman and Hooker.
Click here if you would like to read the entire article about the first 132 years of Brooks Brothers.
The United Nations defense ‘line’ in Korea was more like a rubber band. It gave with Red punches, then snapped back. But last week the strain on the elastic was terrific… Neat shifting by the out-numbered defenders met and tossed back each of the blows – first along the southern coast toward Pusan…
