Articles from 1955
In the Digital Age, Beulah Elizabeth Richardson (1920 – 2000: stage name Beah Richards) is largely remembered as an award-winning actress, but it has widely been forgotten that she was also a poet and playwright. The attached poem is an honest expression of her reaction to the tyranny experienced by too many African Americans.
This article served to introduce the boy who is now Charles III (b.1948) to American magazine readers and answer all their questions as to how impossibly glamorous his life was when he was only six years-old:
“Despite his scant years, Charles is already launched in his training for chairman of the board. In that training, the ancient and splendid trappings of British royal tradition still play a part, but in the main Charles is unmistakably a child of the mid-Twentieth Century.”
The editors at Coronet recognized that Oral Roberts was not your average minister, who was simply contented to preside over thirty full pews every week; they labeled him a businessman-preacher and subtly pointed out that the man’s detractors were many and his flashy attire unseemly for a member of clergy:
God doesn’t run a breadline…I make no apology for buying the best we can afford. The old idea that religious people should be poor is nonsense.
Perhaps the above headline gives a wee-bit too much credit to the flappers for changing the sex codes of North America – but it certainly would never have happened without them. They were one of the necessary elements, in addition to motion pictures, recorded music, automobiles and greater job opportunities for women, that, when mixed together created a new social contract. The attached article spells it all out as to how the flappers of the 1920s had stripped the female body of its Victorian wrappings and proudly displayed it in the sunlight.
You might also want read about sex during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
At the beginning of World War II, our army was a mixture of callow boys and and domesticated men. The older men were homesick for wives and children…There were plenty of lonely wives, too, and it soon became evident that a fair number of them were committed to the belief that continence was bad for women.
Marriage vows were one of the unsung casualties of the Second World War: by 1944 many married women who hadn’t seen their drafted husbands in years began producing babies; you can read about that here…
In 1943 a woman on the home front introduced a sexual component that she believed would bring an end to the problem of industrial absenteeism – click here to read about her idea…
Icebergs are disappearing from Canada’s Atlantic coast; forests are growing in the sub-Arctic of the east and air bases have been established on Baffin Island.
Two months after James Dean’s fatal car crash, photographer Sanford Roth (1906 – 1962) penned this reminiscence of his unique friendship with this actor so many years his junior:
Dean was what Hollywood loosely labels a nonconformist, an individualist in the Brando stripe. He wasn’t easy to know.
Those were the days when the talkies had taken over from the silent films and movie executives began a wholesale raid on the New York stage for promising young talent. It was fertile territory. In a comparatively brief period they signed Clark Gable, George Brent, Jimmy Cagney, Joan Blondell, Spencer Tracy Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart, Francis Tone and a score of others. While I was in Broken Dishes I had been screen tested by Samuel Goldwyn for a feminine lead opposite Ronald Coleman…I reached Hollywood with my mother on December 13, 1930.
This article tells the story of a certain Antoni Cierplikowski – better known as Antoine of Paris (1884 – 1976). He was the premiere hairdresser throughout much of the last century and his illustrious client list included many names that you would recognize. Yet, to simply write the man off as a celebrity hairstylist is to ignore his myriad innovations:
• Antoine was the creator of the Bob.
• He created the Perm.
• He was the first to tint gray hair to blue.
• He was the first to apply a lacquer to hair as a fixative.
• Antoine was the first to tinge isolated elements within a hairdo blond as a streaked highlight.
Throughout the course of her life Lillian Roth (1910 – 1980) had lived the high life as well as the low, and during one of the darker moments she sat pining in the depths of her anguish crying out to God – even though she didn’t believe He existed – a well-wisher approached her with a unique line of reasoning that was so pure in its simplicity it immediately lead her to realize that God does indeed exist.
When it became clear to all that the Black community was not wasting its money or withering under the weight of Syphilis like their White counterparts – it was decided that it was time to erect an interracial hotel in the Nevada casino capital of Las Vegas, and so they did; it was called Moulin Rouge.
Much of the credit for the success of Volkswagen immediately after the war was due to the visionary leadership of Volkswagen CEO Heinz Nordhoff (1899 – 1968), who was able to assess the faults of the existing model and make the necessary improvements:
The power was low, and the engine had a life of only 10,000 miles. Nordhoff brought in new experts who redesigned every vital component, working on the original pre-war designs of Ferdinand Porsche… The new car was quieter and more powerful, and had hydraulic brakes and shock absorbers. Soon, models with luxury touches were introduced.
Associated Press combat photographer Joe Rosenthal (1911 – 2006) wrote the attached article ten years after snapping the world famous image of the four U.S. Marines and one Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima. In five pages, he explains the remarkable impact that the photo had on the American psyche as well as the popular culture on the American home front, both during the war and afterward. Rosenthal was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for capturing on film one of the greatest events of W.W. II and briefly explains that the three surviving men who participated in the event were thrust into fame for years afterward.
•Read our article about the treason of Ezra Pound.•
A single page history essay concerning the most popular hairstyle of the 1920s.
If you are seeking that alive-all-over glow your body radiates when you are in excellent health, try the 15-Day Revitalizing Diet listed on the pages following. It is designed to give you the protein, vitamins and minerals your body needs for dynamic living…
When this article first appeared, the Statue of Liberty was praised as the tallest statue in the world – today, it doesn’t even make the list of the tallest statues; nonetheless, here is a collection of facts about the Ladyy Liberty:
• 200,000 pounds of copper were used in the statue, enough copper for more than 100 stacks of pennies, each as tall as the Empire State Building.
• Trans-Atlantic voyagers do not see Liberty until their ship enters N.Y. Harbor, but her torch can be seen 15 miles out.
• Her index finger is eight feet long.
