1956

Articles from 1956

Leaving Hollywood
(Collier’s Magazine, 1956)

Here is a short, well illustrated article about the love shared between Grace Kelly and Prince Rainnier III:


“I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people who looked more in love. Every time I turned around to change film or grab another camera, they’d start whispering, holding hands… like any just-engaged couple. Pretty romantic.”

VJ-Day + 11 Years
(Collier’s Magazine, 1956)

“The new Japan is fermenting a mash of new ideas and old customs. It is mixing political democracy with feudal loyalties, free enterprise with giant monopolies, and several shades of Marxism with a hankering for the good old days. The nation that once meekly did what a handful of leaders told it to do is now outspokenly divided on every major issue… For seven Occupation years the Japanese had no choice of sides. We ran the country and fed them slabs of democracy sandwiched between $2,500,000,000 worth of relief and rehabilitation. Japan enjoyed our help and even digested a good deal of the democracy. But when the Occupation lid came off in 1952 it revealed a country weary of being told what to do, curious to taste the forbidden fruit behind the bamboo curtain and relishing its authority over the foreigners who had been giving it orders for so long.”

N.AT.O. Established
(Dept. of the Army, 1956)

Attached is a printable page from an R.O.T.C. primer concerning American Military History outlined the events of 1948 that created the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.).

This pact, called the North Atlantic Treaty, united Great Britain, the United States, and ten western European nations in a common security system. Approved by the Senate in April 1949, the treaty provided for mutual assistance, including the use of armed force in the event of a Soviet attack upon one or more of the signatory powers.

Abe Lincoln: Short Story Writer…
(Gentry Magazine, 1956)

Reagan was the first actor to become president, Buchanan the first tailor, Jefferson the first architect and Abraham Lincoln was the first writer to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

The world has long known that Lincoln liked an occasional back-room story. Here is the only record – in his own handwriting – of that earthy side of the Great Emancipator.

Shirley MacLaine at 22
(Modern Screen, 1956)

Arriving in Hollywood by way of The Trouble with Harry in 1955, and cute as buttons – Shirley MacLaine (b. 1934) was the adopted little sister of the Rat Pack, that odd movie star whose sensitive skin burned too easily in the California sun and one of the few starlets who was actually capable of sewing her own clothes.

Humphrey Bogart and his Feud with the Hollywood Press
(Pageant Magazine, 1956)

There was a time, Humphrey Bogart maintains, when he saw all interviewers and tried to answer all questions put to him…

But I can’t take it anymore, I’ve had to cut the fan magazines off my list entirely. Just the sheer smell of them drives me crazy. They smell of milk. The interviewers themselves treat you like a two-year-old child with their will-Debbie-marry-Eddie and can-Lance-Fuller-live-without-a-wife kind of idiocy. You know the whole sorry groove of the thing.


You can read about David Niven HERE

Abraham Lincoln: The Boy
(National Park Service, 1956)

Following the death of his mother, Nancy Hanks, the future president was but six years old. Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, then married Sarah Bush and the family moved to Indiana. The Lincoln family was poor and suffered hardships living in the Indiana wilderness but a bond was created between stepmother Sarah and the boy Abraham that was never broken. From the age of nine and throughout the rest of his life Lincoln would call her, Mother.


These are the tender memories of his boyhood that she called to mind just five months after the assassination.

General Grant Recalled Meeting Lincoln
(National Park Service, 1956)

A short paragraph from General Grant’s memoir recalling the the first private interview with President Lincoln, on the occasion in the early spring of 1864 when he was given command of all the Federal armies.

In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted…


Click here to read about a dream that President Lincoln had, a dream that anticipated his violent death.

When Grant Met Lincoln for the First Time
(National Park Service, 1956)

A short paragraph from General Grant’s memoir recalling the the first private interview with President Lincoln, on the occasion in the early spring of 1864 when he was given command of all the Federal armies:

In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them…


Click here to read about General Grant’s Chief of Staff, General John Rawlins.

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