Articles from 1960
During the Civil War many young boys enlisted. In fact, three out of every ten men on the Union side were under 21, and not until 1864 did Congress pass a law forbidding the enlistment of of anyone under 16. But Johnny Clem, who joined up at ten, had them all beaten.
– Indeed he did. In fact, at the age of 12, Johnny Clem was a hero.
During World War II, the officers and men of the U.S. Navy’s submarine Tang had a proud boast. Their submarine, they crowed, rarely wasted a torpedo. In less than a year of combat, the Tang mowed down Japanese transports, freighters and tankers with deadly accuracy. But it was her fifth patrol from September 27 to October 24, 1944, that gives a unique place in the annals of submarine warfare.
You see, the Tang was sunk by her own torpedo.
The men of the Enola Gay were hand-picked experts, chosen for intelligence, emotional stability and discipline, qualities they have put to good use in their post-war careers. Four remained in the service (one died in 1953) and the others are all successful in their business carees. They earn above-average salaries, all but one are married and they have 26 children among them. None of them has been to Japan since the war, and few have met since separation.
Appearing in a 1960 issue of Coronet Magazine was this piece that revealed the assorted introspective perceptions of the crew of the Enola Gay.
In the fifteen years that had past since the dropping of the Atomic bomb these are the personal thoughts that were produced after years of sober reflection concerning their part in one of the preeminent events of the last century:
After 15 years the scene over Hiroshima is still sharp and clear to them, and though they disagree on details, they are unanimous on the point of whether they’d do the same things again.
A profile of the Hollywood actress Donna Reed (born Donna Belle Mullenger: 1921 – 1986), who will foreve be remembered for her portrayal of the character Mary Bailey in the Frank Capra film, It’s a Wonderful Life(RKO, 1947).
This interview was published as one more publicity element that was created to promote her television program, The Donna Reed Show
A fascinating read about how the previously embalmed language of Hebrew had been dusted off and born anew for the modern era. Hebrew in 1948 (the year that the U.N. recognized Israel as a nation) was largely seen as an inaccessible tongue known only to scholars – had existed for the past 4,000 years with a scant 8,000 words: this would now change as the language was permitted to live and grow once more. Today it is believed that Hebrew has between 60,000 and 150,000 words and that there are as many as 9 million people who speak the language worldwide.
In this article the proud father of Anne Frank, Otto Frank (1889 – 1980), explains that by the late Fifties it seemed more and more teenagers were contacting him to say that very few parents or teachers seemed willing to discuss the Nazi years in Germany. These inquiries were too often dismissed as bothersome or simply brushed away with hasty answers like, The Nazis built the Autobahns.
Otto Frank points out that this was not always the case, and goes on to recall that there existed a more sympathetic and regretful Germany for at least a decade after the war. Yet, in 1960 he sensed that there existed a subtle movement to whitewash Hitler; a battle was being waged for the mind of this teenage generation.
From Amazon: A German Generation
Click here to read about the inmate rebellions that took place at Auschwitz, Sobibor and Triblinka.
The smoldering embers of what had once been Adolf Hitler’s carcass barely cooled by the time reports of his whereabouts began appearing on the pages of assorted newspapers and magazines throughout the world; here are a list of some of them.
The attached page is but a segment of a longer article that pertains to Hitler’s dying days and can be read here
Andrew St. George, a reporter who lived in the hills with Fidel Castro tells the story of how an idealistic revolution turned into one of the greatest tragedies of our time.
To fulfill her publicity obligations for her roll as Roxanne in her forthcoming film The Subterranean (MGM, 1960: from the Jack Kerouac novella
of the same title), actress Janice Rule (1931 – 2003) struck a number of Beat poses and provided a glossary of Beatnik slang for the readers of Coronet magazine.
Click here to read an article about 1940s teen slang.
If you would like to read about 1920s slang, click here.
A single page report on the instituted racist policies practiced by the U.S. Navy throughout the course of the Second World War.
Click here the institutional racist policies of the W.W. I American Army.
Inasmuch as racial integration was the social goal for a vast majority of Americans in 1960, this article made it clear that racial harmony in the U.S. Armed Forces was not simply the goal, it was the reality. Written by a journalist who visited as many as ten U.S. Military establishments throughout Europe and North Africa in order to see how President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 had effected American military culture.
Howl is written, says Ginsberg, peering as he does through his glasses with a friendly intermingling of smile and solemnity, in some of the rhythm of Hebraic liturgy – chants as they were set down by the Old Testament prophets. That’s what it’s supposed to represent – prophets howling in the Wilderness. That, in fact, is what the whole Beat Generation is, if it’s anything, – howling in the Wilderness against a crazy civilization.
Here is a segment from a longer article that tells the sad story about racial segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces. The small portion that is attached here tells of a secret group of fifty army researchers who were dispatched to the European front and
interviewed thousands of [White] soldiers about their attitudes toward Negro platoons fighting experimentally within their divisions.
Their findings proved that to these front-line respondents, the experimental platoons were truly their equal. In 1948 this research was showed to President Truman, who signed Executive Order 9981, thus bringing to an end racial segregation within the ranks of the U.S. Military.
When Mad Magazine first appeared on newsstands in 1952 it was immediately recognized as something quite new in so far as American satirical magazine humor was concerned. The earliest issues were produced in comic book format with almost all content produced by its founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman (1924 – 1993); by 1955 the magazine’s lay-out was altered to its current form. From its earliest days, Kurtzman and his publisher, William Gaines (1922 – 1992), began receiving unsolicited gags from many of the finest writers and performers on radio and TV. This article lists some of the scandals (both foreign and domestic) that the magazine inadvertently generated.
In the fourth decade of women’s suffrage, researchers had discovered that there were more women than men listed on the voting registries. Republican Party executive Clare Williams noted:
Women now hold the balance of power.
Unlike other publications that enter this world with high ideals and lofty ambitions in matters concerning free-speech, the right-to-know, good form and all that sort of stuff – only to slowly devolve into petty, libelous innuendo rags before they cease publication altogether – the British daily The News of The World (1843 – 2011) made its appearance on Fleet Street seeming as if it was already on its way out. As the saying goes, it sold out early and beat the rush.
Although its earliest editions covered the Crimean War, as well as all the other Victorian military adventures, the paper’s editorial policy had always been positioned somewhere to the left of Whoopee.
A new day dawned in Manhattan real estate history at the end of 1961 when the city elders agreed to abandon their bureaucratic jihad (a fire code issue) to evict artists from all those assorted run-down ateliers located around lower Broadway.
These were the upper floors of hundreds of old downtown business and manufacturing buildings (most over a century old) that were characterized by their heavy masonry proliferating with faux loggias, balustrades, entablatures and rows of delicately fluted columns – all scattered throughout Tribeca, SoHo and Chelsea. The artists called them Lofts.
As far as we can figure out, this was the first time in history that anybody seemed to care where an artist lived and worked.
