Pageant Magazine – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

‘Beginner’s Guide to the Civil War”
(Pageant Magazine, 1958)

As the one-hundredth anniversary of the War Between the States grew ever nearer, a Pulitzer Prize winning Civil War Historian, Bruce Catton, wrote the attached article concerning the overwhelming popularity that the nation was finding in their study of that remarkable contest:

The requirements for becoming a Civil War Buff are very simple. All you need is a desire to join. If you are interested in the Civil War, you’re in… You may get to the point where you want to join a Civil War Round Table. [Overtime] commonplace words like Appomattox and Antietam and Perryville take on a new meaning for you; a good deal of the monotony and routine of modern life somehow evaporates, as you escape into a period of profound and haunting significance.

All in all, it’s quite an experience.
Welcome to the Army!

The Bad Generals
(Pageant Magazine, 1958)

Attached herein is a list the five lamest Generals of the American Civil War.

This two page compilation is made up of thumbnail descriptions outlining just how far from awesome these men were, and why, one hundred years later, they continue to be recognized as failures to the succeeding generations of Civil War historians.

The Lot of the Fighting Man
(Pageant Magazine, 1958)

Both Northern and Southern armies were composed predominantly of very young men. Almost all the generals were highly bewhiskered, but the enlisted men were almost all too young to shave.

Both sides carried a muzzle-loading rifle, cumbersome by modern standards, but nevertheless a highly effective weapon. It would kill at more than half a mile, and was deadly when used by veterans…

The Concentration Camp Revolts
(Pageant Magazine, 1966)

The doomed Jews of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor did not all die like sheep. Many perished like lions in little-known uprisings against the Nazis – and some even blew up the grisly ovens and gas chambers.

Women Criminals
(Pageant Magazine, 1959)

Here are the six who top the FBI list of most dangerous lady criminals-at-large; find one and you may prevent murder…

1920s Prohibition created a criminal climate that appealed to more women than you ever might have suspected…

Forty Years of Women Voting
(Pageant Magazine, 1960)

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.

A Righteous Gentile
(Pageant Magazine, 1964)

With daring and resourcefulness Father Benoit built up an efficient organization to smuggle Jews and other anti-Nazi refugees into Spain…He found an old hand press in the basement and, with the aid of a Jewish printer-engraver, turned out thousands of passports. Then he summoned a number of Swiss, Hungarian and Rumanian consuls and convinced them in the name of God and our common humanity to sign the crudely made documents.

The Smiths in America
(Pageant Magazine, 1959)

We were surprised to learn that even in this multicultural era of unenforced immigration laws – the last name Smith still stands as the most common surname in the United States – and as of 2021 there are 2,627,141 people with this last name living today. This article points out that there is always at any given time a Smith serving in Congress (currently that duty falls on the shoulders of Representative Chris Smith, who hails from the 4th District of New Jersey).

Unpopular Charles Lindbergh
(Pageant Magazine,1952)

Written twenty years after the event, this article recalls that period when the Lindberghs returned to America after living in Europe for three years. While abroad, Americans were disturbed to read in the press that he chose to keep company with the Fascists of Germany and Italy; after a while American editors found his behavior so unimpressive, they chose not to write about him any longer. Upon his return, prior to the World War II, Lindbergh joined an isolationist movement called the America First Committee. It was at these functions when he began to make assorted racist comments in his speeches – remarks that the press corps could no longer ignore.

Escape from East Berlin
(Pageant Magazine, 1967)

Lenin went to his grave believing that he had established a nation where a worker’s labor would be fairly compensated – a land free from want; but this was not the case. The Soviet Union, and all its assorted satellites, was in actuality, a police state where people longed to get away from all the free stuff that was offered – thousands of people successfully escaped while many others died trying. The country he created was one in which the word escape was frequently uttered – which brings us to this article – it concerns cars and how they were able to be refashioned in such a way as to conceal the East Germans who wished so badly to get away to the West – and it is very well illustrated.

The Accomplished Civil War Generals
(Pageant Magazine, 1958)

Five thumbnail portraits of the most consistently victorious generals of the American Civil War; three Union and two Confederate:

• Ulysses S. Grant

• Phillip Kearny

• George B. Thomas

• Thomas J. Jackson

• Robert E. Lee

N.Y. Artists Discover Loft-Living
(Pageant Magazine, 1960)

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.

A Profile of ”Mr. America”
(Pageant Magazine, 1955)

WHO, WHAT, AND WHY is the average American [man]? What does he eat? What does he wear? What does he worry about? These questions and more like them have taken us on a long journey through the realm of statistics. Out of the discoveries of the Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau and Dr. Gallup’s polls, we’ve succeeded in piecing together an uncommon portrait of the common man.

How One School Turned Itself Around
(Pageant Magazine, 1961)

When the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in the Autumn of 1957 it shocked the American people and set in motion an event that was quickly labeled the Sputnik Crises. Almost at once, school boards all across the fruited plane resolved to improve their math and science programs in order to ensure the blessings of liberty for generations yet unborn.

One of these institutions was Laguna Beach High School in Southern California and the attached article, Turning Bad Schools into Good Schools, will tell you about the various steps they had taken in order to alter their curriculum and the prevailing campus culture as well.

We were gratified to learn that some fifty-odd years later, Laguna Beach High is still one of the finest schools in the country.

With the War Came Medical Innovations
(Pageant Magazine, 1945)

Four years of global carnage did not simply usher in an era of more destructive weaponry for the inhabitants of Earth to ponder; it also gave cause for tremendous improvements in medical care. This 1945 article anticipated a much better world that would be created from the smoldering remains of Europe and Asia – a world that was better prepared to address the health requirements of the diseased and the burned. The medical advancements that were forged between the years 1939 through 1945 saw remarkable improvements in surgery and anesthesia and brought new light on how the medical establishment understood blood and the treatment of venereal disease.

CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…

Hitler’s Final Days
(Pageant Magazine, 1960)

This article pieces together the last few days of Hitler’s bunker experiences – who was there, how did he pass his time and the subjects he addressed. All the matters discussed herein was gleaned from the intelligence agencies of the three victorious armies that marched into Berlin during the Spring of 1945. The author goes into some detail as to whether he and his entourage could have escaped on foot plane or tank and rules each one out categorically. He further examines the possibility as to how this same group could have escaped to Argentina by submarine or air – and rules these possibilities out as well (the author, however, omits the possibility that they could have escaped through the elaborate tunnel system below the streets of Berlin).

America’s Ever-Changing Mind: 1929 – 1952
(Pageant Magazine, 1953)

In an effort to show how American thought can vary between decades, a retired pollster from the Gallup organization collected the data gleaned from various opinion polls that were launched between 1929 on up through the dawn of the Atomic Age in order to show what a different people we had become. The topics that were addressed were

• Racial tolerance

• Taxes

• Women in the work place

• Labor unions

• Women smoking

• Bathing Suits

How the Soviets Would Have Attacked
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

There wouldn’t be any warning.

Long-range Soviet bombers attempt to knock out our key industrial targets by atomic bombing. Some fly the 4,000, miles from Murmansk across the roof of the world to our East Coast; others strike from bases in Eastern Siberia at California and the Midwest… Simultaneously, organized sabotage breaks out in aviation plants, shipyards, power stations, etc., to complement the work of the bombers.