Pathfinder Magazine

Articles from Pathfinder Magazine

The Birth of Special-Effects Makeup (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Here is an article about one of the most innovative minds in the nascent world of Hollywood makeup design; it belonged to a fellow named Jack Dawn (1892 – 1961). Dawn was under contract at MGM for decades and worked on over two hundred films, his most being the film that is discussed herein: The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM). The article briefly touches upon the thin, rubbery masks that he created after having made numerous in depth studies of human bone and muscle.

‘No More Pearl Harbors” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

When the twenty-year-old editor at Yank Magazine wrote this editorial at the close of W.W. II he was expressing a belief that was shared equally with the members of the W.W. I generation who prosecuted and managed the war from Washington – and that was an understanding that the world is a far more dangerous place than we thought it was and it needs to be watched. This 1946 article is similar to other columns that appeared in 1947 (when the CIA was established) and 1952 (when the NSA opened its doors) in that it announced the creation of a government agency intent on global espionage in order to have done with all future concerns that another Pearl Harbor was in the planning.

WPA and the States (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

In early March, numerous governors convened and agreed that the WPA was dropping too many dependents from their rolls who were then becoming burdensome to their respective states. The executives then wrote a telegram to the White House insisting that the Federal program stop this practice.

The Federal Theater Project (Pathfinder & Literary Digest Magazines, 1939)

The Federal Theater Project (FTP) was a division of President
Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA was organized in order to dream up jobs for the many unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. They employed manual laborers with the Civilian Conservation Corps, musicians with the Federal Music Project and historians with the Federal Records Survey – to name only a few of the agencies within the WPA. The Federal Theater Project was intended to hire the nation’s actors, costumers,directors and stagehands:

At its peak in 1936, FTP employed 12,500 people…it had puppet shows, vaudeville units, circuses and stock companies traveling through every state.

Fashion’s Rainmaker (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

In the February of 1947, he opened eyes and mouths all over the world by showing almost-ankle-length daytime dresses. In the United States this length was christened the New Look. And Christian Dior had won, by inches the title, King of Fashion. His title is still secure. Dior designs accounted for an estimated 60% of total haute couture exports last year.

More Fighting for Christmas (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

The toughest fighting was in a three-mile beachead at the chewed-up port of Hungnam. There the U.S X Corps had escaped from a Chinese trap and was piling aboard a fleet of Victory and Liberty ships.


The U.S. Navy had a strong presence off shore to cover the American withdrawal.

The Atomic Spy Ring (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

An interesting column that succinctly sums up how Stalin’s spies were able to compromise the Manhattan Project, who organized the spy ring, the intelligence that was gleaned, how they were caught and what their fate within the legal system would be.


You can read about Alger Hiss HERE…

Japanese Feudalism Overturned (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

The reforms that were imposed upon Occupied Japan in the Forties and Fifties did not simply come in the form of death sentences for war criminals – but additionally the Japanese came to know the rights and protections that are guaranteed to All Americans under the United States Constitution. For the first time ever Japanese women were permitted to vote, unions were legalized and equality under the law was mandated. This small notice concerned the overthrow of the feudal laws that governed the Japanese tenant farmers.

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