Quick Magazine

Articles from Quick Magazine

Truman Decides to Defend South Korea
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

“[Truman’s] fateful decision to send U.S. planes and ships into the Korean fighting was made with advice of Representative Walter Judd (1898 – 1994: R., Minn.). Judd had been sharply critical of U.S. Far Eastern policy on grounds that it was opening the doorto Communism. The day after fighting started, State Department officials asked Judd’s advice on procedures for helping South Korea.”

The Korean War’s Effect on Wall Street
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

The outbreak of the war in Korea sent stocks tumbling in all important world markets. In N.Y., three months of profits were wiped out. At week’s end some stocks rose, but jittery brokers kept an eye on the war news and – an ear turned toward Washington, where announcements of increased U.S. participation in the fighting touched off further waves of selling>

Advertisement

‘How We Can Win in Asia”
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

In the attached editorial, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (1898 – 1980) weighs in on how the United States could forge stronger Cold War alliances in Asia and the Middle East:

We have thought that we could stop the spread of communism by guns and by dollars. We have spent billions upon billions and yet the Red tide of communism seems to spread… We should show Asia how her revolution can follow the pattern of 1776. What will win in Asia are not guns and dollars but but ideas of freedom and justice. To win in Asia, America must identify herself with those ideas.


To understand some of the diplomatic challenges Douglas was referring to, click here


More on this topic can be read here…

The Damaged Prestige of the FBI
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

When this article appeared on the newsstands, J. Edgar Hoover had been FBI chief for nearly thirty years. In all that time he had enjoyed being photographed among celebrities and adored patting himself on the back by writing numerous magazine articles about the FBI. But by the time the early Fifties came along Hoover and his Federal agency were no longer the teflon icon that they used to be; the failings of the FBI were adding up and Hoover did not seemed accountable.

The Coeds of the Cold War
(Quick Magazine, 1953)

The original Generation X was that group of babies born in the late Twenties/early Thirties: they were the younger brothers and sisters of the W.W. II generation. There seemed to have been some talk in the early Fifties that this group of Americans were becoming sardonic and cynical – raised on the W.W. II home front, only to find that when they came of age they were also expected to sacrifice their numbers in a foreign war:

How can you help being pessimistic when you hear that the boy you sat next to in high school English was killed last week in Korea?


– opined one of the nine college women interviewed on the attached pages. These Cold War women were asked what was on their minds as they prepared for jobs, marriage and family.

Advertisement

Criticism
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

During the Summer of 1952, an unhappy Christian cleric in far away Scotland weighed in on Jane Russell – provoking the Hollywood beauty to weigh right back.

Enter China
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

On Friday, November 3, 1950 Mao Tse-Tung (1893 – 1976) ordered the Chinese Army to intervene in the Korean War on behalf of the the retreating North Korean Army:

…perhaps [as many as] 250,000 Chinese Communists jumped into the battle for Northwest Korea; at best, their intervention meant a winter campaign in the mountains; at worst, a world war.


From Amazon: The Korean War: The Chinese Interventionstyle=border:none

Tensions Build in Washington
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

The Korean War was all of two weeks old when this column went to press describing the combustible atmosphere that characterized the Nation’s Capitol as events unfolded on the Korean peninsula:


A grim Senate voted the $1.2 billion foreign arms aid bill. Knots of legislators gathered on the floor or in the cloakrooms for whispered conversations. Crowds gathered around news tickers…
On everyone’s lips was the question: ‘Is this really World War III?’


Click here to read about the need for Army women during the Korean War.

Advertisement

U.S. Racial Diversity and the Cold War
(Quick Magazine, 1954)

With the end of the Second World War in 1945 came numerous social changes to the nation. Among them was the Civil Rights movement, which soon began to find followers in the white majority and acquire an unprecedented traction in Washington as a result of the Cold War (an article on this topic can be read here). It was these two factors, the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement, that combined in the Fifties to call for the creation of a new immigration policy. It would be naive to assume that race alone was the sole factor in drafting a more inclusive policy because, as the attached editorial spells out, the Cold War climate demanded that the U.S. make more friends among the developing countries if the Soviets were to be defeated economically and militarily.

The Third Christmas in Korea
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

As 1952 was coming to an end President Truman must have seemed delighted to pass along to the next guy all the various assorted trouble spots that existed throughout the world. President-Elect Eisenhower had promised peace during his presidential campaign – but many of the issues at hand were interrelated: French Indochina, South Africa, the Middle-east, the Iron Curtain and, of course, Korea.

The Strong Economy and its Effect on Fashion
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

The antidote to the austere fashion deprivations of the 1930s and the wartime fabric restrictions that characterized the Forties arrived in the immediate post-war period when designers were at last permitted to make manifest their restrained cleverness and create an aesthetic style in a mode that was overindulgent in its use of fabric. This fashion revolt commenced in Paris, when Christian Dior showed his first collection in 1947 – couturiers in every style capitol in the West willingly kowtowed and a new era in fashion was born.

Advertisement

The Arrests of David Greenglass and Alfred Slack
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

The arrests of David Greenglass (1922 – 2014: Soviet code name Kalibr) and Alfred Slack (1905 – 1977: Soviet code name El) were the result of the FBI having arrested and interrogated a vital Soviet courier a month earlier: Harry Gold (1911 – 1972: Soviet code name Arno). When Gold began to sing, the spies began to fall like leaves of autumn day. This quick read concentrates on Gold’s fellow chemist, Slack, who had been passing along information to the Soviets since the mid-Thirties, however between the years 1944 and 1945 Slack had been assigned to work in Oak Ridge Tennessee with the Manhattan Project. Greenglass had also been on the Manhattan project, and he was a far bigger catch.

The Japanese Death Ray?
(Quick Magazine, 1949)

An odd dispatch from W.W. II appeared on the pages of a 1949 issue of QUICK MAGAZINE declaring that the weapons laboratories of Imperial Japan had been developing a ray gun throughout much of the war. When they realized that the jig was up they tossed the contraption in a nearby lake.


What worked considerably better than the Death Ray was hi-altitude hydrogen balloon-bombs that the Japanese let-loose on the Western states at the end of the war – click here to read about them…

Advertisement

The Start of the Korean War
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

On June 25, 1950 ten divisions of North Korean infantry invaded South Korea. In its narrowest sense, the invasion marked the beginning of a civil war between peoples of a divided country. In a far larger sense, it represented a break in tensions between the two dominant power blocs that had emerged from the Second World War. These well-illustrated pages appeared in Quick Magazine two weeks after the hostilities commenced and serves to summarize the events in Washington and at the United Nations. Within the first twelve hours of the war President Truman committed U.S. air and naval forces to the defense of South Korea and signed a bill to widen the draft pool.


The Korean War ended in 1953. Click here to read about the military results of that war.

The Birth of the Slip Dress
(Quick Magazine, 1949)

One Autumn evening in 1949, New York fashion model Anna-Lee Daniels and her gay boyfriend, Henry, took it upon themselves to demonstrate just how chic ladies’ undergarments were becoming. Recognizing that the latest slips were so minimal in their design – appearing much like the dresses flappers were often seen wearing back in the day It was soon decided that the two should step out for a night on the town – with young Anna-Lee sporting the slip – just to see if anyone caught on.

Leopard and Zebra Prints Become the Thing, Again
(Quick Magazine, 1954)

Two years before this article went to press, some Delphian at Quick Magazine scribbled these words:

Expect fashion designers to jump on the African trend in literature and entertainment. Examples: four new African [themed] films (Cry the Beloved Countrystyle=border:none, The Magic Gardenstyle=border:none, Latuko and The African Queenstyle=border:none) to be followed by a Walt Disney African wildlife film.


– next thing you know, down fashion’s runways sashay the teen waifs – all clad as if they were the striped and spotted beasts who prance upon the Serengeti Plain.

Advertisement

Scroll to Top