Script Magazine – Old Magazine Articles

Down With Christian Dior and His ”New Look”!
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The California fashion critic who penned this article believed that the fashions of Christian Dior stood firmly in opposition to the optimistic, Twentieth Century casual elegance of Claire McCardell (1905 – 1958) and Adrian (1903 – 1959). She could not bare Dior, with his vulgar penchant to spin

the feminine figure in the unconventional manner, trying to make her look good where she ain’t. He seeks the ballet dancer illusion – natural, rounded shoulders, too weak to support a struggling world…Her waist is pinched in an exaggerated indentation, the better to emphasize her padded hips…There are butterfly sleeves, box pockets, belled jackets, and barreled skirts, suggesting something like a Gibson girl, or whatever grandmother should have worn.

Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.

The Director: Frank Capra
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1942)

This profile of director Frank Capra was written five years before he directed It’s a Wonderful Life and gives a tidy account as to the course of his career up until 1942, when he was inducted as a major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

What makes the novel good is what makes Saroyan good. In this case his wonderful satires on army life, wangling , and the weird fauns of his private universe. What makes it bad is the overdose of soliloquies, hymns and plain mutterings on love, death life and the appeasement of divine wrath by means of scapegoat.

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

The Degraded Lives of American Reds
(Script Magazine, 1935)

This article was written by an anonymous soul who wanted the Script readers to understand that the life of an American Communist during the Great Depression was not a good one. Their lives often involved constant police surveillance and harassment to say nothing of blacklisting.

What boon can membership in the Communist Party confer upon them in exchange for the martyrdom they almost inevitably suffer? But is any membership card ever printed worth having one’s skull fractured for?

More about American Communists during the Great depression can be read here

A Salute to D.W. Griffith
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1945)

To mark the 67th birthday of the silent film director D.W. Griffith, the editors of a once illustrious Hollywood literary magazine pasted his famous profile on their magazine cover and devoted four columns to his achievements.

The Atomic Crusade
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1948)

Attached is a 1948 article by the Nobel laureate Arthur Holly Compton (1892 – 1962) concerning the widespread understanding among nuclear physicists to wrestle control of atomic energy away from the military and firmly in the hands of civil authorities, where it’s benefits can be put to general use and harnessed as positive force in the lives of all mankind.

Awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1927, the SCRIPT MAGAZINE editors believed that Arthur Compton, more than anyone else, deserved the title Daddy of the Atomic bomb. When the U.S. Government decided to proceed with the research and development of this weapon, Compton was assigned the double task of attempting a nuclear chain reaction and of designing the bomb itself.

Compton is remembered as the senior physicist at the Manhattan Project who hired Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.

Click here to read an article about American public opinion during the early Cold War years.

Click here to read about the invention of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

Otto Klemperer Conducts Stravinsky
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

A printable music review by Lawrence Morton (1904 – 1987), long time advocate of modern music and habitual contributor to MUSICAL QUARTERLY and MODERN MUSIC. One of Morton’s greatest interests was the music of Stravinsky, and it is Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements that was discussed in this 1947 review:

The symphony opens in full orchestra with a mighty affirmation of confidence and resolution. Then the horns state the main problem with which the composer would confront us: other instruments reiterate it, as if to show it to us from new angles and with new perspectives…

This particular performance was conducted in Los Angeles by Otto Klemperer (1885 – 1973), who was singled out for high praise in this article.

Back-Handed Compliments for D.W. Griffith
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1948)

This 1940s Hollywood journalist refrained from using the pejorative white cracker while condemning silent film director D.W. Griffith for his racial views -and yet at the same time did something rather bold in that he put in print his views that the man has been erroneously credited as the creator of various assorted film innovations that were pioneered by other filmmakers.

Louis L’Amour on Post-War Paris
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1946)

During the course of the Second World War, Western fiction writer Louis L’Amour (1908 – 1988) served as a U.S. Army lieutenant in a transport unit. He penned this nifty article about 1946 Paris while waiting to return home:

It is cold in Paris now. There are chill winds blowing down those wide streets. The fuel shortage is serious, and will probably continue to be so as transportation is not yet what it should be.

Vivid with historical background, the city somehow remains modern. It has kept step with the world without losing its beauty or its patina…Easy enough when riding along the Rue St. Antoine to forget that where the jeeps and command cars roll now, there were once Roman chariots. No corner of Paris is without its memories.

Joseph Cummings Chase: Soldiers All
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1942)

Joseph Cummings Chase (1878 – 1965) was an American painter who’s name is not likely to be associated with World War I artists but, like Sir William Orpen, he had a comfortable place within fashionable circles and he, too, was commissioned to paint portraits of the anointed within his nations military establishment. This article appeared in 1942 and primarily concerns the W.W. I portrait that Chase painted of Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur during the closing days of the war:

Joseph Cummings Chase is without doubt one of the world’s greatest portrait painters, and as luck would have it, he was in Paris when World War I began, at which time the Government commissioned him to paint the Distinguished Service Cross men, both enlisted men and officers, wherever he could catch up with them; some in dugouts, some in trenches, and some behind the lines.

Click here to see a few trench war images by German Expressionist Otto Dix.

Click here to read a 1942 article by Rockwell Kent on the proper roll of American artists during wartime.