The American Magazine – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

Will Hays Comes to Hollywood
(The American Magazine, 1922)

This short notice is about Will Hays, an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, who was hired to be the conscience of the Dream Factory in 1922; he rode into Hollywood on the heels of a number of well-publicized scandals vowing to sober the place up. Widely believed to be a moral man, the Hays office was located in New York City – far from the ballyhoo of Hollywood. Hays’ salary was paid by the producers and distributors in the movie business and although he promised to shame the film colony into making wholesome productions, he was also the paid apologist of the producers.

‘Guadalcanal Diary”
(The American Magazine, 1943)

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Mangrum, USMC, was a seasoned veteran in the Cactus Air Force that fought the good fight at Henderson Field from Guadalcanal in 1942:

For eight weeks the author and his fellow pilots shared the primitive life of the other Marines at Henderson Field. Some portion of his squadron was almost constantly in the air, attacking enemy reinforcements.

Distributing Women Throughout Industry
(The American Magazine, 1942)

One of the seldom remembered branches of the War Production Board was the Women’s Labor Supply Services which served to eradicate the various draft deferments that were keeping too many men out of the military. Thelma McKelvey was the woman in charge of this body:

This captain of industry expects to see women workers in factories and farms increase from 700,000 today to 4,000,000 by mid-1943.

Dogs for Defense
(American Magazine, 1943)

Dogs for Defense was a World War II organization founded by three patriotic dog enthusiasts who established the group in order to procure patriotic canines (meeting certain height and weight standards) for the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, that branch of the services charged with the task of training the animals. Dogs for Defense was able to provide as many as four hundred dogs a week for the U.S. Army throughout both W.W. II as well as the Korean War.

The attached article can be printed.

Georgia Carroll
(The American Magazine, 1940)

Fashion Modeling Czar John Powers once said of model Georgia Carroll:

She is the most terrific thing that ever hit this business.

Un-Americanism
(The American Magazine, 1946)

New York’s Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman (1889 – 1967) wrote the attached editorial explaining why Marxism was the polar opposite of everything Americans holds dear:

My sole objective in writing is to help save America from the godless governings of totalitarianism…if you believe with me that freedom is the birthright of the great and the small, the strong and the weak, the poor and the afflicted, then you would be convicted as I that [Socialism] is the antithesis of American Democracy.

Click here to read another argument opposed to socialism.

‘Hollywood Hangout”
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Schwab’s Pharmacy was like many other well-heeled American pharmacies of the Forties – it filled prescriptions, sold cigars, served three squares a day at their counter and cracked-wise with the clientele. What made it different was that many of the customers were among the most glam movie stars of the time. Located on Sunset Boulevard, west of Hollywood, in an area known as Sherman:

It’s the one place in Hollywood where screen biggies like Robert Taylor, Gene Tierney and Marlene Dietrich drop in and out all day and make themselves at home.

Hitler’s Man in Buenos Aires
(American Magazine, 1945)

Here is the first inside story of South America’s leading arms producer, Fritz Mandl (1900 – 1977), who ‘fled’ from Austria with $60,000,000. On the U.S. black list, he has been called ‘one of the most dangerous men in the world’.

John Cage
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Her Arrival
(American Magazine, 1941)

An article that celebrated the well-received performance of Diana Barrymore in her stage debut in the New York play, The Romantic Mr. Dickens:

The critics marshaled such adjectives as ‘vibrant,’ ‘vivid,’ ‘beautiful’, and ‘confident’ to describe the ‘best Barrymore debut in years.’

She Worked The Graveyard Shift
(The American Magazine, 1943)

Thousands of American girls are traveling the same road as 21-year-old Dorthy Vogely, our new Cover Girl this month. No longer do they live at home waiting for a nice young man. Instead they’ve gone on their own to help win the war…

Anti-Nazi POWs Schooled in the Ways of Democracy
(American Magazine, 1946)

Counted among the hundreds of thousands of captured Nazi combatants during the war were thousands of anti-Nazi German draftees who were predictably alienated from the majority of German P.O.W.s in their respective camps. Subjected to kangaroo courts, hazings and random acts of brutality, these Germans were immediately recognized by their captors as a vital element that could prove helpful in the process of rebuilding Germany when the war reached an end.

And so it was early in 1944 when the U.S. Army’s Special Projects Division of the Office of the Provost Marshal General was established in order to take on the enormous task of re-educating these German prisoners of war, all 360,000 of them, in order that they might clearly understand the benefits and virtues of a representative form of government. This article tells the story of their education within the confines of two special encampments that were established just for this purpose, and their repatriation to Germany, when they saw the all that fascism had willed to their countrymen.

Harold Lloyd: The Man, The Cornball
(The American Magazine, 1922)

An in-depth interview with the great silent film comedian Harold Lloyd (1893 – 1971) accompanied by a seldom seen picture of the man WITHOUT his glasses (he didn’t really need them).

One blogger read the attached article and wrote the following:

I’ve never read this before – it’s great. It’s always good to hear Harold’s own thoughts on his films; I enjoyed his description of the stunt he did in on top of the locomotive at the mouth of an approaching tunnel in the film Now or Never. It’s a spectacularly funny gag, but we sometimes forget the effort that went into these scenes; Harold was one comedy star who was prepared to suffer for his art!

Helena Rubenstein on Youth, Beauty and Commerce
(The American Magazine, 1922)

Prior to the creation of cosmetic surgery, with odd procedures like tummy tucks and butt lifts, there was Helena Rubenstein (1871 – 1965), who had a long and stunning career in the cosmetic business and who is remembered for once having said:

There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.

In this interesting 1922 interview, the matron saint of cosmetics made some very bright remarks on the issue of beauty, glamor and vanity.