Interviews: 1912 – 1960 – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

The Life and Death of Hank Williams
(Coronet Magazine, 1956)

Country Music legend Hank Williams (1923 – 1953)
died just four and a half months after being kicked out of the Grand Ol’ Opry for drunken and erratic behavior. He was at the peak of his fame, earning over $200,000 a year and enjoying the enthusiasm of ten million fans in the U.S. and five million abroad. He was 29 years old and known only for 35 songs. The attached article will let you in on the short and painful life of country music’s fair haired boy.

Like many artists, his creativity was nurtured by an empty stomach. Hank Williams was raised under dreadfully impoverished conditions in Depression era Alabama; suffering from spinal bifida, the illness that eventually overcame him, he sought relief from the pain with liquor and drugs and died in the back of the Caddy that was ferrying him to a gig in Canton Ohio.

Robert Benchley, Humorist
(Stage Magazine, 1934)

New Yorker theater critic, columnist, actor and Algonquin wit Robert Benchley (1889 – 1945) was interviewed for Stage Magazine and photographed by theater shutter-bug Ben Pinchot:

Sometimes he writes digests of the news which The New Yorker calls ‘The Wayward Press’ and signs them Guy Fawkes for some quaint reason…

Click here to read more about the The New Yorker.

Robert Benchley, Humorist
(Stage Magazine, 1934)

New Yorker theater critic, columnist, actor and Algonquin wit Robert Benchley (1889 – 1945) was interviewed for Stage Magazine and photographed by theater shutter-bug Ben Pinchot:

Sometimes he writes digests of the news which The New Yorker calls ‘The Wayward Press’ and signs them Guy Fawkes for some quaint reason…

Click here to read more about the The New Yorker.

A Profile of Cartoonist Rube Goldberg, Cartoonist and Quack-Inventor
(Vanity Fair, 1914)

In the attached 1914 magazine profile, Joseph Edgar Chamberlin (1851 – 1935) asked, Who is Goldberg? and then jumped right in and proceeded to answer that question. However, the reader should understand that in 1914 it simply did not take very long to give the answer. With so much good work yet to come, this article outlined the cartoonist’s earliest employment record while making clear that he was already well known for his invention gags, which had already appeared in many papers across the United States.

If you would like to read a 1930 article written by Rube Goldberg click here.

Click here to see an anti-New Deal cartoon that Goldberg drew in 1939.

Leftist Cartoonist Art Young
(Direction Magazine, 1938)

Artist Gilbert Wilson conducted this interview with American socialist cartoonist Art Young (1866 – 1943) which appeared in DIRECTION MAGAZINE during the summer of 1938. In the fullness of time, Art Young has come to be recognized as something of a demi-god in the American poison pen pantheon of graphic satirists and no study of Twentieth Century political cartoons is complete without him:

Art Young has never adopted the policy of tearing into his foe (which is capitalism) with tooth and claw. It simply isn’t his way. He just isn’t capable of hating anyone or anything badly enough to get that angry.

Isn’t it rather the duty of a good radical, as Lenin said, ‘patiently to explain’?

In 1887 the NEW YORK TIMES reviewed the first english edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it…

An Interview With P.G. Wodehouse
(The American Legion Weekly, 1919)

At the time this magazine profile first appeared in 1919, P.G. Wodehouse (1904-1975) had recently resigned his post as the Drama Critic for VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE in order to pursue his ambition as a novelist and playwright. This article revealed to all Wodehouse’s keen interest in American slang and the language of American comic strips.

Click here to read magazine articles about D.W. Griffith.

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

In the attached PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE article, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911 – 2004), the Hollywood actor who would one day become the fortieth president of the United States (1981–1989), gives a tidy account as to who he was in 1942, and what was dear to him:

My favorite menu is steaks smothered with onions and strawberry short cake. I play bridge adequately and collect guns, always carry a penny as a good luck charm…I’m interested in politics and governmental problems. My favorite books are Turnabout, by Thorne Smith, Babbitt, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the works of Pearl Buck, H.G. Wells, Damon Runyon and Erich Remarque.

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

Clare Boothe: The Woman Behind ”The Women”
(Stage Magazine, 1938)

The following STAGE MAGAZINE article by American playwright Clare Boothe (Clare Boothe Luce 1903 – 1987) appeared in print shortly after the successful opening of her play, The Women:

Of course, writing plays wasn’t exactly a flash of genius. I mean I am shewed in spots…But inspiration or calculation, it was frightfully lucky that I hit on writing plays, wasn’t it? And it was so wonderfully fortunate that quite a lot of people that I’d met socially on Park Avenue, at very exclusive parties, people like cowboys, cooks, manicurists, nurses, hat-check girls, fitters, exchorines, declasses countesses, Westport intellectuals, Hollywood producers Southern girls and radical columnists, gave me such lovely material to write about.

Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…