Interviews: 1912 – 1960 – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

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…

Dale Carnegie on Winning Friends and Influencing People
(Collier’s Magazine, 1949)

Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1955) was a phenomenon unique to American shores; he was a publishing marvel whose book How To Win Friends and Influence People has sold over fifty million copies since it’s first appearance in 1937.
Similar to his contemporary Napoleon Hill
(1883 – 1970), Carnegie was one the preeminent self-help authors of the last century who recognized that success can be found within all of us if we simply know how to harness those elements properly. He had a strong belief that the powers of self-determination can be mastered in one’s ability to communicate clearly, and his followers are legion.

This article coincided with the printing of his second book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), and explains the author’s philosophy –

… be a good listener, talk in terms of the other man’s interests, and make the other person feel important.

The New Commander-in-Chief: Harry S Truman
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A heavily illustrated, four page article that served to answer the U.S. serviceman’s questions as to who Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972) was and why was he deemed suitable to serve as President?

Mr. Truman now occupies the Presidency, of course, because he won the Democratic Vice-Presidential nomination in Chicago last summer. Two things won him the nomination. First was the fact that he alone was acceptable to Mr. Roosevelt and to both the conservative element of the Democratic Party and its liberal wing. The second was the excellent performance of the Truman Committee in the investigation of our government’s spending money for the war-effort…One of the main themes of his campaign speeches last fall was that the U.S. should never return to isolationism.

Click here to read about the busy life of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Cole Porter
(Pageant Magazine, 1949)

– a CD from Amazon: KEY WORDS: Cole Porter Magazine Article,Cole Porter biography,Cole Porter Newspaper Article,Cole Porter composer,Cole Porter KISS

Noël Coward
(Stage Magazine, 1933)

Noël Coward (1899 – 1973) was simply the best all-rounder of the theatrical, literary and musical worlds of the 20th century. He invented the concept of celebrity and was the essence of chic in the Jazz Age of the 20s and 30s. His debonair looks and stylishly groomed appearance made him the icon of ‘the Bright Young Things’ that inhabited the world of The Ivy, The Savoy and The Ritz. No one is totally sure when and why it happened but following his success in the 1930s he was called ‘The Master’, a nickname of honor that indicated the level of his talent and achievement in so many of the entertainment arts. -so say the old salts at NoelCoward.net, and they should know because they have a good deal more time to think about him than we do.

The attached article was no doubt written by one of his many groupies for a swank American theater magazine following the successful New York premiere of his play Design for Living:

Click here to read about Cole Porter.

Elsa Maxwell kept the party going during the Great Depression…

A Look at Oscar Wilde
(The Nineteenth Century, 1922)

The author of this article, Gilbert Coleridge, has written an honest character study of Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) in hopes to better understand the man in the context of his time. One of the interesting hypothetical questions he poses asks how would Oscar Wilde (a man who lived only for pleasure) have got on during the highly rationed home front of 1914-1918 war?

He was an arresting figure in person, of commanding height, with a clean-shaved oval face. The latter was marred by a weak mouth, from which poured, with fascinating languor sometimes, torrents of paradox, quaint wit, perverse and startling epigrams, all spoken in a tone which left the listener wondering whether the speaker was really in earnest, or only talking for effect.

Another article about Oscar Wilde can be read here.

Impressions of Elvis
(Gentry Magazine, 1957)

The artist-editor-author-publisher of TOPOLSKI’S CHRONICLE, the London fortnightly, recently visited America. These are his drawings and comments on an American-Greek-god-sex-hero phenomenon:

But, however mystically chosen, why Elvis Presley? Because, I think, he possess very happily the godlike value of all-embracing popularity: he is vulgar, yet stylish in the ‘zoot’ manner – thus he appeals to both the sophisticated and the simple. And his manhood is above suspicion…

An Interview with Erich von Stroheim
(Photoplay Magazine, 1919)

Legendary silent film player Erich von Stroheim (1885 – 1957) gave an account of his life and career in this 1920 interview printed in Motion Picture Magazine. The article touches upon von Stroheim’s roll as producer for the movie Blind Husbands (1919), but primarily concentrates on his pre-Hollywood life and his disappointment with the provincial nature of American films:

Motion picture audiences have been educated down to to accept drivel until they have lost all perspective. It will take time to again build up a sane balance and an artistic judgment.

Walter Lippmann: Columnist
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1933)

Attached is a 1933 interview of Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974) that covers many of the successes and influences of his career up to that time. Lippmann was, without a doubt, one of the most respected Pulitzer Prize winning American columnists of the Twentieth Century and a sharp critic of FDR’s New Deal.

Working as one of the earliest associate editors at The New Republic, he was there at the magazine’s birth (1914), and returned to those offices following his service as a captain in army intelligence and aid to the U.S. Secretary of War when the First World War ended. It was at this point that his career as columnist took flight when he assumed the position as lead commentator at The New York World. The article was written by historian James Truslow Adams (1879 – 1940) who wrote of him:

This phenomenon of Walter Lippmann is, it seems to me, a fact of possibly deep significance, and the remainder of his career will teach us not a little as to what sort of world we are living into…his intellectualism is tempered for the ordinary reader by his effort to be fair and by his fearlessness.