Miscellaneous – Old Magazine Articles

Christian Nationalism: the First Go-Round
(Christian Herald Magazine, 1950)

We like to think that if the Christians who call themselves “Christian Nationalists” today were aware of what that term meant decades ago, they would immediately insist that the name be changed. The organization discussed in the attached article was the brainchild of Gerald L.K. Smith (1898 – 1976), a hate-filled man, an alleged minister of the Gospel, who denied the Jewishness of Christ and all His lessons.

SECOND TEST MISC.

Observations Concerning Comic Strips
(Vanity Fair, 1923)

“From a study that covers practically all the comic sequences, I have roughly estimated that sixty percent deal with the unhappiness of married life, fifteen percent with other problems of the home, such as disagreeable children, and in the other fifteen is grouped a miscellany of tragic subjects – mental or social inferiority, misfortune and poverty. This last group contains a few subjects that carry no definite plan from day-to-day but are based on transient jokes such a Prohibition and the income tax.”

General Smedley Butler on Peace
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)

Retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler (1881 – 1940) was well known for his 1935 book, War is a Racket in which he summed-up his military career as one in which he served as “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers”; he wrote of the importance of removing the profitability from war and cautioned his countrymen to be weary of American military adventurism. In this essay, Butler warned of well-healed, deep-pocketed “peace” organizations and prophesied that institutions like the League of Nation and the U.N. would be incapable of stopping wars (he got that right).

Smedley Butler on Peace
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)

Retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler (1881 – 1940) was well known for his 1935 book, War is a Racket

SECOND TEST MISC.

1950s Texas
(American Magazine, 1952)

Lost in wide-eyed wonder, this journalist reported all that he saw during his four-month journey through The Lone Star State, finding, to his astonishment, that everything those annoying men named Tex had told him throughout the years was absolutely true.

Don’t be offended if Texans fail to thank you for compliments about their state; they are weaned on a sublime conviction that everything in Texas is the biggest or best or both… Anything in Texas that isn’t the biggest or best is bound to be the smallest or the worst; there is no mediocrity.

Click here to read about the U.S. Border Patrol in Texas.

Mr. Kinsey’s Report
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)

Although much of what Dr. Alfred Kinsey wrote concerning male sex patterns has been debunked in our own age, his conclusions were taken quite seriously in the late Forties and early Fifties. This slender column serves as a summary and review regarding his studies that were published in his 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948).

From Amazon:

Sexual Behavior in The Human Female and Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Two Volume Set

Mobsters and Their Nick-Names
(Confidential Magazine, 1958)

An article about Irving Izzy the Eel Cohen, Joseph Socks Lanza, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, Jake Greasy Thumb Guzik and Albert Tick Tock Tannenbaum (among others) and how they earned such colorful names.

(This article was brought into the digital world by Matt the Mad Scanner Jacobsen)

An Al Capone article can be read here…

SECOND TEST MISC.

Discovering the Color of the Earth
(Literary Digest, 1933

Generations before satellite photography, and long before the T.V. cameras were placed on the moon, an American astronomer named V.M. Slipher (1875 – 1969) figured out the predominate color of our planet when seen from afar. Read on…

Discovered: The Tomb of King Tutankhamun
(Literary Digest, 1923)

One of the first American magazine articles heralding the November 4, 1922 discovery of the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen (1341 BC – 1323 BC) by the British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874 – 1939); who was in this article, erroneously sited as an American:

What is thought may prove the greatest archeological discovery of all time has recently been made in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor. Two chambers of a tomb have been found filled with the funeral paraphernalia of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, and hopes are entertained that the third chamber, yet unopened, may contain the royal mummy itself.

The Pandemic of 1918
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1938)

The Spanish Influenza (February 1918 – April 1920) struck hard in the U.S. Army camps. Every fourth man came down with the flu, every twenty-fourth man caught pneumonia, every sixth man died.

By the time the virus ran its course in the United States 675,000 Americans would succumb (although this article estimated the loss at 500,000).

SECOND TEST MISC.

Does Smoking Really Cause Cancer?
(United States News, 1953)

Some time ago we posted an article from 1921 about legislation that the U.S. Congress was considering concerning the prohibition of cigarettes (Click here to read about that) we thought that the cat was out of the bag at that time as to the fact concerning the connection of smoking and cancer. But we were wrong. The 1953 article attached herein concerns four doctors who appeared before Congress in an appeal for federal funding for cancer research. They made it clear that research was indicating that there was a clear link between smoking and cancer, but more exploration was needed.

In 1921 there was talk in Congress of outlawing cigarettes – you can read about it here

Click here to read about one of the greatest innovations by 20th Century chemists: plastic.

Chicago Vaudeville Remembered
(Stage Magazine, 1935)

American journalist and radio personality Franklin P. Adams (1881 – 1960) recalled the high-water mark of Chicago’s Vaudeville (with some detail) for the editors of STAGE MAGAZINE, a witty and highly glossy magazine that concerned all the goings-on in the American theater of the day:

They were Continuous Variety Shows. They ran – at any rate at the Olympic Theatre, known in Chicago as the Big O – from 12:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m….While those days are often referred to as the Golden Days of Vaudeville, candor compels the admission that they were brimming with dross; that Vaudeville’s standard in 1896 was no more aureate than musical comedy in 1935 is.

Andrew Mellon’s Gift
(Art Digest, 1937)

A 1937 news column announced the very generous gift to Washington, D.C. and the nation made by billionaire philanthropist Andrew W. Mellon (1855 — 1937): The National Gallery of Art:

A long, low, classic structure, tailored in lines that harmonize with the neighboring white Beaux-Arts buildings, will house the new National Gallery made possible for the nation’s capital by Andrew W. Mellon. The plans, designed by John Russell Pope have already been accepted by the Fine Arts Commission and construction… will get underway as soon as congressional authorization is made… The cost of the building, which will be borne entirely by Mr. Mellon, is estimated at $9,000,000.

(The cost was actually $10,000,000)

Click here to read additional articles from the Twenties and Thirties about art.

The Death of Governor Huey Long
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1935)

Milton Caniff: 1940s American Cartoonist

Attached is a profile of Milton Caniff (1907 – 1988), who is remembered as the creator of Terry and the Pirates (1934 – 1946), Mail Call (1942 – 1946) and Steve Canyon (1946 – 1988).

Click here to read an article by G.I. cartoonist Bill Maulden.

The Slang of the Beatnik Generation
(Pageant Magazine, 1960)

To fulfill her publicity obligations for her roll as Roxanne in her forthcoming film The Subterranean (MGM, 1960: from the Jack Kerouac novella
of the same title), actress Janice Rule (1931 – 2003) struck a number of Beat poses and provided a glossary of Beatnik slang for the readers of Coronet magazine.

Click here to read an article about 1940s teen slang.

If you would like to read about 1920s slang, click here.

‘Why I Live In Los Angeles”
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

An article written at a time when L.A. was a very different city – with a population of merely ten million, the city’s detractors often called it Iowa by the sea; today they compare it to the Balkans:

The point is that in [1950] Los Angeles the individual leads his own life and plays his own games rather than lose himself vicariously in the capers of professionals.

Click here to read about the San Fernando Valley.

San Francisco: 1906
(Collier’s Magazine, 1956)

These historic pen portraits were compiled and re-worked for publication some fifty years after the San Francisco Earthquake; together they serve to illustrate the collective, yet individual, acts of suffering and heroics that took place April 18, 1906:

On the front steps of an abandoned house she had seen a young Chinese mother nursing a baby. The mother’s face was besmirched, and drawn with weariness. Her own child slept in swaddling blankets beside her. The child on her breast was white.