Recent Articles – Page 100 – Old Magazine Articles

False Hope for 1937
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Perhaps it was the practice of magazine editors during the Great Depression to instruct their reporters to find hope where none existed; that must have been the case for this article. The unnamed journalist who wrote this slender column reported on a few rare cases involving real jobs with real salaries being offered to recent graduates; the reporter wished to believe that this was a sign that the end was nigh – but these few jobs were flukes. The author saw economic growth where there really wasn’t any at all, however he certainly made the case for its existence. The title link posted above leads to a passage from FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell that explains the true situation that existed in 1937, when unemployment stood at 20 percent by Summer.

Defending the Mentally Ill
(America Weekly, 1945)

Here is a short notice from a Catholic weekly crediting the editors of THOUGHT magazine for having printed a 1940 protest lodged by the German Cardinals Faulhaber (Munich) and Bertram (Breslau) for the obscene Nazi practice of murdering mental patients.

Spotlight on U.S. Schools in the Late Forties
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

One can’t but help but cry a little when reading that the Americans of 1947 actually believed that their public school system was substandard; they had no idea the depths this same system would be thrust just thirty years hence. The Forties was a time when most school teachers believed that the school’s biggest problem was talking in the classroom or lingering in the halls. However, this article lists the ten firsts that both state and Federal governments had initiated in order to make a fine education system better.

Critical Thinking from South of the Border
(Literary Digest, 1923)

More harsh words for Uncle Sam are found in some Brazilian journals, such as the JOURNAL DO PAIZ, which observes:

Happenings like the Negro massacre at Chicago in 1919 are still fresh in our minds; nor must we forget that at the time mentioned many in this country advocated a boycott on all American goods to serve as a protest and a warning to the Unites States.

Click here if you would like to read about the American race riots of 1919.

Maestro Toscanini on the Home Front
(Pathfinder and Coronet, 1943)

Unlike most other musicians in Italy, Arturo Toscanini (1867 – 1957) refused to scramble onto the Fascist bandwagon. He refused to preface his concerts with the Fascist anthem and eventually was made a virtual prisoner at his home. When he was permitted to leave his country, he vowed never to revisit it so long as Fascism held it in bondage.

Nowhere has the magic baton of Toscanini been more acclaimed than in the United States. Under its spell, the Metropolitan Opera made its highest artistic mark, and the New York Philharmonic became the world’s greatest symphonic ensemble.

Pants in High Fashion
(Quick Magazine, 1953)

1953 was the year that designers from both Paris and New York included pants in their respective evening wear collections – even their homely little sister, Los Angeles – the new fashion capitol of sportswear, provided a pair of pants for dinner occasions.

Japan Chipped-In
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

War-weary Japan recognized that when the U.S. and her assorted allies went to war in Korea, she too, could play an important roll in the struggle as a reliable, non-combatant partner.

Mother of the Year: Joan Crawford
(Photoplay Magazine, 1948)

This article, I’m an Adopted Mother, by Hollywood movie actress Joan Crawford (1905 – 1977) rambles on column after column about her four adopted children and the tremendous fulfillment they brought to her life. It was all a bunch of hooey, and we might have ended up believing it all, if it weren’t for her daughter Christine, who, in 1978, published a bestselling memoir testifying to the beatings that the movie star could be depended upon to deliver regularly; a first edition of the book is available at Amazon – it was titled Mommy Dearest

Two Who Escaped the Germans
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Remarkable for lacking bravado and deeds of cunning daring-do, this is a war story about two hapless GIs of the 84th Division who got themselves captured and, do to a heavy U.S. artillery barrage (that served as a backdrop throughout much of the story), were able to escape and allude further incarceration. The German officers who (briefly) lorded over these men are beautifully painted as dunderheads that will surely amuse. Wandering in a southerly direction through the frost of Belgium, they make it back to their outfits in time for a New Year’s Day supper.

Click here if you would like to read about a World War One German P.O.W. camp.

Mickey Cohen in Hollywood
(Quick Magazine, 1949)

Illustrated with a photo of L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen and his wife, this short column from 1949 summarizes one of the many shake-down schemes that the thug would employ to blackmail Hollywood actors during their weaker moments.

Now the Men Can Sleep
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

From the same country that gave us Benny Hill came this remarkable invention that improved men’s lives immeasurably.

The Abusive Occupying Army
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

This editorial lends credibility to Andrei Cherny’s 2007 tome, The Candy Bombers, in which the author states that there was no love lost between the Berliners and the occupying American army in the immediate aftermath of the German surrender:

Stories keep coming back to this country about American soldiers sticking up Berlin restaurants, or beating up German citizens, or looting German homes. How much of this stuff goes on, we don’t know. We do know that some of it goes on, and that any of it is too much. Not that we believe in sobbing unduly over the German people, they let themselves be razzle-dazzled into the war by Hitler and his mobsters.

The Battle at the Great Wall
(Literary Digest, 1933)

…Peiping Associated Press dispatches tell of a major battle between Japanese and Chinese armies for possession of Chiumenkow Pass in the Great Wall of China. The Pass is one of the most important gateways leading into the rich province of Jehol which, it is reported, Japan purposes to cut off from China and add to Manchukuo…This collision forms the second chapter in the Shanhaikwan dispute, and it comes quickly.

A Chronology: 1950 – 51
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Appearing in the June 27, 1951 issue of PATHFINDER was this list of chronological events that made up the first ten months of fighting in the Korean War.

The Red Spies in Washington
(Coronet Magazine, 1952)

Stalin’s deep fear of traitors and moles was not simply confined to the Soviet Union – it spread throughout every branch of his embassies as well. This article pertains to the Soviet spies who worked in Washington – the ones who spied on the Soviet diplomatic corps:

When a new [diplomat arrives from Moscow] he soon learns that the Ambassador is not the real boss. One outside diplomat who has contacts with the Embassy declares: ‘Always, there is someone in the Embassy whom the others fear. They live in terror of him, for he is the real leader… I have seen Soviet officials actually tremble when he comes into the room.’

A 1951 article about the young CIA can be read by clicking here…

The French Army in Africa
(The Commonweal, 1941)

Attached is a history article concerning the various organizations that made up the French Colonial Army in Africa:

Before and during the World War, all the different races serving in the French Army were excellently officered by subalterns and non-coms born in North Africa, but of European ancestry: by sons of immigrated colonists of French, Spanish and Italian extraction.

The late Marshal Lyautey used to say of these sons of European settlers: ‘Their knowledge of the ways of the natives is priceless, because they have assimilated it from childhood. In the native regiments, they constitute a human concrete, which keeps together men of antagonistic races and beliefs’

Hermann Goering: Power Hungry Graff Master
(Click Magazine, 1943)

Appearing on the pages of a 1943 CLICK MAGAZINE was this article by Austrian journalist Alfred Tyrnauer, who was no stranger to Nazi terror. The journalist explained quite clearly for his American readers who exactly Hermann Goering was, his shameless looting in all Nazi-occupied zones and the goings-on within Goering Works, the German re-armament trust.

Master crook, blackmailer and general villain Reichsmarshal Hermann Wilhelm Goering, second most potent Nazi, ‘owns’ the world’s largest industrial empire by right of possession. Gross Goering has stopped at nothing, not even murder, to enrich himself and insure his future comfort, whether the Nazi regime stands or falls.

John Barrymore
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)

John Barrymore (né John Sidney Blyth: 1882 – 1942) is said to have been one of America’s finest actors; co-star in an ensemble cast of thespians that consisted of his brother Lionel and sister Ethel, they were known around Broadway and Hollywood as the Barrymores. Today he is primarily known as the great-grandfather of Drew Barrymore (b. 1975). Although badly plagued by alcoholism, he managed to play his parts admirably – and those who knew him best both on the stage and off, remember him in this article.

A far more revealing article about Barrymore can be read here.