Recent Articles – Page 104 – Old Magazine Articles

Dashiel Hammett Fights the Fascists
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Dashiel Hammett (1894 – 1961) had a pretty swell resume by the time World War Two came along. He had a number of celebrated novels and short stories published as well as a few well-paying gigs writing in Hollywood. It was during this period, in the Thirties, that he had created some of the wonderful characters that are still remembered to this day, such as Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man). During the war, it was rare but not unheard of, for an older man with such accomplishments to enlist in the army -and that is just what he did. This one page article clearly spells out Hammett’s period serving on an Alaskan army base; his slow climb from Buck Private to Sergeant; his difficulty with officers and the enjoyment of being anonymous.

Accompanying the article is a black and white image of the writer wearing Uncle Sam’s olive drab, herringbone twill -rather than the tell-tale tweed he was so often photographed wearing.

Big Bandleader Cab Calloway
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

The attached six page article about Cab Calloway (1907 – 1994) makes no mention whatever of the three movies he had appeared in prior to 1941, but it answers many other questions you might have had about the musician’s first thirty-one years.

Mary Pickford: An Appreciation
(Motion Picture Magazine, 1916)

I haven’t a clue as to whether California lawyers had the Restraining Order as one of the tools in their arsenal back in 1916; but if they had, Mary Pickford might have chosen to deploy just such a legal measure in order to defend herself from this obsessed fan who wrote the following essay for the editors of MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE:

She is adorably feminine, from her curls to her toes. In Tess, Caprice, the forlorn waif of the desert island in Hearts Adrift, she is feminine in everything she does. She can storm, but she storms like a warm-hearted, human woman, not a virago; she can coquette, but it is never the cold blooded type of flirting; Mary Pickford couldn’t be cold blooded if she tried. Men of all ages, women of all types, children of both sexes respond to this wonderful little girl in a manner no other star is able to arouse. They are all good and have done some wonderful work, but Mary is child, sweetheart and friend of the whole world, and no one can ever take her place in our hearts.

Click here to read a 1923 comparison between Norma Talmadge and Mary Pickford.

The Battle of Chateau-Thierry
(Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The American performance at the battle of Chateau-Thierry proved to General Foche that the Americans had the necessary stuff, and it was widely recognized that the Doughboys played the key roll in keeping the Germans out of Paris.

The attached STARS AND STRIPES article is extremely detailed as to the individual units (both French and American) that participated in rolling back the Germans along the Marne.

German Weapons in Winter
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

The following notes, based on directions issued in 1943 by the German Army High Command, regarding the use and proper care of German infantry weapons during winter campaigns. The instructions in question concern:

• German Luger & Walther P38 pistols,

• the Gewehr 41 rifle, Gewehr 98,

• M.G. 34 light machine gun and the,

• M.G. 42 heavy machine guns.

The article is accompanied by illustrations of the snow sleds used to transport the German machine guns.

Click here to read about the mobile pill boxes of the Nazi army.

The Fashion Group
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

At the time this article appeared on the pages of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE, the Fashion Group was already over twenty years old and in need of more office space.

Established in 1928 by the crowned-heads of the American fashion industry, it was decided that the dominate fashionistas ‘needed a forum, a stage, or a force to express and enhance a widening awareness of the American fashion business and of women’s roles in that business. This article points out that there were present in that room on that historic day a smattering of women who toiled in the vineyards as fashion journalists and collectively it was understood that the two groups very much relied upon each other.
The Fashion Group was established in order to:

judge trends by watching sales figures, which indicate which fashions are on the wane and which are gaining favor. They travel around to see what we do, and therefore, what we need.

Today, the Fashion Group has offices in every major American city as well as branches in the fashion capitols of Europe, South America and Asia.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The Manhattan Project was the code name given to the allied effort to develop the Atomic Bomb during World War Two. The research and development spanned the years 1942 through 1946 and the participating nations behind the effort were the Unites States, Great Britain and Canada. Within the United States, there were as many as three locations where the Manhattan Project was carried out however this article concerns the goings-on at the uranium-enrichment facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The article presents the point of view of your basic PFC on the base; how he had to maintain the necessary secrecy, what was it like living among such a plethora of pointy-headed slide-rule jockeys and how grateful they were to be living the comfortable life, while so many other draftees fared so poorly.

Captured: A Woman Sniper
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

A small notice from a post D-Day YANK announced the capture of a German woman sniper named, Myra.

Click here if you would like to read about women combatants during W.W. I.

Must England Destroy Germany?
(Literary Digest, 1897)

Bismark (1815 – 1898) has long since recognized what at length the people of England are beginning to understand, that England and Germany must come to blows over the right to levy from the whole world the tribute of commerce…

Letter from France
(Tricolor Magazine, 1944)

A British staff officer who was an eyewitness to the Allied breakout from the Normandy hedgerows compiled all the assorted questions that friends and family had written to him in their respective letters and answered them in a public format published in TRICOLOR MAGAZINE:

What do you feel when you see people dead?

Just an urgent desire to get by quickly and a feeling of revulsion which is greater or less according to the length of time the body has been dead… There is no difference in appearance between decomposing men and decomposing animals and the same stench comes from both.

Charlie Chaplin Wanted to be Taken Seriously
(Current Opinion, 1922)

We have all seen it many times before: the well-loved, widely accepted comedian who decides that being adored by the masses is simply not enough. For too many comic talents, sadly, there comes a time when they slip on one banana peel too many and it occurs to them that they want the world to appreciate them for their ability to think. Comics who fill this description might be Al Frankin, Woody Allen or Steve Martin.

This article tries to understand why Chaplin wanted to play a tragic part in a 1921 London stage adaptation of William Thackeray’s ‘Vanity Fair’.
We have seen such behavior in comics many times before, they hadn’t.

An Austrian at the German Supreme Headquarters
(Times Literary Supplement, 1921)

Reviewed herein is the W.W. memoir of General von Josef Graf Sturgkh (1859 – 1916) memoir recalling his days in Berlin serving as the Austrian Army delegate to the German military’s Great Headquarters (1915 – 1916):

Graf Sturgkh drops several hints about the very heavy losses incurred by the Germans in the very first weeks of the war…

An Englishman in the French Army
(Times Literary Supplement, 1917)

Under the French Flag is a W.W. I memoir by M. Macdonald in which the author tells the story of an Englishman who chose to sign up for the French Army due to their lax recruiting regulations which provided for the enlistment of men as old as fifty years of age. The reviewer believed the author recounted some interesting scenes of early-war France and French barracks life.

Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.

Sean O’Casey: Laborer, Playwright, Poet
(Stage Magazine, 1934)

Drama critic Ruth Woodbury Sedgwick interviewed Irish playwright Seán O’Casey
(1880 – 1964) for the November, 1934, issue of STAGE MAGAZINE and wrote this piece which clearly illustrated his art and politics.

Good Taste and the Year 1914
(The Delineator Magazine, 1914)

A quick read for costumers and historians regarding the fashion dos and don’ts on the matter of men’s ready-made clothes from 1914.

Dada at MOMA
(Literary Digest, 1936)

An amusing, if blasphemous, art review of the Museum of Modern Art’s 1936 Dada and Surrealism exhibit.
The journalist oddly credited Joan Miro as the author of the Dada movement.

The Marx Brothers of the art world are displayed, in all their unrestrained glory, in an exhibition of Fantastic Art in New York this week.

An exhibition of this type is always easy prey for the practical joker. A similar show in Paris several years ago exhibited a shovel, submitted by a well-known but discontented artist as an example of perfect symmetry.

Click here to read about the contempt that the Nazis had for Modern Art.

Violent Women
(The Literary Digest, 1913)

With the number violent acts committed by destructive Suffragettes quickly growing, the British patriarchs considered deporting them to Australia and other dominions as a just punishment for such a class of women.

Read about an attack on President Wilson that was launched by the suffragettes in 1918…

A Writer in the Ranks
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Dashiel Hammett (1894 – 1961) had a pretty swell resume by the time World War II came along. He had written a string of well-received novels and enjoyed a few well-paying gigs in Hollywood. During the war years it was rare, but not unheard of, for an older man with such accomplishments to enlist in the army – and that is just what he did. The attached article spells out Hammett’s period serving on an Alaskan army base, his slow climb from Buck Private to sergeant, his difficulty with officers and the enjoyment of being anonymous.

Accompanying the article is a black and white image of the writer wearing Uncle Sam’s olive drab, herringbone twill – rather than the tell-tale tweed he was so often photographed wearing.

Click here to read a 1939 STAGE MAGAZINE profile of Hammett’s wife, the playwright Lillian Hellman.