Recent Articles – Page 105 – Old Magazine Articles

Cosmetic Surgery in 1930s Hollywood (Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Published in a 1930 fan magazine, this article tells the story of the earliest days of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:

Telling the actual names of all the stars who have been to the plastic surgeon is an impossible task. They won’t admit it, except in a few isolated instances…It is only lately that a few of them are beginning, not only to to admit that they’ve had their faces bettered, but to even go so far as to publicly announce it.

Click here to read more articles from PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE.

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

Cosmetic Surgery in 1930s Hollywood (Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Published in a 1930 fan magazine, this article tells the story of the earliest days of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:

Click here to read more articles from PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE.

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

Charlie Chaplin and His Imposters (Motion Picture Magazine, 1916)

With the popularity of Charlie Chaplin (1889 – 1977) came a large number of artificial, bootlegged Charlie Chaplin movies and a host of fraudulent ‘Charlies’. All the fake Chaplins were clad the same and all answered to the same name yet all had different biographies and were not terribly funny in the slightest degree. Chaplin No. 1 did not care for this one bit and did not hold back while talking to this correspondent from Motion Picture Magazine.

Hello, Denim (Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

The editors at COLLIER’S MAGAZINE could not have known the significance of this subject back in 1942, yet to those Americans born after 1960 who read these old columns, it seems like a sign post that pointed the way to the sportswear of the future. Verily, few are the Americans who tread the fruited plane today who do not see at least one pair of jeans every day. Blue jeans have become the symbol of the nation, just as much as the flag.

This 1940s article pointed out that more and more Americans are waking up to denim. They found that it suited them and deemed it a sensible fabric in light of the new agricultural and industrial toil that needed to be finished if the fascists were to be beaten. However, denim was not some newfangled wartime invention; denim has been on the American scene since 1853 – in the Western gold mines and barnyards, roundhouses and cattle ranges.

Some seven years before this article hit the newsstands American teenagers began wearing jeans, but it was W.W. II that created a market for women’s jeans, and for good or ill, the course of American sportswear was forever altered.

A far more thorough fashion history of blue jeans can be read here.

‘The Strange Death of Heinrich Himmler” (Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Here is an eyewitness account of the suicide of Heinrich Himmler as told by Major John C. Schwarzwalder, a former member of the intelligence division of the U.S. Army Services Forces:

…At the end of the search an army doctor told Himmler to open his mouth. The prisoner did so, but Himmler bit down. The doctor withdrew his finger hastily. Himmler then ground his teeth together and swallowed hard. Some say he smiled grimly. In another second he was on the floor writhing in agony…

How the YMCA Got it Wrong (The Home Sector, 1919)

There were many benevolent organizations that volunteered to go abroad and cheer up the American military personnel serving in W.W. I Europe; groups such as the Jewish Welfare Board, the Knights of Columbus, the War Camp Community Service and the Salvation Army – to name just a few, but the Y.M.C.A. (Young Men’s Christian Association) was the only one among them that irked the Doughboys. In this 1919 exposé former STARS and STRIPES reporter Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) levels numerous charges against the Y, believing that they had misrepresented their intentions when they asked the War Department to grant them passage. Woolcott maintains that their primary mission was proselytizing rather than relief work.

Click here to read another article about the YMCA.

From Amazon: My Hut: A Memoir of a YMCA Volunteer in World War One

‘I Flew for Israel” (Collier’s Magazine, 1949)

A veteran of our Air Force with Jewish blood tells why he fought for Israel and why the Israelis, hopelessly outnumbered, won the war with the Arabs. His experiences taught him that the Palestinian Jews have been badly treated by the outside world and he says, ‘The people of Israel are the most democratic in the world’

Ten Weeks in the German Cavalry (Leslie’s Weekly, 1915)

Fritz Arno Wagner (1894 – 1958) is best remembered as a pioneering cinematographer from the earliest days of the German film industry, however before he could gain the experiences necessary to become the director of photography for such films as Nosferatu, and Westfront he had to first fulfill his obligations to the Kaiser. This article is an account of his brief stint in the Hussars (ie. lancers) that he gave to the editor’s of LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY NEWSPAPER.

Although the article only covers his training period, it does give the reader a sense of what life was like for an enlisted man serving in one of the highly prized regiments in the Imperial German Army.

The N.K.V.D. and the Purges Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

Congratulations were in order in Soviet Russia last week. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the famed N.K.V.D., secret police, and celebration of that organization’s success in ‘rooting out the enemies of the people’

‘Hollywood Hangout” (The American Magazine, 1942)

Schwab’s Pharmacy was like many other well-heeled American pharmacies of the Forties – it filled prescriptions, sold cigars, served three squares a day at their counter and cracked-wise with the clientele. What made it different was that many of the customers were among the most glam movie stars of the time. Located on Sunset Boulevard, west of Hollywood, in an area known as Sherman:

It’s the one place in Hollywood where screen biggies like Robert Taylor, Gene Tierney and Marlene Dietrich drop in and out all day and make themselves at home.