Recent Articles – Page 29 – Old Magazine Articles

Listening-In On The Enemy
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

The FBIS – short for Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service – is the organization that listens to the world’s radios for Uncle Sam. It’s monitoring station in Washington has, besides editors and annalists, some sixty fantastic linguists on its staff – people who are fluent at anywhere from three or four – up to a couple of dozen, languages apiece. Their job is to intercept and translate the shortwave broadcasts of Rome, Berlin, Vichy and a score of lesser stations, which daily pour out Axis propaganda in more languages than were ever spoken in the Tower of babel.

Spiritual Warfare
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

For the believers in this world, it is very easy to see World War II as a spiritual conflict waged against the righteous by the evil forces of darkness. The atheist Nazis were truly having their way with the lukewarm Christians who filled the ranks of the European Armies – up until the arrival of a particular North American army whose motto is In God We Trust. Even to this day, the U.S. Military holds the record as having built more churches than any other institution (every base, fort and naval installation had one). This article reports that the U.S.Army did not simply deliver weaponry to our Chinese allies, they delivered millions of Bibles, too.

‘Movies & Myths As Seen by an Insider”
(Literary Digest, 1921)

This writer, Banjamin B. Hampton (1875 – 1932), having heard so much hokum about Hollywood, decided to write an article about all he knew about the place – he was a film director and a producer, so he knew plenty. He was especially irked by the number of young women who arrived at the dream factory each month only to be bamboozled and find themselves on the street before too long.

America’s First Brush With Multiculturalism
(American Legion Weekly, 1922)

Like many Americans in the Twenties, the journalist who penned the attached article was totally irked by the concept of an American territory – bound for statehood – having a majority Asian population. He wrote at a time when the nation was deeply concerned about assimilating America’s immigrants and his indignation can clearly be sensed.

She Fought in the Trenches
(Liberty Magazine, 1938)

Well, Monsieur, did I ever tell you about the time I was a Doughboy in the Great war?

This is the story of Marie Marvingt (1875 – 1963), an amazing French woman who did indeed serve in the forward trenches disguised as a man during the Summer of 1917.

The Birth of Airline Food
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)

Newton Wilson, a modest, quiet, somewhat academic man who never leaps before he looks through, in and around a situation, became the 20th Century innovator of precise recipes; a sort of Fanny Farmer of flying.

Click here to read about the earliest airline stewardesses…

Home Front Teen Slang
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A 1945 Yank Magazine article concerning American teen culture on the W.W. II home front in which the journalist/anthropologist paid particular attention to the teen-age slang of the day.

Some of today’s teenagers —pleasantly not many — talk the strange new language of sling swing. In this bright lexicon of the good citizens of tomorrow, a girl with sex appeal is an able Grable or a ready Hedy. A pretty girl is whistle bait. A boy whose mug and muscles appeal to the girls is a mellow man, a hunk of heart break or a glad lad.

To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…

Click here to learn how the Beatniks spoke.
Click here if you would like to read a glossary of WAC slang terms.

•Suggested Reading• Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang

Greta Garbo’s First Impressions of Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Greta Garbo (1905 – 1990) was well known for keeping to herself and preferring to act on movie sets free of executives, pals and all sorts of other hangers-on and she was very famous for refusing to grant members of the press corps interviews. With that in mind, it is a wonder that Katherine Albert of PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE was able to piece enough together for this 1930 article:

She has no place in the life of Hollywood. She has never adapted herself to it.

Garbo will continue to remain an enigma…

Click here to read about early cosmetic surgery in Hollywood.

Who Pays the Bills Racked-Up in a Socialist State?
(Literary Digest, 1894)

This article was written long before the crumbling Euro and the economic collapse of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Venezuela, East Germany and the USSR – it is an 1894 editorial that outlines why socialism cannot not work:

He insists that all previous Social evolutions have meant an improvement in production and an increase in income, but the peculiarity of the Socialistic programme is that “it is to be not a money-making, but a money-spending evolution,” in which “everybody is to live a great deal better than he has been in the habit of living, and to have far more fun.

This 1946 article argued that Socialism is simply un-American…

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…

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).

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 Necessity of Overthrowing Russia
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

This is a profile of the American Cold Warrior James Burnham (1905 – 1987), who is remembered as being one of the co-founders of the conservative monthly, National Review. What is little known about Burnham is the fact that he was a communist in his early twenties and a steady correspondent with Trotsky. It didn’t take long before he recognized the inherit tyranny that is the very nature of communism – and from that moment on he devoted much of his life to revealing to the world the dangers of that tyranny.

The Navy Tells It
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

One year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the Navy released its report to the press with updates on all the various repairs that were put into effect.

A Busy Year for the FBI
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

The FBI had been tangling Axis spies throughout the mid-to-late Thirties, but with the December 8, 1941, declaration of war the FBI was emboldened with far greater powers. This explains why Director Hoover exclaimed that his agency had just completed the busiest year in its history.

The Communist on Capitol Hill
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Although his membership in the Communist Party would not be known until he had already been out of the House of Representatives for six years, Hugh De Lacy (1910 – 1986) was easily recognized by his colleagues as quite the radical…

No doubt De Lacy’s favorite presidential candidate was the American socialist Norman Thomas – and you can read about him here…

Black Nazis?
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

Black Nazis: Fritz Delfs, leader of the Nazis in Tanganyika, the former German East Africa that Hitler is demanding, soft-pedals Aryan supremacy credo in propounding Nazi ideology, and capitalizes traditional use of the swastika by the natives as a symbol of fertility.

Click here to read about the fall of Paris…

‘Class Magazines”
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1938)

This article looks at the rise of Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and House & Garden – recognizing them as highly unique publications for their time. Special attention is paid to publisher Condé Nast and his meteoric rise during the early 20th Century.

The class magazines exude an aura of wealth and their circulations, therefore, are limited. They cater to the fit though few and they do this with slick paper, excellent illustrations and a sycophantic reverence for Society – at thirty-five to fifty cents a copy.

Click here to read about Fortune Magazine…