Recent Articles – Page 40 – Old Magazine Articles

The New Yorker
(’48 Magazine, 1948)

Twenty-three years after Harold Ross (1892 – 1951) launched The New Yorker, this profile of the man appeared on the newsstands:

Ross is a kind of impostor. The New Yorker is urbane; cactus is more urbane than Ross. The New Yorker carries understatement almost to the point of inaudibility; with Ross the expletive crowds out most of the eight parts of speech….It is true that he never had a high school education; but it is also true that he is a master grammarian, and that the superb sense of style which informs The New Yorker flows in part from his clean, uncompromising feeling for the English language.

Click here to read the second half of the Harold Ross profile. This portion is decorated with rejected cartoons from The New Yorker …

Ross never forgot his days in Paris as the editor of The Stars & Stars, click here to read an article about that period in his life.

Liquor Up
(New Outlook, 1935)

When The Noble Experiment ended in 1933 the United Sates was a far less sober nation than it was thirteen years earlier. Organized crime was stronger than ever before, more Americans were in prison then ever before and more Americans than ever before had developed an unfortunate taste for narcotics. If prohibition was undertaken in order to awaken Americans to the glories of sobriety, it was the opposite that came to pass – Americans had become a people that reveled in drink. The writer who penned this column recognized that with the demise of Prohibition arose a culture that was eagerly buying up

a flood of utensils, mechanisms, gadgets, devices and general accessories [that celebrated the] noble old art of public drinking…

Protestants in America
(Pageant Magazine, 1952)

This is a report from 1952 on the largest group of Christians in the United States during that period in time:

The United States is sometimes called a ‘Protestant nation.’ It isn’t, of course. It is a nation of 150,697,361 free people, free to choose whatever path to God they please. But it was settles largely by Protestant denominations; it has, in fact, the largest Protestant population of any nation on earth. By latest tally, 81,862,328 Americans belong to religious bodies. Of these 59 percent are Protestant. Roman Catholics account for 33 percent, Jews for six percent and other faiths for two percent.

‘No More Wars In Asia”
(United States News, 1954)

Ridgway wants no repetition of the Korean experience. If the U.S. is to fight in Asia again, he wants an army equal to the task and free to win. And, until his Army is capable of undertaking the job, he opposes even limited action by air or sea forces. The General disagrees with those who hold that a war can be won by air or sea power alone.

Kennedy vs. Nixon: a Cartoon
(Monocle, 1961)

This is a very funny cartoon that was published in a long forgotten satire magazine from the early Sixties – you’ll enjoy it.

Anticipating Elizabeth II
(Literary Digest, 1937)

When Edward VIII chose to abdicate, the world’s attention shifted to the new heir, the Duke of York (George VI: 1895 – 1952) and his daughter, Elizabeth (Elizabeth II: b. 1926). This magazine article served to introduce the future queen to American readers – making clear that the princess was something like a British version of the Hollywood child star, Shirley Temple – often imitated and recognized as the gold standard of girlhood. Written during the depression, her lavish, story-book existence seemed unreal to many.

Princess Elizabeth During the Second World War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

A printable article (excerpted from a longer one) outlining what exactly Princess Elizabeth II was up to during World War II:

…and it was decided that Elizabeth must not enlist in anything, that her training for the throne was of the first importance. But Elizabeth felt that she would be a slacker and carry about an inferiority complex for life. So for a year, relentlessly, she persisted. Just before her nineteenth birthday, her father gave in…

Queen Elizabeth: HOTTIE
(Pageant Magazine, 1966)

Actor Richard Burton, CBE (1925 – 1984) was no stranger to pretty feminine faces – and as a Welshman, he was no fan of British royalty; so it must have turned some heads when he listed Britain’s Queen Elizabeth as one of the most beautiful women in the world for the editors of Pageant Magazine.

‘The New Deal Was Not Fascist”
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1933)

In certain quarters it is asserted that Mr. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ is nothing other than the first stage of an American movement toward Fascism. It is said that, although the United States has not yet adopted the political structure of Italy and Germany, the economic structure of the country is rapidly being molded upon the Fascist pattern.

FDR’s D-Day prayer can be read here

Hermann Goering as Fop: a Cartoon
(The Jesters in Earnest, 1944)

Here is a W.W. II gag cartoon by the Czech chuckle-meister himself, W. Trier (probably a pseudonym) that was smuggled out of his occupied homeland to Britain where it was published in Jesters in Earnest (1944). The cartoonist truly succeeded in satirizing Goering’s love of costume and his precious self-image. However glorious the drawings may be, they fail to impart to the viewers just how enamored the Reichsmarschall was with perfume (and he was)

‘Fear of the Police”
(Pageant Magazine, 1964)

As 1964 came to a close this venom-packed column was read by many in the white American middle-class and it must have seemed very clear to many among them that matters between the races would not be righted for decades to come. Written by the Harlem-born writer James Baldwin (1924 – 1987) on the occasion of the 1964 Harlem Race Riot, Baldwin did not simply denigrate the NYC Police Department but the culture, government and sacred documents of the entire nation.

The Decline of Masculine Elegance
(Vogue Magazine, 1922)

A Parisienne with a good many thoughts regarding menswear goes to some length to impart that men are dressing worse, not better, and the substitution of the dinner jacket (read: Tuxedo) for the tail-coat is an example of the slovenliness to come.

You are entirely wrong in imagining that we pay no attention to the way men dress…The truth is that while we may say nothing, we do not in the least consent, and we find, messieurs, that for some time now you have been very much changed, and for the worse.

Click here to read about the fashion legacy of W.W. I…

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

Click here to read about the origins of the T-shirt.

The Dying Underclass…
(Pageant Magazine, 1964)

This article chronicles the poor health that had been a constant companion within the African-American communities and how it differed from their white counterparts.

To the men who count the living and the dead – the statisticians, discrimination against the Negroes carves a picture in their death charts as clear as an inscription on a new tombstone, as pathetic as a dead child’s forgotten doll… There is no question in any public health expert’s mind that to get a real improvement in the death rate picture among Negroes, they must be able to improve their diet, housing, education, and living standards, including medical care. And that can only come about, it seems, by removal of all the discriminatory barriers on the economic and social level.

The Backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance
(The Independent, 1921)

The excitement that was 1920’s Harlem can clearly be felt in this article by the journalist and Congregational minister, Rollin Lynde Hartt:

Greatest Negro city in the world, it boasts magnificent Negro churches, luxurious Negro apartment houses, vast Negro wealth, and a Negro population of 130,000…

‘The Communists Are After Our Minds”
(The American Magazine, 1954)

Oh how we all laughed when we used to read of these old Cold Warriors who actually believed that Communists were active in our schools in the 1990s! Gosh, it was funny! But it wasn’t funny when we discovered how close an actual Marxist came to winning the presidential nominations of the Democratic Party in both 2016 and 2020. It seems like the long march through the institutions has finally paid off for the Leftists. The attached article was written by J. Edgar Hoover and it was penned in order that Americans would know that this day would come if we were not vigilant.

Why The Rebels Fought
(Confederate Veteran Magazine, 1918)

Fed-up with decades of articles and editorials declaring that he and his Confederate comrades fought tirelessly for four years in order to preserve and advance the cause of slavery, elderly Southern veteran, James Callaway, put pen to paper in order explain that this was not the case. Equipped with numerous passages from A Soldier’s Recollections and an artificial Lincoln quote, Calloway argued that it was Northern aggression that swelled the Confederate ranks.

The Story Factory
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1935)

Motion picture studios manufacture motion pictures. Motion pictures are shot from scripts. Scripts are developed from stories. Stories are written and sent to studios by undertakers, gamekeepers, chocolate dippers, steamfitters, pretzel-makers, judges, dentists, trapeze artists, carpet layers, parachute jumpers, nurses, tea tasters and amateur winders. It is a platitude that everyone owning a pencil fancies themselves a writer.

I Still Believe in Non-Violence’ by Mahatma Gandhi
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

In the face of history’s most brutal war, as men the world over live by the rule of kill or be killed, India’s leader preaches a gospel of never lifting a weapon or pulling a trigger. Here he tells why:

The principle of non-violence means, in general terms, that men will deliberately shun all weapons of slaughter and the use of force of any kind whatsoever against their fellow men…Are we naive fools? Is non-violence a sort of dreamy wishful thinking that has never had and can never have any real success against the heavy odds of modern armies and the unlimited application of force and frightfulness?