Recent Articles – Page 48 – Old Magazine Articles

‘Americans All”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

In an effort to keep the writers and actors of the Works Progress Administration busy, FDR’s Department of the Interior produced a 26-part radio program intended to prove that America could never have become so great without the contributions of all the various hyphenated groups that make up the country. On Sunday afternoon throughout much of 1938, Americans could gather around their radios, if they had them, and hear their identity groups being praised by the Government: African-Americans tuned in on December 18th; the WASP show was on December fourth.

The Temper of the Electorate
(The New Outlook Magazine, 1932)

Just weeks before the U.S. presidential election of 1932 this article appeared in a political magazine that indicated how the Depression-tossed voters were feeling after three years of economic set-backs. The article consists of 21 pithy little paragraphs that sum up their feelings:

I BELIEVE it possible to feel hungry under either major party, but that under the Republicans it seems to hurt more.

Click here to read about the extensive press coverage that was devoted to the death of FDR…

A Woman War Worker Cartoon
(NY Times 1917)

Attached is a cartoon that was created during the third year of the First World War by a British cartoonist who feared that women have, through the years, been loosing their feminine mojo – that charming thing that truly separates them from the males of the species.

Sunglasses Make Their Mark in the Fashion World
(Click Magazine, 1939)

Although sunglasses had slowly inched their way forward in popularity since the late Twenties, the attached article declared that by 1939 sunglasses were officially recognized as a full-fledged fashion accessory when the Hollywood stars Joan Bennet and Hedy Lamar began to sport them around town.

Like T-shirts and khaki pants, it would be W.W. II that would provide sunglasses with a guaranteed spot on fashion stage for the next sixty-five years.

Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.

The Bund-Klan Connection
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

Edward James Smythe, a whisky-guzzling old reprobate whose great sorrow is that Hitler is too merciful toward the Jews, has decided to tell all – if anybody will listen. Smythe called PM‘s city desk the other day and, after establishing his identity as the well-known American-bred tinhorn Fascist, now under indictment with 27 others on sedition charges, said:

‘Remember that joint meeting of the Klan and the Bund at Camp Nordland over in Jersey? Well I organized that…’

Swimwear
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

The only big fashion innovation popular enough to share the 1947 headlines with Dior’s New Look involved the evolution in women’s swimwear; most notably the Bikini. The attached single page article pertains to all the new fabrics being deployed in ladies beachwear and all their assorted coverups:

Sand-and-sun fashions for this summer are perter and briefer than ever before. Although the typical bathing suit covers just about 2.5 square feet of a swimmer’s anatomy, a costume-look for the beach is achieved with a companion cape, skirt of short coat… Favored fabrics are those made to ride the waves. Knitted wool shows up in both classic and unusual designs. Colors are softer and muted. Black and blue appear most often, with cider, gray and smudge the ‘high-style’ shades.

•Click here to learn about women’s fashions from the Summer of 1934•

Soviet Treaty Violations
(U.S. Dept. of Defense, 1962)

This is a carefully cataloged list of the international treaties that the Soviet Union signed and agreed to abide by during the course of their first forty years (1920 – 1960). Printed next to these agreements are listed the dates the Soviets chose to violate the treaties and the direct results that ensued.

Promises are like pie crust, made to be broken. – V.I. Lenin

Click here to read about the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.

The Army Restrained
(U.S. News & World Report, 1954)

Sitting before a senate committee convened in order to understand what went wrong in Korea, Lieutenant General Edward M. Almond (1892 – 1979), U.S. Army, was not shy to point out that it was the the back-seat drivers in Washington who interfered in their ability to fight the war.

Senator Welker: Could we have won the war in 1951…?

General Almond: I think so.

General Matthew Ridgway experienced the same frustration – click here to read about it.

Gandhi Urges Revolution
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Mohandas K. Gandhi tonight summoned India’s millions to rise in a struggle ‘for freedom or death’ after the full committee of the All-India Nationalist Congress approved by an overwhelming vote his call for mass passive resistance against British rule.

‘How We Made the October Revolution”
(New York Times, 1919)

Here is Leon Trotsky’s reminiscence of those heady days in 1917 that served as the first step in a 75 year march that went nowhere in particular and put millions of people in an early grave – this is his recollection of the fall of the Kerensky Government and the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(R.I.P.).

THE REVOLUTION was born directly from the war, and the war became the touchstone of all the revolutionary parties and energies…

The review of the first English edition of Das Kapital can be read here…

FDR’s ”Pack The Court” Proposal
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Attached is a break-down of President Roosevelt’s proposed legislation to rid the Supreme Court of six ornery justices by imposing a mandatory retirement age for the whole of the Federal Government. Failing that, FDR’s legislation would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70, in order to assure passage of all New Deal legislation.

Fashion Modeling in the 1940s
(Coronet Magazine, 1944)

Inasmuch as this 1944 article sums up the bygone world of the New York fashion model, the terms heroin chic and bulimia are not found on any of it’s five pages (an over site, no doubt). The Forties were a time when a model would be just as likely to get a booking from a commercial artist as she would a photographer, and, unlike the Twenties and the earliest days of the Thirties, it was a time when a standardized image of beauty was well-established.

– five feet nine inches in height, weight 110 pounds, bust 33, waist 24, hips 34, blonde or a light shade of brown hair. She will have quick, clever eyes and a very expressive face.
Many of the models are bitter, unhappy girls inside. They soon grow disillusioned with their dream of modeling as a gateway to theatrical glory; they learn that their height is against them.

Read about the attack of the actress/models!

When W.W. II Came to Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1948)

The attached article is but a small segment addressing the history of Hollywood during the war W.W. II years; clipped from a longer Photoplay Magazine piece that recounted the illustrious past of Hollywood some thirty-five years earlier.

After Pearl Harbor, the men really began leaving town. David Niven was gone now. So too, was Flight Officer Laurence Olivier. And more and more from the Hollywood ranks kept leaving. Gable, Fonda, Reagan, the well-knowns and the lesser-knowns. Power, Taylor, Payne, Skelton and many others…More Hollywood regulars went away, so other, newer newcomers had to be found to replace them because the box office was booming.

U.S. Advertising During W.W. II
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

If advertising is defined as the craft of convincing people they want something that they actually don’t care for, then World War II proved to have been the perfect challenge to the ad men of the 1940s. The wordsmith who penned this article regarding home front advertising chortled loudly when he saw the manner in which the bloodiest brawl in history was being marketed to the American consumers.

Advertising has gone to war… and the advertising profession not only knows what we are fighting for; it knows down to the last uplift bra, what we want when we come home…It is the copywriters of advertising who nurse the carefully guarded secret that this war is, in reality, a luxury cruise.

Articles about the importance of fashion models in 1940s advertising can be read here.

Women Drivers Vindicated
(Literary Digest, 1936)

Attached is a magazine article concerning the on-going debate regarding women drivers and the continuing balderdash as to which of the genders is the better driver: the issue was decided in 1936 and the men lost:

…according to the report of a university professor who took the trouble to find out. Armed with statistics, he asserts that the female of the motoring species is not nearly so deadly as the male.

The Down-Hill Side of Being a Society Girl
(Collier’s Magazine, 1933)

The attached Collier’s article was written by two post-debs of the Boston/Manhattan variety who were both products of what they called the approval mill of America’s upper-crust. Having been run through the right schools and the right summer camps, they attended the right parties and made charming with all the right people; looking back in their 20s, they were able to see how this long-treasured practice prepared them poorly for life – tending to perpetuate the spiraling vortex of women who were educated and polite, yet unable to think.

Segregation Soviet-Style
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

As the April of 1949 was winding down, 11 members of the Communist Party U.S.A. were standing trial in a Federal courtroom spilling every secret they had in an all-out effort to lighten their load further down the road. Among these classified plots was a 1930s plan to invade the United States and create two separate Soviet republics – one White, the other Black. The region they had in mind for the African-Americans would cover nine of the old Confederate states.

A Quick Read About Soviet-Enforced Atheism Behind the Iron Curtain…

‘What Kind of Women are the WAACs?”
(Click Magazine, 1942)

They’re career women, housewives, professionals, factory hands, debutantes. They’ve taught school, modeled, supported themselves, as secretaries, salesgirls, mechanics. Single and married, white and colored, between the ages of 21 and 45, they’re corresponding with a beau, in Ireland, a husband Australia, or the ‘folks back home’ in Flatbush. But varied as their background may be, they’ve enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) with a common purpose: to get behind America’s fighting men and help win a lasting peace.

When well-versed in army-administrative methods, the WAAC will cause the transfer of 450 enlisted men to combat areas each week. It realizes full-well its responsibility and has dedicated itself to the idea that the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps will prove itself equal to the opportunity.