Recent Articles – Page 63 – Old Magazine Articles

Errol Flynn on Trial (Yank Magazine, 1943)

During the war years, the boys on the front loved reading about a juicy Hollywood scandal just as much as we do today, and Errol Flynn could always be relied upon to provide at least one at any given time. The closest thing to a Hollywood tabloid that the far-flung khaki-clad Joes could ever get their hands on was Yank Magazine, the U.S. army weekly that also provided them with the news from all battlefronts.

Movie star Flynn was tried by the California courts for having gained a fair measure of carnal knowledge from two feminine California movie fans who were both under the age of 18; said knowledge was gained while on board the defendant’s yacht, The Sirocco.

More about this trial and Flynn’s other scandals can be read here…

Reporting D-Day (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Never had so many correspondents (450) poured so much copy (millions of words) into so many press associations, photo services, newspapers, magazine and radio stations (115 organizations in all). Representing the combined Allied press, some 100 reporters covered every phase of the actual battle operations. Their pooled copy started reaching the United States within four hours of General Eisenhower’s communiqué.

The first newspaper to get the scoop was The New York Daily News (circulation 2,000,999). The First radio station to announce the news was WNEW (NYC).

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

The Training of Tank Crews (Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

For the Americans, World War II was just four months old when these three color pictures appeared depicting the most up to date (and economical) methods used in the training of Stuart Tank gunners.

Anticipating Cell Phones in 1945 (Yank Magazine, 1945)

I recommend this article primarily for it’s three funny illustrations; the copy is not likely to hold your attention for too long. It concerns civilian applications for military technology, such as that era’s hand-held radios that were the wonder of the period. As you will see from the illustrations, the cartoonist recognized so well that such inventions could serve as the grandfather of the cell phone and he drew people on the street and driving cars -all chatting away on their walkie-talkies. Good fun.

The Nimitz Strategy (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

An brief article by a former Chief of Naval Operations (1930 – 33), Admiral William V. Pratt praising the Pacific naval strategy of Fleet Admiral Nimitz.

Over 15,000 Suicides in 1928 Germany (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)

A short notice compiled from figures collected at the end of 1928 showed that Germany was the all-time global-champion when it came to suicide:

In that year 16,036 persons in Germany committed suicide. This is an average of 44 a day or 39 for each 100,000 persons in the country…

The Plummeting Salaries (New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

In this article, Dorothy Dunbar Bromley (1896 – 1986) addressed one of the preeminent issue of her day: the rapidly decreasing salaries of the American worker:

If we are fatuous optimists, it is because we have only the vaguest idea of how appalling the situation is. We have read a great deal about the return of of the garment sweatshop of fifty years ago, with the same abominable conditions and the same exploitation of women and children for a few cents an hour, or for no pay at all…

More on this exploitation can be read here…

The Poor Are Everywhere (The Chicagoan, 1932)

Three years into the Great Depression a citizen of Chicago realizes that there is nowhere he can go to escape the uneasy presence of the hungry poor in his city:

They’re on the boulevards and in the parks. They’re on the shady streets in nice neighborhoods and around the corner from expensive restaurants. You can tell they’re starving by looking at them. Their nerve is gone – they don’t even beg. You see thousands every day… Young men and old women never begged in this country before.

Leonard Bernstein (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

This Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990) profile is a real page turner – briefly explaining in four and a half pages all that this composer and conductor had been up to during the first thirty-eight years of his very productive life. The article appeared on the newsstands during the earliest days of 1957, when he was partnered with Stephen Sondheim on West Side Story and mention is made of his numerous other collaborations with the likes of Jerome Robbins (Fancy Free),
Comden and Green (On the Town), and Lillian Hellman (Candide).

WINGS: Directed by William Wellman (Life Magazine, 1927)

Appearing in an issue of [the old] Life Magazine, that was almost entirely devoted to the 1927 American Legion convention in Paris, was this Robert Sherwood review of the blockbuster silent film Wings. Directed by an American Air Corps veteran, William Wellman (1896 – 1975), Wings was the only silent film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (at that time the category was titled Most Outstanding Production).