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.
Recent Articles
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
Comden and Green (On the Town
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).
European Praise for American Silent Comedies
(Photoplay Magazine, 1931)
Written at a time when it was widely recognized that the silent film era had finally run it’s course and talking pictures were here to stay, the film critic for the Sunday Express (London) stepped up to the plate and heaped praise on the Hollywood film colony for having produced such an abundance of sorely-needed comedies which allowed Europe to get through some difficult times:
While German films were steeped in menacing morbidity and Russian films wallowed in psychopathic horrors; while Swedish film producers turned to Calvinistic frigidities, and Britain floundered in apologetic ineptitude…Hollywood’s unfailing stream of fun and high spirits has kept the lamp of optimism burning in Europe.
The Era of Bartering
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)
Scrip (sometimes called chit) is a term for any substitute for legal tender and is often a form of credit – so reads the Wikipedia definition for those items that served as currency in those portions of the U.S. where the bucks were scarce.
The attached news column tells a scrip story from the Great Depression – the sort of story that was probably most common on the old frontier.
The Pessimism That Followed W.W. I
(Atlantic Monthly, 1923)
A few years after the Great War reached it’s bloody conclusion, literary critic Helen McAfee discovered that a careful reading of the prominent authors and poets writing between 1918 and 1923 revealed that each of them shared a newfound sense of malaise – a despairing, pessimistic voice that was not found in their pre-war predecessors.
Certainly the most striking dramatization of this depth of confusion and bitterness is Mr. Eliot’s The Waste Land. As if by flashes of lightening it reveals the wreck of the storm… The poem is written in the Expressionist manner – a manner peculiarly adapted to the present temper… It is mood more than idea that gives the poem its unity. And the mood is black. It is bitter as gall; not only with a personal bitterness, but also with the bitterness of a man facing a world devastated by a war for a peace without ideals.
If you would like to read another 1920s article about the disillusioned post-war spirit, click here.
Mad Magazine
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)
When Mad Magazine first appeared on newsstands in 1952 it was immediately recognized as something quite new in so far as American satirical magazine humor was concerned. The earliest issues were produced in comic book format with almost all content produced by its founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman (1924 – 1993); by 1955 the magazine’s lay-out was altered to its current form. From its earliest days, Kurtzman and his publisher, William Gaines (1922 – 1992), began receiving unsolicited gags from many of the finest writers and performers on radio and TV. This article lists some of the scandals (both foreign and domestic) that the magazine inadvertently generated.
Charles Lindbergh: American Hero
(Literary Digest, 1927)
Truth is stranger than fiction’ is an old writer’s saw that the pen plodders know and the general reader doubts. But that truth and fiction may be one and the same thing in comes to light in the story of Charles Lindbergh’s flight. No fiction writer could have contrived a story more perfect and right in it’s details…In a few short days an unknown lad has become the hero of the world. His name is on the lips of more people than any under the sun. His face etched in more minds than any living human. The narrative question of the story, ‘Will he make it?’ is on everybody’s lips, from President to beggars.
A Foreigner’s View of 1930s America
(Focus Magazine, 1938)
In his effort serve his editors at Focus Magazine and alert their curious readers just how Europeans saw the American culture, German photographer Bernd Lohse (1911 – 1995) traveled throughout the country taking snap-shots of everything that charmed and repulsed him – take a look for yourself.
The Plot to Assassinate Eisenhower Foiled by Cartoons…(Lion’s Roar, 1946)
An interesting W.W. II story was passed along by actor, announcer, producer and screenwriter John Nesbitt (1910 – 1960), who is best remembered as the narrator for the MGM radio series Passing Parade. Five months after the end of the war, Nesbitt relayed to his audience that during the Battle of the Bulge, U.S.-born Nazi agents, having been ordered to kill General Eisenhower, did not even come close to fulfilling their mission, suffered incarceration among other humiliations – all due to a lack of knowledge where American comic strips were concerned. Read on…
Dr. Seuss Tried His Hand at Grown-Up Fiction
(Stage Magazine, 1937)
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel: 1904 – 1991) was all of 33 years of age when this one page piece of fiction appeared in The Stage Magazine; that same year his first book went to press, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street
The article is illustrated by one of his delightful drawings that future generations would come to know so well.
A Child’s Interview With Dickens
(The Literary Digest, 1912)
Kate Douglas Wiggin recalled her childhood train ride in the 1840’s in which she was able to have a chat with one of her favorite authors, Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870), as he traveled the United States on a reading tour.
‘Of course, I do skip some of the very dull parts once and a while; not the short dull parts but the long ones.’ He laughed heartily. ‘Now that is something that I hear very little about’ he said.
Skiiers Discover Aspen
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)
A late Forties travel article that simultaneously announced the end of Aspen, Colorado, as a ghost town and the beginning of it’s reign as a ski resort of the first order.
Aspen is a tiny Colorado village tucked away in one corner of a lush green valley ringed by snow-capped peaks rising to altitudes of more than 14,000 feet…
Mark Twain’s Unkind Portrait of Bret Harte
(Current Opinion, 1922)
Nasty adjectives fly in this nifty essay concerning the friendship that soured between American writers Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) and Bret Harte (1836 – 1902). The two men were quite close during their younger days as journalists in San Francisco; in 1877 the bond between them was so strong that the two agreed to collaborate on a play, which they titled, Ah, Sin. However, Twain insisted that it was notoriety that killed his friend and it might have been better …if Harte had died in the first flush of his fame:
There was a happy Bret Harte, a contented Bret Harte, an ambitious Bret Harte, a bright, cheerful, easy-laughing Bret Harte to whom it was a bubbling effervescent joy to be alive. That Bret Harte died in San Francisco. It was the corpse of that Bret Harte that swept in splendor across the continent…
American Schools During the Great Depression
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)
This is a portion of a longer article about American children and their collective sufferings during the Great Depression that can be read here. The column attached pertains to a White House conference and the sorry state of American schools in 1940.
From Amazon: Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher
