Recent Articles – Page 78 – Old Magazine Articles

A Jihad on Menswear
(Click Magazine, 1941)

With her characteristic disregard for the unreasonable mandates of the prevailing fashion police hanging out for all to see, Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) scoffed with the deepest irreverence at the males of the species for being so thoughtless and blind in matters sartorial. Pointing out that men, who she compared to mice, don’t have to wear ties, hats, heavy leather shoes or anything else that makes them uncomfortable, but do so purposelessly and out of fear…

Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.

Israel’s Alarm at Hitler’s Rise
(Literary Digest, 1933)

This is an article that gathered Jewish opinions about the rise of Nazi Germany from many parts of the globe:

There have been European Premiers before this who were surrounded with an anti-Semite atmosphere, but never has such a Jew-baiter as Hitler sat at the helm of the Ship-of-State among Modern civilized people.

This bitter climax is the reward given to the Jews of Germany who poured out their blood for the ‘Fatherland’ during the Great War. Not less than 100,000 Jews took part in the war, which was more than a sixth of the Jewish population of the country including women and children. Twelve thousand fell on the battlefields, and thousands returned home crippled.

Upholstery in the Finest Luxury Cars of 1920
(Vogue Magazine, 1920)

A magazine article which examines the automotive upholstery styles of cars that were made for the general public (stock cars) and those other cars that were custom made and likely to be furnished with Dictaphones and vanity cases.

As for materials, it may be said that most of the custom-built cars are upholstered in broadcloth or whipcord, whereas the stock cars show prevailingly velours, mohair velvet and the textile known as automobile cloth.

Captured Hitlerjugend
(Stars & Stripes, 1944)

Among the thousands of German POWs captured during the Normandy campaign was this 17 year-old alumnus of the Hitler Jugend program who is the subject in the attached column. The editors at The Stars and Stripes were dumbfounded to discover how thoroughly he had been brainwashed – to prove the point, they printed their interview with the teen.

Q. If Germany wins the war, will you punish the United States?

A. We want living space.

Goldwater on Vietnam
(Coronet Magazine, 1966)

Throughout the course of the Vietnam War there was no greater Hawk on Capitol Hill than United States Senator Barry Goldwater (1909 – 1998). In the attached interview from 1966 the Senator chastises President Johnson for failing to seize the initiative and correctly predicted that if the Americans did not show greater pugnacity, they would be run out of South Vietnam.

The Japanese Homefront
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

This 1938 article concerned the gas rationing and and other assorted inconveniences that the Japanese population had to suffer during the Sino-Japanese conflict. The reporter was surprised to discover that the general citizenry was kept in a reasonable state of ignorance as to their military’s intentions in China:

Some attention is paid to the sacrifices made by the Japanese industrial classes, such as the Yasuda, Iwasaki, and Mitsui families.

T.V. as It Was in 1945
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Those heady days of early T.V. broadcasting:

Television was about ready for immediate commercialization when Pearl Harbor forced the industry to mark time, but engineers agree that the war has hastened electronic developments to a point that could not have been expected for 15 years under normal circumstances.

Fashion Designers Colide wth Hollywood Designers…
(Click Magazine, 1938)

This is an historic article that introduced the fashion era that we still reside in today.

The attached article from 1938 heralded a new day in the fashion industry where fashion magazines would no longer be relied upon to set the trends in clothing; henceforth, that roll would largely be played by movie actresses in far-off Hollywood:

The greatest fashion influence in America, stylists sadly lament, is the much-photographed, much-glamorized and much-imitated Movie Queen. What she wears is news, eagerly copied, by girls all over the country who want to look like Joan Crawford and Myrna Loy.

The primary bone of contention that the East Coast fashionistas found most objectionable was the fact that movie stars are Californians, and Californians will always prefer comfort over glamor.

Fearing German Filmmakers
(Current Opinion, 1921)

Teutonic film producers must have gotten a good guffaw upon reading the attached article that announced how insecure Hollywood producers felt when faced with the filmmakers of Germany. These intimidated studio heads and distributors believed that the Germans had a leg-up on Hollywood due to the high quantity of well-trained actors, crew and writers who had benefited from the traditions set forth generations earlier in German theater – so much so that they beseeched the law givers in Washington to protect them from these Germans…

The Soviet Life Style
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

The standard of living in Russia has never been very high, but even despite his natural stoicism, the average citizen feels he has a good reason to be disgruntled with his life… Like any other totalitarian state, the Soviet state has done its best to paint a larger than life-size picture of its citizens. It likes to describe them as steel-hard heroes with an inflexible will, living for nothing but the great ideal of a Communist future, laughing at difficulties, gaily grasping with hard ship – a continent of Douglas Fairbankses. This is just a bit too good to be true, and the last one to be taken in by it is the average Russian.

June 6, 1945: the First Anniversary
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

YANK correspondent Dewitt Gilpin visited the Omaha and Utah beaches exactly one year after the 1944 Normandy Invasion. The journalist interviewed some American D-Day veterans as well as members of the local French population who recalled that bloody day -while others simply tried to forget.

Landing to the left of the Rangers on Omaha was the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division. Their 1st Battalion came in over a beach that had more dead men on it than live ones.

Read what the army psychologists had to say about fear in combat.

June 6, 1945: the First Anniversary
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Landing to the left of the Rangers on Omaha was the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division. Their 1st Battalion came in over a beach that had more dead men on it than live ones.

Read what the army psychologists had to say about fear in combat.

Papier-Mache Used to Deceive German Snipers
(Popular Mechanics, 1917)

By the time the U.S. Army had joined the war in 1917, they were far behind in the study of camouflage, but they did their best to catch up quickly. The American generals assigned the task camouflage to the Signal Corps, which began to cruise the ranks for artists and sculptors because of their natural abilities understand paint and scale (one of the more well-known W.W. I Signal Corps camofleurs was the painter Grant Wood: click here to read about him).

The attached article displays an illustration that clearly shows that the American Army had torn a page out of that well-worn play book written by the British Camouflage School in order to deploy papier-mache dummies along the front lines. There is no evidence or written word to indicate that it was actually done.

American Weed Goes to War
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

With the loss of Asian sources for rope fiber, the Department of Agriculture requested American farmers harvest marijuana to make up for the dearth.

The Modern Klan
(Atlantic Monthly, 1922)

An Atlantic Monthly article by LeRoy Percy (1860– 1929), a well-off planter who had successfully fought the spread of the KKK into Washington County, Mississippi. This article explains how the Klan operated in 1922. Their wide-spread appeal is also discussed.

One of the strangest aberrations in American life since the war is the growth of the Ku Klux Klan. In the North that organization, when considered at all, has been thought of as a colossal buffoonery, a matter unworthy of the time or thought of intelligent folk; and indeed for the average American, with his common sense and his appreciation for the ridiculous, any other attitude of numbers would seem unlikely…The Klan excludes from membership Negroes, Jews, Catholics and foreign-born, whether citizens or not. In its own phrase, it is the only Gentile White Protestant American-born organization in the world. It is secret… When asked if he is a member, the custom is for a good Klansman to evade, more rarely to reply in the negative, but in any event not to avow his membership.

Click here to learn about the origins of the term Jim Crow.

The Swing of Cecil Leitch
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

Attached herein is a photographic study of the British golf champion Cecil Leitch (1891 – 1977) snapped with a high-speed, stop-motion camera. In nine black and white images depicting her drive from start to finish, we are able to gain an understand as to how she was able to win three British driving championships up until that time. She left the game after having won a total of twelve national titles; at the time of this printing, she was writing her first book: Golf (1922).

The Fine Art of Introduction
(Vanity Fair, 1917)

Stephen Leacock (1869 – 1944) had some amusing opinions concerning social introductions according to the recognized formulas.

With the approach of the winter season, conversation as an art is again in order. It is a thing that we all need to consider. Some of us are asked out to dinner merely because we talk. Others, chiefly because we do not. It is a matter in which we can help one another. Let us discuss it…

Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms.

Two Parachute Pioneers
(Popular Mechanics, 1912)

Attached is a well illustrated article concerning two of the earliest parachute drops: one was quite fatal while the other had a jollier ending. The first leap documented in this column was made by a fellow known only as F. Rodman Law (dates?); he jumped 345 feet from the torch of the Statue of Liberty and landed 30 feet from the water’s edge. The next day, parachute enthuiast Franz Reichelt (1879 – 1912) jumped from the first platform of the Eiffel Tower with a parachute of his own design. The Popular Mechanics correspondent reported that:

His body was a shapeless mass when the police picked it up.