Recent Articles – Page 87 – Old Magazine Articles

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

In the attached PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE article, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911 – 2004), the Hollywood actor who would one day become the fortieth president of the United States (1981–1989), gives a tidy account as to who he was in 1942, and what was dear to him:

My favorite menu is steaks smothered with onions and strawberry short cake. I play bridge adequately and collect guns, always carry a penny as a good luck charm…I’m interested in politics and governmental problems. My favorite books are Turnabout, by Thorne Smith, Babbitt, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the works of Pearl Buck, H.G. Wells, Damon Runyon and Erich Remarque.

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

Ronald Reagan in his Own Words
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.

Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…

A Salute to D.W. Griffith
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1945)

To mark the 67th birthday of the silent film director D.W. Griffith, the editors of a once illustrious Hollywood literary magazine pasted his famous profile on their magazine cover and devoted four columns to his achievements.

‘Fashion is Spinach”
(Focus Magazine, 1938)

Fashion philosophizer and designer Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) recognized the sham that is fashion – in the attached photo-essay she writes plainly on the matter.

The book is available at Amazon.com:
Fashion is Spinach

Intent on Battle
(U.S. Army Report, 1919)

Here is a page from The Enemy Order of Battle report (1919) by the subsection of the same name that was an arm of the U.S. Army General Staff. The report tells of Baccarat, a portion of the Western Front during the later part of the war that was quiet, by mutual agreement between the French and Germans – until the U.S. Army took their place in the French position – and then all Hell broke loose.

The Shell-Shocked Millions
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

With the close of the war came the release of millions of combat veterans onto the streets of the world. Some of these veterans adjusted nicely to the post-war world – but many had a difficult time. Their maladjustment was called Shell Shock and it could manifest itself in any number of ways; in the attached article, written less than a year after the war, one anonymous American veteran explained his own personal encounter with the illness.

Click here to read a post-W.W. I poem about combat-related stress…

Night Patrol in the Toul Sector
(Stars and Stripes, 1918)

Mr. Junius B. Wood, correspondent of the CHICAGO DAILY NEWS with the A.E.F. recently spent a week in the sector held by the American Army Northwest of Toul. He lived the life of a Doughboy, slept a little and saw a lot. He spent his days in and near the front line and some of his nights in No Man’s Land. Here is the second and concluding installment of his story, depicting life at the front as it actually is…

Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.

Martha Vickers
(Pic Magazine, 1945)

Perhaps one of the first magazine articles about the beautiful actress Martha Vickers (1925 – 1971) who is best remembered by fans for her performance as the fabulously slutty Carmen Sternwood in the 1946 film The Big Sleep.

This article tells the tale of her early days in 1940s Los Angeles and her work as a photographer’s model, which turned more than a few of the crowned heads of Hollywood.

Martha Vickers
(Pic Magazine, 1945)

This article tells the tale of her early days in 1940s Los Angeles and her work as a photographer’s model, which turned more than a few of the crowned heads of Hollywood.

Was Allied Air Power Decisive During World War II?
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A light and breezy review concerning the findings of a U.S. government study regarding the effectiveness of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany:

…the survey authorities report that although air power might have been more advantageously applied in this case or that, its decisive bearing on the victory was undeniable…At sea, its contribution, combined with naval air power, brought an end to the enemy’s greatest naval threat -the U-boat; on land, it helped turn the tide overwhelmingly in favor of allied ground forces.

Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here.

How the Soviets Would Have Attacked
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

There wouldn’t be any warning.

Long-range Soviet bombers attempt to knock out our key industrial targets by atomic bombing. Some fly the 4,000, miles from Murmansk across the roof of the world to our East Coast; others strike from bases in Eastern Siberia at California and the Midwest… Simultaneously, organized sabotage breaks out in aviation plants, shipyards, power stations, etc., to complement the work of the bombers.

The Biased Military Courts of the U.S. Army
(G.I. Joe Magazine, 1945)

G.I. JOE MAGAZINE was established shortly after the war by a shrewd, commerce-driven soul who fully recognized that the American veterans of W.W. II would have a good deal to say about their military hardships, and would need a venue in which to do it. The attached article was written by a veteran who preferred to remain anonymous; the righteous indignation can be keenly sensed in his prose as he explained the three-tiered justice system that he believed to have been built into the offices of the U.S. Army military court system. The first tier meted out soft justice for officers, the second dispensed a harsh justice to White enlisted men, and the bottom tier dished-out a far more vile variety to the American soldiers of African descent.

Read an Article about Racial Integration in the U.S. Military

The ICBM
(Collier’s Magazine, 1956)

The U.S. and Russia are engaged in a race whose outcome may determine the course of history. The goal: development of the most frightful weapon conceived by man – a virtually unstoppable 16,000-mph intercontinental ballistic missile that can drop a hydrogen warhead on a city 5,000 miles away. At stake is not only the security of the free world , but our position as the world’s most technological and industrial power.

600 Nisei Judged Disloyal
(L.A. Times, 1944)

About 630 American-born Japanese over the age of 17, now at the Poston (AZ.) relocation center, were found to be openly disloyal or of questionable loyalty to the United States, the Dies subcommittee learned at its hearing yesterday in the Federal Building…Among the 630 there were 606 men and 24 women.

A Diagram of Germany’s Only World War I Tank
(Almanach Hachette, 1919)

A black and white diagram depicting the interior and exterior of the German A7V heavy tank. Manufactured in the spring of 1918, only twenty were ever known to have existed. Although the illustration depicts only two men, it is said that the tank had a crew of 18 and measured 26 feet, three inches in length and 10.5 feet in width. The A7V had two heavy Maxim machine guns placed within it’s turret, while the tank’s primary weapon was a 57mm gun mounted at the very front (these guns were believed to have been of Russian or Belgian origin). The tank could travel an estimated fifty miles at the top speed of 6 mph; it weighed 32 tons and sported armor plating that was 30mm thick at the bow and 20mm thick all around. The tank’s two 150 horse-power, 4-cylinder water cooled engines were made by Daimler.

The Talent for Sniping: Native Americans on the Western Front
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

It was not beyond the editors of THE STARS and STRIPES to indulge in ethnic stereotyping from time to time and, no doubt, they exercised that privilege here as well, however the performance of the American Indian soldier got high marks for a number of valued skills from many Allied officers on the Western Front. It was not simply their ability to shoot well which invited these compliments, but also their instincts while patrolling No-Man’s Land in the dark in addition to a common sense of bravery shared by all. The article is rich with a number of factoids that the Western Front reader will no doubt enjoy; among them, mention is made of German women serving in combat.

Read some magazine articles about one of the great failed inventions of the Twentieth Century: the Soviet Union.