The Leftists who ran the shop over at New Masses could easily have lived with the muscle-bound posing’s of Bernarr MacFadden (1868 – 1955), but when he grew discontent with mugging it before the cameras and started writing anti-FDR editorials in a popular magazine, they knew they had to shut him down.
“Howard Hughes (1905 – 1976) works as Edison worked – hard. Hughes possesses much of Edison’s inventive genius. In the public eye it is Hughes’ Cassanova role which stands out, but if Hughes was only a rich collector of escapades, he would no more merit serious serious examination than Tommy Manville… The late novelist Rupert hughes, Howard’s uncle, once remarked when asked why he would not talk to his famous nephew: “When I get down on my knees I can talk to God, but not to Howard Hughes.”
his brief notice is from a much admired American magazine containing many sweet words regarding the unstoppable Orson Welles (1915 – 1985) and his appearance in the Archibald McLeish (1892 – 1982) play, Panic (directed by John Houseman, 1902 — 1988).
The year 1941, Ano Domini, was another great year for the boy genius who seemed to effortlessly triumph with all his theatrical and film ventures. At the time this appeared in print, Welles was filming The Magnificent Ambersons, having recently pocketed an Oscar for his collaborative writing efforts in Citizen Cane. Highly accomplished and multi-married, no study of American entertainment is complete without mention of his name. The anonymous scribe who penned the attached article remarked:
No pretentiously shy Saroyan courtship of an audience about Welles! He really loves his relation to the public. He doesn’t flirt with it.
Barry Goldwater (1909 – 1998) was the Republican presidential candidate for 1964, and although he lost that contest by wide margins to Lyndon Johnson, his political philosophy has played a vital roll in shaping the direction of American conservative thought. William F. Buckley, Jr. explained why in this article.
In 1887 The New York Times reviewed the first english edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it…
A 1942 article about Mexican film comedian Mario Moreno (1911 – 1993) who was widely known and loved throughout Latin America and parts of the West as Cantinflas, the bumbling cargador character of his own creation. Born in the poorest circumstances Mexico could dish-out, Mario Moreno achieved glorious heights in the entertainment industry; by the time he assumed room temperature in the early Nineties he had appeared in well over fifty films.
This is a profile of Dr. Sigmund Freud that appeared during the last months of his life. In the Spring of 1938 Freud and his family had fled to London in order escape the Nazis.
Preferring not to be found face-down in the Chicago River, this journalist wrote a very middle-of-the-road sort of article about Al Capone following the thug’s 1931 conviction on tax evasion.
This column concerns Jackie Robinson’s non-professional days in sports; his football seasons at Pasadena Junior College, basketball at UCLA and the Kansas City Monarchs. Being an Army publication, the reporter touched upon Robinson’s brief period as a junior officer in the 761st Tank Battalion.
A 1951 article about the Negro Baseball League can be read here
In 1969, Jackie Robinson wrote about African-American racists, click here to read it…
Click here to read a 1954 article about Willie Mays.
KEY WORDS: ELSA MAXWELL 1940s socialite,ELSA MAXWELL 1950s socialite,ELSA MAXWELL 1930s socialite,hostess ELSA MAXWELL magazine article,hostess ELSA MAXWELL newspaper article,ELSA
Nobody has been able to figure out to anyone’s satisfaction why Sinatra has the effect he has on his Bobby Sox fans. One of his secretaries, a cute dish whose husband is serving overseas, said: ‘The doctors say it’s just because he’s got a very sexy voice, but I’ve been with him a year now and his voice doesn’t do a thing to me’.
Maybe it’s the war.
Here is a profile of a very young Al Hirschfeld (1903 – 2003) – long-time NY Times caricaturist.
Here is a moving account of the meteoric rise of Johnny Mathis (b. 1935) – from an impoverished child of the San Francisco slums to the last of the great-American crooners.
Johnny Mathis is just 23 years old , though he appears a hungry , vulnerable 17. When he sings a romantic ballad in high falsetto, his large eyes gaze out over the heads of the audience as if in search of someone.
Bernard Baruch (1870 – 1965) was a major player in President Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust; during World War Two he served that president as a respected adviser concerning economic matters. Not long after this interview, during the Truman Administration, he was appointed to serve as the first U.S. Representative on the U.N Atomic Energy Commission.
Click here to read a 1945 article about the funeral of FDR.
Attached is a five page interview with the always demure and introverted pianist Liberace (b. Wladziu Valentino Liberace: 1919 – 1987). When this article first appeared on the pages of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE, no living performer was selling more records than he was, his television program was nearing its second year and American women had not yet figured out that he was gay. Life was good.
From Amazon: Liberace: An American Boy
Here is a very thorough profile of Mustafa Kamel Atatürk (1881 – 1938), the first president of the Republic of Turkey (1923 – 1938). The article goes into some detail concerning his humble beginnings, his vices and his secret writings for the revolutionary Vatan ve Hürriyet (Motherland and Liberty) underground movement. His rise to power came with his assorted military triumphs in the Italo-Turkish War, the Balkan War, the First World War and most notably, the Greko-Turkish War. He came to power in 1922 and began reforming Turkish society in ways that rocked the nation to its very corps.
Click here to read a 1922 article about the Turkish slaughter of Christians.
During much of the 20s and 30s satirist H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) was widely read and respected for the critic that he was -and as you read this British essay from the arts journal, The English Review, you’ll get a sense that the author/groupie must have been waiting by the docks for several years in anticipation of his arrival.
The historian Henry Steele Commager ranked H.L. Mencken at number 9 insofar as his impact on the American mind was concerned – click here to understand his reasoning…
Click here to read an article about one of New York’s greatest mayors: Fiorello LaGuardia.
She had been a key figure in the most spectacular murder trial of the Gilded Age. An artist’s model, a Broadway chorus girl, the obsession of crazed millionaire and the play thing of one of America’s greatest architects; her beauty was legend – driving men to do the sorts of things that they knew were wrong. Her name was Evelyn Nesbit (1884 – 1967) and when that era faded into obscurity, so did she; until the hard-charging reporters of PEOPLE TODAY found her decades later – in the Land of Fruits and Nuts (Southern California), where the celebrities of yesteryear all go to find themselves.
Written with a strong spirit of gratitude, this is the obituary of Teddy Roosevelt as it appeared in the N.A.A.C.P. magazine The Crises. Published at a time when the friends of the black man were few, this is a stirring tribute to a man who, although not always an ally, was respected as the world’s greatest protagonist of lofty ideals and principles.
Click here to read a 1945 article about the funeral of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, TR’s nephew.
Click here to read an article about one of New York’s greatest mayors: Fiorello LaGuardia.
