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"Organized February 13, 1943 the Women's Reserve was directed by Lt. Colonel Ruth Cheney Streeter (1895 – 1990). Women in the Marine Corps were authorized to hold the same jobs, ranks and pay as Marines."


''A Flapper's Appeal to Parents'' (The Outlook, 1922)

"If one judges by appearances, I suppose I am a flapper. I am within the age limit, I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood. I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and bright colored sweaters, and scarves and waists with Peter Pan collars and low-heeled 'finale hopper' shoes. I adore to dance... But then there are many degrees of a flapper. There is the semi-flapper, the flapper, the super-flapper. Each of these three main general divisions has its degrees of variation. I might possibly be placed somewhere in the middle of the first class".

Silent Movie Caricatures (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

When the Five O'Clock Whistle Blows in Hollywood is attached; it appeared in Vanity Fair eight years after Hollywood was declared the film capital of the world. This single page cartoon was created by one of the great American caricaturists of the Twenties: Ralph Barton, and all the kingpins of the young empire are depicted.


''Hitler'' of Hollywood (The American Magazine, 1944)

Song and Dance man Robert Watson (1888 - 1965) was Hollywood's-go-to-guy when they needed a fella to tread the boards as the Bohemian Corporal (Adolf Hitler). Throughout the course of his career he played him nine times.


The Dreamland Story Factory (Rob Wagner's Script, 1935)

"Motion picture studios manufacture motion pictures. Motion pictures are shot from scripts. Scripts are developed from stories. Stories are written and sent to studios by undertakers, gamekeepers, chocolate dippers, steamfitters, pretzel-makers, judges, dentists, trapeze artists, carpet layers, parachute jumpers, nurses, tea tasters and amateur winders. It is a platitude that everyone owning a pencil fancies themselves a writer."


Witness on Azusa Street (LA Times, 1906)

Between 1906 and 1909, the Holy Spirit had come to dwell among the people in Los Angeles. One April day, in a run-down livery stable that was converted to a church, Pastor William Seymore (1870 – 1922) broke out into tongues and so did everyone within earshot. In fact, people blocks away began to speak in tongues and witnessing to all passersby. Within no time, the walls of that "tumble-down shack on Azusa Street" were decorated with the crutches, canes and hearing horns of the recently healed. The attached article was written by one of the few attendees to remain totally unaltered by the righteous energy that permeated the neighborhood.


New York City During World War One (Vanity Fair, 1918)

Delightfully illustrated with seven period photographs, this is a high-spirited read from VANITY FAIR titled "New York's Unceasing Pageantry":

"From the First Liberty Loan to the Draft, from the Draft to the period of heatless days and meatless days, New York has showed good temper which used to be considered as but an indication of incorrigible lightness of mind. And as the months have gone by New York's interest in herself as a military center has grown and deepened, with the growing consciousness of the high part she was to play in an adventure that has done more for her as a social organism than anything else in her history."

Click here to read about the welcome New York gave Sergeant York.


''I'm No Communist'' (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)

Months after his appearance as a spectator at the House Committee on Un-American Activities, actor Humphrey Bogart wrote this article for the editors of Photoplay Magazine addressing the topic of communist infiltration in the Hollywood film industry:

"In the final analysis, this House Committee probe has had one salutary effect. It has cleared the air by indicating what a minute number of Commies there really are in the film industry. Though headlines may have screamed of the Red menace in the movies, all the wind and the fury actually proved that there's been no Communism injected on American movie screens."


T.E. Lawrence: On Allenby's Right (Liberty Magazine, 1936)

"General Storrs said, 'I want you to meet Colonel Lawrence, the uncrowned king of Arabia.'"
"Now it all came back to me!
This was the man Todd Gilney had spoken of - the man who had fostered the Arab revolt against Turkish rule. He was the leader who had singlehandedly welded a hundred warring desert tribes into a compact fighting force which now protected Allenby's right wing."


Black WAACs (Click Magazine, 1942)

A single page from the early war period tells the tale of Natalie Donaldson

Click here to read about the African-American efforts during the First World War.