James Montgomery Flagg on Advertising

In this 1914 Vanity Fair magazine article, James Montgomery Flagg (1877 – 1960) had a good laugh at the hand that fed him.

Better remembered in our own time as the creator of the iconic "I Want You for the U.S. Army" (1917) poster, Flagg was a prolific artist and one of the highest paid magazine and advertising illustrators of his day. As the era of mass-media advertising developed, James Montgomery Flagg didn't just have a good seat on the fifty-yard line; he was a player on the field and he saw his work reproduced in all sorts of unlikely venues. In this article, Flagg poked fun at the language of the advertising copy writer.

"CHEW WIGGLEJAW GUM! Chew it in your own ear! Chew it for dessert! It stimulates conversation. It prevents cholera, bubonic plague, and berri-berri..."

Herman Goering Named as 'Economic Dictator' (Literary Digest, 1936)

"'Uncle' Hermann to the masses, 'Our' Hermann to the army and big business, Col. Gen. Hermann Wilhelm Goering (1893– 1946) last week became economic dictator and virtual Vice-Chancellor of the Third Reich."

"Adolf Hitler dropped into his brawny, outstretched arms full power to carry out the gigantic plan which aims at making the Nazi State economically self-sufficient [in four years]."

Dr. Seuss Tries 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.

W.B. Yeats Gripes About the Theater-Going Bourgeoisie
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1919)

Poet and playwright W.B. Yeats (1865 - 1939) had his say on the matter of "theater-subscriber-book-of-the-month-club" types who are more likely to attend performances because they feel they "should", rather than attending for their own reasons of personal enjoyment:

"And the worst of it is that I could not pay my players, or the seamstresses, or the owner of the building, unless I could draw to my plays those who prefer light amusement, or who have no ear for verse and literature, and fortunately they are all very polite."

New York Court Rules That Women Can Smoke in Public
(Hearst's Sunday American, 1917)

A brief notice reporting on the arrest of three women for smoking in the Times Square subway station.

Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms of 1937.

Military Buildup in Germany (Ken Magazine, 1939)

"The German Army is the greatest enterprise in the world. It has a million employees on it's payrolls, the active officers and soldiers, and, at a conservative estimate, feeds another million workers in the munitions industry. Actually the army employs all of Germany. Military needs alone determine the way of life in the besieged fortress into which 80 million Germans have more or less willingly formed themselves."

Robert Capa: World War II Photographer ('47 Magazine)

The attached (printable) article was written by John Hersey (1914 – 1993); it was written as a review of "Slightly Out of Focus", the memoir of Robert Capa (né Endre Friedmann: 1913 – 1954), famed combat photographer of World War II as well as the Spanish Civil War. A fun, informative read, you will learn how the man came to be a photographer, how he acquired his nom de plume and the fame that quickly followed.

-To read about other W.W. II photographers, click here.

Military Buildup in Belgium (Literary Digest, 1936)

With a clear understanding as to what was coming down the pike, Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Henri Spaak (1899 - 1972) "prevailed upon Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland to push through the Chamber of Deputies a bill increasing the military service from twelve to eighteen months for Belgium's 44,000 conscripts" while at the same time, reinforcing the fortifications along the French border.

Over half the article pertains to the fascist party of Belgium, REX, a group that hardheartedly resisted any such defensive posturing. A few weeks following this printing, Léon Degrelle (1906 – 1994), the leader of REX, the Belgian fascist party, marched on Brussels and brought down the van Zeeland government.

The Wartime Leadership of Sian-Kuan Lin (Collier's Magazine, 1945)

"As well as anything else, the leadership of Sian-Kuan Lin explains why the people of China continue to wage barehanded battle against the overwhelming might of Japan. It is a story that starts in 1927 when Chang Kai-shek marched North against the war lords, fighting to make Sun Yat Sen's dream of a great Chinese republic come true."

World War Two Bomb Tonnage (Yank, 1945)

After the allied air forces moved to Germany in 1945 and unpacked their suitcases, they began to take account of the bombing damage inflicted on that country throughout the course of the war. By the end of 1945 they were able to figure out what percentage of their bombing tonnage was needed to destroy the vital (and some not terribly vital) elements of the Nazi war machine; Yank printed this handy cartoon-chart to help make sense of it all...

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