1927 – Old Magazine Articles

‘Why I Live in Paris” by a Former American Soldier
(American Legion Monthly, 1927)

This piece was penned by an anonymous expatriate, a former American soldier of the Great War who went into some detail comparing life in 1920s Paris to the life he knew in America, and he is quite funny about it. He described a Paris that Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald didn’t talk about.

Back in America I sincerely thought that my hometown had the worst telephone system in the world. This was a colossal error…

Click here to read about the fall of Paris…

Prohibition – Chicago Style
(The Chicagoan, 1927)

By 1927 it was common knowledge to every Chicago-based journalist that any reporter who wrote truthfully or seemed in any way outraged by the business practices of Al Capone – and others of his ilk, was likely to be found face down in Lake Michigan. The writer who penned this piece probably had that fact in mind while sitting at the typewriter; it is not an apology for the Chicago gangsters, it simply implies that they are established, the police are complicit – so get used to it. The writer then begins to explain how the bootlegging and distribution business operated – some of the up-and-coming hoods of the day must have been gratified to read that there was plenty of room for advancement within each organization.

A history of Chicago vaudeville can be read here…

‘Film Cannot Be Art”
(The Dial Magazine, 1927)

In this article, a 1920s critic forthrightly states that the primitive state of movie cameras renders them unfit as capable tools with which art can be created. He expands on his remarks by pointing out that 1920s film technology generally will never be able to render thought-provoking plots or articulate narratives until some necessary advancements are made in the field.

Another anti-silent film article can be read here…

-an additional article from the 1920s defaming silent film can be read here…

Just Another Classified Ad from Dixie…
(The Nation, 1927)

The attached file is a digital facsimile of a classified ad that was once posted in a Georgia newspaper long after the Emancipation Proclamation was passed into law. The editors at THE NATION saw fit to title the notice as an interesting little advertisement when they reproduced it six months later on their pages. Yet, for the Southerners who set the type-face, applied the ink, delivered the paper and subscribed, the ad was typical of so many other classifieds that had appeared during the past one hundred and fifty years, and it was not, as the Yankees put it:

…the request of someone who never heard of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Christ is Big Box Office
(The Literary Digest, 1927)

This is a review of one of the first movies to tell the story of Jesus, The King of Kings, which was directed by one of Hollywood’s earliest seers: Cecil B. DeMille (1881 – 1959). The film was genuinely adored in all circles; one critic gushed:

Cecil B. DeMille’s reward for The King of Kings will be in heaven…

Click here to read about the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb.

1920s Road Rage
(The American Magazine, 1927)

Is it possible for a person to drive an automobile and remain a human being?

Do gasoline and courtesy mix?

Can you tell me why Ottis Throckmorton Whoozies, secretary of the Golden Rule Society, will smile sweetly, lift his hat and say graciously, ‘I beg your pardon. I’m really awfully sorry. Please excuse me,’ when he accidentally steps on a strange woman’s foot in a theater lobby, yet will lean out and make faces at his own grandmother if she fails to slow up her flivver and allow him to ‘cut in’ on a congested highway?

There’s something about a windshield that distorts a man’s outlook on life.

Click here to read about Lincoln, the joke teller.

Rebel General John McCausland: the Terror of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
(The Nation, 1927)

This small notice from The Nation marked the death of General John McCausland (1836 – 1927), C.S.A.. Much to the disappointment of the town elders residing in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, McCausland (pardoned by President U.S. Grant) escaped the hangman and outlived every last Confederate general ever put in the field.

The Anti-Asian Immigration Laws of 1924
(The Nation, 1927)

The Immigration Act of 1924 denied admission to the United States to wives of American citizens if these wives are of a race ineligible for citizenship. Hindus, Chinese and Japanese are ineligible. Hence the curious and cruel fact that while an Oriental merchant with his wife may enter America, the wedded wife of an American-born citizen is held at the coast for deportation.

WINGS: Directed by William Wellman
(Life Magazine, 1927)

Appearing in an issue of [the old] Life Magazine, that was almost entirely devoted to the 1927 American Legion convention in Paris, was this Robert Sherwood review of the blockbuster silent film Wings. Directed by an American Air Corps veteran, William Wellman (1896 – 1975), Wings was the only silent film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (at that time the category was titled Most Outstanding Production).

Charles Lindbergh: American Hero
(Literary Digest, 1927)

Truth is stranger than fiction’ is an old writer’s saw that the pen plodders know and the general reader doubts. But that truth and fiction may be one and the same thing in comes to light in the story of Charles Lindbergh’s flight. No fiction writer could have contrived a story more perfect and right in it’s details…In a few short days an unknown lad has become the hero of the world. His name is on the lips of more people than any under the sun. His face etched in more minds than any living human. The narrative question of the story, ‘Will he make it?’ is on everybody’s lips, from President to beggars.

The Blessings of Poison Gas
(Literary Digest, 1927)

Having examined the collected data from the First World War, scientists and soldiers alike were drawing surprising conclusions as to the inefficiency of chemical agents in warfare. No doubt, it was articles such as this that lead to the decision not to use gas in the Second World War:

Poisonous gas as used in warfare is ‘a blessing, not a curse,’ and makes for the future security and peace of the world’, declares J.E. Mills, of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service

…Theoretically one ton of mustard gas could kill 45,000,000 men. Actually one ton of mustard gas as used at the front caused about twenty-nine casualties, of which one died.

The Unknown Soldier
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1927)

Ten years after Congress decided to enter the war in Europe, James Truslow Adams (1878 – 1949) wrote this article that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in which he noted that one of the maladies of the modern era was the creation of a new type of collective thinking that celebrated the common man:

Man has always delighted to honor the great…But now for the first time whole nations, and those the most enlightened, have come to honor the man of whom we know nothing: the Unknown Soldier. As a matter of unfortunate fact, the particular body may be that of one who fought the draft to the last ditch and was a slacker in service. That, however, is of course wholly irrelevant; for it is not really the Unknown Soldier who thus receives the almost religious adoration of his people, but the Common Man, for that is what he is intending to typify…

The Flapper as a Religious Force in the World
(Literary Digest, 1927)

Scorned for too long by churchmen as an ambulatory example of folly, the flapper at length finds herself defended by the Church. She is not, in this new view, the brainless, overdressed Jezebel that she has been pictured to be. ‘She is a symbol of the times. As she sweeps down the street, she is like nothing so much as a fine, young spirited puppy-dog, eager for the fray’.

Unlike some members of clergy, the wise sages of Hollywood were clearly numbered among those who held favorable views about flappers, but they didn’t always produce films that were sympathetic to their causes; for example, the editors of Flapper magazine hated this movie.

‘Me & My Flapper Daughters”
(American Magazine, 1927)

A Victorian father embraced the spirit of the Flapper rebellion, welcomed it into his house and testified that it made his daughters better and their family bonds stronger.

‘Soldier Man Blues”
(Literary Digest, 1927)

This article is essentially a collection of lyrics from an assortment of songs sung by the Black Doughboys who were charged with the task of loading and unloading trucks far behind the front line trenches during the First World War. It was written in 1927 to serve as a review for Singing Soldiers by John J. Niles, who compiled the labor songs while stationed in France as a fighter pilot:

All dese colored soldiers comin’ over to France

All dese soldiers an’ me

Goin’ to help de Whites make de Kaiser dance

All dese soldiers an’ me…

‘Learn War No More”
(Literary Digest, 1927)

Following World War One there existed a poor taste in the collective mouths of all the participating combatant nations; as a result, 1927 saw a small rebellion against much of the military training taking place on some U.S. campuses. This article lists a number restrictions that various academic institutions had placed on those military organizations active on college and high school grounds.

Zhang Zuolin: Chinese Strong Man
(The Nation, 1927)

An interview with Zhang Zuolin (1873 – 1928), the Chinese warlord who oversaw Manchuria and much of North China during the last fifteen years of his life. The article was written by the old China-based correspondent Randall Gould.

Marshall Zhang, drawn to Peking from his native Mukden ‘to cooperate with the foreign ministers in saving China from Bolshevism’, talks in terms of nations but continues to think in terms of provinces. Anyone who has spent half an hour with him knows this. The Strong Man of Mukden has improved his propaganda vocabulary but he is using the same old brain – shrewd, keen, but sharply limited.

A Diagram of Lindbergh’s Plane
(Literary Digest, 1927)

Originally created for the editors of the now defunct Aero Digest, the diagram depicted the interior of The Spirit of St. Louis (also referred to to as The Ryan Transatlantic Monoplane) shows the layout of the famous craft, and the placement of the water supply, air vent, earth inductor compass and more. The Spirit of St. Louis weighed 5,000 pounds, could travel at the speed of 135 miles per hour and had a wing span measuring 46 feet.