Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)"The appeal of James Stewart, the shy, inarticulate movie actor, is that he reminds every girl in the audience of the date before the last. He's not a glamorized Gable, a remote Robert Taylor. He's 'Jim', the lackadaisical, easy-going boy from just around the corner."
The above line was pulled from the attached article which was one of the first widely read profiles of Jimmy Stewart (James Maitland Stewart 1908 – 1997). Written four years after his arrival in the California dream factory and printed during the same year as his first encounter with the director Frank Capra in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", this article reveals that Stewart had a small town upbringing and was essentially the same character he played in "It's A Wonderful Life".
"Booth Tarkington might have created Jim Stewart. He's 'Little Orvie and Billie Baxter' grown up 'Penrod' with a Princeton diploma."
From Amazon: It's a Wonderful Life: Favorite Scenes from the Classic Film
''The Tenth Man'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)This is a light history of the African-American people; weak in some spots, informative in others, the article seems to have been written for the white Americans who know little about them.
The Klan in Miami (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)"The night before [the Miami] citizens went to the polls to decide among 15 candidates for three commissionerships, the old specter of the Ku Klux Klan was raised to scare away the colored votes."
The scheme didn't work. The Founders of the Hollywood Film Colony Gather Together
(Film Daily, 1939)A notice from the pages of a 1939 Hollywood trade publication announced an organization for the silver-haired alumni of Hollywood's silent film business: "Early this summer there came into existence a new organization known as Picture Pioneers, consisting of veterans who have been in the industry 25 years."
Click here to read about the movie moguls of 1919.
How the AEF Intelligence Service Did It (American Legion Monthly, 1939)A fascinating read. Written twenty-one years after the war, journalist Thomas M. Johnson, who had covered the A.E.F. for The New York Sun, revealed all the tricks employed by the U.S Army Intelligence Service to get the most information out of every German prisoner they could get their hands on - and none of them involved breaking bones or shedding blood. American Dominance in Pop-Culture (Stage Magazine, 1939)The editors of Stage magazine were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident. "And the Movies: all them stories, all them fables, all them beautiful women,all them amazing children: Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Jane Withers, Jackie Searl,and the others. Even Europe in the movies is America. Even Charlie Chan is American. Even Mr. Moto is American. Even war in the movies is American, instead of neurotic. And the newsreels: the style of them,the energy and comedy of them: the imitativeness, the invention, and absurdity of them for the sake of comedy. America made these entertainers,and now, very naturally, they are making America."
Emily Post on Society Language (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)At the tail-end of a very long interview concerning the problems with Hollywood movies, Emily Post (1872 – 1960), America's high-priestess of good manners, was asked just one more question - this one involved the English language and here is Emily Post's 1939 list of what to say and what not to say.
• Don't say 'brainy' - say, 'clever'.
• Don't say 'wealthy', say 'rich'.
• Don't say 'Charmed or pleased to meet you', say 'how do you do'.
• etc, etc, etc.
Emily Post had so many opinions... The Visual Accuracy of the 'Gone with the Wind' (Click Magazine, 1939)This page from Click Magazine contrasts three Civil War photographs by Matthew Brady (1822 – 1896) with three production stills snapped on the sets of Gone with the Wind. The editors refused to weigh-in on the slowly building case regarding Hollywood's questionable abilities to portray historic events with any degree of accuracy, preferring instead to praise the filmmakers as to "how carefully" they "checked details".
The Matthew Brady images provided on the attached page only serves to condemn the otherwise flawless work of Gone with the Wind costume designer Walter Plunkett (1902 - 1982) who historians and reënactors have slandered through the years for failing to fully grasp the look of the era. American Dominance in 1930s Film (Stage Magazine, 1939)The editors of STAGE MAGAZINE were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident. Nazi Terror at Plotzensee Prison (Ken Magazine, 1939)A first-hand account as to the daily goings-on at Plötzensee Prison in Nazi Germany.
Written by Jan Valtin (alias of Richard Julius Hermann Krebs: 1905 - 1951), one of the few inmates to make his way out of that highly inclusive address and tell the tale. Valtin was a communist in the German resistance movement who later escaped to New York and published his memoir about his experiences in Nazi Germany Out of the Night (1941).
"...the purpose of punishment is the infliction of suffering." In the tiny, dark cells of this Nazi prison that is the Law. It breaks some men, but it tempers others to a harder steel as the underground fight against Hitler goes on..." *Color Film Footage of Nazi Germany in 1939* Mussolini Betrayed the Italian Jews (Liberty Magazine, 1939)"What is the reason for Il Duce's newly acquired antisemitism? Why the new laws degrading the Jews of Italy? There are hardly 60,000 native-born Jews in all Italy. Many Italians have never laid eyes on a Jew. Antisemitism played no part in Italian life until Il Duce determined to banish the Jews into a moral and material ghetto." No, Joe Biden, U.S. Relations With Germany Were Bad Before the U.S. Entry Into W.W. II (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)During the Presidential debate of October 22 (2020) Vice President Biden remarked that the American diplomatic corps made nice with Hitler up until the German invasion of Poland - the attached article from 1939 refutes this statement:
Eight months prior to the day when W.W. II would commence, diplomatic relations between Berlin and Washington got ugly; the carefully controlled German press declared that matters between the two camps "were at their lowest point since 1917". Hitler's diplomats demanded apologies and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee clarified the American position by stating that the American people have a general dislike for Fascism. The Department of the Navy announced that it was expanding its presence in the Atlantic.
Horst Wessel: Nazi Martyr (Ken Magazine, 1939)This 1939 article from Ken Magazine lays out the real story of the life and death of Nazi storm trooper Horst Wessel (1907 – 1930) - not the one believed by the fascists he left behind:
"In Germany, 1930, a pimp killed another pimp for cutting in on his girl's territory. The slain pimp was a Nazi named Horst Wessel. Then Hitler came into power, and propagandist Goebbels, in need of a 'Hell-rouser', dreamed up the Wessel legend, made him an official Nazi martyr-saint.'"
Japanese Spies on the West-Coast (Ken Magazine, 1939)A 1939 magazine article that reported on the assorted activities of Japanese spies operating around the Tijuana/San Diego region (their presence was well-documented by the Mexican military in addition to the F.B.I.).
A year and a half before the Pearl Harbor attack, Naval Intelligence sold a Japanese agent some bogus plans of the naval installation - more about this can be read here.
Growth and Expansion at the Walt Disney Company (Film Daily, 1939)Herein is a 1939 article from a defunct Hollywood trade magazine marking the construction of a 20 acre facility for the Disney studio in Burbank, California:
"By 1930, the Walt Disney studio had grown in fantastic fashion. Instead of the 25 employees of 1929, there were now 40 people...By the end of the year there were 66 employees...In 1931 the total number of personnel had jumped to 106...When 'The Three Little Pigs' came along in 1933, the studio had grown 1,600 square feet of floor space in 1929, to 20,000 square feet. A hundred and fifty people were now turning out the Disney productions... In 1937, all the employees were still jostling each other... From around 600 employees in the summer of 1937, the organization had grown to almost 900 by the winter of 1938."
Warner Brothers Opens Fire on Nazi Germany (Stage Magazine, 1939)STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Katherine Best was not shy about giving credit where credit was due, as you will read in this article that stands as one big pat on the back for the producers at Warner Brother's for possessing the testicular fortitude needed to launch the first anti-Nazi movie in Hollywood: Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939).
In October of 1940, Charlie Chaplin released his anti-fascist masterpiece: The Great Dictator. Click here to read about that. Vivien Leigh to Play Scarlet (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)A short notice from a Hollywood fan magazine announcing that Vivien Leigh (born Vivian Mary Hartley: 1913 – 1967), an actress largely unknown to U.S. audiences, had been cast to play the roll of 'Scarlet'. Accompanied by two breathtakingly beautiful color images of the actress, this short announcement outlines her genetic makeup, her previous marriage to Leigh Holman, and her thoughts concerning the upcoming roll.
Click here to read magazine articles about D.W. Griffith. The Man Behind Mussolini (Ken Magazine, 1939)This short, slanderous profile of Italy's Victor Emmanuel III (1869 – 1947) is accompanied by a caricature of the potentate: "He chose Mussolini in 1922 in preference to dictatorship by Premiere (Luigi) Facta, aided him in attaining supreme power...Hasn't had any choice about anything since." Settling Hitler's Refugees (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)"In Washington, D.C. at least 1,500 delegates from 800 American communities in 44 states swarmed into the Mayflower Hotel for the annual conference of the National Council for Palestine. As one of the nation's most important and inclusive Jewish organizations, it was natural that the Council should devote its meetings exclusively to the refugee problem."
Read about the Nazis who cried out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...
Pickford & Fairbanks Join Forces with Chaplin & Griffith to Form U.A. (Film Cavalcade, 1939)Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks linked arms with two other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:
[United Artists] "introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization." A Profile of Shirley Temple (Film Daily, 1939)"As a phenomenon in the history of the show business and among all children, Shirley Temple (1928 - 2014) stands as absolutely unique. For four successive years she has led all other stars in the film industry as the number one box office attraction of the world. But Shirley's influence has been wider than this - there is no country in the world, both civilized and uncivilized where at some time or another her pictures have not been shown." "In a few weeks Shirley's fan mail reached avalanche proportions, with with the result in her next film, Bright Eyes , Shirley was starred. The old contract was torn up and the Temples were given a new one."
Bauhaus Exhibit Smeared by Critics (Art Digest, 1939)"With all the best wishes in the world, it is impossible to suppress the feeling that there is something essentially heavy, forced and repellent in most of the Bauhaus work. They are under suspicion of being modern for the sake of being modern and not because of any necessities of their system of living."
-so wrote the well-respected art critic Henry McBride (1867 – 1962) in response to the groundbreaking 1938 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, Bauhaus 1919 - 1928. McBride did not mince words in expressing his belief that the Bauhaus was not a genuine art school and that the MoMA showed poor judgment by lamenting it's passing. McBride is remembered as having been a longtime advocate of modernism, a champion of the 1913 Armory Show, and supporter of "the new and untried", but for him, the Bauhaus represented the art of the poseur.
Paul Terry: The Other Animator (Film Daily, 1939)A short profile on Paul Terry, torn from the pages of a prominent Hollywood trade rag: "During Paul Terry's notable career in the film industry, he has produced more than 1,000 pictures. In October of the current year he celebrates 25 years of continuous work in the cartoon field, which he helped to pioneer." "Today, the fountain of Terry-Toons is a thoroughly modern studio in New Rochelle, employing some 130 hands, all skilled in the imparting of life, voice and voice expression to the characters created on the drawing boards."
Anticipating the Television Juggernaut (Stage Magazine, 1939)This 1939 article was written by a wise old sage who probably hadn't spent much time with a "television set" but recognized fully the tremor that it was likely to cause in the world of pop-culture:
"Of all the brats, legitimate and otherwise, sired of the entertainment business, the youngest, television, looks as if it would be the hardest to raise and to housebreak..."
Click here to read about the early Christian broadcasts of televangelist Oral Roberts...
The Birth of Special-Effects Makeup (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Here is an article about one of the most innovative minds in the nascent world of Hollywood makeup design; it belonged to a fellow named Jack Dawn (1892 - 1961). Dawn was under contract at MGM for decades and worked on over two hundred films, his most being the film that is discussed herein: The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM). The article briefly touches upon the "thin, rubbery" masks that he created after having made numerous in depth studies of human bone and muscle. A Military Genius? (Ken Magazine, 1939)This is a small segment from a longer article on this site that can be read here.
Just months prior to the start of the Second World War, this anonymous correspondent asked, "Is Hitler a strategic genius?" For much of the following year many of Europe's anointed would find themselves asking much the same question; but this reporter was not impressed with the man one jot and wished his readers to keep in mind that throughout the slaughterous environment provided by the Entente Powers of the 1914 - 1918 war, Hitler was entirely unable to rise above the rank of corporal - in spite of the fact that his regiment was losing a sergeant each day.
From Amazon: Hitler's First War .
Lindbergh's Movie Contract (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)This article originally appeared in a well-known Hollywood fan magazine and was written by Lindbergh's pal and business partner, Major Thomas G. Lanphier (1890 - 1972). It concerns "the story of how one of the most ambitious movies of all times, starring America's hero, Charles Lindbergh, was not made". The story goes that in 1927, "the Lone Eagle" signed a $1,000,000.00 Hollywood contract to make a movie about the history of aviation and would not be persuaded to do otherwise by any of his flying-peers, who all tended to believe that no good could come out of it. "Slim" finally saw the light and was released from his contractual obligations by non other than William Randolph Hearst (1863 – 1951): "Mr. Hearst asked no questions... He brought out the contract and tore it up in Lindbergh's presence."
"You are as much a hero to me, as to anyone else in the world..."
Click here to read more articles from Photoplay Magazine.
Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (Coronet Magazine, 1939)Here is a profile of a very young Al Hirschfeld (1903 – 2003) - long-time NY Times caricaturist. The Wonderful World of Adjectives (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)"To grammarians, a verb is the strongest part of speech, but not to radio advertisers. In a survey of 15 national radio programs, the entertainment weekly VARIETY has found that adjectives receive the most voice emphasis and the most repetition. On one program, 28 adjectives were spoken in 15 minutes."
Click here to read about how the mass-marketing techniques of the W.W. I era was used to promote KKK membership...
Stalin Invades (Newsweek Magazine, 1939)In this article, retired U.S. Major General Stephen O. Fuqua (1874 - 1943) examined the Soviet invasion of Finland during its opening week. Nazi Indoctrination: the Eighth Grade (Ken Magazine, 1939)Five months before the Second World War began an American journalist paid a visit to a German middle school and watched an eighth grade German history pageant; these are his observations: "Sitting in Germany's schoolrooms are 20 million boys and girls. It is the custom, in democratic countries, to think that Hitler is engaged in pulling wool, or at least some cheap non-import substitute for it, over their eyes every school day."
"For two years , for instance, all German boys and girls have been exposed to the following clear-cut lesson": 'Where e'er I gaze, as German,
My soul with pain o'erflows,
I see the German nation
Girt round and round with foes.' Click here to read about the Allied effort to re-educate the German boy soldiers of W.W. II. When Hollywood Wished Not to Offend Hitler (Liberty Magazine, 1939)When Hitler and Mussolini declared that they would no longer import Hollywood films for viewing, they inadvertently gave birth to a new kind of Hollywood - a Hollywood that would now produce movies criticizing European Fascism.
Read about Mission to Moscow (Warner Brothers, 1943) - made when Hollywood wished not to offend Stalin... Hugh Harmon & Rudolf Ising: Animators (Film Daily, 1939)A short account regarding Hugh Harman (1903 – 1982) and Rudy Ising (1903 – 1992) who were a team of Oscar winning animators best known for founding the animation studios at Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. "In the last decade the animated cartoon has developed from its early grotesque form to its present lofty state and this development is really a miracle in art and achievement in entertainment... The significance of the animated cartoon can be realized only when we consider its world wide appeal and power of influence." The same year this article went to press, Harmon-Ising produced their much admired anti-war cartoon, Peace on Earth.
• Click Here to Watch The Chinese Nightingale • The Growth of the German Airforce (Ken Magazine, 1939)Published four months before Germany's attack on Poland (September 1, 1939), this article outlines Hermann Goering's efforts to build the Luftwaffe from scratch, the creation of various flight schools, the Luftwaffe collaboration with the Hitler Youth organization, and his aspirations to out-class the air forces of the United States and Britain. The article also addresses the business dealings of American manufacturers Boeing and Douglas Aircraft had with the German Luftwaffe.
Click here to read about the corrupt American corporations that aided the Nazi war machine during the 1930s.
Ginger Rogers (Film Daily, 1939)A single page article on the topic of Ginger Rogers (1911 – 1995) and her career as it had progressed up to the year 1939:
"Virginia Katherine McMath is the real name of this famous star and she was born in Independence, Missouri, on July 16, but most of her childhood was spent in Fort Worth, Texas."
"She is five feet, four inches tall and weighs 108 pounds. She never has to diet because dancing keeps her in perfect condition. Dancing is listed as her very favorite hobby, too."
"She had her first taste of real success on the screen with the winning roles in 'Gold Diggers of 1933' and '42nd Street'."
Click here to read about the young Lucile Ball. The Producer: David O. Selznick (Film Daily, 1939)"Observers of the career of David O. Selznick see his enterprises this year the culmination of a dream....The most lavish motion picture project ever conceived, Gone With the Wind, is already acknowledged as Selznick's chef d'oeuvre and the picture destined to mark the peak of cinema progress during the past 50 years. Executives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which company released the picture, as well as those of Selznick International who have seen it, are unanimous in declaring it the greatest picture ever made, and the most frequent comment heard today from those who have observed it in production is 'No one could have made it but Selznick.'"
Selznick produced blockbuster after blockbuster. He was awarded two Academy Awards during his Hollywood reign for 'Outstanding Production': one for Gone With the Wind in 1939 and another one year later for Rebecca.
Black Nazis? (Ken Magazine, 1939)"Black Nazis: Fritz Delfs, leader of the Nazis in Tanganyika, the former German East Africa that Hitler is demanding, soft-pedals Aryan supremacy credo in propounding Nazi ideology, and capitalizes traditional use of the swastika by the natives as a symbol of fertility."
Click here to read about the fall of Paris...
• Watch a Quick Film Clip About Hitler's African Army • The Free Speech Dilemma
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)The antisemitic radio ramblings of Father Charles Coughlin (1891 – 1979) prompted the brain trust of the nascent radio world to ponder deeply the differences between hate speech and free speech and where their responsibilities rested in the matter. Adolf Hitler and Women (Click Magazine, 1939)This article about Adolf Hitler and women appeared on the newsstands two months prior the start of the Second World War, when the world learned how evil a man the lunatic truly was. The journalist wanted to confirm that there was no truth to the 1939 rumor that Hitler was dead and quickly began musing about other rumors: "More feasible is the theory that the sexless madman of Naziland is still alive and has merely discovered that he gets a vicarious thrill out of having women around him and likes to watch acrobatic dance routines." Photographed in this article is Frau Scholtz-Klink, who had been dubbed "the perfect Nazi woman" by the Reichfuehrer, in addition to three curvy American burlesque dancers who performed before Hitler.
Click here to read about the dating history of Adolf Hitler. Jimmy Stewart: Four Years in Hollywood (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)Hollywood scribe Wilbur Morse, Jr. wrote this 1939 magazine profile of Jimmy Stewart (1908 – 1997). At the time of this printing, Stewart had dozens of stage credits and had been working in films for only four years; one year later he would be awarded an Oscar for his performance in PHILADELPHIA STORY: "Booth Tarkington might have created Jim Stewart. He's 'Little Orvie and Billie Baxter' grown up 'Penrod' with a Princeton diploma." "The appeal of James Stewart, the shy, inarticulate movie actor, is that he reminds every girl in the audience of the date before the last. He's not a glamorized Gable, a remote Robert Taylor. He's 'Jim', the lackadaisical, easy-going boy from just around the corner." Sunglasses Make Their Mark in the Fashion World (Click Magazine, 1939)Although sunglasses had slowly inched their way forward in popularity since the late Twenties, the attached article declared that by 1939 sunglasses were officially recognized as a full-fledged fashion accessory when the Hollywood stars Joan Bennet and Hedy Lamar began to sport them around town.Like T-shirts and khaki pants, it would be W.W. II that would provide sunglasses with a guaranteed spot on fashion stage for the next sixty-five years.
Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy's influence on American fashion.
A Very Hitler Christmas (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Whether it was the nog, the tannenbaum or just the good ol' spirit of the season - no one knows - but in late of December of 1938, the "nice Hitler" came out for some airing:
"Partly as a Yuletide truce and partly because most of them were suffering from severe frostbite, 18 'reformed Communists' and 7,000 Jews were released from concentration camps." African-Americans During the Great Depression (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Written during the later years of the Great Depression, these columns summarize the sad lot of America's Black population - their hardships, ambitions, leadership, and where they tended to live.
"When the Depression struck, Negroes were the first to lose their jobs. Today, 1,500,000 colored adults are unemployed."
A 1938 article about the hardships of the Southern States during the Great Depression can be read here...
Click here to learn about the origins of the term "Jim Crow".
One Cartoonist's View of Depression Era Hollywood...(Ken Magazine, 1939)A full page drawing of the sound stage-spangled Hollywood landscape picturing all the usual suspects - the Hollywood glory girls, studio yes-men and sub-literate European starlets -all sweltering beneath the intense heat of the occidental sun. Click here to see cartoons about the silent movie culture. Click here to read historic magazine articles about American animated films. Musslolini And The Pope: Friction (Newsweek Magazine, 1939)On June 29, 1931, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical letter that condemned Italian fascism’s “pagan worship of the State” and “revolution which snatches the young from the Church and from Jesus Christ, and which inculcates in its own young people hatred, violence and irreverence.” The Pope irritated Mussolini to a further degree by labeling the Italian Fascist government as "anti-Catholic" after Il Duce put the kibosh on numerous Catholic youth organizations throughout the land. A Truce was agreed upon but as Mussolini grew closer to the Nazis later in the decade, and the battle reemerged. The Federal Theater Project (Pathfinder & Literary Digest Magazines, 1939)The Federal Theater Project (FTP) was a division of President
Roosevelt's Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA was organized in order to dream up jobs for the many unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. They employed manual laborers with the Civilian Conservation Corps, musicians with the Federal Music Project and historians with the Federal Records Survey - to name only a few of the agencies within the WPA. The Federal Theater Project was intended to hire the nation's actors, costumers,directors and stagehands:
"At its peak in 1936, FTP employed 12,500 people...it had puppet shows, vaudeville units, circuses and stock companies traveling through every state." The Great Depression and American Communists (Click Magazine, 1939)This photo-essay tells the story of the radical elements within the United States during the later period of the Great Depression - all of them were directed and financed by Georgi Dimitrov (1882 - 1949) in far-off Moscow. The leaders of the American Communist Party USA (CPUSA) were William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, and Ella Reeve Bloor.
In 1944, the city of Seattle, Washington elected a communist to the U.S. House of Representatives, click here to read about him...
Click here to learn how thoroughly the FBI had infiltrated the CPUSA.
Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who pontificated on every street corner during the Great Depression...
Click here to read about the tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression...
From Amazon: Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Union Party, 1932-1936,
Adolf Hitler: Millionaire (Ken Magazine, 1939)"Der Fuhrer boasts of his impecuniosity, but the fact is that royalties from his book, Mein Kampf and investments in German real-estate and industrial firms make him one of Germnay's wealthiest men. This money is deposited throughout Europe in 15 bank accounts under three names..."
An eyewitness recalled Hitler as a boy...
Jokes in Germany (Coronet Magazine, 1939)"Many of the jokes that are at present circulating the land of Hitleria cannot be told quite openly. They are whispered among friends. The traffic is great and much whispering going on. Many people want to laugh. It seems a necessary release..."
- so observed one journalist fresh from his whirlwind journey through Hitler's Germany. He could not help but notice how painfully neurotic the Reich leadership was of being the object of Teutonic derision. This article is about the underground society of whispered jokes that the Nazis created; the journalist was good enough to write-up a few so that the free-world could take place in the chuckle-fest (some were lost in translation). MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit (Art Digest Magazine, 1939)"The art that Hitler has exiled as 'degenerate' is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe's twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.
The article lists the purchased works.
Click here to read about the Nazi "Art Battalions"...
Ignaz Paderewski (Stage Magazine, 1939)Here is an article on the last American concert tour of Polish pianist (and composer, diplomat and politician) Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1860 - 1941). The article concentrates on the amount of money pulled-in by the performer, both on this tour as well as previous ones; his legendary generosity and his monumental reputation.
Click here to read more about Paderewski and other pianists of 1915...
Click here to see what the first car radios look like. Technicolor (Film Daily, 1939)"Technicolor - conceived at Boston Tech and born in a rail way car in 1917, attained its majority, properly enough, 28 years later when Dr. Herbert Thomas Kalmus, president and founder, received the 1938 Progress Award from the Society of Motion Picture Engineers at its annual convention."
"The story of Technicolor begins in 1915 when Dr. Kalmus and his associates became interested in a color process. Dr. Kalmus' task was to find a suitable name, and, a Boston Tech man himself, he combined "Technique," the engineering school's class annual, and Color and so was born Technicolor."
Click here to read a about a particularly persuasive and highly effective W.W. II training film...
Dr. Freud (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)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. Director Alfred Hitchcock (Film Daily, 1939)"Now at work on his first American motion picture [since arriving in Hollywood], the glossily rotund Hitchcock, whose gelatinous appearance and jocose manner belie his sinister intent, and who brightly eyes all comers with a sort of controlled effervescence, happily declares that his first Hollywood opus will surpass anything he has yet done to keep an audience poised on the edges of its chairs."
Click here to read about Marilyn Monroe and watch a terrific documentary about her life.
The Adolf Hitler Schools (Current History Magazine, 1939)This is a 1939 article about the Adolph Hitler Schools; a (thankfully) short-lived institution that was created to ill-educate the chosen of Hitler's Germany in order to create a ruling elite.
"Their education, in the proper sense of the word, lays emphasis above all on biology, and naturally, on the racial question - on the philosophy of the National Socialist State, on the Common Law, and on the history of Germany and of the Nazi Movement. Foreign languages, literature, and philosophy finds no place." The Military Buildup in Imperial Japan (Literary Digest, 1936 & Newsweek, 1939)Attached are two short notices from 1936 and '39 reporting that Japan's army and navy budgets were expanding. Mention is also made concerning the growth of the Soviet military. The March of Time: Newsreel Journalism (Film Daily, 1939)This article was first seen in the Hollywood trade Film Daily concerns the 1930s newsreel production company "The March of Time":
"Since the beginning of the motion picture, the newsreel has been recognized as a vital medium of public information. Movie goers demand it. But, by the very nature of its technique and the swiftness with which it brings today's events to the screen, the newsreel can give little more than headline news. And so it has created among movie-goers a desire to see more."
"It was this desire 'to see more' that led the founders of 'The March of Time' to launch their new kind of pictorial journalism...The first issue appeared in some 400 theaters throughout the United States on February 1, 1935"
Hermann Goering Builds His Air Force (Ken Magazine, 1939)Published four months before Germany's attack on Poland, this article outlines Hermann Goering's (1893 – 1946) efforts to build the Luftwaffe from scratch, the creation of various flight schools, the Luftwaffe collaboration with the Hitler Youth organization, and his aspirations to out-class the air forces of the United States and Britain. "It has taken Field Marshall Hermann Wilhelm Goering a little over six years to build the German Air Armada, one of the world's most formidable offensive forces, out of a magnificent bluff." By the time this magazine profile of Field Marshall Goering went to print, he had already made his entry on the world stage as the master-mind behind the 1937 bombing of the Basque city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War (an event that was not mentioned at all in this article). ''Cash and Carry'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Cash and carry was a diplomatic trade policy set in place by the FDR administration; it was crafted during a special session of the U.S. Congress on September 21, 1939, as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Act of 1937, by which belligerent parties would purchase only non-military goods from the United States so long as the client states in question paid in cash at the time of purchase and assumed full responsibility for transportation. The 1939 Cash and carry revision allowed for the purchasing of military arms to belligerents on the same cash-and-carry basis. The purpose of the policy was to maintain neutrality between the United States and European nations while giving aid to Britain by allowing them to buy non war materials.
Shortly after the 1940 election, British Prime Minister Churchill told FDR that Britain could no longer afford to buy military supplies under the code of cash and carry and a new agreement needed to be agreed upon. The President then persuaded Congress to swap cash-and-carry with Lend-Lease - a new piece of legislation that granted the president authority to sell, exchange, lend, or lease war materiel to any nation whose defense was vital to U.S. security.
The third most popular Lend-Lease export item was the Tommy Gun - click here to read more..
Click here to read about the lend-lease program for Stalin's Russia... Richard Julius Hermann Krebs Under the Nazi Boot (Ken Magazine, 1939)A first-hand account as to the daily goings-on at Hitler's Plotzensee Prison.
Written by Jan Valtin (alias of Richard Julius Hermann Krebs: 1905 - 1951), one of the few inmates to make his way out of that highly inclusive address and tell the tale. Krebs was a communist in the German resistance movement who later escaped to New York and wrote a book (Out of the Night
) about his experiences in Nazi Germany.
"The prisoner who has served his sentence is usually not released; he is surrendered to the Gestapo for an indefinite term in one of the concentration camps, preferably Sachsenhausen or Buchenwald. Incurable hard cases are sent to Dachau... " Television with All It's Possibilities (Stage Magazine, 1939)There wasn't a single soul in 1939 would have imagined that television would be the sort of venue that would allow millions of strangers to see Tyra Banks get a breast exam, but that is the kind of institution it has become.
STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Alan Rinehart was astonished that so much dough was being invested in such a young industry, yet he recognized that T.V. was capable of much good, but was also capable of generating the kind of banality that we're used to. "What then, will be the entertainment value of television?...What's to be the entertainment? Why should we tune in? Will we get more than we will on the radio?...The revolutionary idea about television is that the medium has been developed before the art. It's as if the piano had been invented before music, or paint and canvas before drawing." Margaret Bourke-White (Coronet Magazine, 1939)This is a profile of the American photographer Margaret Bourke-White (1904 - 1971). At the time these pages appeared on the newsstand, the photographer's stock was truly on the rise as a result of her remarkable documentary images depicting the Great Depression as it played out across the land. • A Video Clip About One of the Most Famous Images from the Depression • Charlie Chaplin Joins With Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith to Form United Artists
(Film Daily, 1939)Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Chaplin joined forces with three other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:
"[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization." American Playwright Lillian Hellman (Stage Magazine, 1939)The attached profile of playwright Lillian Hellman (1905 – 1984) is accompanied by a rare photo of the thirty-four year old American writer, snapped shortly after the opening of her play, The Little Foxes:
"Four seasons ago when The Children's Hour was produced, that labeling which is the destiny of every important new playwright began. "Second Ibsen"..."American Strindberg"..."1934 Chekhov"...the rumors ran. In this finest example of Miss Hellman's highly individual contribution to the current theater, the Ibsen heritage seems most likely to win out." In 1945 Hellman wrote about much of what she had seen on the W.W. II Soviet front; click here to read it
A Word on New York Waiters (Stage Magazine, 1939)Waiters are to New York City what lobbyists are to Washington and celebrated illustrator, author and all-around foodie Ludwig Bemelmans (1898 – 1962) had some thoughts on this very diverse group: "New York is full of waiters, Chinese, American, Congo, French, Italian and German waiters, Jewish and Christian waiters, Vegetarian and Greek waiters, many good waiters, many bad waiters." Click here to read an article by Benny Goodman concerning the arrival of Swing on Park Ave. 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."
The German economist who made the rearmament possible was named Hjalmar Schacht, click here to read about him...
The Birth of the M-1 Garand Rifle (American Legion Magazine, 1939)This article was written by the war correspondent Fairfax Downey (1894 - 1990) for a magazine that catered to American veterans of W.W. I, and it seemed that he simply could not contain his enthusiasm for the U.S. infantry's newest rifle: the M-1 Garand:
"What a gun it is! Its nine pound weight swings easily through the manual of arms. The eight-round clip (three more shots than the we used to have with the '03 Springfield) slips in easily and the breech clicks closed. The old range scale slide has vanished; range and windage adjustments are made simply by turning two knobs... The new semi-automatic means, among other things, that the fire power of troops armed with it has increased at least two and a half times over the old Springfield."
For further magazine reading about John Garand and his rifle, click here.
A Cartoonist Slams FDR (Click Magazine, 1939)Rube Goldberg (1883 – 1970), one of the iconic, Grand Master ink slingers from days of yore, applied his signature thought pattern to presidential politics in the creation of the attached FDR cartoon. Unlike President Roosevelt, Goldberg recognized that the New Deal was naive in their belief they could create and fund numerous government agencies that bedevil small businesses, reduce productivity, and fix prices while expecting the whole time that the national economy would bloom as a result. A Profile of Cary Grant (Stage Magazine, 1939)A fabulous three page article from STAGE MAGAZINE on the early career of Cary Grant:
"Cary Grant appeared in six Broadway productions and twenty-seven Hollywood pictures before anybody took notice. Then he played a dead man."
Beating the Beach Censor (Click Magazine, 1939)Attached is a printable fashion editorial from a 1939 issue of CLICK MAGAZINE which beautifully illustrated (in color) one of the chic, California beach fashions of the day.
Learn about the color trends in men's 1930 suits... Oscars for 1938 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Attached is short report listing some of the highlights of the 11th Academy Awards ceremony that was held on February 23, 1939 in downtown Los Angeles:
• Director Frank Capra received his third "Best Director" statue for
"You Can't Take It with You"
.
• Walt Disney was awarded an "Oscar" for the best animated short film, "Ferdinand The Bull" - in addition to a special award for his innovative work on
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".
• The Best Screenplay "Oscar" went to Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw for his efforts on "Pygmalion".
An amusing, if blasphemous, article about the 1938 Oscars can be read here...
The Boeing Collaboration (Ken Magazine, 1939)A 1939 article that concerned the rapid growth of the German Air Force, but also referred to the scandalous business dealings of American manufacturers Boeing and Douglas Aircraft had in this expansion.
"It has taken Field Marshall Hermann Wilhelm Goering a little over six years to build the German Air Armada, one of the world's most formidable offensive forces, out of a magnificent bluff."
A similar article can be read here...
Negotiations (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939) The W.P.A. Arts Projects Closed Due to Communist Tampering (Ken Magazine, 1939)This 1939 magazine article addressed the matter of the communist organization "Workers Alliance" perverting the arts organizations that operated within the Federal Works Projects Administration (WPA), thus forcing the government agency to close: "When the arts projects of the WPA were instituted, many capable and culturally progressive individuals throughout the country hailed them as a banner raised against the gloomy depression sky to form a rallying point for youthful and ambitious artists whose task it was to carry the torch of aesthetic advancement on to that future time when we envisaged the return of 'prosperity'..."yet "the obvious control of the arts projects by the communist party through its stooge, the Workers Alliance" has forced the hand of Congress to abolish the agency.
CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.
1919: United Artists is Formed (Film Cavalcade, 1939)A printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:
"[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization." An Interview with Dr. George Washington Carver (Ken Magazine, 1939)A profile of Dr. George Washington Carver (1864 – 1943): "One of the greatest agricultural chemists of our day was born a slave 80 years ago. He has given the world approximately 300 new by-products from the peanut...Today Dr. Carver is the South's most distinguished scientist. He turned the peanut into a $60,000,000 industry." "I simply go to my laboratory, shut myself in and ask my Creator why He made the peanut. My Creator tells me to pull the peanut apart and examine the constituents. When this is done, I tell Him what I want to create, and He tells me I can make anything that contains the same constituents as a peanut. I go to work and keep working until I get what I want."
Nazis Against the Christian Churches (Ken Magazine, 1939)"As pastor of the little Austrian church, the good father was happy until Nazis swallowed the country, mistreated his Jewish converts and threw many of his colleagues into the dreaded concentration camp of Dachau. Shocked, he attempted to preserve a fragmentary picture of events for posterity - and found himself in Dachau. Similar episodes, which are today common throughout Nazidom, only succeed in stiffening the Catholic fight against Nazism."
Gone with Wind Begins Shooting (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)Jack Wade, one of the many Hollywood reporters for Photoplay, must have let loose a big girlish squeal when he got word from the "Selznick-International man" that he would not get bounced off the set of Gone with the Wind
if he were to swing by to take a look.
"First of all, a report on Vivien Leigh...Hollywood already agreed that she's the happiest choice any one could have made. Even swamp angels from deepest Dixie put their okay on her accent...Clark Gable looks like the real Big-Man-From-the-South. In a black frock coat, starched bosom and ruffles, he makes a menacing, impressive Rhett, and he's a little pleased about it, too."
''God and Alcoholics'' (Liberty Magazine, 1939)"Somebody said The Lord's Prayer, and the meeting broke up. I walked three blocks to the subway station. Just as I was about to go down the stairs - BANG - It happened! I don't like that word miracle, but that's all I can call it. The lights in the street seemed to flare up. My feet seemed to leave the pavement. A kind of shiver went over me and I burst out crying...I haven't touched a drop since, and I've since set four other fellows on the same road." Munchkin Gossip (Stage Magazine, 1939)From the "Hot From Hollywood" page in STAGE MAGAZINE came this tidbit reporting on the curious events taking place on the sets of 'The Wizard of Oz': "The cast was extraordinary, from the stars Frank Morgan, Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley to Toto, the Carin Terrier. But of them all, the most utterly enchanting were the midgets, two hundred and twenty-five of them, with their doll faces, their plastered hair that looked as though it had been painted on their heads, the little felt flowers that grew out of their shoes, the bells that jingled from their sleeves. They, of course, were in costume for the good little Munchkins."
Another article about this incredible film can be read here... * 70 Years Later Five Surviving Munchkins Remember Their Rolls* Canadian Nazis (Liberty Magazine, 1939)"The Nazi center of activity is the Deutsche Bund headquarters in Montreal, controlled by the Montreal Consulate of the German Reich. There are branches of the Bund in every large Canadian city. It maintains its own schools in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Kitchener. Children are taught not only the German language but the German greeting, the Hitler greeting and the Nazi tenets. Their education is completed in the big camps near Winnipeg and Montreal."
Click here to read about American fascists... Emily Post on Manners in the Movies (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)A 1939 magazine interview with America's Mullah of manners, Emily Post (1872 – 1960) who was asked to give some criticism on the way etiquette is displayed on screen. She did not hold back; letting Hollywood have both barrels, La Post articulately opined about the poor choice of words the actors are required to spout, how humorously enormous so many of the living room sets always appear to be and how thoroughly inappropriate too many of the costumes are: "According to Miss Post, the worst offense committed against good manners is that of pretentiousness. She says, 'Good manners are the outward expression of an inward grace. You can't get them any other way. Probably that is why Shirley Temple, in that very first feature picture of hers, had charm that few can equal.'" "Sometimes the mistakes Hollywood makes are not too serious, but usually they are ludicrous, and far too often they set bad examples for millions of ardent movie-goers." Donald Budge: 1940s Tennis Champ (Stage Magazine, 1939)An article about Donald Budge (1915 – 2000), an American tennis champ active in the late 1930s who was ranked the World's Number 1 player for five years, first as an amateur player and then as a pro. This article appeared in print in 1939, when the player's best days were behind him. | 
