Skiiers Discover Aspen (Collier's Magazine, 1948)A late Forties travel article that simultaneously announced the end of Aspen, Colorado, as a ghost town and the beginning of it's reign as a ski resort of the first order. "Aspen is a tiny Colorado village tucked away in one corner of a lush green valley ringed by snow-capped peaks rising to altitudes of more than 14,000 feet..." Things Were Not Right in Korea ('48 Magazine, 1948)Written two years prior to the Korean War, this article is about the joint occupation of Korea - the Soviets in the industrialized North, the Americans in the agrarian South, and how poorly both regions were being served before the 1950 war: "The issue in Korea is not Communism vs. Americanism, but occupation-trusteeship vs. freedom. On that issue, both Russia and the United States would lose after a free vote of the people, because the two powers have, each in their own way, failed Korea."
The Soviet Army moved into northern Korea during the August of 1945, click here to read about it...
''The Women Are Coming'' (The Saturday Review, 1948) "Unknown to the majority of women in this country, a steadily mounting feminist campaign is under way for Equal Rights for women under the Constitution. The average man will regard this statement with bewilderment." Fourth Place in the People's Choice Awards (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)When the most popular movies of 1947 were tallied up in Photoplay Magazine's "People's Choice Award", It's a Wonderful Life clocked in at number four, having been trounced by The Jolson Story, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Welcome Stranger The New Yorker ('48 Magazine, 1948)Twenty-three years after Harold Ross (1892 – 1951) launched The New Yorker, this profile of the man appeared on the newsstands:
"Ross is a kind of impostor. The New Yorker is urbane; cactus is more urbane than Ross. The New Yorker carries understatement almost to the point of inaudibility; with Ross the expletive crowds out most of the eight parts of speech....It is true that he never had a high school education; but it is also true that he is a master grammarian, and that the superb sense of style which informs The New Yorker flows in part from his clean, uncompromising feeling for the English language."
Click here to read the second half of the Harold Ross profile. This portion is decorated with rejected cartoons from The New Yorker ...
Ross never forgot his days in Paris as the editor of The Stars & Stars, click here to read an article about that period in his life. What Makes Songs Popular ('48 Magazine, 1948)Knowing, as they did, that the Broadway composer Oscar Hammerstein II (1895 - 1960) was no slouch when it came to writing hummable tunes with snappy lyrics, hundreds of people would write to him daily seeking advice as to how they might be able to do the same (indeed, the search logs at Google indicate that this question is asked 369,000 times each month). No doubt fed-up with these never ending solicitations - Hammerstein penned this article, What Makes Songs Popular: in four pages he spewed-forth all that he knew about writing music and lyrics: "It seems to me that the most important element in a lyric is subject matter. A song had better be about something fundamental - which is why so many songs are about love."
must have been fed up with answering the hundreds of letters that he received daily begging him for tips as to how best to write songs and lyrics - he turned to the editors of '48 MAGAZINE who were happy to print his article in which answered those questions John Nance Garner on F.D.R. (Collier's, 1948)A printable article by John Nance Garner (1868 - 1967), FDR's first Vice-President (1933 - 1941), who wrote a number of pieces for the readers of COLLIER'S MAGAZINE in 1948 outlining the various reasons for their contentious relationship.
"Cactus Jack" Garner bickered with F.D.R. on a number of issues; primarily supporting a balanced federal budget and opposing F.D.R.'s efforts to pack the Supreme Court. Within these attached pages, Garner tells how Roosevelt lost the support of his Democratic Congress.
Read about FDR's African-American advisers here...
The Foundation Garments that Were Needed for ''The New Look'' (See Magazine, 1948)Since The New Look sought to overhaul the fashion silhouette of the female form it was quickly understood that women would need different foundation garments to complete this look. Fashion's cry has always been: "When nature doth deny, let art supply" - and the rocket scientists of the ladies underwear subculture did just that. The attached photo-essay from See Magazine shows three pictures of the new under-lovelies.
Click here to learn about the lingerie and pajamas that had to be hand-crafted on the W.W. II American home front...
Fear in Post-War Berlin (Collier's Magazine, 1948)"Barely existing on brief rations of food and other necessities, the three million-odd Germans in 1948 Berlin are cold and afraid. In their battle for survival they spy on one another, steal coffins from the dead for firewood and raid garbage cans to eat."
Just how accurate was the Allied bombing campaign of Germany? Click here and find out. *Watch a Newsreel About the Allied Bombing of Berlin* How One Southerner Overcame His Racist Attitudes (Coronet Magazine, 1948)The attached is an historic article that explains the lesson that so many white Americans had to learn in order that America become one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. There can be no doubt that many ragged, dog-eared copies of this middle class magazine must have been passed from seat to seat in the backs of many buses; perhaps one of the readers was a nineteen year-old divinity student named Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Before the Atom Bomb came along, Joseph Stalin hatched a scheme to invade the U.S. and create two Americas, one black, one white - click here to read more...
The Problem with Loyalty Oaths ('48 Magazine, 1948)On the twenty-first of March, 1947, President Harry Truman signed into law Executive Order 9835 which was intended to remove communists and their assorted apologists from working in the Federal Government.
Unfortunately the President hadn't issued a working definition as to what was "loyal" and what was "disloyal" and the results of the decree were predictable. The attached editorial was penned by a seasoned Washington journalist who had collected an agglomeration of anecdotal evidence during the first year of its enforcement in order to illustrate the inherent difficulties created as a result of the order. He pointed out that Truman's order simply granted carte blanche to the F.B.I., called into question the rights of government workers and created a "Loyalty Review Board" that was cumbersome and bureaucratic.
Hitler's Man in Jerusalem ('48 Magazine, 1948)Written two and a half years after the Second World War, this article tells the story of Haj Amin Al-husseini (1897 - 1974), the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; he was the most prominent of Nazi-collaborators in all of Islam. Believed to have been a blood relation of Yasser Arafat (1929 – 2004), Al-Husseini was the animating force behind numerous attacks on the Jews of British Palestine throughout the Twenties and Thirties.
Al-Husseini is also the subject of this article.
Here is an article from 1919 about Al Husseini.
• Watch A Quick Clip About Hitler's Arab Army • Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman Divorce (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)Attached is an article from a 1948 PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE that illustrated quite clearly how much easier Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, had it with the Soviet Union, when compared to his failings with his first bride, Jane Wyman (1917 – 2007). The journalist, Gladys Hall, outlined nicely how busy the couple had been up to that time yet remarked that they had had a difficult time since the war ended, breaking-up and reconciling as many as three times. In 1948 Wyman, who had been married twice before, filed for divorce on charges of "mental cruelty"; the divorce was finalized in '49 and the future president went on to meet Nancy Davis in 1951 (marrying in '52); click here if you wish to read a 1951 article about that courtship.
Historically, Ronald Reagan was the first divorced man to ascend the office of the presidency. Shortly after his death, Wyman remarked: "America has lost a great president and a great, kind, and gentle man."
Click here to read about the Cold War prophet who believed that Kennan's containment policy was not tough enough on the Soviets...
Click here read an article about Hollywood's war on monogamy. Charlie Chaplin Snubs Hollywood and Departs (Collier's Magazine, 1948) Mahatma Gandhi, RIP (America Weekly, 1948)Shortly after hearing about the murder of Mahatma Gandhi (January 30, 1948) the editor of America Weekly typed up these six solemn paragraphs
in order to consecrate his memory and deeds.
“It is the death of a man of the highest moral prestige, and it leaves us with forebodings of the future.”
The Fashion Group (Collier's Magazine, 1948)At the time this article appeared on the pages of COLLIER'S MAGAZINE, the Fashion Group was already over twenty years old and in need of more office space.
Established in 1928 by the crowned-heads of the American fashion industry, it was decided that the dominate fashionistas 'needed a forum, a stage, or a force to express and enhance a widening awareness of the American fashion business and of women’s roles in that business." This article points out that there were present in that room on that historic day a smattering of women who toiled in the vineyards as fashion journalists and collectively it was understood that the two groups very much relied upon each other.
The Fashion Group was established in order to: "judge trends by watching sales figures, which indicate which fashions are on the wane and which are gaining favor. They travel around to see what we do, and therefore, what we need." Today, the Fashion Group has offices in every major American city as well as branches in the fashion capitols of Europe, South America and Asia. They Molded the American Mind ('48 Magazine, 1948)In 1948 the American history professor Henry Steele Commager (1902 – 1998) read this article that named the most powerful men in Cold War Washington - he then began to compose a list of his own, a list that he felt was far more permanent in nature. Commager wrote the names of the most influential thinkers of the past 100 years, leaders and writers who he credited for having "supplied us with our symbols, our values, our ideas and ideals".
'Third Symphony' by Aaron Copland (Rob Wagner's Script, 1948)A review of Aaron Copland's "Third Symphony" written in 1948 by the respected Los Angeles music critic and historian Lawrence Morton (1908 - 1987): "...there can be no mistake about the "Third". It is a solid structure, exceedingly rich and varied in expressiveness, large in concept, masterful in execution, completely unabashed and outspoken." "No wonder that Sergi Koussevitsky called it 'the greatest American symphony.'" *Listen to Aaron Copland's Third Symphony* Hermann Goering's Car Finds a New Owner (See Magazine, 1948)A remarkable 1948 photo essay from the pages of the defunct weekly See Magazine illustrating the bullet-proof, 2-door, 4 passenger, Mercedes convertible roadster that was previously owned by Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Göering (1893 – 1946). The car was purchased by the Danish industrialist Svend Vestergaard: "Vestergaard purchased the 8-cylinder, 240 h.p., under-slung speedster from British occupation authorities...The car was especially built according to the ostentatious Number 2 Nazi's exacting specifications, the German-made product of Stuttgart's famed Daimler-Benz Aktiengesellschaft is 11 feet long, weighs three truck-like tons,[and] has six forward speeds."
Click here to read about the dating history of Adolf Hitler. The Ronald Reagan-Jane Wyman Crack-Up (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)A printable article from a 1948 Hollywood fan magazine that illustrated quite clearly how much easier Ronald Reagan had it with the Soviet Union, when compared to his failings with his first bride, Jane Wyman (1917 – 2007). The PHOTOPLAY journalist, Gladys Hall, outlined nicely how busy the couple had been up to that time yet remarked that they had had a difficult time since the war ended, breaking-up and reconciling as many as three times. In 1948 Wyman, who had been married twice before, filed for divorce on charges of "mental cruelty"; the divorce was finalized in '49 and the future president went on to meet Nancy Davis in 1951 (marrying in '52); click here if you wish to read a 1951 article about that courtship.
Historically, Ronald Reagan was the first divorced man to ascend the office of the presidency. Shortly after his death in 2004, Wyman remarked: "America has lost a great president and a great, kind, and gentle man."
Click here read an article about Hollywood's war on monogamy. The Back Story of the Star-Spangled Banner (Coronet Magazine, 1948)Here is one of the few histories that explain the Star-Spangled Banner that seldom mentions its author. This short column will tell you about Sam Smith, the Militia general who kept the flag at Fort McHenry waving throughout that "perilous fight". ''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." Mother of the Year: Joan Crawford (Photoplay Magazine, 1948) This article, I'm an Adopted Mother, by Hollywood movie actress Joan Crawford (1905 – 1977) rambles on column after column about her four adopted children and the tremendous fulfillment they brought to her life. It was all a bunch of hooey, and we might have ended up believing it all, if it weren't for her daughter Christine, who, in 1978, published a bestselling memoir testifying to the beatings that the movie star could be depended upon to deliver regularly; a first edition of the book is available at Amazon - it was titled Mommy Dearest
The Economic Downturn Affected Clothing (The Era of the Great Depression, 1948)"Men's attire was more sensitive to depression than women's, for even the most elemental sense of chivalry recognized the superior importance of fashion for wife and daughter."
More articles on 1930s fashion can be read here...
Can There be Peace with Stalin? (United States News & World Report, 1948)The Berlin Blockade was already six weeks old when this article appeared proclaiming that peace with the Soviet Union was still possible:
"Russia and the U.S. are in the midst of another showdown on peace. Odds favor a settlement, not war."
"Peace terms are shifting closer to compromise. Russia is more interested in seeking peace, less interested in stalling... Each side is out to get the best possible terms. But prospects for easing the tension of cold war are good."
Click here to read about the Berlin Blockade. Cover Girls (Coronet Magazine, 1948)By 1948 the business of fashion modeling had developed into a $15,000,000-a-year industry. This article examines just how such changes evolved in just a ten year span of time:
"American advertising struck pay dirt when it discovered the super salesgirls whose irresistible allure will sell anything from a bar of soap to a seagoing yacht...Always there was the secret whisper of sex. For women it was, 'Be lovely, be loved, don't grow old, be exciting'... For men it was, 'Be successful, make everyone know that you're successful, how can you get women if you're not successful?'"
"The importance of attractive girls in our economy was stressed by John McPartland when he discussed modern advertising in his recent best seller, Sex in Our Changing World (1947).
Legendary fashion designer Christian Dior had a good deal of trouble with people who would illegally copy his designs; click here to read about that part of fashion history.
British Girls Loved 'The New Look' (See Magazine, 1948)"Weary of restraints imposed by more than a decade of war followed by the austerity program...British women have now cast aside the old look, are stampeding West End shops for the built-in New Look."
The Battle for the City of Peace (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)"With ranks spread thin, Haganah, the army of the two-weeks old 'Independent Republic' of Israel, had to resist the armed forces of four other Arab states The Lebanese swept down from the north. Syrian and Iraqi armies converged near the Sea of Galilee. Egyptians invaded Jerusalem from the south. And Egyptian planes bombed Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel, and settlements in the south. Dropping 50-pounders, the Egyptians scored their biggest strike on a Tel Aviv bus station, killing 41, wounding 65." Free College? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)The concept of a free college education paid for by the Federal Government was not the brain child of the Vermont Marxist Bernie Sanders, but an idea that was briefly pursued by the education advisers of U.S. President Harry S Truman:
"Today the average American of 20 - 24 years of age has completed 12.1 years of schooling, an all-time high...Last week the President's Commission on Higher Education issued a report aimed at pushing the average still higher. It urged that free public education be extended through the first two years of college."
Even as early as 1894 socialism was recognized as wishful thinking.
Beautiful Girls Wanted (Coronet Magazine, 1948)"American advertising struck pay dirt when it discovered the super salesgirls whose irresistible allure will sell anything from a bar of soap to a seagoing yacht...Always there was the secret whisper of sex. For women it was, 'Be lovely, be loved, don't grow old, be exciting'... For men it was, 'Be successful, make everyone know that your successful, how can you get women if your not successful?'"
Ross of The New Yorker: Part II ('48 Magazine, 1948)This is the second and final installment of the Harold Ross profile posted above. ''How Close are We to War with Russia?'' (See Magazine, 1948) The article is illustrated with five black and white photos and answers thirty-four questions as to whether or not a war with the Soviet Union can be avoided.
When these columns first appeared on the newsstands Berlin was undergoing it's third month of hardships as a result of a Soviet blockade (you can read about the Berlin Blockade here).
The Cold War began in 1945...
One Month Into the Berlin Blockade (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)"The firm of Uncle Sam and John Bull flying grocers, kept the Western Allies in the Battle for Berlin last week... If the peace continues, the U.S. British estimated, by mid-July there will be enough food in Berlin's stockpile to feed the 2 million Germans in western sectors of the capital until September 1... Supplying fuel and coal was another problem..."
The article is accompanied by one cartoon from THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE.
Read more articles from PATHFINDER MAGAZINE...
When W.W. II Came to Hollywood (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)The attached article is but a small segment addressing the history of Hollywood during the war W.W. II years; clipped from a longer Photoplay Magazine piece that recounted the illustrious past of Hollywood some thirty-five years earlier. "After Pearl Harbor, the men really began leaving town. David Niven was gone now. So too, was Flight Officer Laurence Olivier. And more and more from the Hollywood ranks kept leaving. Gable, Fonda, Reagan, the well-knowns and the lesser-knowns. Power, Taylor, Payne, Skelton and many others...More Hollywood regulars went away, so other, newer newcomers had to be found to replace them because the box office was booming." Why All The Sidewalk Apple Vendors?
(The Age of the Great Depression, 1948)A single paragraph from the late Forties explains who was behind the rise and fall of the oft-photographed sidewalk apple vending stands in New York City.
Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression...
Tokyo Living ('48 Magazine, 1948)The post-war life of a Tokyo family as experienced by "Mrs. Tanaya": the wife of a carpenter and mother of one son. This is an eleven page magazine article that will allow you to gain some understanding as to how the Tokyo black-market operated and how that city began to rebuild itself after so many years of war. Also of some interest the Tokyo reaction to the American occupying army: "There is a lot of talk about Americans. To the Japanese women and their husbands, the conquerors are a puzzling combination of good and bad. But they often thank their gods for 'Marshal' MacArthur..."
••Click here to read about post-World War II Kyoto. Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here. In Defense of President Hoover (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)Attached is a small excerpt from the Pathfinder review of Eugene Lyons' book, Our Unknown Ex-President (1948). The author outlined the various measures taken by the Hoover administration during the earliest years of the Great Depression in hopes that the flood waters would subside:
"He fought for banking reform laws, appropriations for public works, home-loan banks to protect farms and residences. He asked for millions for relief to be administered by state and local organizations... A Democratic Congress refused to heed his suggestions."
Yet, regardless of the various missteps made by Hoover and FDR, the United States remailed an enormously wealthy nation...
File Sharing (United States News & World Report, 1948)"This is the story of how Russia got military secrets from the United States during W.W. II. It is a story that has little to do with the spy ring that congressional committees are trying to prove existed during the war period (The Gouzenko Affair: read about it here) . But it does throw light on the methods and purposes of the so-called 'spy ring'". "Military information was going to Russia as a matter of routine, by official channels, on an organized basis, all during the period when United States Communists and their friends were supposed to be spying out bits of information to send... As an ally of the U.S. in the war against Germany, Russia had free access to far more information than the so-called 'spy ring' claims..." Berlin Becomes the Center of Global Espionage (See Magazine, 1948)"ESPIONAGE is big business in Berlin and has it's painstaking, pecuniary bureaucracy. It is practiced by small fry (who is willing to procure for you anything from the latest deployment plan of the Red Army to a lock of Hitler's hair) and by big-time operators who deal nonchalantly and lucratively in international secrets." Henry Wallace: Was He Red? (Collier's Magazine, 1948)Henry Wallace (1888 – 1965) was FDR's second Vice President (1941 - 1945) and as a seasoned Washington politician he must have known that his political career was coming to an end when the attached editorial hit the newsstands in early October of 1948. Written by William L. Chenery, publisher of Collier's Magazine, one of the most staid, middle class news and fiction organs around - it was not the sort of organization that looked upon libel lightly; Chenery meant what he wrote when he slandered the former vice president as "the spokesman of Russia".
Wallace, who at the time was taking a licking as the Progressive Party nominee for president in the 1948 race, left politics shortly afterward. In 1952 he wrote a book in which he admitted how wrong he was to have ever trusted Joseph Stalin. The Deserters from the U.S. Army (See Magazine, 1948)Illustrated with seven photographs, article was written some three years after the close of the war and reported on the efforts of the Allied Armies and local police authorities globally to track-down some 10,000 deserters from the U.S. Army. In the mid-fifties the Department of the Army had estimated that the total number of deserters from all branches of the American military added up to 21,000, but in 1948 the army was happy just to find these 10,000 men: the numeric equivalent of an entire division.
The article is composed of short, choppy paragraphs that present for the reader some of the more interesting stories of World War II desertion. A good read. ''Panic in Hollywood'' ('48 Magazine, 1948)The years 1947 and 1948 was a rough patch for Hollywood - and journalist James Felton did a favor for all those geeky film historians yet unborn for documenting their myriad travails in the attached article. Aside from a major drop in box-office receipts, the most time consuming inconvenience involved U.S. Representative J. Parnell Thomas (1895 – 1970) and his cursed House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that threatened to reduce their profits to a further degree.
The Stewardship of General MacArthur (Collier's Magazine, 1948)The attached article is about the governance of
General Douglas MacArthur (1880 – 1964) over conquered Japan following the close of World War II and was written half way through the American occupation period by the well-respected American journalist George Creel (1876 - 1953). The article clarifies what regime change meant for post-war Japan and the roll that MacArthur's creed and character played in the process.
Click here to read about the 1918 portrait of General MacArthur painted by Joseph Cummings Chase.
Forties Ski Mode (Collier's Magazine, 1948)Clipped from the pages of a 1948 issue of COLLIER'S MAGAZINE were these four color pictures of skiers loafing about the slopes in a place that had just recently been discovered for such purposes; it was called Aspen, in Colorado. You will no doubt notice that there is no real difference between the skiing togs worn by either gender; both wore only wool, jaunty ski sweaters and pegged trousers.
Click here if you would like to read the entire article about Aspen in 1948; there are additional color photographs. President Truman and Civil Rights (Commonweal, 1948)When President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights submitted their findings to the White House in December of 1947, the anxious and skeptical editors at COMMONWEAL MAGAZINE eagerly waited their conclusions. Knowing that this Southern president was the only Klansman (1924 membership) to have ever attained such high office, they were doubtful that any good would come of it, and in this column they explain why they felt that way.
Four years later an article was written about the gratitude many African-Americans felt toward President Truman and his stand on civil rights - read it here...
Picasso Painted Me ('48 Magazine, 1948)Artist and poet Jaime Sabartés (1881 – 1968) had been among the oldest and closest friends of Pablo Picasso since the two of them were 19-year-old artists in Barcelona. Throughout the course of their 40-year friendship Picasso had painted and drawn his pal on numerous occasions - Sabartés' comments about those six portraits and his memories of those isolated moments appear on the attached pages. He recalled a day when Picasso energetically encouraged him to write down his thoughts, which in time lead to this article, that appeared in his 1948 book, PICASSO: an Intimate Portrait :
"I decided, therefore, to take these portraits as texts, to try to imbue with warmth Picasso's pictures of me, to make them live anew, to enrich them with fragments from the life of their creator and shreds of my own."
A Picasso poem is included among the reminiscence (translator unknown).
A forgotten article from 1913 that degraded Picasso and other assorted Modernists can be read here.
The Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)During the April of 1945 elements of the U.S. First Army barreled across the countryside of central Germany. Coming across the chateau outside of the Harz Mountain village of Degenershausen it must have seemed to them to be just another pretty pile of high class European rocks, just like all the other ones they'd been stumbling upon since D-Day - but they soon found that the joint was used to house many of the records of pertaining to German diplomacy between the years 1871 through 1944. This article lays bare some of the hidden details in the agreement that was struck between foreign ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop in 1939; the treaty that came to be known as the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.
Read about the earliest post-war sightings of Hitler: 1945-1955
Dr. Albert Schweitzer (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)Written to review the latest book by Dr. Shweitzer, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus, the article informs the reader as to the remarkable life the author lead and all that he did for the Kingdom. Palestine Brexit (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)The British reign over Palestine lasted 31 years; attached is an eyewitness account of the orderly withdrawal that took place during the summer of 1948, when the remaining elements of their colonial regiments lowered the Union Jack for the last time and boarded ships for home:
"Last week, from gently-heaving transports in Haifa harbor, men of Britain's 40th Royal Marines in khaki shorts and green berets, took a last look shoreward. Alongside the transports were the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Triumph, a cruiser and five destroyers... From shore came note by note the sound of a bugler blowing Last Post."
Jihad Against 'The New Look' (See Magazine, 1948)A former fashion model, Bobbie Woodward, was outraged when she awoke that morning in 1947 to find that the hidden hairy hand that decides which direction the fashion winds will blow had given the nod to some snail-eating Frenchman who stood athwart fashion's unspoken promise to continue the skirt hem's march ever-upward. Wasting no time, she quickly marshaled other equally inclined women and formed The Little Below the Knee Clubs, which spread to forty-eight states (as well as Canada) in order to let the fashion establishment know that they would not be forced into wearing this fashion juggernaut known as "The New Look".
The attached SEE MAGAZINE article serves as a photo-essay documenting the collective outrage of these women and their doomed crusade against Christian Dior. One 1947 fashion critic believed that the New Look suffered from "a split personality". Click here to read her review. Mr. Kinsey's Report (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)Although much of what Dr. Alfred Kinsey wrote concerning male sex patterns has been debunked in our own age, his conclusions were taken quite seriously in the late Forties and early Fifties. This slender column serves as a summary and review regarding his studies that were published in his 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948).
From Amazon:
Sexual Behavior in The Human Female and Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Two Volume Set
A Warning to the West (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)This is a 1948 Soviet poster that foreign correspondents of the day reported as having been widely distributed across the Worker's Paradise. A veiled piece of patriotic pageantry, it was clearly intended to intimidate the Western democracies; it made its appearance a few weeks into the Berlin Blockade (June, 1948 - May, 1949) - an international stunt that gained the Soviets nothing. From Amazon:
Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin
Did President Lincoln Really Need the Beard? (Collier's Magazine, 1948)"When an eleven year-old girl advised Abraham Lincoln to grow some whiskers, the great man humbly took her suggestion to heart":
"I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President." The rest is history.
Click here to read an 1862 review about the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady.
The Atomic Crusade (Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, 1948)Attached is a 1948 article by the Nobel laureate Arthur Holly Compton (1892 – 1962) concerning the widespread understanding among nuclear physicists to wrestle control of atomic energy away from the military and firmly in the hands of civil authorities, where it's benefits can be put to general use and harnessed as positive force in the lives of all mankind.
Awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1927, the SCRIPT MAGAZINE editors believed that Arthur Compton, more than anyone else, deserved the title "Daddy of the Atomic bomb". When the U.S. Government decided to proceed with the research and development of this weapon, Compton was assigned the double task of attempting a nuclear chain reaction and of designing the bomb itself.
Compton is remembered as the senior physicist at the Manhattan Project who hired Dr. Robert Oppenheimer. Click here to read an article about American public opinion during the early Cold War years.
Click here to read about the invention of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
The Unsinkable Titanic ('48 Magazine, 1948)Award winning word-smith Hanson W. Baldwin (1903 - 1991) wrote this tight little essay some 64 years after the Titanic sinking. He succinctly pieced together the events of that day (April 12, 1912) and clearly indicated that there was plenty of blame to go around for the tremendous loss of life; not simply the Grand Poobahs in the senior positions (Captain Smith and Bruce Ismay) but the small fries as well (such as Second Radio Operator Harold McBride). By the second page, Baldwin commences with an hour by hour break-down of the events on-board TITANIC until she made her final plunge into the deep:
"12:30 a.m. The word is passed: 'Women and children in the boats'. Stewards finish waking passengers below; life-preservers are tied on; some men smile at the precaution.
"'The Titanic is unsinkable.'" Back-Handed Compliments for D.W. Griffith (Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, 1948)This 1940s Hollywood journalist refrained from using the pejorative "white cracker" while condemning silent film director D.W. Griffith for his racial views -and yet at the same time did something rather bold in that he put in print his views that the man has been erroneously credited as the creator of various assorted film innovations that were pioneered by other filmmakers. The Creation of the Ghettos (The Saturday Review, 1948)The subject addressed in this article pertains to the greatest act of cruelty that was ever thrust upon African-Americans by the white hegemony - for it was the one scheme designed to guarantee their continuing poverty. Ben Shahn ('48 Magazine, 1948)A magazine article about the artist Ben Shahn (1898 – 1969) and his particular approach to making art: "A fundamental of Ben Shahn's philosophy insists that there should be a minimum of separation between the private and the public work of art. He believes that the painter should speak with the same voice in the room and in the street. He is pleased by the criticism that his posters sometimes look like fragments of murals..."
This review was penned by James Thrall Soby (1906 – 1979), art historian and critic who wrote two monographs on the artist. Free College? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)The concept of a free college education paid for by the Federal Government was not the brain child of the Vermont Marxist Bernie Sanders, but an idea that was briefly pursued by the education advisers of U.S. President Harry S Truman:
"Today the average American of 20 - 24 years of age has completed 12.1 years of schooling, an all-time high...Last week the President's Commission on Higher Education issued a report aimed at pushing the average still higher. It urged that free public education be extended through the first two years of college."
Even as early as 1894 socialism was recognized as wishful thinking.
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