Stalin's final days, as recalled by his daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926 – 2011), were mired in paranoia; he had imprisoned his one physician (accusing him of being a British spy) and refused all medical attention - preferring to self-medicate with liberal doses of iodine. His hatred of the West had drastically intensified; he rambled on about the natural intelligence of peasants and was displeased that numerous members of his family wished to marry Jews.
Attached you will find a number of black and white images illustrating the general look for 1950s golfers - and if you've been looking for an article that explains the fashion sense of every single retired U.S. President for te past fifty years, you may have found it.
The fashions illustrated herein also provide today's costume designers with a sense of how retired crooners preferred to look as well.
"No one is certain how football came to America. There are those who say it has always been here in the guise of an Indian game like lacrosse; its resemblance to English Rugby is apparent. But the game we know today is uniquely American, its place on the American scene secures. From September until long after the snow falls, Saturday afternoon means the Big Game to millions; and to millions the names of Heffelfinger, Grange, Harmon, Kazmaier and other gridiron greats will never lose their luster. This year [1953], more than 15,000,000 Americans - old grads, subway alumni and just plain football fans - will turn out to see their favorites do battle in a game that bears little resemblance to the scrambling, uncoordinated melees of 50 years ago. This is the story of how football grew up, of its heroes, and of the great games of yesteryear."
"Modigliani's art reflects the psychological secret of his personality as a man, which in turn determines, the characteristics of his art. This longing for intellectual and spiritual self-discipline was constantly struggling with the demands of his overflowing sensual nature; his dreams of physical and sexual vigor were at odds with the failings of his body, his ailments, and his psycho-sexual infantilism; his desire for glory rebelled against the frustrations and poverty of reality."
"The Duke of Windsor is now 59. He has arrived at that age when a man begins to weigh his life and all that he has done with it...What can he remember? That having come to the throne the most beloved of all princes, the darling of a nation that would have followed him through hell-fire; he threw away the tiresome restraints of kingship, to gain what?"
"Day and night U.S. Psychological Warfare soldiers in Korea risk their lives to talk and write Communists into submission. Their first leaflets hit the Reds just 36 hours after they first crossed the 38th Parallel. Today Pentagon brass praises 'Psywar' for influencing 70,000 North Koreans and Chinese Communists to surrender."
Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 generated a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the West, and a good deal of it is reflected in the attached column. A list of possible successors was provided; two of the names played an immediate roll in the governance of the Soviet Union: Georgy Malenkov (1902 – 1988) - who ruled for three days, until he was replaced by Nikolai Bulganin (1895 – 1975). Bulganin ran the shop until he, too, was replaced by Stalin's right-hand man: Nikita Khrushchev
(1894 – 1971) - who was known in some corners as "the hangman of the Ukraine".
"Less dependent on the whims of fashion than almost any other fabric, lace blooms perennially in designers' collections. Because it has an ageless quality, which makes it look well on women of any age, its uses are varied. This season it is treated in new ways by some of the top couturiers. It is embroidered, used as applique, beaded or scattered with sequins... There is variety in lace itself; it may be gossamer sheer or rich and handsome in design. But whatever its form, it is a universal fashion favorite [for now].
Read this unbelievable adventure by a former Afrika Korps Panzer Grenadier who, having been captured and subsequently shipped to the U.S., made good his escape from an Illinois prisoner-of-war camp - whereupon he assumed a fake identity and easily acquired a Social Security number. After having rented an apartment and worked several jobs in Chicago, he started a successful business just two years after his escape, married an American woman, sired a daughter - and he might very well have eluded the FBI entirely if he hadn't insisted all the while on sending foodstuffs to his mother in war-ravaged Germany.
Here is a collection of interviews with the men who, just a week earlier, had all been POWs in North Korea. Each of them recall their own unique account as to how they had been captured, their forced march to the camp, the poor medical care, sanitation and the high death toll from exposure to the cold. The intense practice of Communist brainwashing is described in detail.
This article confirms that the 3-D film format was brought into existence in 1952 for the same reasons it exists today: to get TV audiences off of their wallets and into the theaters.
Iles Brody, author of Gone with the Windsors, was no fan of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, but before he began to outline all their various faults in the attached essay, he first wanted to make one aspect of their history quite clear:
"The true story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor cannot be told without clarifying one point right at the beginning: there was only one man who forced Edward VIII off the throne: himself. Yet millions have been led to believe that Prime Minister and Primate got together with the peers and, with the help of the British press, compelled the King to abandon his hereditary trust."
"Pretty girl's pictures help sell toothpaste, cigarettes and magazines, so why shouldn't they help sell religion? This logic is being applied by churchmen producing the new TV series called, This is the Life."
"After all - it's no sin to be pretty" - quoth Reverend R.C. Wuerffel, Chairman of the Lutheran TV Production Committee.
It was indeed divine inspiration that graced the craniums of these producing-churchmen employed by the Lutheran Hour Ministries - this television program was an absolute success - appearing first in 1952 and wrapping in 1988. Some of the pretty faces they employed along the way belonged to Annette O'Toole, Kathy Garver, Angie Dickinson, Lisa Pelikan, Mala Powers and Lynn Whitfield.
A small notice from a news digest featured a photograph of a carpet that was designed by famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893 – 1986) in the early Fifties"
"Something new in room dividers are area rugs designed by Raymond Loewy to define areas of activity within a room; dining sections, TV corners for example. Sophisticated but adaptable to almost all interiors, the new rugs come in such decorator colors as pink, lime green [and] turquoise."
Attached is an article about Val Peterson (1903 – 1983), who had been appointed by President Eisenhower to serve as the director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration between 1953 through 1957. Peterson is remembered as the Washington functionary who mobilized graphic designers, copywriters, cartoonists and filmmakers in an effort to shock America's youth out of their complacency and recognize that nuclear warfare was a genuine possibility.
"America has always depended on its youth. The Atomic Age of nuclear weapons has not changed this - it has intensified it".
"While the fighting raged on the central front the negotiators at Panmunjom rapidly approached an agreement on armistice terms. The July 19th (1953) agreement was reached on all points by both sides. The next day liaison and staff officers began the task of drawing up the boundaries of the demilitarized zone... At 1100 hours on July 27, Lieutenant General William K Harrison, Jr., the senior United Nations delegate to the armistice negotiations, signed the armistice papers. At the same time the senior enemy delegate, General Nam Il, placed his signature on the documents."
This article makes a passing reference to a Soviet defector who jumped ship in 1937 in order to escape Stalin's seemingly random purges, his name was General Alexander Barmine (1899 - 1987). In his READER'S DIGEST piece from October, 1944 (the article can be read here) Barmine declared that Soviet spies were rapidly filling up positions within the U.S. Government. His more alarming proclamation was when he wrote that FDR's administration was protecting them - this implied that Red agents were already perched in the highest positions. When W.W. II ended (along with the Soviet alliance) both political parties in Washington agreed to weed out these moles - but they couldn't agree as to how deep the infiltration was. The Democrats believed that by 1953 most of the Communists had been found, the Republicans felt otherwise.
Unlike Reinhold Pabel, the W.W. II German P.O.W. whose story is told in the article posted above, the five escapees in this article remained at large long after the war ended. Five minutes researching their names on the internet revealed that every single one of them remained in the U.S. where they held jobs, paid taxes and raised families well into their golden years.
"Is the average soldier in the USSR eager for war with the United States? Here's the inside story of Russian morale and military spirit, revealed by the first Soviest fighting man to escape his Communist masters and become an American GI."
Upon hearing that Stalin had died, "the official Red Chinese radion spent hours talking of Stalin's death, paid little heed to Malenkov's elevation to Russia's premiership."
"Mao has considered himself second only to Stalin in communism".
"Fighting in Korea ended under a truce effective July 27. It is a well known fact, though, that the truce is no guarantee that fighting won't start again. The UN wants to work out an agreement with the Reds that will mean no more war for Korea."
- and work it out they did; the truce has held for some sixty-five years. This article concerns all the various minutia both sides had to agree to in order to reach the agreement.
Times have changed: when this article about Beverly Hills first went to press, that famed little hamlet could support as many as ten bookshops. It is now barely able to support one:
"Beverly Hills became famous in 1926 when, in one of the smartest publicity stunts of the century, the movie star Will Rogers was elected honorary mayor. Installed in drizzling rain, Rogers declared that all the budding town needed for progress was a little scandal and a few murders..."
"In 1942 Roper Poll found only 42 per cent of Americans saying 'yes' to the question 'Are Negroes as intelligent as Whites and can they learn just as quickly if given education and training?' After W.W. II the number rose to 57 per cent."
"The 'real' world into which the Duke has entered by his 'own' free will is international café society, that glittering, gilded bubble floating above the stormy seas of history...The Duke lives a rather different life. An hour or so with one of those American businessmen he admires, following tips on the market, looking over the quotations in stocks and bonds, and he has nothing to trouble about for the day, or the next month or so, until another empty hour obtrudes itself in the almost ceaseless round of pleasure like a hole in time waiting to be plugged by something, anything."
Some wise old wag once opined that by the time W.W. II came along, Hemingway was far too fascinated by his own public image to have ever been an effective war correspondent. However, it should be remembered that he had looked war in the face on many occasions - the Second World War was the seventh conflict that he witnessed as a war reporter. Prior to working as a war correspondent for Time and Collier's during the Second World War, Hemingway had written for a number of other outlets in six other conflicts.
Attached is an unflattering essay by biographer Iles Brody, who beautifully captured the Duchess of Windsor and her unending pursuit of the chic. Obsessed with self-image, this column lists the fashion houses and boutiques that were most favored by Wallis Simpson.
Despite her wealth, the Duchess loved a good bargain.
The original "Generation X" was that group of babies born in the late Twenties/early Thirties: they were the younger brothers and sisters of the W.W. II generation. There seemed to have been some talk in the early Fifties that this group of Americans were becoming sardonic and cynical - raised on the W.W. II home front, only to find that when they came of age they were also expected to sacrifice their numbers in a foreign war:
"How can you help being pessimistic when you hear that the boy you sat next to in high school English was killed last week in Korea?"
- opined one of the nine college women interviewed on the attached pages. These Cold War women were asked what was on their minds as they prepared for jobs, marriage and family.
"Red is the color which is going to add excitement to the fall scene. In a season when black is everywhere, the woman who wants to stand out is going to turn to red to express her own sense of drama. Red will be seen in suits, in coats, in after-dark dresses. The color itself is so dramatic that designers rely on cut and line for interest."
Well-illustrated, pithy and informative, this article will get you up to speed on some of the espionage triumphs of the Soviet GRU (the military intelligence arm of the former "worker's paradise"). The article refers to where their agents trained before their American and Canadian deployments, what they were taught, and how big the GRU was. Of even greater interest were the parts of the article that referred to their "Atomic spies" and the variety of traitors and turncoats they were able to attract.
During the early days of 1953 some of the young men of the World War Two generation looked into their grandfather's wardrobes and came away with a new friend - the Norfolk jacket:
"There has been some talk concerning the possible revival of certain Edwardian fashions. In the renewed acceptance of the Norfolk jacket, which takes its name from the 15th Duke of Norfolk, we have the revival of a style which is even older, having first come into being during the Victorian era....In 1910 it was so well accepted that few small lads of that era were content unless they had a Norfolk coat just like their fathers'."
The 1953 Titanic reunion took place in New York City. Numbered among the nine survivors was Edith Russell, who had been nineteen at the time of the ship's sinking. Also in attendance that day was the writer Seymour Ettman, who collaborated with Russell in crafting the attached five page article about her experiences the night Titanic slipped below the surface of the North Atlantic:
"If the Titanic sinks, will they transfer the luggage?"
"Miss, if I were you, I'd go back to your room and kiss your lovely things goodbye."
During the final months of the Korean war, when it seemed that both sides were willing to make an arrangement that would bring the hostilities to an agreed upon end, the Chinese diplomats upped the ante
"... the Red regime in Peiping [Beijing] wanted a Great Power conference on Korea's future as a preface to new truce talks... Zhou Enlai, premier in Mao Tse Tung's government, has secretly proposed tossing all disputes - the prisoner exchange issue as well as the political future of Korea - into a conference of 11 nations."
When General James Van Fleet let it be known that much of the previous two years in Korea had been plagued by a shortage in ammunition, tempers flared in the Senate as both parties talked of convening an investigative committee.
In an effort to show how American thought can vary between decades, a retired pollster from the Gallup organization collected the data gleaned from various opinion polls that were launched between 1929 on up through the dawn of the Atomic Age in order to show what a different people we had become. The topics that were addressed were
• Racial tolerance
• Taxes
• Women in the work place
• Labor unions
• Women smoking
• Bathing Suits
Judging by the photographs in this eleven page article, the editors of PAGEANT MAGAZINE must have finally decided to take their name quite seriously when they decided to dispatch a correspondent across the sea to report on all the glorious pageantry and glamour that made up the 1953 Coronation of the 27-year-old Elizabeth II (b. 1926):
"When Elizabeth arrives at Westminster Abbey for the two-and-a-half-hour ceremony of the Coronation, it will mark the first time in fifty years that a queen has been crowned in England. Three queens have ruled over Albion in 800 years: Elizabeth I, Ann and Victoria; each of their reigns have brought great progress and prosperity. That is one reason why her subjects look forward with such glowing hope to the reign of Elizabeth II."
(Although it is no reflection on her, Britain's power has decreased dramatically since 1953)
Assorted snide stories concerning the Duke of Windsor - the world he made and the man he became:
"It is both sad and amusing to see a former King of England reduced by the woman he loves to a 'Little Man', to the rank of a meek husband. What should one do, laugh or cry, when one looks at the ex-Caesar in the role of handbag-carrier, a sort of walking ornament..."
"Early next month the whole world will take time out from its atom bombs and cold wars and financial worries to re-live for a day all the jeweled delight of an old-fashioned fairy tale. This fairy tale will be all the more significant because it happens to be true... In short, a young queen will be crowned in London... But, amid all the glitter and pomp, the one man who would normally be expected to be the most important guest will not have a roll to play - The Duke of Windsor."
On September 5, 1945, N.K.V.D. cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko (1919 – 1982) severed ties with his masters at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa and high-tailed it over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with tales of extensive Soviet espionage throughout all of North America. The news of this defection and the intelligence he delivered sent shock waves throughout Washington, London, Moscow, and Ottawa - historians insist that this was the event that sparked the Cold War and altered the course of the Twentieth Century.
The attached photograph of Queen Elizabeth in her Coronation attire is accompanied by a few select words concerning the Koh-I-Nor diamond and a few other pretty baubles worn on the occasion of her 1953 coronation:
"Elizabeth II wearing the diamond-and-pearl circlet of Queen Victoria. The design incorporates the Tudor rose, Scotch thistle, and Irish shamrock. The diamond necklace was a wedding gift from the Nizam of Hyderabad."
1953 was the year that designers from both Paris and New York included pants in their respective evening wear collections - even their homely little sister, Los Angeles - the new fashion capitol of sportswear, provided a pair of pants for dinner occasions.
Some time ago we posted an article from 1921 about legislation that the U.S. Congress was considering concerning the prohibition of cigarettes (Click here to read about that) we thought that the cat was out of the bag at that time as to the fact concerning the connection of smoking and cancer. But we were wrong. The 1953 article attached herein concerns four doctors who appeared before Congress in an appeal for federal funding for cancer research. They made it clear that research was indicating that there was a clear link between smoking and cancer, but more exploration was needed.
