"To Marilyn Monroe, currently the nation's favorite daydream, a trophy won is only a prelude to shinier trophies to come. She learned to act and she learned to dance. Now she is learning to sing...'The Monroe' has taken up vocalizing in a big way, and critics are saying her voice is as arresting as her personality".
Writing ten years after D-Day, Sonia D'Artois recalled her experiences as a spy and saboteur in Nazi-occupied France:
"...I began my mission in wartime France as a British secret agent. Colonel Maurice Buckmaster had told me what my assignment was:"
"You will parachute into France with a wireless operator and a demolition specialist. The drop will be 40 miles from Le Mans, where Rommel's army is concentrated..."
"The fabulous jewels worn by the stars in movies look like the real thing, but they are all paste. Most of this fake splendor is produced by Joan Castle Joseff of Hollywood (1912 - 2010) whose factory turns out 90 percent of the jewelry used in pictures. Sometimes an order must be filled in twenty-four hours, to avoid holding up a costly production."
A clearly written piece which sums up the climactic third day of the Gettysburg battle:
"Night brought an end to the bloody combat at East Cemetery Hill, but this was not the time for rest. What would Meade do? Would the Union Army remain in its established position and hold its lines at all costs?"
Ten years after the death of Big Band legend Glenn Miller (1904 1944), it was found that his record sales were going through the roof at 16,000,000 per annum, and Hollywood had attempted to cash-in on his memory by releasing a (bland) Technicolor bio-pic, appropriately titled, The Glenn Miller Story(Universal) - with Jimmy Stewart starring in the title roll. The band leader's popularity was obvious to everyone in 1944, when he was killed in the war, but no one could have predicted this.
Two years before this article went to press, some Delphian at Quick Magazine scribbled these words:
"Expect fashion designers to jump on the African trend in literature and entertainment. Examples: four new African [themed] films (Cry the Beloved Country, The Magic Garden, Latuko and The African Queen) to be followed by a Walt Disney African wildlife film."
- next thing you know, down fashion's runways sashay the teen waifs - all clad as if they were the striped and spotted beasts who prance upon the Serengeti Plain.
In the chaos and confusion of 1945 Berlin the whereabouts of Gestapo General Heinrich Mόller was lost; many believe he had been killed or committed suicide. Another report had it that Mόller had been captured with the Africa Korps by the British and subsequently made good his escape into Syria. In an issue of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia that appeared on newsstands at the end of July, 1950, it was reported that while residing in the Middle East he had converted to Islam, changed his name to Hanak Hassim Bey and was amassing an army of German veterans in order to march on Israel. The attached notice seems to be based on the Izvestia article.
"The Golfmobile provides an ideal solution for two new golfing problems: a growing shortage of caddies and a crop of time-pressed golf lovers, headed by President Eisenhower, who frequently uses a Golfmobile to cut playing time in half."
"The Tamarisk Country Club in Palm Springs, California was one of the first to employ a fleet of the 'bugs' and now many courses throughout the country are doing the same."
Attached is a five page interview with the always demure and introverted pianist Liberace (b. Wladziu Valentino Liberace: 1919 - 1987). When this article first appeared on the pages of COLLIER'S MAGAZINE, no living performer was selling more records than he was, his television program was nearing its second year and American women had not yet figured out that he was gay. Life was good.
An account of the inconclusive first day at Gettysburg:
"The two armies converge on Gettysburg - The men of Heth's division, leading the Confederate advance across the mountain, reached Cashtown on June 29. Pettigrew's brigade was sent on to Gettysburg the following day to obtain supplies, but upon reaching the ridge a mile west of the town, they observed a column of Union cavalry approaching..."
Click here to read a Confederate perspective of the first day at Gettysburg.
It was on the first day at Gettysburg that the Confederates made a terrible mistake. Read about it here.
"Christian Dior, the Frenchman who covered up women's legs with his post-war 'New Look', has now decided that the female bosom must go. In fact, if Dior has his way, the feminine figure itself will go - the bust flattened to the backbone, the wasp-waist a thing of the past, the fair curve destined to be replaced by the washboard look of the 20s."
For reasons we are unable to fully comprehend, today's magazine editors are no longer asked to cast their ballots for a category titled "Most Photogenic Figure on TV" - but this was not the case in 1951, and Delores "Roxanne" Rosedale won hands-down.
"By the afternoon of July 2, the powerful forces of Meade and Lee were at hand, and battle on a tremendous scale was imminent. That part of the Union line extending diagonally across the valley between Seminary and Cemetery Ridges held. Late in the forenoon, General Dan Sickles, commanding the Third Corps which lay north of Little Round Top, sent Berdan's sharpshooters and some of the men of the 3rd Maine Regiment forward from Emmitsburg Road to Pitzer's Woods... as they reached the woods, a strong Confederate force fired upon them..."
"The U.S. is going to shoulder the job of saving what is left of Indo-China from the Communists...Congress is unlikely to approve additional funds. South Vietnam isn't a good-enough risk to be worth much bigger American investment. Everything may go down the drain in 19 months."
"Countless scientists contributed to the phenomenon [of television]. Marconi gets credit, as do Farnsworth and Lee de Forest. But the real starting line was strung by an RCA scientist named Vladimir K. Zworykin in 1923, when he applied for a patent on a iconoscope..."
Illustrated with 27 pictures, this article lists a number of historic and semi-historic events that were captured by the early TV cameras and seen by millions of souls who otherwise would have only had to read about them in their respective newspapers, if they cared to.
In just two paragraphs this author nicely summed up the immediate aftermath of that remarkable battle at Gettysburg:
"Late on the afternoon of July 4, Lee began an orderly retreat. The wagon train of wounded, 17 miles in length, guarded by Imboden's cavalry, started homeward through Greenwood and Greencastle. At night, the able-bodied men marched over the Hagerstown Road by way of Monterey Pass to the Potomac..."
"There's a 'New Look' in Japan. It's come about in the years since World War II and is largely due the result of Western influence brought about by the presence of American soldiers...More and more women are dressing in American-style clothing, although they still prefer the kimono as evening dress. Girls now are given the same education as boys. There is a new school system with grade schools, high schools and colleges modeled somewhat on the American pattern..."
Ever since America established the car culture, there came a need for all-night retail establishments: hamburgers, hot dogs, beer, pharmaceuticals - you get the picture. During the late Thirties this became apparent to the Reverend John Welles as he "drove aimlessly through the West" - he saw that it was quite possible to acquire meatloaf at all hours of the night, but if you wanted to speak with a minister of the Gospel, you were just plain out of luck. It was then that Welles swore to himself:
"If ever I have another church, it will be open day and night. The soul doesn't come alive on Sunday mornings only, and some day I'll build a church where people can pray whenever they wish."
Appearing in Confidential Magazine during the early months of 1954 were these pages from a memoir that was written by the sergeant who rode herd on the New York Police Security detail for FDR. As far as we can figure, Prisoner at Hyde Park by New York State Policeman Edward J. Dougherty was never published, but as you will soon read, it was full of many obscure and unheard of stories of FDR and the world he dominated while in the Empire State.
With the end of the Second World War in 1945 came numerous social changes to the nation. Among them was the Civil Rights movement, which soon began to find followers in the white majority and acquire an unprecedented traction in Washington as a result of the Cold War (an article on this topic can be read here). It was these two factors, the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement, that combined in the Fifties to call for the creation of a new immigration policy. It would be naive to assume that race alone was the sole factor in drafting a more inclusive policy because, as the attached editorial spells out, the Cold War climate demanded that the U.S. make more friends among the developing countries if the Soviets were to be defeated economically and militarily.
During World War II many women played roles as daring and courageous as were required of any man. This is the true story of one such woman, who gambled her life to help the Allies win the final victory in Europe.
"...I began my mission in wartime France as a British secret agent. Colonel Maurice Buckmaster had told me what my assignment was:"
"You will parachute into France with a wireless operator and a demolition specialist. The drop will be 40 miles from Le Mans, where Rommel's army is concentrated..."
Click here to read about the women who spied for the Nazis during the Second World War.
The triumphs of the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day stand as a testament to the superb combat leadership skills of Lt. Colonel James E. Rudder (1910 1970), who is the subject of the attached article. As a participant in the planning the Allied invasion of Normandy, General Omar Bradley recognized that the German heavy guns situated above and between the Omaha and Utah beaches had to be silenced if the landings were to be successful; Bradley selected Rudder and his group to do the job, later remarking that this order was "the most difficult he had ever, in his entire career, given anybody".
Written ten years after that historic day, this article is about Rudder's return to Omaha Beach with his young son, and his recollections of the battle that was fought.
A good read; an even more in-depth study regarding the assault on Pointe du Hoc can be found at Amazon: Rudder's Rangers.
The gum-shoe reporters at Confidential Magazine were on the job as soon as it became clear to all that her wayward lifestyle could no longer be ignored.
The weapons and tactics used at the Battle of Gettysburg were in no way different from those brought into use during other parts in the war. Just as war has always been practiced, weapons influence tactics and this article lists a variety of Civil War rifles and artillery pieces that were put to use during that three day battle. The author also goes to some length describing the manner in which Civil War regiments and brigades marched into battle and the deployment of their supporting artillery batteries.
You can bet that throughout the short career of Marilyn Monroe there were voluminous amounts stylistes, cosmetologists, coiffeurs and doyennes of glamour who came in contact with the headliner at one time or another. Some offered genuine nuggets of beauty wisdom while others could only offer bum steers. Although the name Emmeline Snively may sound like a character from a Charles Dickens novel, she was in actuality the very first woman to offer sound fashion advice to the ingenue - advice that would start her on her path to an unparalleled celebrity status as the preeminent "Blonde Bombshell" in all of Hollywood. You see, Emmeline Snively was the one who recommended that La Monroe dye her hair that color in the first place.
Sitting before a senate committee convened in order to understand what went wrong in Korea, Lieutenant General Edward M. Almond (1892 1979), U.S. Army, was not shy to point out that it was the "the back-seat drivers" in Washington who interfered in their ability to fight the war.
"Senator Welker: Could we have won the war in 1951...?"
There is no doubt that the Hollywood matinee idol Errol Flynn (1909 - 1959) was the Charlie Sheen of his day, and thanks to the unrelenting press control that the Hollywood studios exercised over the fan magazines of that day, we probably only know about a quarter of his assorted debaucheries. He was a masher and a lush, and the one law suit that the studio executives couldn't kill was
"the great case against him for statutory rape which, had it stuck, would have given him jail for fifty years. For weeks in 1942 it replaced the war news in the headlines."
In 1938, Flynn wrote an article in which he weakly defended the unique moral codes of Hollywood actors; you can read it here.
"The great objective of the war in the West - the opening of the Mississippi River and the severing of the Confederacy - had been realized with the fall of Vicksburg."
"On July 9 [1863], the Confederate commander at Port Hudson, upon learning of the fall of Vicksburg, surrendered his garrison of 6,000 men. One week later the merchant steamboat Imperial tied up at the wharf at New Orleans, completing the 1,000-mile passage from St. Louis undisturbed by hostile guns. After two years of land and naval warfare, the Mississippi River was open, the grip of the South had been broken, and merchant and military traffic had now a safe avenue to the gulf of Mexico. In the words of Lincoln:
"The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea".
"Ridgway wants no repetition of the Korean experience. If the U.S. is to fight in Asia again, he wants an army equal to the task and free to win. And, until his Army is capable of undertaking the job, he opposes even limited action by air or sea forces. The General disagrees with those who hold that a war can be won by air or sea power alone."
For Jefferson Davis and his confederates, the double disasters of Gettysburg and Vicksburg that came with the summer of 1863 spelled doom for the Rebel cause. Writing in his diary during those canicular days was Confederate General Josiah Gorgas (1818 1883) who succinctly summarized the meaning of these two major defeats:
"Events have succeeded one another with disastrous rapidity. One brief month ago we were apparently at the point of success. Lee was in Pennsylvania, threatening Harrisburg, and even Philadelphia... Today absolute ruin seems to be our portion. The Confederacy totters to its destruction."
A hard-charging investigative reporter from Sir! magazine exposed the morbid aspects of "the abortion racket" in this 1951 article that reported on the money-loving quack "doctors" who were responsible for killing 50,000 women each year in back-alley abortions; equally shocking was his report on the slaughter of half a million American babies throughout the country in 1954.
Oh how we all laughed when we used to read of these old Cold Warriors who actually believed that Communists were active in our schools in the 1990s! Gosh, it was funny! But it wasn't funny when we discovered how close an actual Marxist came to winning the presidential nominations of the Democratic Party in both 2016 and 2020. It seems like the long march through the institutions has finally paid off for the Leftists. The attached article was written by J. Edgar Hoover and it was penned in order that Americans would know that this day would come if we were not vigilant.
Licorice - it ain't just for watching movies any more because in the mid-to-late Forties scientists "[had] found that there is a black magic in licorice, a versatile chemical which is already playing a considerable part in your life". Licorice has been harnessed as a fire retardant, weather insulation, medicine and a moisturizer for a few agriculture products. The ancient Egyptians were the first to discover it and they recognized its benefits from the start.
There was one thing the Japanese hated more than being defeated and occupied by the "Gai-jin" (the Japanese slur for Whites) and that was when their daughters, sisters and nieces began bedding their tormentors and baring their young. Tremendous shame was brought on these women, and their families. This article is about the Amerasian babies who were isolated in a special orphanage designed just for them.
Illustrated with nine pictures, this article briefly tells the story of baseball legend Willie Mays (b. 1931) and the Summer of 1954 when sportswriters credited him alone for having raised the athletic standards of his team, The New York Giants (the team won the World Series that year):
"A 23-year-old Alabaman with a laugh as explosive as his bat, Willie has electrified N.Y. Giants fans as no man has done since Mel Ott (1909 1958)... Statistics don't begin to give a real picture of Willie's value. He adds drama to baseball in a way that defies fiction."
"Lincoln could use humor as an explosive weapon as well as employing it as a constructive force... For Abraham Lincoln never told a story except with a purpose. He himself pointed this out often. His anecdotes were the precision tools of a highly skilled and intelligent wit... 'I laugh because I must not cry: That's all, that's all.'"
Click here to read another article about Lincoln's use of humor and story-telling.
Click here to read the back-story concerning the Star-Spangled Banner...
, 
, Latuko and 
) to be followed by a Walt Disney African wildlife film."
