Here is an article that was written on the third anniversary of the passage of the Lend-Lease Act and it lists the numerous munitions that were made available to the allied nations and who signed the agreement.
Two articles from two different magazines reported the news that the World Champion Boxer of 1919, Jack Dempsey
In the future, other athletes would follow in his steps to Hollywood; his fellow boxer Gene Tunney would follow him out there eight years later (The Fighting Marines). Swimmers Buster Crabbe (Buck Rogers) and Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) got the fever and came out during the early days of sound movies.
Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953) is credited as the author of the attached article, Russia’s Plan for World Conquest, and it outlines all the various methods Soviet agents can subvert and curry-favor among the various youth and labor groups that are based in the industrialized democracies of the West:
…here is the Russian Dictator’s nine point program for world conquest, taken from his recorded writings, which are now on file in the Stalin Archives of the National War College in Washington, D.C. Italicized sentences have been inserted throughout the article in order to point up Stalin’s plan in the light of today’s crucial events. [ie. the Korean War]
As Lenin has said, a terrible clash between Soviet Russia and the capitalist States must inevitably occur…Therefore we must try to take the enemy by surprise, seize a moment when his forces are dispersed.
Click here to read about Soviet collusion with American communists.
A thoughtful look at all that stage productions have had to learn while competing for audiences with the early (and exciting) Hollywood film industry:
There is no doubt that the moving picture was responsible for the disappearance of the second-class theatre devoted to traveling companies, giving lurid melodramas and plays of obvious sentiment [but] instead of taking a lesson from the history of this form of amusement, which it helped to kill, the moving picture theatre imitated one of it’s very worst features.
Attached are the results of a nationwide survey from 1954 indicating what the American automobile consumers were shopping for in cars:
• 54% preferred whitewall tires over any other kind
• 68% preferred push-button door handles
• 59% wanted jet-age hood ornaments
• 44% wished that dashboards were loaded with dials and gauges
To read the U.S. magazines and newspapers printed in 1941 is to gain an understanding as to the sixth sense many Americans had in predicting that W.W. II would soon be upon them – and this article is a fine example. One month before Pearl Harbor the editors of AMERICAN MAGAZINE ran this column about Lauretta Schimmoller (1902 – 1981) who established the Aerial Nurse Corps of America, which, at that time, was composed of over 400 volunteers:
All air-minded registered nurses, they stand ready to fly with medical aid to scenes of disaster…Now established on a nation-wide scale, ANCOA, with its 19 national chapters, has already handled more than 3,000 emergency cases.
An article concerning a nasty spat between Yale Jews and Yale gentiles, and when all was said and done and the dust had settled, no one came out looking terribly intelligent.
A short paragraph from 1921 in which the editors of The Nation leveled a charge at the admission departments for both New York University and Columbia for having taken steps that would reduce the number of Jewish students admitted each year.
Writing his review of O Pioneers, DRESS and VANITY FAIR book critic Henry Brinsley wrote:
Miss Willa Cather in O Pioneers! (O title!!) is neither a skilled storyteller nor the least bit of an artist. And yet by the end of the book, something has happened in the readers mind that leaves him grateful…There isn’t a vestige of ‘style’ as such: for page after page one is dazed at the ineptness of the medium and the triviality of the incidents…And the secret of this is the persistence throughout of a single fine quality of the author – her extraordinary sincerity.
During the war years, the boys on the front loved reading about a juicy Hollywood scandal just as much as we do today, and Errol Flynn could always be relied upon to provide at least one at any given time. The closest thing to a Hollywood tabloid that the far-flung khaki-clad Joes could ever get their hands on was Yank Magazine, the U.S. army weekly that also provided them with the news from all battlefronts.
Movie star Flynn was tried by the California courts for having gained a fair measure of carnal knowledge from two feminine California movie fans who were both under the age of 18; said knowledge was gained while on board the defendant’s yacht, The Sirocco.
More about this trial and Flynn’s other scandals can be read here…
A sly little grin must have come to the lips of the editors of Photoplay when they asked Hollywood’s reigning scandal-monger, Errol Flynn (1909 – 1959), to write a small treatise concerning Hollywood morals – and he accepted their offer. Flynn sharpened his pencil and scribbled the following lighthearted defense of Hollywood hedonism; contradicting himself at several points, he opined that Hollywood was not much different than any other neighborhood – and actors are always good because they’re too closely monitored to do bad – and if you don’t believe that, then you should know that the acting trade brings out in all who heed the call a certain character trait that makes any monogamy highly unlikely.
Four years after his stellar performance as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939), Hollywood actor and comedian Ray Bolger (1904 – 1987) was performing in many parts of the war-torn Pacific islands on a USO tour for thousands of very grateful GIs and Marines. Attached is a two page reminiscence about one particular Guadalcanal performance, the men he met and the Hell they paid in the years that followed
Hundreds of thousands of people regard me, I believe, as something of a success: A well-dressed, well-fed young writer, famous for his ties, who has moved upward and forward in the world of letters with a speed veering on the imperceptible; an Oriental whose name has become a word in the English language.
SAROYAN, n., one with money, a gentleman, a scholar, an artist; v., to slay, butcher, club, strafe, bombard, or cause to spin; adj., pleasing, ill-mannered, gallant; prep., near-by, within, over, under, toward.
What, however, is the inside story? What is the truth? Who is the real Saroyan? Is he a success or a failure? I will go over the entire saga from there to here chronologically…
Dramatist and author William Saroyan (1908 – 1981) treated the readers of ’47 MAGAZINE with a number of his anecdotes concerning his close wartime friendship with W.W. II photographer Robert Capa.
They all involve alcohol.
Click here to read an anecdote about Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War.
Never had so many correspondents (450) poured so much copy (millions of words) into so many press associations, photo services, newspapers, magazine and radio stations (115 organizations in all). Representing the combined Allied press, some 100 reporters covered every phase of the actual battle operations. Their pooled copy started reaching the United States within four hours of General Eisenhower’s communiqué.
The first newspaper to get the scoop was The New York Daily News (circulation 2,000,999). The First radio station to announce the news was WNEW (NYC).
Click here to read about the extensive press coverage that was devoted to the death of FDR…
A favorable review of Evelyn Waugh’s (1903 – 1966) triumph Brideshead Revisited
(1945):
Looking up momentarily from our crystal ball, we predict that ‘Brideshead Revisited’ will set sales records and arouse more comment – critical and otherwise – than any book in many a day.
For the Americans, World War II was just four months old when these three color pictures appeared depicting the most up to date (and economical) methods used in the training of Stuart Tank gunners.
A short notice from a May, 1944, issue of The Pathfinder reported that there was a fashion among the American sea-going men of the enlisted variety to wear a particular style of earring in their left ear if they’d experienced combat. Don’t take our word for it, read on…
