An article about Governor Floyd B. Olson (1891 – 1936) of Minnesota who allowed his emotions to get the better of him one day in the early Spring of 1933 when he threatened to impose martial law throughout the state in order to confiscate private wealth should his proposed relief legislation fail to pass the Minnesota Senate:
Was former Democratic vice-President Henry Wallace a dirty Red?
In our era we think nothing of bookmobiles and bloodmobiles or any number of other converted trucks and vans that are fashioned for various unique uses; this link will enable you to learn about a Catholic chapel-on-wheels (a.k.a. the Jesus-Jalopy, the Nun-Truck, the Pope Pick-Up, the Bishop-Bus) from 1913, that very well might have served as the inspiration for them all.
At the time this magazine profile first appeared in 1919, P.G. Wodehouse
Click here to read magazine articles about D.W. Griffith.
This article attempted to explain to that portion of the reading public fortunate enough to have jobs, just how the county relief programs worked and what was provided to the subscribers. The journalist did not weigh-in as to whether she approved or disapproved of the program but sought to explain that in places like the Mid-West, where houses outnumbered apartment buildings, allowances for such possessions were made. In the congested cities of the East it might be expected that the family car be sold prior to receiving relief funds, but in the states where distances were greater subscribers were permitted to hold on to their cars.
In the attached PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE article, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911 – 2004), the Hollywood actor who would one day become the fortieth president of the United States (1981–1989), gives a tidy account as to who he was in 1942, and what was dear to him:
My favorite menu is steaks smothered with onions and strawberry short cake. I play bridge adequately and collect guns, always carry a penny as a good luck charm…I’m interested in politics and governmental problems. My favorite books are Turnabout, by Thorne Smith, Babbitt, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the works of Pearl Buck, H.G. Wells, Damon Runyon and Erich Remarque.
A good read and a revealing article by a complicated man.
Click here to read about a Cold War prophet who was much admired by President Reagan…
The following STAGE MAGAZINE article by American playwright Clare Boothe (Clare Boothe Luce 1903 – 1987) appeared in print shortly after the successful opening of her play, The Women:
Of course, writing plays wasn’t exactly a flash of genius. I mean I am shewed in spots…But inspiration or calculation, it was frightfully lucky that I hit on writing plays, wasn’t it? And it was so wonderfully fortunate that quite a lot of people that I’d met socially on Park Avenue, at very exclusive parties, people like cowboys, cooks, manicurists, nurses, hat-check girls, fitters, exchorines, declasses countesses, Westport intellectuals, Hollywood producers Southern girls and radical columnists, gave me such lovely material to write about.
Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.
To mark the 67th birthday of the silent film director D.W. Griffith, the editors of a once illustrious Hollywood literary magazine pasted his famous profile on their magazine cover and devoted four columns to his achievements.
Fashion philosophizer and designer Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) recognized the sham that is fashion – in the attached photo-essay she writes plainly on the matter.
The book is available at Amazon.com:
Fashion is Spinach
Here is another account from The Enemy Order of Battle report (1919) – on this page two experienced German veterans recalled their unit’s battles with the American infantry:
American soldiers took big chances and [did so] irrespective of any danger.
Here is a page from The Enemy Order of Battle report (1919) by the subsection of the same name that was an arm of the U.S. Army General Staff. The report tells of Baccarat, a portion of the Western Front during the later part of the war that was quiet, by mutual agreement between the French and Germans – until the U.S. Army took their place in the French position – and then all Hell broke loose.
General Karl Wilhelm Georg August von Einem (1853 – 1934), commander of the German Third Army (1914 – 1919) granted a short interview to a member of the U.S. Army General Staff concerning his observations regarding the American Army.
1940s feminism bares no resemblance to the take-no-prisoners feminism of today. This is made clear in the attached article by Amaran Scheinfeld (1900 – 1979), a writer, whose book Women and Men (1944), as stated by the New York Times, foreshadowed many issues of the feminist movement. The primary difference between the two lay in the fact that seventy-five years ago it was believed that it was nature that had established many of the rolls played by the (two) genders.
With the close of the war came the release of millions of combat veterans onto the streets of the world. Some of these veterans adjusted nicely to the post-war world – but many had a difficult time. Their maladjustment was called Shell Shock and it could manifest itself in any number of ways; in the attached article, written less than a year after the war, one anonymous American veteran explained his own personal encounter with the illness.
Click here to read a post-W.W. I poem about combat-related stress…
Mr. Junius B. Wood, correspondent of the Chicago Daily News with the A.E.F. recently spent a week in the sector held by the American Army Northwest of Toul. He lived the life of a Doughboy, slept a little and saw a lot. He spent his days in and near the front line and some of his nights in No Man’s Land. Here is the second and concluding installment of his story, depicting life at the front as it actually is…
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
Perhaps one of the first magazine articles about the beautiful actress Martha Vickers (1925 – 1971) who is best remembered by fans for her performance as the fabulously slutty Carmen Sternwood in the 1946 film The Big Sleep.
This article tells the tale of her early days in 1940s Los Angeles and her work as a photographer’s model, which turned more than a few of the crowned heads of Hollywood.
A YANK staff writer Robert Bendiner (1910 – 2009), summed-up the eventful period that began with the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on
April 12, and ended with the Japanese surrender on August 10, 1945. He pointed out that within that period remarkable changes had been made; not merely the deaths of Hitler, Mussolini and the collapse of Imperial Japan, but it was clear to many that the stage was being set for a new world. The foundations were in place for the creation of a durable world security organization and as if that wasn’t enough, there was a new, hideous weapon called the Atomic Bomb that would cast a long shadow across the land and mark this new era as a unique period in world history.
After a streak like that it would not be surprising if a revulsion against big news should set in. It may well be that people long to pick up a paper in which nothing more cosmic is reported than the city’s reception of a visiting channel-swimmer, and nothing more violent than a tie-up on the Magnolia Avenue trolley line.
Click here to read how British women struggled to understand American slang.
A light and breezy review concerning the findings of a U.S. government study regarding the effectiveness of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany:
…the survey authorities report that although air power might have been more advantageously applied in this case or that, its decisive bearing on the victory was undeniable…At sea, its contribution, combined with naval air power, brought an end to the enemy’s greatest naval threat -the U-boat; on land, it helped turn the tide overwhelmingly in favor of allied ground forces.
Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here.
Attached is the concluding essay from a U.S. Army report written in 1986 concerning the spirited defense that was offered by the 101st Airborne Division
At Bastogne, well-coordinated combined arms teams defeated uncoordinated armored and infantry forces committed to an unrealistic plan.
Click here to read more about W.W. II parachute infantry…
Another article about this battle can be read by clicking here…
