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Hollywood During the Second World War (Yank, 1945)
1945, Hollywood, Yank Magazine

Hollywood During the Second World War
(Yank, 1945)

This is a swell article that truly catches the spirit of the time. You will read about the war-torn Hollywood that existed between the years 1941-1945 and the movie shortage, the hair-pin rationing, the rise of the independent producers and the ascent of Van Johnson and Lauren Becall:

Lauren, a Warner Brothers property, is a blonde-haired chick with a tall, hippy figure, a voice that sounds like a sexy foghorn and a pair of so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it eyes

Mention is also made of the hiring of demobilized U.S. combat veterans to serve as technical assistants for war movies in such films as Objective Burma.

Brush-Fire War of the USSR
1950, Pathfinder Magazine, The Cold War

The Proxy Wars
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

On June 24 [1950] Soviet Russia dug deep into her bag of tricks and came up with a new one – war by proxy. Today, still sadly unprepared for satellite warfare, the US may yet profit by tragic experiences – so that even possible defeat in Korea will not be totally without gain. What has been learned and how this knowledge might be used in future satellite wars is discussed here.

The Show-Biz Blood of Cecil B. DeMille (Pic Magazine, 1941)
1941, Hollywood History, Pic Magazine

The Show-Biz Blood of Cecil B. DeMille
(Pic Magazine, 1941)

At the age of 63, after 44 years in show business, Cecil B. De Mille is still producing. He can’t stop and he probably never will. He is first, last and all the time a showman. The show business is in his blood, and whether he is on a set or taking his leisure at home, his heart and mind are in the theater. He loves to have people around him so that he can play a part, for consciously or unconsciously, he is always acting… C.B.’s father was an actor and playwright, and later a partner of David Belasco. His mother was an actress, and later a very successful play agent.


The article goes into more depth outlining De Mille various triumphs in silent film and his work on The Squaw Manstyle=border:none.

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Problems in British Palestine... (Current Opinion Magazine, 1921)
1921, Current Opinion Magazine, Jews in the 20th Century

Problems in British Palestine…
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1921)

This is a news article that first appeared in 1921 concerning the continuing clash of civilizations in British Palestine:

There are in Palestine about half a million Muslems, about 62,500 Christians and 65,300 Jews. The aspiration for a Jewish State encounters the opposition not only of all Moslems and Christians but of many Orthodox Jews residing in Palestine. …The Zionist leaders, erroneously classifying the present inhabitants as Arabs, expect them to silently steal away, as Zangwill puts it, and leave the Jews free to rule.

When New York City Mourned F.D.R. (Yank Magazine, 1945)
1945, F.D.R., Yank Magazine

When New York City Mourned F.D.R.
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

With the exception of the attached piece, there is no magazine article in existence that illustrated so clearly the soul-piercing pain that descended upon the city of New York when the word got around that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died. YANK correspondent Bill Davidson walked from one neighborhood to the next recording much of what he saw:

Nowhere was grief so open as in the poorest districts of the city. In Old St. Patrick’s in the heart of the Italian district on the lower East Side, bowed, shabby figures came and went, and by the day after the President died hundreds of candles burned in front of the altar. ‘Never’ a priest said ‘have so many candles burned in this church’.
A woman clasped her 8-year-old son and said, ‘Not in my lifetime or in yours will we again see such a man.’

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Lew Ayres at Twenty (Photoplay Magazine, 1930)
1930, Hollywood History, Photoplay Magazine

Lew Ayres at Twenty
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Here is a profile of the actor Lew Ayres (1908 – 1996) that was published, quite coincidentally, shortly before the release of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Universal):

Naturally a great deal depends on the outcome of this picture. Lew is not the type that will go on for years as a moderate success. He will either be a tremendous hit or or a failure.


Click here to read about Lew Ayres and his status as a conscientious objector during the second World War.

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Communist Racketeers in 1930s Hollywood
1940, Blacklisting, Photoplay Magazine

Red Tactics in Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1940)

American political parties have not been the only folks to visit Beverly Hills – hat-in-hand; Soviet-backed Reds have done it, too. This 1940 article goes into some detail explaining all the various false fronts that American Communists would erect in order to attract Hollywood’s empathetic pretty boys – a tribe that is so easily separated from their wealth. Once an actor was hooked, they were steadily relied upon by the Reds to cough-up the do-re-mi without question; if they didn’t – they got the works.

Walter Winchell has already passed on to Washington documentary evidence proving that thousands of dollars contributed by Hollywood to innocent-sounding organizations eventually wound up in the hands of Communist leaders. Police and other investigatory groups have gone about accumulating evidence of the conspiracy.


One of the many Communist-front advocacy groups that milked Hollywood of much of its wealth was called theIndependent Citizen’s Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions; actress Olivia de Havilland was one of their willing dupes until she worked with the FBI and helped to bring them down.

What Was the Phony War |1940 French Maginot Line Article
1940, Click Magazine, World War Two

German Choices In 1940
(Click Magazine, 1940)

Attached is a Phoney War magazine article by Major General George Ared White (1880 – 1941) in which he mused wistfully (as Oregon men are wont to do) as to all the various horrible choices that were spread before Herr Hitler in the early months of 1940. The General believed that France’s Maginot Line was impregnable and he did not think that Hitler would commit to such an undertaking.

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Richest Counties During the Great Depression | Richest Counties During the 1930s
1937, Pathfinder Magazine, The Great Depression

The Five Wealthiest Counties
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

During the summer of 1937 the U.S. Census Bureau released the data that was compiled by it’s business department concerning the payrolls dolled out by the nation’s wealthiest industries in 1935. The information gleaned from these payrolls indicated which were the five richest counties in the country based on personal income. These small municipalities could be found in two Eastern states, two Mid-Western states and one Western state.


Jump ahead to our own time and you’ll learn how much the game has changed: today the top five wealthiest counties in the United States are all located in the Maryland and Virginia Suburbs that lie just outside the District of Columbia!

The Early CIA (Coronet Magazine, 1951)
1951, Coronet Magazine, Spies

The Early CIA
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)

The CIA is a young and relatively untested child in the strange world of intelligence. The enemy dourly accuses it of ‘Black Warfare.’ But there is definite proof of its success. Radio Moscow never misses a chance to scream shrilly of ‘the extended spy network of the Wall Street mercenaries.’

The CIA formula avoids the fog of rumor that fills any world capital, and goes straight to the hard facts of the enemy’s economy, production, transportation, raw materials and manpower. A modern war must be organized, much of it in the open, long in advance. Guns must be manufactured; munitions, food, and raw materials stockpiled; railways and roads expanded and soldiers trained. The allocation of scarce Soviet-controlled steel is far more important than the minutes of the Politburo.


In 1958, Fidel Castro wrote an article for an American magazine in which he thoroughly lied about his intentions; click here to read it.

European Hunger 1946 | Post-WW2 Life | European Suffering 1946
1946, Aftermath (WWII), Collier's Magazine

One Year After the War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

An anonymous opinion piece that was published in the August 24, 1946 issue of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE in which the writer expressed his astonishment in finding that peacetime, after such a hard-fought victory, should seem so anti-climactic:

Consumers goods are so scarce everywhere that all major countries are suffering more or less inflation. A wave of big strikes in this country earlier this year slowed production badly, so that it seems impossible for us to freeze our own relatively mild inflation at its present point.

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'Where Moscow Is Teaching China to see Red'' (Literary Digest, 1927)
1927, China - Twentieth Century, The Literary Digest

‘Where Moscow Is Teaching China to see Red”
(Literary Digest, 1927)

Attached is a 1927 American magazine article that reported on the Soviet influence taking place in China. Attention is paid to the activities of a young Soviet named Karl Berngardovich Radek (born Karol Sobelsohn: 1885 – 1939):

Russia has been the only country to assist the Nationalist China movement to which they all hope to devote their lives. Men who believe in the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ have furnished much of the brain-power that has organized, directed and articulated the Chinese popular uprising in it’s successful Northern drive…As far as foreign culture is concerned, China is still much more deeply steeped in American and British idealism than in those of modern Russia

A Word on New York Waiters (Stage Magazine, 1939)
1939, Old New York History, Stage Magazine

A Word on New York Waiters
(Stage Magazine, 1939)

Waiters are to New York City what lobbyists are to Washington and celebrated illustrator, author and all-around foodie Ludwig Bemelmans (1898 – 1962) had some thoughts on this very diverse group:

New York is full of waiters, Chinese, American, Congo, French, Italian and German waiters, Jewish and Christian waiters, Vegetarian and Greek waiters, many good waiters, many bad waiters.

Click here to read an article by Benny Goodman concerning the arrival of Swing on Park Ave.

Women Migrants 1921 | European Women Search for American Husbands 1921
1921, Immigration History, The Literary Digest

1921 Saw Many Single European Women Moving to the U.S.
(Literary Digest, 1921)

The death and disfigurement of over four million young men during the course of the First World War (1914 – 1918) created an enormous problem for the women of Europe:

A French statesman recently estimated that in his country there are now 1,000,000 women for whom there are no mates, while similar conditions exist also in England, Italy, Germany and Austria.

This article makes clear that in a quest for husbands, half a million women had arrived in the U.S. following the end of hostilities and it was further believed that by the close of 1921 another half million will have landed.

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