editor – Page 212 – Old Magazine Articles

1945, Twentieth Century Writers, Yank Magazine

Dashiel Hammett Fights the Fascists
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

By editor / June 22, 2016

Dashiel Hammett (1894 – 1961) had a pretty swell resume by the time World War Two came along. He had a number of celebrated novels and short stories published as well as a few well-paying gigs writing in Hollywood. It was during this period, in the Thirties, that he had created some of the wonderful characters that are still remembered to this day, such as Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man). During the war, it was rare but not unheard of, for an older man with such accomplishments to enlist in the army -and that is just what he did. This one page article clearly spells out Hammett’s period serving on an Alaskan army base; his slow climb from Buck Private to Sergeant; his difficulty with officers and the enjoyment of being anonymous.

Accompanying the article is a black and white image of the writer wearing Uncle Sam’s olive drab, herringbone twill -rather than the tell-tale tweed he was so often photographed wearing.

Big Band leader Cab Calloway | Cab Calloway Article

1941, Big Band 1930s-1940s, Coronet Magazine

Big Bandleader Cab Calloway
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

By editor / June 22, 2016

The attached six page article about Cab Calloway (1907 – 1994) makes no mention whatever of the three movies he had appeared in prior to 1941, but it answers many other questions you might have had about the musician’s first thirty-one years.

1916, Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford, Motion Picture Magazine

Mary Pickford: An Appreciation
(Motion Picture Magazine, 1916)

By editor / June 22, 2016

I haven’t a clue as to whether California lawyers had the Restraining Order as one of the tools in their arsenal back in 1916; but if they had, Mary Pickford might have chosen to deploy just such a legal measure in order to defend herself from this obsessed fan who wrote the following essay for the editors of MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE:

She is adorably feminine, from her curls to her toes. In Tess, Caprice, the forlorn waif of the desert island in Hearts Adrift, she is feminine in everything she does. She can storm, but she storms like a warm-hearted, human woman, not a virago; she can coquette, but it is never the cold blooded type of flirting; Mary Pickford couldn’t be cold blooded if she tried. Men of all ages, women of all types, children of both sexes respond to this wonderful little girl in a manner no other star is able to arouse. They are all good and have done some wonderful work, but Mary is child, sweetheart and friend of the whole world, and no one can ever take her place in our hearts.

Click here to read a 1923 comparison between Norma Talmadge and Mary Pickford.

1947, 47 Magazine, Silent Movie History

Son of ”Fast Facts”
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

By editor / June 21, 2016

To be sure, the motion pictures that Hollywood produced during the late teens were very self-conscious, but they were beginning to develop smartness…
Los Angeles and its environs were crowded with new motion picture companies. The American Film Company, the Vitagraph Company, the Universal Company Christie Comedies and Selig found competitors springing up like weeds after rain: the demand for flickers was enjoying its first boom.

1919, Chateau Thierry, The Stars and Stripes

The First Anniversary of Chateau-Thierry
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

By editor / June 14, 2016

Monday, June 2 [1919], was a holiday in the 2nd Division in the bridgehead on the Rhine. The anniversary of the battle of Chateau-Thierry was observed. It is just a year ago that infantry and Marines of the 2nd Division were thrown against the Boche on the Paris-Metz road near Chateau-Thierry, and from that moment on the Americans were in continual fighting until November 11.

1918, Chateau Thierry, The Stars and Stripes

The Battle of Chateau-Thierry
(Stars and Stripes, 1918)

By editor / June 14, 2016

The American performance at the battle of Chateau-Thierry proved to General Foche that the Americans had the necessary stuff, and it was widely recognized that the Doughboys played the key roll in keeping the Germans out of Paris.

The attached STARS AND STRIPES article is extremely detailed as to the individual units (both French and American) that participated in rolling back the Germans along the Marne.

1943, Weapons and Inventions, Yank Magazine

German Weapons in Winter
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

By editor / June 13, 2016

The following notes, based on directions issued in 1943 by the German Army High Command, regarding the use and proper care of German infantry weapons during winter campaigns. The instructions in question concern:

• German Luger & Walther P38 pistols,

• the Gewehr 41 rifle, Gewehr 98,

• M.G. 34 light machine gun and the,

• M.G. 42 heavy machine guns.

The article is accompanied by illustrations of the snow sleds used to transport the German machine guns.

Click here to read about the mobile pill boxes of the Nazi army.

1940s Fashion, 1948, Collier's Magazine

The Fashion Group
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

By editor / June 12, 2016

At the time this article appeared on the pages of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE, the Fashion Group was already over twenty years old and in need of more office space.

Established in 1928 by the crowned-heads of the American fashion industry, it was decided that the dominate fashionistas ‘needed a forum, a stage, or a force to express and enhance a widening awareness of the American fashion business and of women’s roles in that business. This article points out that there were present in that room on that historic day a smattering of women who toiled in the vineyards as fashion journalists and collectively it was understood that the two groups very much relied upon each other.
The Fashion Group was established in order to:

judge trends by watching sales figures, which indicate which fashions are on the wane and which are gaining favor. They travel around to see what we do, and therefore, what we need.

Today, the Fashion Group has offices in every major American city as well as branches in the fashion capitols of Europe, South America and Asia.

1945, Atomic Bombs, Yank Magazine

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

By editor / June 10, 2016

The Manhattan Project was the code name given to the allied effort to develop the Atomic Bomb during World War Two. The research and development spanned the years 1942 through 1946 and the participating nations behind the effort were the Unites States, Great Britain and Canada. Within the United States, there were as many as three locations where the Manhattan Project was carried out however this article concerns the goings-on at the uranium-enrichment facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The article presents the point of view of your basic PFC on the base; how he had to maintain the necessary secrecy, what was it like living among such a plethora of pointy-headed slide-rule jockeys and how grateful they were to be living the comfortable life, while so many other draftees fared so poorly.

1944, D-Day, Yank Magazine

Captured: A Woman Sniper
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

By editor / June 9, 2016

A small notice from a post D-Day YANK announced the capture of a German woman sniper named, Myra.

Click here if you would like to read about women combatants during W.W. I.

1930 US Immigration Info | Immigration Records from the 1930 U.S. Census

1932, Immigration History, Pathfinder Magazine

The Foreign-Born Population in the Early ’30s
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

By editor / June 5, 2016

A brief notice from the 1930 Census reporting on that percentage of the United States population that was born on foreign shores. Within the confines of this small paragraph some details were provided as to how many arrived prior to 1900, how many between 1901 and 1910; 1911 and 1919; 1920 and 1930. Additional information appears concerning the assorted racial make-up of these new American and how many of them originated from both quota and non-quota nations.

Was WW I Inevitable | Bismark on German Competition With England

1897, Prelude, The Literary Digest

Must England Destroy Germany?
(Literary Digest, 1897)

By editor / June 2, 2016

Bismark (1815 – 1898) has long since recognized what at length the people of England are beginning to understand, that England and Germany must come to blows over the right to levy from the whole world the tribute of commerce…

1944, Tricolor Magazine, World War Two

Letter from France
(Tricolor Magazine, 1944)

By editor / May 31, 2016

A British staff officer who was an eyewitness to the Allied breakout from the Normandy hedgerows compiled all the assorted questions that friends and family had written to him in their respective letters and answered them in a public format published in TRICOLOR MAGAZINE:

What do you feel when you see people dead?

Just an urgent desire to get by quickly and a feeling of revulsion which is greater or less according to the length of time the body has been dead… There is no difference in appearance between decomposing men and decomposing animals and the same stench comes from both.

Pictures of Charlie Chaplin (Motion Picture Magazine, 1916)

1922, Charlie Chaplin Articles, Current Opinion Magazine

Charlie Chaplin Wanted to be Taken Seriously
(Current Opinion, 1922)

By editor / May 27, 2016

We have all seen it many times before: the well-loved, widely accepted comedian who decides that being adored by the masses is simply not enough. For too many comic talents, sadly, there comes a time when they slip on one banana peel too many and it occurs to them that they want the world to appreciate them for their ability to think. Comics who fill this description might be Al Frankin, Woody Allen or Steve Martin.

This article tries to understand why Chaplin wanted to play a tragic part in a 1921 London stage adaptation of William Thackeray’s ‘Vanity Fair’.
We have seen such behavior in comics many times before, they hadn’t.

1921, The Times Literary Supplement, Writing

An Austrian at the German Supreme Headquarters
(Times Literary Supplement, 1921)

By editor / May 26, 2016

Reviewed herein is the W.W. memoir of General von Josef Graf Sturgkh (1859 – 1916) memoir recalling his days in Berlin serving as the Austrian Army delegate to the German military’s Great Headquarters (1915 – 1916):

Graf Sturgkh drops several hints about the very heavy losses incurred by the Germans in the very first weeks of the war…

1917, The Times Literary Supplement, Writing

An Englishman in the French Army
(Times Literary Supplement, 1917)

By editor / May 26, 2016

Under the French Flag is a W.W. I memoir by M. Macdonald in which the author tells the story of an Englishman who chose to sign up for the French Army due to their lax recruiting regulations which provided for the enlistment of men as old as fifty years of age. The reviewer believed the author recounted some interesting scenes of early-war France and French barracks life.

Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.

1956, The Dept. of the Army, The Korean War

The Two Korean Armies Compared
(Dept. of the Army, 1956)

By editor / May 25, 2016

This single page analysis of the North Korean People’s Army and the Army of South Korea will clue you in pretty quickly as to why President Truman hastened to get the necessary beans, bullets and band-aids delivered to the South as quickly as he did. This comparison, written by the U.S. Army History Section, clearly indicates that the North Korean force was intended to be an offensive army; well-equipped and fast-a-foot; the army of the South, by comparison, was intended (for some unexplained reason) to fight limited engagements – rather than prolonged, corps sized campaigns.

It was no surprise to the assorted military insiders of the world when the South Korean capital of Seoul was seized three days into the war.

Irish Playwright Sean O'Casey | Biography of Sean O'Casey

1934, Stage Magazine, Twentieth Century Writers

Sean O’Casey: Laborer, Playwright, Poet
(Stage Magazine, 1934)

By editor / May 21, 2016

Drama critic Ruth Woodbury Sedgwick interviewed Irish playwright Seán O’Casey
(1880 – 1964) for the November, 1934, issue of STAGE MAGAZINE and wrote this piece which clearly illustrated his art and politics.

Author name: editor