editor – Page 235 – Old Magazine Articles

The Well-Born Officer
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

By editor / July 29, 2015

For it’s October issue, the editors of VANITY FAIR magazine stepped up to the plate and did their bit with this splendid review of all the finest uniform apparel that New York City offered it’s silk stocking officers. The article is nicely illustrated with photographs of a double-breasted mackinaw coat, two officer blouses (one of a wool-silk blend), a classic silk knit service tie as well as a very fine trench boot.

New From Amazon: Doughboys on the Great War:
How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experience

1918, Magazine Advertisement, U.S. Army Uniforms of World War One

The Fifth Avenue Soldier
(Advertisement, 1918)

By editor / July 29, 2015

The haberdashers of the Franklin Simon Company of Fifth Avenue, New York City, simply must not have been reading the many news reports regarding the horrors of industrial warfare. Indeed, their concept of coping with such carnage involved offering such sale items as silk handkerchiefs, cashmere socks and a dashing bathrobe for tooling around the barracks.

Click here to see what Brooks Brothers was selling During World War One.

1922, Life Magazine, Prohibition Cartoons

A Prohibition Cartoon by Art Young
(Life, 1922)

By editor / July 29, 2015

Art Young (1866 – 1943) was a cartoonist best remembered for his contributions to the radical magazine The Masses, however the hypocritical behavior that was widely inspired by that Noble Experiment, known as Prohibition, no doubt served as the muse for additional cartoons in other rags.

1917, Men's Fashion, Vanity Fair Magazine

Clothing the Camper and Yachtsman
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1917)

By editor / July 29, 2015

For all too few it is understood that fashion need not end in the wilderness: for it is more than likely that that was where the need for fashion was first recognized and it was there, among the toads and the dung, that the Well-Dressed man first crawled out of the muck and civilization

was born. With all this in mind, Robert Lloyd Trevor reviewed the fashions for the enjoyment of camp-life in this 1917 Vanity Fair review. Another vital concern touched upon by the journalist was the clothing available to the yachtsmen at that time:

Yachting is one of the things that begin at the bottom. That is to say, at the shoes. They are the foundation, as it were, for the rest of life on the rolling deep.

1915, European Royalty, Vanity Fair Hall of Fame

Four Photgraphs of the Extended Royal Family
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

By editor / July 29, 2015

Assorted photographs of the assembled German, Spanish, Belgian, Russian, Norwegian and British royal families, posed as they gathered to attend the the 1894 and 1896 Royal weddings at Coburg; also pictured is the group photo snapped at the 1898 shooting party at Sandingham. Queen Victoria appears in two of the pictures, while Kaiser Wilhelm II can be seen in all of them.

1922, Fashion, Old New York History, Vanity Fair Magazine

The Four Social Zones of Fifth Avenue
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

By editor / July 29, 2015

This cartoon was drawn by the artist Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954), who had a swell time comparing and contrasting the bio-diversity along 1922 Fifth Avenue; from the free-verse poets on Eighth Avenue up to the narrow-nosed society swanks on Sixty-Eighth Street -and everyone else in between.

1915, Modern Art, Vanity Fair Hall of Fame

William Orpen and the Portrait of Mrs. Oscar Lewisohn
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

By editor / July 29, 2015

Here is a petite notice that appeared in a 1915 issue of VANITY FAIR heralding a new portrait by the British painter William Orpen (1878 – 1931), which depicted the likeness of a popular American stage actress Mrs. Oscar Lewisohn (Edna May Pettie 1878 – 1948). The anonymous reviewer compared the portrait styles of Orpen with that of London’s reigning portrait painter, John Singer Sargent:

Sargent had a way of showing his sitters as they didn’t think they looked. On the other hand, Orpen has a trick of making his sitters look like what they would like to be.

1917, Silent Movie History, The Atlanta Georgian

Civilization: An Anti-War Film
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

By editor / July 29, 2015

Attached is a brief review of Civilization, the silent anti-war film produced by Thomas Ince in 1917. Sadly, Ince underestimated the power of film as a means of persuasion; World War I raged on for another year and a half following it’s release.

1947, 47 Magazine, Miscellaneous

Irwin Shaw Recalled Combat PhotographerRobert Capa
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

By editor / July 29, 2015

American novelist Irwin Shaw (1913 – 1984) was quick to reminisce about the bad old days of World War II and Robert Capa (1913 – 1954), who fit it like a round peg fits a round hole:

Capa is a dangerous influence because he has perfected the trick of making life among the bombed cities and the stinking battlefields of our time seem gay and dashing and glamorous…

Click here to read an anecdote about Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War.

1916, Modern Art, Vanity Fair Hall of Fame

Robert Henri
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

By editor / July 29, 2015

A VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE profile of the American painter Robert Henri (1865 – 1929):

Robert Henri does not sympathize with the artists who throw their work in the face of the public with a ‘There, take it or leave it.’ Indeed, he has an almost hieratic belief in the power of the fine arts, not merely to delight, but to improve, to uplift and to educate the masses.

Click here to read further about the 1913 Armory show.

1951, Modern Art, Quick Magazine

Resourceful Robert Motherwell
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

By editor / July 29, 2015

The ink-stained editors at QUICK MAGAZINE rarely ever concerned themselves with the Bohemian-happenings of the New York art world, but when the abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell (1915 – 1991) strayed from the standard-issue art supply tools and used a reflective fabric called Scotchlite in the creation of a 12 foot, three-paneled mural – the editors thought it was news.

1942, Modern Art, Rob Wagner's Script Magazine

Rockwell Kent: Artists of Democracy
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

By editor / July 29, 2015

The U.S. had only been actively engaged in World War II for five months when the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) felt the impulse to write about the unique roll an artist must play when a democracy goes to war:

The art of a democracy must be, like democracy itself, of and by and for the people. It must and will reflect the public mood and public interest…Awareness of America, of its infinitely varied beauties and of its sometimes sordid ugliness; awareness of the life of America, of its fulfillments and its failures; awareness, if you like, of God, the landscape architect supreme – and political failure: of the promise of America and of its problems, art has been, or has aimed to be, a revelation. It is for the right to solve these problems our way that we are now at war.

1915, European Royalty, Vanity Fair Hall of Fame

W.W. I and the Royal Families of Europe
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

By editor / July 29, 2015

In five short paragraphs, this writer (Ard Choille), nicely sums up the chumminess that made up the royal families of old Europe and the vital role Queen Victoria played in the creation and maintenance of that bond:

Until the outbreak of the war the royal families of the various nations made up a wonderful club, the like of which had never been known before. Judging from the society papers, most of Europe existed for their convenience, and even the variety of military uniforms was kept up in order that royalty, while at home or abroad, might have the opportunity to change its clothes as often as possible

1914, European Royalty, Vanity Fair Hall of Fame

The Princess Colonels of 1914
(Vanity Fair, 1914)

By editor / July 29, 2015

Attached is a page from VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE depicting the ten European princesses from 1914, having benefited from full hair and make-up, posing bemedaled and amused in full military dress before the society magazine cameras.

The Royals pictured on this page were all granted the ceremonial rank of ‘Colonel’ in the household cavalry units within their respective principalities, as well as a few of the cavalry regiments outside their domains.

Several of the Royal and Imperial women in Europe, who are possessed of military rank, have lost their colonelcies in foreign regiments by the World War. Thus, the Czarina and the Russian Grand Duchess, as well as Queen Mary of England, have been deprived of their commands in the Kaiser’s army.

1945, Design, Direction Magazine

Architect Rudolf Schindler
(Direction Magazine, 1945)

By editor / July 29, 2015

Esther McCoy (1904 – 1989) was one of the few voices in Forties journalism to champion modern architecture in the city Los Angeles. Sadly, the common thinking among too many critics and editors at the time held that Gomorrah-Sur-la-Mer could only to be relied upon for innovations like Cobb Salad and valet parking – but McCoy recognized that the city’s dramatic quality of light and odd lunar landscape combined to create fertile ground for modern architecture. Unlike other like-minded critics and historians who discovered the city in later decades, such as Reyner Banham, McCoy came to know the Viena-trained architect Rudolph Schindler, who is the subject of this 1945 article.

1955, Gentry Magazine, Modern Art

Saul Steinberg
(Gentry Magazine, 1955)

By editor / July 29, 2015

The art of living in the wrong century – this is Saul Steinberg’s (1914 – 1999) own designation for the predicament he has been illustrating for over a decade. In his latest collection, The Passport (the title is a deceptively mild clue to the whole works; it sneaks up on you), he has again and more inexorably than ever demonstrated his infinite capacity for taking pains in his graphic pursuit of melange, drafting, with a vilifying grasp of the murderously essential, our contemporary quest for style – in architecture, in furniture, clothing and machines – which we can also own.

1945, Collier's Magazine, Sino-Japanese Wars

The Wartime Leadership of Sian-Kuan Lin
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

By editor / July 29, 2015

As well as anything else, the leadership of Sian-Kuan Lin explains why the people of China continue to wage barehanded battle against the overwhelming might of Japan. It is a story that starts in 1927 when Chang Kai-shek marched North against the war lords, fighting to make Sun Yat Sen’s dream of a great Chinese republic come true.

1920, Poetry, Touchstone Magazine

Siegfried Sassoon Reviewed
(Touchstone Magazine, 1920)

By editor / July 29, 2015

American poet Marguerite Wilkinson(1883 — 1928) was very impressed with the World War I poetry of Sigfried Sassoon, MC (1886 – 1967); in this three page review she lucidly explained why Sassoon’s voice was different from all the other wartime versifiers and illustrated her point by quoting liberally from his two earlier volumes, The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter Attack (1918):

Such wisdom is the shining power of Sigfried Sassoon. To read it is to come face to face with indelible memories of unspeakable anguish. No palliatives are offered. The truth about warfare is told, as Mr. Sassoon understands it, with vigor and in sight…It is told by a man, a soldier, who will never forget this Calvary of the youth of our generation.

Author name: editor