By citing numerous examples of American jurisprudence spanning the early to mid-Fifties, this uncredited journalist illustrates that the era of Jim Crow was being disassembled brick-by-bigoted-brick:
All across the South, the segregation wall is cracking. The hammer is being wielded by the courts… The executive branch is also moving into the civil rights field.
This article recalls the story behind the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown vs. the Board of Education.
Although the attached article is indeed about the famous civil rights march on Washington that took place in August of 1963, the journalist made his primary concern the political gains and losses that remained after all was said and done.
There was a time, Humphrey Bogart maintains, when he saw all interviewers and tried to answer all questions put to him…
But I can’t take it anymore, I’ve had to cut the fan magazines off my list entirely. Just the sheer smell of them drives me crazy. They smell of milk. The interviewers themselves treat you like a two-year-old child with their will-Debbie-marry-Eddie and can-Lance-Fuller-live-without-a-wife kind of idiocy. You know the whole sorry groove of the thing.
You can read about David Niven HERE
The men of the Enola Gay were hand-picked experts, chosen for intelligence, emotional stability and discipline, qualities they have put to good use in their post-war careers. Four remained in the service (one died in 1953) and the others are all successful in their business carees. They earn above-average salaries, all but one are married and they have 26 children among them. None of them has been to Japan since the war, and few have met since separation.
Appearing in a 1960 issue of Coronet Magazine was this piece that revealed the assorted introspective perceptions of the crew of the Enola Gay.
In the fifteen years that had past since the dropping of the Atomic bomb these are the personal thoughts that were produced after years of sober reflection concerning their part in one of the preeminent events of the last century:
After 15 years the scene over Hiroshima is still sharp and clear to them, and though they disagree on details, they are unanimous on the point of whether they’d do the same things again.
Throughout the course of the Second World War, the city of Munich was bombed seventy-four times by both the Royal Air Force as well as the U.S. Army Air Corps. The attached article gives an account of the third of these attacks.
Giant four-motored planes flew in over their targets so low that they could clearly see the Brown House and the Beer Hall where Hitler organized his 1923 putsch… The citizens of Munich will, no doubt, be thinking of their Fuehrer today as they survey the bombed-out buildings and piles of rubble in the streets where Hitler first harangued them about his political ideas.
For the production of Snow White (1938), the Disney artists had gone to great lengths in order to properly portray the manner in which young women move; these efforts were rewarded at the box-office to such a high degree that the same devotion was applied to the study of deer anatomy in their efforts to create Bambi (1942).
We had to remember, that Disney has a ruthless fidelity to the physical scene, to the truth of nature, even when he may seem to be distorting nature.
Click here to read more articles about Disney animation.
There is a new girl out at MGM in Culver City named Esther Williams (1921 – 2013), who is a cross between Lana Turner and a seal…Miss Williams happens to be that fortunate thing known as ‘a knockout’ – in looks and one of the greatest swimmers in the world.
Click here to read about Marilyn Monroe and watch a terrific documentary about her life.
Coca-Cola may be the real thing, but in 1940 Pepsi had launched the ad that made Madison Avenue sit up and realize the true power of radio advertising. It was the famous radio jingle that we still hear today in every play, movie and TV show wishing to create the perfect Forties atmosphere – you know the one: Pepsi Cola hits the spot, etc., etc., etc. A real toe-tapper. The attached article will clue you-in to it’s significance.
Here is one of the reviews of Pattern of Conquest
Harsch says that German morale is ‘fundamentally unsound’ however, and that it took a bad beating when the RAF first bombed Berlin, which Marshal Goering had said would happen only ‘over his dead body’. (‘Have you heard the news?’ Berliners asked each other, after the first raids. ‘Goering’s dead.’)
Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.
Comparing the American [daylight] raids with the RAF [nighttime] incursions, it was certainly a great shock to Berliners to find their city now open to round-the-clock bombing.
We don’t mind the Yanks who come when the sun shines and it’s warm. It’s the Tommies sneaking in at night that we don’t like so much.
When 22 divisions were cut off by the Russians at the gates of Stalingrad, the Nazis had to rely on air transport for contact with the surrounded troops. One mid-December day a German cargo plane was shot down on its way from the ringed divisions. The wreckage yielded some three hundred letters from doomed soldier of der Fuehrer. The Soviets selected and published a typical one:
It is hard to confess even to myself, but it seems to me that at Stalingrad we shall soon win ourselves to death.
Click here to read an assessment of the late-war German soldier…
Soviet counterblows have thrown the Germans back in some places in the Stalingrad area. The early communique announced today that several of the city’s streets were recaptured in bloody hand-to-hand battles.
Petain clamped the chains of Nazi slavery on the men and women of France today. The aged Marshal, Pierre Laval, and their quisling cabinet, promulgated a decree ordering all French men and women to compulsory labor. The decree, which the Government frankly admitted meant slavery in Germany for thousands of Frenchmen, was signed by Petain on Friday night.
Click here to read about the enslavement of Europe…
The Red Army crossed the Don River at three points and advanced spearheads upwards of ten miles to the south of the Stalingrad Axis seige army, threatening it with more strict encirclement and at the time moving the key city of Caucacus. Moscow dispatches stressed the importance of this action which apparently swings a considerable weight along the railroad toward Rostov.
Here is a Crisis Magazine summary of the all the various lynchings that had been recorded in the United States between the years 1885 through 1918. Additional lists are provided that give an account of the participating states for the year 1918, the genders of the victims and the racial group to which they belonged.
Click here for the Ku Klux Klan Archive.
Here is an article about one of the most innovative minds in the nascent world of Hollywood makeup design; it belonged to a fellow named Jack Dawn (1892 – 1961). Dawn was under contract at MGM for decades and worked on over two hundred films, his most being the film that is discussed herein: The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM). The article briefly touches upon the thin, rubbery masks that he created after having made numerous in depth studies of human bone and muscle.
