Articles from 1939
The antisemitic radio ramblings of Father Charles Coughlin (1891 – 1979) prompted the brain trust of the nascent radio world to ponder deeply the differences between hate speech and free speech and where their responsibilities rested in the matter.
A printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:
[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.
A 1939 article that concerned the rapid growth of the German Air Force, but also referred to the scandalous business dealings of American manufacturers Boeing and Douglas Aircraft had in this expansion.
It has taken Field Marshall Hermann Wilhelm Goering a little over six years to build the German Air Armada, one of the world’s most formidable offensive forces, out of a magnificent bluff.
A similar article can be read here…
A notice from the pages of a 1939 Hollywood trade publication announced an organization for the silver-haired alumni of Hollywood’s silent film business:
Early this summer there came into existence a new organization known as Picture Pioneers, consisting of veterans who have been in the industry 25 years.
Click here to read about the movie moguls of 1919.
Now at work on his first American motion picture [since arriving in Hollywood], the glossily rotund Hitchcock, whose gelatinous appearance and jocose manner belie his sinister intent, and who brightly eyes all comers with a sort of controlled effervescence, happily declares that his first Hollywood opus will surpass anything he has yet done to keep an audience poised on the edges of its chairs.
Click here to read about Marilyn Monroe and watch a terrific documentary about her life.
Whether it was the nog, the tannenbaum or just the good ol’ spirit of the season – no one knows – but in late of December of 1938, the nice Hitler came out for some airing:
Partly as a Yuletide truce and partly because most of them were suffering from severe frostbite, 18 ‘reformed Communists’ and 7,000 Jews were released from concentration camps.
A first-hand account as to the daily goings-on at Plötzensee Prison in Nazi Germany.
Written by Jan Valtin (alias of Richard Julius Hermann Krebs: 1905 – 1951), one of the few inmates to make his way out of that highly inclusive address and tell the tale. Valtin was a communist in the German resistance movement who later escaped to New York and published his memoir about his experiences in Nazi Germany Out of the Night (1941).
…the purpose of punishment is the infliction of suffering. In the tiny, dark cells of this Nazi prison that is the Law. It breaks some men, but it tempers others to a harder steel as the underground fight against Hitler goes on…
Many of the jokes that are at present circulating the land of Hitleria cannot be told quite openly. They are whispered among friends. The traffic is great and much whispering going on. Many people want to laugh. It seems a necessary release…
– so observed one journalist fresh from his whirlwind journey through Hitler’s Germany. He could not help but notice how painfully neurotic the Reich leadership was of being the object of Teutonic derision. This article is about the underground society of whispered jokes that the Nazis created; the journalist was good enough to write-up a few so that the free-world could take place in the chuckle-fest (some were lost in translation).
In Washington, D.C. at least 1,500 delegates from 800 American communities in 44 states swarmed into the Mayflower Hotel for the annual conference of the National Council for Palestine. As one of the nation’s most important and inclusive Jewish organizations, it was natural that the Council should devote its meetings exclusively to the refugee problem.
More articles about the Winter War can be read here… – from Amazon:Read more …
The editors of STAGE MAGAZINE were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident.
A single page article on the topic of Ginger Rogers (1911 – 1995) and her career as it had progressed up to the year 1939:
Virginia Katherine McMath is the real name of this famous star and she was born in Independence, Missouri, on July 16, but most of her childhood was spent in Fort Worth, Texas.
She is five feet, four inches tall and weighs 108 pounds. She never has to diet because dancing keeps her in perfect condition. Dancing is listed as her very favorite hobby, too.
She had her first taste of real success on the screen with the winning roles in ‘Gold Diggers of 1933′ and ’42nd Street’.
Click here to read about the young Lucile Ball.
This 1939 article was written by a wise old sage who probably hadn’t spent much time with a television set but recognized fully the tremor that it was likely to cause in the world of pop-culture:
Of all the brats, legitimate and otherwise, sired of the entertainment business, the youngest, television, looks as if it would be the hardest to raise and to housebreak…
Click here to read about the early Christian broadcasts of televangelist Oral Roberts…
Attached is a printable fashion editorial from a 1939 issue of CLICK MAGAZINE which beautifully illustrated (in color) one of the chic, California beach fashions of the day.
Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Chaplin joined forces with three other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:
[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.
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.
The attached profile of playwright Lillian Hellman (1905 – 1984) is accompanied by a rare photo of the thirty-four year old American writer, snapped shortly after the opening of her play, The Little Foxes:
Four seasons ago when ‘The Children’s Hour’ was produced, that labeling which is the destiny of every important new playwright began. Second Ibsen…American Strindberg…1934 Chekhov…the rumors ran. In this finest example of Miss Hellman’s highly individual contribution to the current theater, the Ibsen heritage seems most likely to win out.
In 1945 Hellman wrote about much of what she had seen on the W.W. II Soviet front; click here to read it
At the tail-end of a very long interview concerning the problems with Hollywood movies, Emily Post (1872 – 1960), America’s high-priestess of good manners, was asked just one more question – this one involved the English language and here is Emily Post’s 1939 list of what to say and what not to say.
• Don’t say ‘brainy’ – say, ‘clever’.
• Don’t say ‘wealthy’, say ‘rich’.
• Don’t say ‘Charmed or pleased to meet you’, say ‘how do you do’.
• etc, etc, etc.
Emily Post had so many opinions…
