1940 – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

The Klansman on the Supreme Court
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

When the U.S. Supreme Court gave their decision concerning the 1940 appeal of a lower court’s verdict to convict three African-Americans for murder, civil libertarians in Washington held their collective breath wondering how Justice Hugo Black approached the case. Black, confirmed in 1937 as FDR’s first court appointee, admitted to having once been made a ‘life member’ of the Ku Klux Klan. This column was one of any number of other articles from that era that reported on the Alabaman’s explanation behind his Klan associations:

I did join the Klan… I later resigned. I never rejoined.

With the Sailor Guns in France
(The American Legion Magazine, 1940)

A seven page recollection of the history of the US Navy Railway Artillery Reserve, penned by W.W I naval veteran Bill Cunningham, who served as an officer on one of her five rail-mounted batteries. The unit was lead in collaboration by a hard-charging U.S. Army artillery officer but commanded by Rear Admiral Charles Plunkett (1864 – 1931), a veteran of the Spanish-American War. Cunningham described his first encounter with the admiral, who he first mistook as a member of the YMCA:

I looked up to see a tall stranger approaching. He wore a pair of black, I said black, shoes beneath some badly rolled puttees. He didn’t have on a blouse, but wore an enlisted man’s rubber slicker open down the front, and badly rust-stained around the buckles. His battered campaign hat had no cord of any sort He was strictly the least military object we’d seen in a couple of years, if ever.

Click here to read about the woman who entertained the U.S. troops during the First World War.

A 1940s Tour of Manhattan
(Click Magazine, 1940)

A black and white photo-essay of a New York that is gone with the wind, written in that wonderfully irreverent slang-heavy patois so reminiscent of the movies of that era. We posted this piece to please that New York archivist in all of you: you will see images of the watering holes preferred by the high and the low, the museums, Fifth Ave., Harlem, and the Fulton Fish Market.

Click here to see another 1930s photo-essay…

Speeches by Hitler and Chamberlain Compared
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

We shall fight until the terror of the plutocracies has been broken.

– so blathered Adolf Hitler in a radio address from early 1940 in which he attempted to clarify the Nazi war aims. Never forgetting that the zi in Nazi is derived from Sozi for socialist (Compare with ‘Commie’ for ‘Communist’) – the dictator was heard here doing what he did from time to time in his speeches; borrowing the street hustle of the proletarian underdog (many thanks to WIKIanswers).

Click here to read another article on the same topic.

The Women Voter in Her First Five Elections
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

This is an interesting article that indicates just how profoundly elections had changed after 1920, when women began to vote. Previously, when the voting booth was a gender-specific domain, the victory margins were seldom greater than 10%; yet, beginning with the 1920 presidential election and continuing through the election of 1936, dramatic differences could be seen between the winners and losers that had never existed in prior contests.

The journalist believed that the advent of radio broadcasting also played a contributing factor in these elections.

Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.

A Sweep at the Oscars
(Newsweek Magazine, 1940)

On February 29, at the Academy’s twelfth annual dinner at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood, Gone with the Wind surpassed [1934’s ‘It Happened One Night’] by winning eight out of sixteen possible prizes and garnering two special awards for good measure.

The Secret Papers of Robert Lansing
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

In 1940, when America stood on the precipice preparing to enter another enormous conflict, the heretofore secret papers of Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, Robert Lansing (1864 – 1928), were released – shedding light on the government’s reasoning as to why they felt U.S. intervention in the European war was necessary.

Hitler’s Military Options in 1940
(Click Magazine, 1940)

A Phony War magazine article by Major General George Ared White (1880 – 1941) in which he muses wistfully (as Oregon men are wont to do) as to all the various, dreadful choices that were spread before Herr Hitler in the early months of 1940.

As varied as Hitler’s military options were, the General believed that France’s Maginot Line was impregnable and he did not think that Hitler would commit to such an undertaking. General White believed Hitler had six options before him which are all illustrated on the attached cartoon map.

Georgia Carroll
(The American Magazine, 1940)

Fashion Modeling Czar John Powers once said of model Georgia Carroll:

She is the most terrific thing that ever hit this business.

Children in Need
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

In respect to their economic status, it has been estimated that one-half to two-thirds of the city children of America are in homes where annual income is too low to permit the family to buy items called for in an ordinary ‘maintenance’ budget – a budget of about $1,261 to meet the normal needs of living in a family of four.

CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.

El Morocco
(Click Magazine, 1940)

What a Time It Was!: Leonard Lyons and the Golden Age of New York Nightlife KEY WORDS: 1930s NY High

Mickey Rooney, RIP
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

In 1940 Mickey Rooney (né Joe Yule, Jr.; b. 1920 – 2014) had replaced Shirley Temple as the number one box-office draw, after having steadily performed before the cameras from the age of six onward. Rooney had been jockeying for first place since he began playing the title roll in the Andy Hardy films just two and a half years earlier.

With the onslaught of the Second World War the sands of Hollywood shifted beneath his feet, creating a plethora of new stars and the need for different sorts of films – from that point on he only appeared in supporting rolls. In 1982 Rooney remarked:

When I was 19 years old, I was the number one star of the world for two years. When I was 40, nobody wanted me. I couldn’t get a job.

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.

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.

FDR’s Third Term: Vox Populi
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

Here are the results of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE‘s 1940 poll concerning FDR’s controversial run for a third term. The pollsters were interested in discovering the voter’s thoughts on the third term as a concept for future presidents – rather than gaining a better understanding as to the popularity of President Roosevelt.

The poll considered the opinions of citizens who voted for FDR in 1936 and those who sided with Republican Alf Landon in the same election. They concluded that 68.6% of poll’s participants were against a third presidential term.

The Biz
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

Pulled from the business section of a 1940 issue of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE was this list of Hollywood statistics that should be of interest to all you old movie fans. If you’ve ever wondered how the Dream Factory fared following the Great Depression, you can stop scratching your head bone – herein you will learn how many souls were on Hollywood’s payroll, how many movies did the town make each year (give or take), what percentage of global film production was turned out by Hollywood and how many American movie theaters were there in 1940.

The Great Native-American Athletes of the Early 20th Century
(American Legion Magazine, 1940)

Idolized, publicized, dramatized, picturesque members of a fast diminishing aboriginal race, they were the white man’s heroes. But the white man’s adulations and his indulgences helped write ‘finis’ prematurely on the records of some of them even as his vices quickened the racial degeneration of their stock.

Sockalexis, Thorpe, Bender, Longboat and Meyers! There were scores of other notable Indian athletes from ’93 to 1915, but the names of those five were household words in the early days of the new century.

Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians
(American Legion Magazine, 1940)

This football article recounts the glory days of Jim Thorpe (1888 – 1953) and his Carlisle football team as well as a number of other Native-American jocks of lesser fame who were active in other sports during the same time period.

A remarkable all-around athlete, Jim Thorpe at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania was a whiz at reversing his field or skirting an end, and there was bonecrunching power behind his charges into the line. He could punt with any of them and was a good drop kicker. But it was as a place kicker that he was really tops. He rarely missed one.

We recommend this unique college football site…