Coronet Magazine – Page 10 – Old Magazine Articles

‘The Strange Death of Heinrich Himmler”
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Here is an eyewitness account of the suicide of Heinrich Himmler as told by Major John C. Schwarzwalder, a former member of the intelligence division of the U.S. Army Services Forces:

…At the end of the search an army doctor told Himmler to open his mouth. The prisoner did so, but Himmler bit down. The doctor withdrew his finger hastily. Himmler then ground his teeth together and swallowed hard. Some say he smiled grimly. In another second he was on the floor writhing in agony…

He Murdered Trotsky
(Coronet Magazine, 1959)

On the afternoon of August 20, 1940, in the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacán, Leon Trotsky (b. 1878) was murdered by Ramón Mercader (1914 – 1978). Mercader (alias Jacques Mornard) was a Spanish Communist and a Moscow-trained agent of Joseph Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD.

The attached article pertains to Mercader’s 20-year incarceration at the Mexican Lecumberri Penitentiary, where he was constrained in semi-luxurious accommodations, complete with a telephone, silk pajamas, a book collection, newspapers and weekly conjugal visits – courtesy of the Worker’s Paradise.

Click here to read a 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky.

The Great Depression and the Sexes
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Unemployment permitted a great deal more companionship between young men and young women, which ordinarily would have led to marriage. The only thing lacking was money. The arrangements called, simply, ‘living together’ became common. Often the man or woman was married, and couldn’t get , couldn’t afford, or didn’t want a divorce. Sometimes the man simply refused to marry, and the woman took him into her home or moved into his as the next best thing…

You Might Also Care to Know About The Sex Manners of the Twenties or Men & Women During W.W. II

My Brother Groucho
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)

In this six page essay Harpo Marx tells the tale of Groucho (1890 – 1977) as only an older brother could see it. From the Marx family’s earliest days in the slums of New York and Groucho’s first entertainment job (he was 13), Harpo (1888 – 1964) briefly recounts his brother’s wins and losses leading up to the team’s first popular show on Broadway (I’ll Say She Is, 1923) and the man’s travails on his T.V. game show, You Bet Your Life.

Groucho’s infatuation with the language has been the backbone of his entire life and has, undoubtedly, played the largest single part in shaping him into one of the greatest wits of our time. Groucho doesn’t regard words the way the rest of us do. He looks at a word in the usual fashion. Then he looks at it upside down, backwards, from the middle out to the ends, and from the ends back to the middle…Groucho doesn’t look for double meanings. He looks for quadruple meanings. And usually finds them.

Click here to read about the manner in which the Marx Brothers would test their jokes.

Jokes in Germany
(Coronet Magazine, 1939)

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).

Stalin at 72
(Coronet Magazine, 1952)

When the attached article hit the newsstands in May of 1952 Joseph Stalin had less than a year to live and like most totalitarians living on borrowed time, the heavily guarded diminutive dictator had his public appearances drastically reduced in number:

Today he lives in isolation unrivaled by any monarch since the Pharaohs. He must have forgotten what he himself once told the historian Emil Ludwig: ‘Any man on a high pinnacle is lost the instant he loses touch with the masses.’

The article has a fair amount of Stalin minutia you might find interesting.

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia
(Coronet Magazine, 1956)

An exceptional article about Fiorello LaGuardia (1882 – 1947), who is remembered to have been one of the great mayors of New York City (1934 – 1945). Written by a fellow who knew him well, you get a sense of his energy, humor and strong sense of civic duty:

At exactly midnight on January 1, 1934, Fiorello H. LaGuardia took the oath of office as Mayor of New York City. At exactly one minute after midnight, he ordered the arrest of the most notorious gangster in town: Lucky Luciano. This jet-propelled momentum never let up during the next 12 years.

The article is composed of a series of anecdotes that clearly illustrate his humanity, making you feel somewhat at a loss for never having known him yourself.

Even today, LaGuardia’s memory is so revered that New Yorkers conveniently forget that he was a Republican.

Click here to read about the NYC air-raid wardens of W. W. II…

The Frenzy for Rudolph Valentino
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)

Even as late as 1951, those eccentric little movie theaters that ran only thirty year-old flicks filled their seats with middle-aged women who still nursed a flame for Rudolph Valentino (1895 – 1926); their beau ideal from the mad Twenties who so many imagined to have been the perfect lover.

Levi Strauss and his Denim
(Coronet Magazine, 1956)

The attached piece was written in the shadows of W.W. II – a time when Levi Strauss’ famous blue jean fabric was not simply being woven for the 12,000,000 souls in the U.S. military, but also the civilian war-workers who donned jean overalls and found them ideal for the heavy, industrial labor that they faced each day.

As if this wasn’t enough to keep the factories of Levi Strauss & Co. humming happily, the American teenagers also discovered blue jeans in the around the same time and have been devoted to them ever since. The author of this article could never have known that the social revolution that made the name Levi a household word all across the globe was only nine years away.

Read About the History of the T-Shirt

An article about 1940s denim can be read here…

The Submarine that Killed 9,400 People
(Coronet Magazine, 1958)

This article recalls an event in W.W. II history that is still remembered today as the greatest maritime disaster of all time: January 30, 1945, when Soviet Navy submarine S-13 sank the German liner Wilhelm Gustloff as she fled the Danzig port overloaded with fleeing refugees.

Written 18 years after the attack, this article erroneously attributes the sinking to two submarines and killing 8,000; but this was not the case.

Che Guevara: Undeserving Fashion Icon
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

In our times, the handsome face of Che Guevara can be seen everywhere – tee-shirts, hoodies, key,chains, tote bags and much more. But is it suitable? He was a common murderer.

More Letters From Vietnam
(Coronet Magazine, 1970)

More article about the Vietnam War can be found here…Read more …

The Unusual Case of Henry Fonda
(Coronet Magazine, 1953)

Click here to read an article about Jane Fonda at the beginning of her career. Click here to read about

The FDR Assassination Attempt
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

The attached article recalls that seldom remembered day in February of 1933 when Giuseppe Zangara (1900 – 1933) fired fifteen bullets wildly into a Florida crowd in an attempt to murder President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt.

The Early CIA
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)

The CIA is a young and relatively untested child in the strange world of intelligence. The enemy dourly accuses it of ‘Black Warfare.’ But there is definite proof of its success. Radio Moscow never misses a chance to scream shrilly of ‘the extended spy network of the Wall Street mercenaries.’

The CIA formula avoids the fog of rumor that fills any world capital, and goes straight to the hard facts of the enemy’s economy, production, transportation, raw materials and manpower. A modern war must be organized, much of it in the open, long in advance. Guns must be manufactured; munitions, food, and raw materials stockpiled; railways and roads expanded and soldiers trained. The allocation of scarce Soviet-controlled steel is far more important than the minutes of the Politburo.

In 1958, Fidel Castro wrote an article for an American magazine in which he thoroughly lied about his intentions; click here to read it.

The Cold War Began with Igor Gouzenko
(Coronet Magazine, 1953)

On September 5, 1945, N.K.V.D. cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko (1919 – 1982) severed ties with his masters at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa and high-tailed it over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with tales of extensive Soviet espionage throughout all of North America. The news of this defection and the intelligence he delivered sent shock waves throughout Washington, London, Moscow, and Ottawa – historians insist that this was the event that sparked the Cold War and altered the course of the Twentieth Century.

The Fabulous Brazil Nuts
(Coronet Magazine, 1956)

In 1956 the editors of CORONET Magazine saw fit to print this three page history of the Brazil nut; a fruit that has been popular in much of Europe for centuries but seldom known by the Brazilians or their neighbors:

The Brazil nut is the world’s most fabulous nut, fabulous in the manner of its growth, its gathering, its distribution and the perils associated with bringing it out of the Amazon jungle where it thrives.

The nut has been consistently exported to Great Britain, Germany and other European countries since 1633. After W.W. II, a large share of the annual crop was shipped to the United States, as well, where the raw nuts were shelled and reshipped throughout the world.

Licorice
(Coronet Magazine, 1954)

Licorice – it ain’t just for watching movies any more because in the mid-to-late Forties scientists [had] found that there is a black magic in licorice, a versatile chemical which is already playing a considerable part in your life. Licorice has been harnessed as a fire retardant, weather insulation, medicine and a moisturizer for a few agriculture products. The ancient Egyptians were the first to discover it and they recognized its benefits from the start.