Articles from Coronet Magazine
A proud daughter of Georgia, Susan Myrick (1893 – 1978) worked the sixteen hour days in Hollywood policing the Southern accents and manners of every performer who passed before the camera.
Assorted snide stories concerning the Duke of Windsor – the world he made and the man he became:
It is both sad and amusing to see a former King of England reduced by the woman he loves to a ‘Little Man’, to the rank of a meek husband. What should one do, laugh or cry, when one looks at the ex-Caesar in the role of handbag-carrier, a sort of walking ornament…
The ‘real’ world into which the Duke has entered by his ‘own’ free will is international café society, that glittering, gilded bubble floating above the stormy seas of history…The Duke lives a rather different life. An hour or so with one of those American businessmen he admires, following tips on the market, looking over the quotations in stocks and bonds, and he has nothing to trouble about for the day, or the next month or so, until another empty hour obtrudes itself in the almost ceaseless round of pleasure like a hole in time waiting to be plugged by something, anything.
Available at Amazon: Gone with the Windsors
Attached is an unflattering essay by biographer Iles Brody, who beautifully captured the Duchess of Windsor and her unending pursuit of the chic. Obsessed with self-image, this column lists the fashion houses and boutiques that were most favored by Wallis Simpson.
Despite her wealth, the Duchess loved a good bargain.
The Duke of Windsor is now 59. He has arrived at that age when a man begins to weigh his life and all that he has done with it…What can he remember? That having come to the throne the most beloved of all princes, the darling of a nation that would have followed him through hell-fire; he threw away the tiresome restraints of kingship, to gain what?
Iles Brody, author of Gone with the Windsors, was no fan of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, but before he began to outline all their various faults in the attached essay, he first wanted to make one aspect of their history quite clear:
The true story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor cannot be told without clarifying one point right at the beginning: there was only one man who forced Edward VIII off the throne: himself.
Yet millions have been led to believe that Prime Minister and Primate got together with the peers and, with the help of the British press, compelled the King to abandon his hereditary trust.
1970: One year after Mary Jo Kopechne had died in a car driven by U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy – questions still lingered concerning his questionable behavior after the accident. This article concerns the five female campaign aids who attended the party the night of the accident; they were the last to see Miss Kopechne alive as she entered the senator’s car. These five were nicknamed the Boiler Room Girls by those who worked on Kennedy’s re-election campaign and many people were curious as to why they were as tight-lipped as they were.
Here is a wonderful photo-essay that depicts the lives of one of the most pious communities in the United States: the Mennonites of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania:
The Biblical statement that God wished to ‘purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works’ [Titus 2:14] is followed literally by the Amish. They do everything possible to ensure their goodness and to make themselves different from ordinary men.
Throughout the course of her life Lillian Roth (1910 – 1980) had lived the high life as well as the low, and during one of the darker moments she sat pining in the depths of her anguish crying out to God – even though she didn’t believe He existed – a well-wisher approached her with a unique line of reasoning that was so pure in its simplicity it immediately lead her to realize that God does indeed exist.
The sixth American to be granted the status of sainthood by the Catholic Church was a remarkable woman by the name Katharine Mary Drexel (1858 – 1955). Born into aristocratic circles in Philadelphia, she entered a convent at the age of 31. She is remembered for toiling unceasingly among America’s down-trodden while liberally dispersing her family fortune in the process:
In a period of some 60 years, she gave away $12 million. In doing so, she built 45 elementary schools, 12 high schools a university and countless country schools; she supported orphanages, hospitals and homes for the aged; she increased her congregation from its original 11 teaching nuns to over 500 at the time of her death in 1955.
The magnetic power that Greta Garbo still generates to attract the avid interest of beatniks, the avant garde, the hootenanny, the jet set and her own contemporaries is not easy to explain…
Inasmuch as racial integration was the social goal for a vast majority of Americans in 1960, this article made it clear that racial harmony in the U.S. Armed Forces was not simply the goal, it was the reality. Written by a journalist who visited as many as ten U.S. Military establishments throughout Europe and North Africa in order to see how President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 had effected American military culture.
There is only one retail establishment in the world that is able to boast that they had retained the patronage of both Thomas Jefferson and Andy Warhol, and that would be Brooks Brothers.
Diplomats and prize fighters, dukes and bankers, Cabinet members and theatrical luminaries stroll every day through the ten-story building on Madison Avenue. The sight of Secretary of State Dean Acheson trying on a new overcoat, or Clark Gable testing a new pair of shoes, or the Duke of Windsor undecided between a red or green dressing gown causes scarcely a flurry. The reason is simply that the store itself is a national legend, as noted in its own right as any of its patrons.
The attached five page article lays out the first 132 years of Brooks Brothers. It is printable.
– from Amazon:
Brooks Brothers: Generations of Style, It’s About the Clothing
Our movies are becoming more blatantly obsessed with sex. Ten years ago it was unthinkable for a Hollywood picture to show a couple in bed together – even a husband and wife, since this violated an unwritten taboo of the industry’s self-regulating Productions Code. Today it is not surprising to see two people embracing, in varying stages of dishabille… As motion picture critic of The New York Times and as one who has watched American movies from the ‘silent’ days, I can truthfully say I have never seen them so unnecessarily loaded with stuff that is plainly meant to shock.
Click here to read more about the destruction of taboos in American pop-culture…
This three page reminiscence provides an example of the persuasive power of film and it tells the tale of an important event at a small industrial building in Hollywood, California, that housed the Navy Film Services Depot between 1942 and 1945.
Taking the Offensive was the name given to this small, low budget training film that was produced on that dusty sun-bleached street and it didn’t appear to be anything terribly special to the NCOs who produced it at the time – but they learned later that their film provided a badly needed shot in the arm to the then untested officers and men of one particular heavy cruiser that was destined to tangle with three Japanese ships the next day.
Click here to read about the Battle of the Coral Sea
The attached article is by novelist Richard DeWitt Miller (1910 – 1958) who assembled a number of anecdotes and first-hand accounts from people of various backgrounds who had all experienced singularly unique moments in their lives that were unworldly; happenings that could only serve as evidence that there exists a life after this one.
Myriad are the clever epigrams that have been attributed to the famed Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) – and attached you’ll find additional chestnuts to add to the list. These particular ones recall the bon mots he tossed out while prattling-on with various assorted glitterati of his day; yapers like Clare Boothe Luce, Orson Welles, Judith Anderson and tennis champ Helen Wills.
More about Shaw can be read here.
