Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine – Old Magazine Articles

Dalton Trumbo Brings on the Storm(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1946)

Blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905 – 1976) did not do himself any favors when he wrote the attached essay outlining his sympathies for Stalin’s Soviet Union at the expense of the United States. A year later he would find himself in the hot-seat in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (1938 – 1975) where his non-cooperation landed him eleven months in the hoosegow on contempt of Congress charges.

In 1887 the New York Times reviewed the first English edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it…

A Veteran Against War
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1938)

Writer Paul Gerard Smith (1894 – 1968) was a U.S. Marine in World War I and in 1938, when he saw that another war with Germany was simmering on the the front burner he put a Fresh ribbon of ink in the typewriter and wrote this editorial which he titled, An Open Letter to Boys of Military Age. His column is a cautionary tale advising the young men of his day to make their decisions thoughtfully before committing themselves to such a dangerous undertaking as war. Smith advised youth to examine the causes for the war, verify whose commercial interests will be served in victory and only if –

you find that America and the future of America is threatened – then go and kick Hell of the enemy, and God be with you.

Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.

CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…

‘Extras Are Anybody”
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1935)

When the 20th Century Fox executive Joseph Schenk (1876 – 1961) opened his big fat pie hole and blathered-on about what he really thought of Hollywood extras, he soon discovered that this minority had champions in the press corps who would come to their aid when needed.

Art on the Home Front
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

The United States had only been committed to the Second World War for twenty weeks when the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) felt compelled to write about the unique roll artist are called upon to play within a democracy at war:

The art of a democracy must be, like democracy itself, of and by and for the people. It must and will reflect the public mood and public interest…Awareness of America, of its infinitely varied beauties and of its sometimes sordid ugliness; awareness of the life of America, of its fulfillments and its failures; awareness, if you like, of God, the landscape architect supreme – and political failure: of the promise of America and of its problems, art has been, or has aimed to be, a revelation. It is for the right to solve these problems our way that we are now at war.

The Story Factory
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1935)

Motion picture studios manufacture motion pictures. Motion pictures are shot from scripts. Scripts are developed from stories. Stories are written and sent to studios by undertakers, gamekeepers, chocolate dippers, steamfitters, pretzel-makers, judges, dentists, trapeze artists, carpet layers, parachute jumpers, nurses, tea tasters and amateur winders. It is a platitude that everyone owning a pencil fancies themselves a writer.

Down With Christian Dior and His ”New Look”!
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The California fashion critic who penned this article believed that the fashions of Christian Dior stood firmly in opposition to the optimistic, Twentieth Century casual elegance of Claire McCardell (1905 – 1958) and Adrian (1903 – 1959). She could not bare Dior, with his vulgar penchant to spin

the feminine figure in the unconventional manner, trying to make her look good where she ain’t. He seeks the ballet dancer illusion – natural, rounded shoulders, too weak to support a struggling world…Her waist is pinched in an exaggerated indentation, the better to emphasize her padded hips…There are butterfly sleeves, box pockets, belled jackets, and barreled skirts, suggesting something like a Gibson girl, or whatever grandmother should have worn.

Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.

The Director: Frank Capra
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1942)

This profile of director Frank Capra was written five years before he directed It’s a Wonderful Life and gives a tidy account as to the course of his career up until 1942, when he was inducted as a major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

The Death of Governor Huey Long
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1935)

Remembering Captain Uemumra
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1947)

An article in which Bataan Death March survivor Dean Sherry, tells the tale of his jailer, a kindly school teacher known only as Captain Uemumra, and remembers him with a tremendous sense of gratitude.

An unusual story during a horrible time.

Post-War America and the KKK
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1946)

Written in the aftermath of W.W. II, this is an article which cautioned that the KKK was attempting to pick-up where it had left off prior to the war and made known it’s intentions to open a franchise in Southern California.

Spring Fashions
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1935)

Paulette, the fashion critic for the long-defunct Beverly Hills society rag, Rob Wagner’s Script, joyfully reported that color had at long-last come to liven-up the drab wardrobe for the Great American male:

The myriads of color, diversity of design and gamut of styles displayed in men’s shops are revolutionary…The new page in fashion history began when daring members of the nations’ social elite first braved formal dinners in suits showing decided sheens of blue and red.

Prohibition Remembered
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1945)

A reminiscence by screen writer, artist and all-around literary misfit Rob Wagner (1872 – 1942) as he recalled the bad old days of 1918, when he was hoodwinked into believing that the widespread prohibition of alcohol would help achieve an Allied victory in World War I. When the war ended and time passed, he noticed how the Noble Experiment was evolving into something quite different, and how it was altering not only his friends and neighbors, but American culture as a whole.

Before Prohibition, the average business or professional man, never dreamed of drinking spirits during the working day…Now, however, a full grown man with the sparkle in his eye of a naughty sophomore, will meet you on Spring Street at eleven in the morning, slap you on the back, and ask you to duck up to his office where he will uncork his forbidden treasure…

Women, Fashion and Uniforms on the Home Front
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Two short, gossipy paragraphs from a Hollywood literary magazine printed early in the American home front experience concerning women war-workers, fabric rationing and the long-standing debate between ready-made uniforms vs custom-made uniforms:

Feminine uniforms are causing great dismay. Women of small means complain that while they would like custom-made uniforms, they can’t afford them. Nevertheless, designers are doing a capacity business, turning out ultra-chic numbers for those in the money…

Click here to read an article about women’s uniforms during W.W. I.

A Review of Brideshead Revisited
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazinet, 1946)

A favorable review of Evelyn Waugh’s (1903 – 1966) triumph Brideshead Revisited
(1945):

Looking up momentarily from our crystal ball, we predict that ‘Brideshead Revisited’ will set sales records and arouse more comment – critical and otherwise – than any book in many a day.

Television: God’s Gift to Hollywood
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1938)

Young mother Hollywood has had another baby… a child some day destined to take its place in the playpen and howl the living pants off the rest of the brood – movies, radio, music, big theater, little theater, dance and festival. How soon television becomes the fair-haired boy of the village depends upon a number of manufacturing and economic factors…

Read another article about this Westward expansion…

Eyewitness to Pearl Harbor
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Attached is an eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack as relayed to family members in a letter written home a few weeks after the assault:

The noise was like ten thousand factories gone nuts….Quicker than I can tell you, a bomb blows up the barracks with the gang in it, a ship explodes in front of me, a hangar goes up in flames…

The very next day President Roosevelt stood before the microphones in the well of the U.S. Capitol and asked Congress to declare war against the Empire of Japan; CLICK HERE to hear about the reactions of the American public during his broadcast…

Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941

Click here to read about the Battle of Midway.

D.W. Griffith: His Minor Masterworks
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946)

In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art Film Department decided to exhibit only the most famous films of D.W. Griffith for the retrospective that was being launched to celebrate the famed director. This enormous omission inspired film critic Herb Sterne (1906 – 1995) to think again about the large body of work that the director created and, putting pen to paper, he wrote:

Because of the museum’s lack of judgment, the Griffith collection it has chosen to circulate is woefully incomplete, thereby giving contemporary students of the motion picture a distorted and erroneous impression of the scope of the man’s achievements.

To read a 1924 article regarding Hollywood film executive Irving Thalberg, click here.

The Personal Ads
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1935)

Before there was social media, there were the personal ads.

And what, as a general rule, is the personal column used for? To communicate, to sell, to plot, to advertise, to complain, to hope, to invite, to reject, to pray, to love, to hate, to express appreciation – in fact, anything.