Vanity Fair Hall of Fame – Old Magazine Articles

Observations Concerning Comic Strips
(Vanity Fair, 1923)

“From a study that covers practically all the comic sequences, I have roughly estimated that sixty percent deal with the unhappiness of married life, fifteen percent with other problems of the home, such as disagreeable children, and in the other fifteen is grouped a miscellany of tragic subjects – mental or social inferiority, misfortune and poverty. This last group contains a few subjects that carry no definite plan from day-to-day but are based on transient jokes such a Prohibition and the income tax.”

The Rise and Fall of Cubism
(Vanity fair, 1923)

Numerous deep thoughts on the subject of Cubism by a prominent art critic of the time, Clive Bell (1881 – 1964):

“But, though in two or three years’ time Cubism may have disappeared, its influence should endure for a generation at least. The service it has rendered art is inestimable. Without it the liberating impulse given by Cezanne had been incomplete. Cezanne freed artistic sensibility from a hampering and outworn convention; Cubism imposed on it an intelligent and reasonable discipline. If a generation of free artists is now turning spontaneously towards the great tradition, it was through Cubism that it came at Ingres and Poussin.”

Siegfried Sassoon on the Soldier Poets
(Vanity Fair, 1920)

The following five page article was written by the World War I poet, Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), in an

attempt to give a rough outline of what the British poets did in the Great War, making every allowance for the fact that they were writing under great difficulty….

Sassoon gave a thorough going-over of every war poet that he admired, naming at least twenty. It is a wonderful and revealing read for all those who have come to admire the poets of the First World War and Sigfried Sassoon in particular.

Click here to read additional articles about W.W. I poetry.

Winston Churchill Steps Down as First Lord of the Admiralty
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

After the British withdrawal from Gallipoli it was time for the architect of the disaster, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, to resign his office. Wishing to still play a part in the Great War, Churchill assumed the rank of Major with his old regiment, the Oxfordshire Hussars:

To have been ruler of the King’s Navy, and then to take a subordinate place in a trench in Flanders, involved a considerable change even for one whose life had been full of startling and dramatic moments.

Click here to read a review of Churchill’s remembrance of World War I .

‘When Women Rule”(Vanity Fair, 1918)

Some well-chosen words by L.L. Jones, one of the many forgotten Suffragettes of yore, who looked longingly to new day:

So far as political equality is concerned I believe I could adjust myself quite readily to a society governed by United States presidentesses, State governesses, and city mayorines, alderwomen, chairwomen, directrices, senatresses, and congresswomen, and I believe I should be just as happy if clergywomen preached to me, doctrices prescribed for me, and policewomen helped me across the street, and chuffeuresses ran the taxis which on rare occasions I can afford to take.

Read a 1918 article about the women’s city.

Paris Fashion: Spring, 1915
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

During the Spring of 1915 Mme. Parisienne had decided that it was time to add some gaiety into her wardrobe. Since August of the previous summer there had been such bad news and although the rationing of fabric continued, there was still much available for the asking.

Click to read about the U.S. fabric rationing during W.W. II.

Eric Satie Goes After the Critics
(Vanity Fair, 1921)

There is little doubt that the French Composer Eric Satie had wished that the bellyaching dilettantes who were charged with the task of writing music reviews for the Paris papers had spent more time in school in order that they might show greater erudition in their writings. However, Satie recognized that we can’t change the past and so he took his critics out to the woodshed with this column.

A Glossary of Terms for Movie Fans
(Vanity Fair, 1920)

During the summer of 1920, Photoplay Magazine ran this glossary of movie terms with cartoons by Ralph Barton and doggerel verses by Howard Dietz.

With new technology came new terms that seemed odd to the ear (it should be remembered that this new technology did not involve the use of one’s ear at all); words to be added to the nation’s vocabulary were fade-out, shooting, box-office and location.

To shoot a scene is nothing new-
Directors should be shot at, too

The Silent Movie Producers of 1919
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

In three short pages this article outlines the growth of the film industry beginning in 1909 to the time of this printing, in 1919.

In 1930 Adolf Zukor was listed as one of the most powerful men in Washington…

Sight-Seeing at the Front
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

Written during the closing weeks of the war, this Vanity Fair article was penned by a rather sly, witty scribe who was astounded to find that those areas closest to the front, yet just outside the entrances to the reserve trenches, were jam-packed with all manner of civilian tourist groups (ie. The American Woman’s Bouillon Cube Fund, The Overseas Committee of the New and Enlarged Encyclopedia, The National Mushroom Association of the United States); an exercise in creative writing? You tell us.

The Great War and It’s Influence on Feminine Fashion
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

The military influence on feminine fashion predates the conflict of 1914-1918 by a long shot and the evidence of this is undeniable. These 1918 fashion illustrations show the influence that the war was having on American designers during the final year of W.W. I.

Click here to read about the fashion legacy of W.W. I…

To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…

Click here to read about the origins of the T-shirt.

Erik Satie and Les Six
(Vanity Fair, 1921)

This article was written by Erik Satie as a salute to six unique French composers who had been working in Montparnasse during the previous years.

To me, the New Spirit seems a return to classic form with an admixture of modern sensibility. This modern sensibility you will discover in certain ones of the Six -George Autic (1899 – 1983), Francis Poulenc (1899 – 1963), Darius Milhaud (1892 – 1974)…

An Interview With James Joyce
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

James Joyce (1882 – 1941) refers to many different subjects in this 1922 interview, among them was Ulysses, his recently released book. The interview was written by Djuna Barnes (1892 – 1982); avant-garde writer, illustrator and playwright.

The 1922 New York Times review of Ulysses can be read here…

New York City During World War One
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

Delightfully illustrated with seven period photographs, this is a high-spirited read from VANITY FAIR titled New York’s Unceasing Pageantry:

From the First Liberty Loan to the Draft, from the Draft to the period of heatless days and meatless days, New York has showed good temper which used to be considered as but an indication of incorrigible lightness of mind. And as the months have gone by New York’s interest in herself as a military center has grown and deepened, with the growing consciousness of the high part she was to play in an adventure that has done more for her as a social organism than anything else in her history.

Click here to read about the welcome New York gave Sergeant York.

W.W. I and French Women
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

Here are five quick sketches by the French artist Rabajoi depicting the women of France fulfilling their various obligations as Mariannes, as sweethearts and as family members.

Hugh Walpole Returns to America
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

A short piece on the British novelist Hugh Walpole (1884 – 1941). This notice concerns the writer’s first trip to the United States following the the close of the First World War and the printing of his novel, The Secret City; which reflects much of what the writer saw in the Russian Revolution during his service with the British Government:

In ‘The Secret City’, as in ‘ The Dark Forrest,’ the author handles very special material at first hand. Mr. Walpole served in the Russian Army during the first year of the war…He was in Russia all through the Revolution. ‘The Secret City’ is real Russia (even Russians admit this), somber, tragic, idealistic, half-maddened by the virus of revolt, yet imposing upon one a quality at once presaging and splendid.

The British Aristocracy and the Great War
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

The 1914 social register for London did not go to press until 1915, so great was the task of assessing the butcher’s bill paid by that tribe. The letters written from camp and the front by those privileged young men all seemed to give thanks that their youth had been matched with this hour and that they might be able to show to one and all that they were worthy.

…For not even in the Great Rebellion against Charles I did the nobility lose so many of its members as the list of casualties of the present war displays. In the first sixteen months of operations no less than eight hundred men of title were killed in action, or died of their wounds, and over a thousand more were serving with the land or sea forces.

A similar article can be read here…

Click here to read about the W.W. I efforts of Prince Edward, the future Duke of Windsor.

Click here to read another article about the old European order.

A Profile of Isadora Duncan
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), said to be the birth mother of Modern Dance, is profiled in the attached VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE article written by Arthur Hazlitt Perry:

She is truly a remarkable woman. She never dances, acts, dresses, or thinks like anybody else. She is essentially the child of another age, a Twentieth Century exponent of a by-gone civilization. She missed her cue to come on, by twenty-three hundred years.