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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mary Pickford Considers Her Rolls
(Vanity Fair, 1920)

This article was written by the silent film star herself for a fashionable American magazine concerning a few of the difficulties in the way of dress, make-up, manners and technique an actress might consider before portraying a child on stage or screen.

‘The Lady and the Plane”
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

In the June, 1920 issue of British Vogue, an anonymous correspondent tried her hand at prophecy:

As surely as the woman of yesterday was born to ride in a limousine, the woman of today was born to fly an aeroplane.

-that said, we have higher hopes for the women of the 21st Century – however, a year earlier, the Vanity Fair writer charged with covering all aspects of motoring, both horizontal and vertical, penned this enthusiastic article and filled it with the names of many of the women aviators who were at that time, striving to make new records in aviation history; it must have been a very exciting time in history to experience (except for the dental care).

Modern Women for a Modern Age
(Vanity Fair, 1921)

Contained within the confines of the attached PDF is an excerpt from the review of the New York production of the 1921 play, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton 1888-1965) – with much enthusiasm, the reviewer wrote:

We know of no better expression of the creed of the new generation than that which Clemence Dane has drawn up….

What followed was a very short soliloquy which beautifully summed up not only the philosophy of the modern woman, but the philosophy of much the Twentieth Century.

Social Jottings from Newport
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

Here is a mock society page that sought to belittle all the goings on among the sweet young things at Newport during the season of 1922. The article was illustrated by Clara Tice (Art Director of The Masses).

A large and fashionably dressed group of Newport’s ‘creme de la creme’ were observed on burning sands. Mixed bathing was indulged in…Many succulent bits of gossip and spicey rumor have been overheard in the ladies annex during the noon dressing hour and right merry time was had by all.

Birth of a Nation Reviewed
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

One of Conde Nast’s most popular magazines reviewed D.W. Griffith’s film, The Birth of a Nation and gave a somewhat balanced account of the production. The journalist clearly recognized that the movie was unfair to the Negro yet remarkable for it’s photography.

Comprehending the Flapper Revolt
(Vanity Fair, 1921)

In the early Twenties there were a good many social changes which men had to struggle to understand; among them was the Modern Woman. The Italian novelist and lexicographer Alfredo Panzini (1863 – 1939) attempted to do just that for the editors of Vanity Fair.

‘Don’t expect us’, she says to you, disconsolate male, ‘don’t expect us to be like the old-fashioned girls who went to church, and did the laundry, and looked up to their husbands as to their God.’

The Fine Art of Introduction
(Vanity Fair, 1917)

Stephen Leacock (1869 – 1944) had some amusing opinions concerning social introductions according to the recognized formulas.

With the approach of the winter season, conversation as an art is again in order. It is a thing that we all need to consider. Some of us are asked out to dinner merely because we talk. Others, chiefly because we do not. It is a matter in which we can help one another. Let us discuss it…

Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms.

Publicity Spot for D.W. Griffith
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

A thumbnail biography of the celebrated silent film director,D.W. Griffith, appears on a page from a fashionable magazine paid for by the publicity office of the film studio. Directors back in the teens had to be fluffed and soothed, too.

Fifth Avenue Observations
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

This cartoon was drawn by the New York artist Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954), who had a swell time comparing and contrasting the bio-diversity along 1922 Fifth Avenue; from the free-verse poets on Eighth Avenue up to the narrow-nosed society swanks on Sixty-Eighth Street -and everyone else in between.

Click here to read a 1921 article about the growth of the Jewish population in New York.

Click here to read a magazine article about 1921 Harlem.