Recent Articles – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

The Sullivans
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

In 1943, Twentieth Century Fox released a movie that told the story of one of the earlies heroes of the war, The Sullivans. These five Iowa brothers enlisted in the U.S. Navy just three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. Assigned to the cruiser Juneau, three were killed that summer during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (1942), and the two others died the next day. The nation as a whole was very moved by this saga and cherished their memory.

“Five unknown actors play the Sullivan lads. And because their faces are fresh and new, they seem amazingly convincing and real.”

Nazis on Trial
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

War correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998) filed this article concerning her observations and insights gleaned at the Nuremberg Trials:

“The second charge against these twenty-one men was crimes against peace. War is the crime against peace. War is the silver bombers, with the young men in them, who never wanted to kill anyone, flying in the morning sun over Germany and not coming back. War is the sinking ship and the sailors drowning in a flaming sea on the way to Murmansk. War is the casualty lists and bombed ruins and refugees, frightened and homeless and tired to death, on all the roads.”

A Mighty Voice Talent
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

“Eleven years ago, when Fred Allen, then a vaudeville star, was just starting in radio, somebody urged him to hire – as a screwball character – a certain young girl who weighed about a hundred pounds, stood scarcely five feet tall, and had about as much glamor as a sack of cement.”

– so begins the Liberty article about Minerva Pious (1903 – 1979), the zany comic, well-known back in the day for bringing to life some of the kookiest characters on radio.

A Nastier Enemy
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

The Germans we fought in World War Two were very different from the ones we fought twenty-one years earlier.

How the AEF Intelligence Service Did It
(American Legion Monthly, 1939)

A fascinating read. Written twenty-one years after the war, journalist Thomas M. Johnson, who had covered the A.E.F. for The New York Sun, revealed all the tricks employed by the U.S Army Intelligence Service to get the most information out of every German prisoner they could get their hands on – and none of them involved breaking bones or shedding blood.

More about W.W. I prisoners of war can be read here

Reasons for Rationing
(American Magazine, 1942)

Attached herein is a fun little chart laying out the reasons why commercial goods on the home front were scarce.

Witness on Azusa Street
(LA Times, 1906)

Between 1906 and 1909, the Holy Spirit had come to dwell among the people in Los Angeles. One April day, in a run-down livery stable that was converted to a church, Pastor William Seymore (1870 – 1922) broke out into tongues and so did everyone within earshot. In fact, people blocks away began to speak in tongues and witnessing to all passersby. Within no time, the walls of that “tumble-down shack on Azusa Street” were decorated with the crutches, canes and hearing horns of the recently healed.

David Sarnoff and the Origins of Radio
(Look Magazine, 1938)

‘David Sarnoff (1891 – 1971) [had] grown up with the radio industry. At the age of fifteen he became an office boy for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in 1906. When he was 21 he sat at the wireless key for 72 hours, directing the rescue efforts for survivors of Titanic. From there he began his steady climb to the presidency of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA)”. Sarnoff played a vital roll in the development of the telephone, and at the time this article went to press, he was hard at work at Visual Radio (aka Television).

Prejudice on the Home Front
(Look Magazine, 1945)

As the Allied Armies were nearing Berlin and Tokyo, U.S. magazines began running articles concerning the nation’s problems that had all been put on the back burner during the war years. Subjects of concern involved inflation, alcoholism, and juvenile delinquency. The article attached here concern America’s curse: racial and religious prejudice, and how to get rid of it.

His Popularity
(NY Times Book Review, 1923)

In the attached article, famed journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick (1880 – 1954) went to great lengths to explain why the Italian people were so coocoo crazy for the rule of Benito Mussolini. At this point he had only been in power for eight months:

“Mussolini has the people hypnotized, but he has been given so much rope that he is sure to hang himself in the end.”

Ewing Krainin
(Pageant Magazine, 1952)

Ewing Krainin (1912 – 2004) was a popular photographer in his day, and the darling of many a magazine editor. His most revered image was the Life picture of the scantily clad fashion model Chili Williams (1921 – 2003) – an image that is recalled and explained in the opening paragraphs of this article.

Linda Darnell Downsizes
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Everyone on the home front was used to making sacrifices, and Hollywood star Linda Darnell (1923 – 1965) was no exception:

“Allowances must be made for Linda Darnell who has been sorely tried. Instead of six servants, she now has two – and she hears strange sounds from the kitchen that convince her she will soon be alone. Her chauffer has been drafted; her butler is working at Lockheed. Her flower gardens are a wreck because the Japs who once tended them are in internment camps… ‘Why, this gas rationing… it’s worse than being bombed!'”

The Great Depression and the Failings of FDR
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

The columnist whose opinions are attached bitterly pointed out that the first year of FDR’s administration had marginalized the Congress – and further opined that Roosevelt’s rhetoric clearly implied his arrogant conviction that his administration alone was the only alternative to out right revolution, and should therefore to be seen as a mandate of the people. The article lists the numerous failings of FDR’s New Deal.

CLICK HERE to read more criticism from FDR’s loyal opposition…

When W.W. II began and the factories reopened, the reality of having money and full-time employment made so many people giddy with excitement it proved to be too much for them – click here to read about that…

‘I Backed Hitler”
(American Magazine, 1940)

German millionaire industrialist Fritz Thyssen (1873 – 1951) paid the way for the Nazi party from its earliest days all the way up to Hitler’s place in the sun. When Hitler attacked Poland, Thyssen bailed. In this column he confesses all:

I met Hitler for the first time in 1923… Ludendorf arranged my first meeting with Hitler at the home of a mutual friend. What a different character Hitler was then! He was deferential and anxious to learn. You may not believe me, but he had a sense of humor, actually telling many jokes… Hitler as a speaker was amazing. I asked him how he achieved such success addressing people. He said, ‘I don’t know, but after ten minutes, like a band leader, I usually make contact with the crowd, and then everything is all right.’

Liquor Up
(New Outlook, 1935)

When The Noble Experiment ended in 1933 the United Sates was a far less sober nation than it was thirteen years earlier. Organized crime was stronger than ever before, more Americans were in prison then ever before and more Americans than ever before had developed an unfortunate taste for narcotics. If prohibition was undertaken in order to awaken Americans to the glories of sobriety, it was the opposite that came to pass – Americans had become a people that reveled in drink. The writer who penned this column recognized that with the demise of Prohibition arose a culture that was eagerly buying up

a flood of utensils, mechanisms, gadgets, devices and general accessories [that celebrated the] noble old art of public drinking…