Random Issues

I really wanted to do a good job on this issue! After all, I promised it to you for last issue, changed it at the last minute and promised it to you again for this issue. In fact, I said I was going to act like a 1927 subscriber to the Atlantic and read a little of the issue day by day throughout the month. Well I tried, and I hate to admit this, but I found at least this particular issue of the Atlantic to be extremely — boring.

So I’ll say from the start that my heart was not in this like it was in my little cover jinx article, but I did do my best. Is it really horrible for me to say that I found the most interesting part of this issue to be the advertising?

Did I read this issue cover to cover as promised? I’m sorry to say, no, I did not. But I did page through it cover to cover enough times to give you a general idea of both the layout and the contents, and that is largely what the purpose of Random Issues is.

When dealing with the Atlantic from the perspective of collectors we must remember that the covers offer us nothing during this period. They are a solid orange-brownish background with the Atlantic banner at the top and a text listing of the contents filling the page. This issue would be a little more collectible than unremarkable issues from the same period, as it does contain a short story by novelist, D.H. Lawrence. That is definitely the high-spot in this issue.

First I noticed a strange lay-out, that is in terms of the page-numbering. My copy is a stand-alone issue, not part of a bound collection, and appears to be complete, though maybe not. It’s pretty thick and it seemed a little queer from the start that the last page of this thick issue is number 116.

Advertising sandwiches the reading matter inside the issue, so that the issue begins on page 1 and the pages run consecutively through page 52. The front matter is all advertising except for the section titled “The Atlantic Bookshelf” which is five full pages of book reviews. I assume this is mixed into the front advertising area because most of the ads are from publishers, book clubs, and booksellers. This issue reviews Galahad by John Erskine, You Can’t Win by Jack Black, Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe by Harvey Allen, Dark of the Moon by Sara Teasdale, Streets in the Moon by Archibald MacLaish, and Constantinople Settings and Traits by H.G. Dwight, plus makes mentions of seven non-fiction titles and five novels including The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, which “have received definite commendation from members of the Board.”

Returning to page count, immediately following page 52, the last of the advertising up front, is page 145 which includes The Atlantic Monthly banner and February, 1927 issue date and can only be assumed to be the first page of this issue’s editorial. Skipping ahead of the meat of the matter for a moment, the original contents then run consecutively through page 288. Following page 288 is page 53 which is a continuation of the advertising. My last page is page 116, which leaves me wondering where are pages 117 through 144. My issue is a bit tattered, so the best that I can come up with is that this section, pretty obviously containing advertising if it does exist, had been torn out and discarded. Hopefully there weren’t any really neat ads!

Advertising for the most part is placed thematically throughout the issue. Other than the cover the only images accompanying this profile are those of ads, because, well, those are the only images that the Atlantic offered us at this time. First we have all of those literary related ads that I’ve already mentioned from a page announcing the Atlantic‘s own recently released titles, to a collection of Conrad’s works from Doubleday, Page, and Company, a full-page ad for “The Lazy Colon” which was probably as exciting to read as the Atlantic at this time, Modern Library offering its newest titles, an in-house ad for the Atlantic College Essay Contest and another for the Atlantic High School Essay Contest, and The Literary Guild of America, which has a sketch and a message from editor-in-chief Charles Van Doren. This is followed by a section titled “Educational Directory” which has business-card sized ads for schools around the country.

The back of the magazine has quite a few ads for pianos in addition to the more usually advertised products of the time such as Camel Cigarettes, Cadillac, Listerine, Frigidaire, Marlboro Cigarettes, RCA-Radiola, and then several investments-related and travel-related ads surely targeted at the more highly educated and assumed to be better employed readers of The Atlantic.

The best part of the text inside this issue was, for me, “The Contributers’ Column” which includes a short summary of each of the contents in this issue along with letters from readers.

First, an aside. Where did my dissatisfaction come from with this issue? I think I was expecting too much. Personally, 1927 sounds like about as exciting of a time in recent American history that I could think of. Readers and editors of the Atlantic seemed to missed out on the fun. No references to Babe Ruth, Clara Bow, bathtub gin, mobsters or the Charleston, or what I more likely expected to find: commentaries about the social consequences of these or similar people/events of the time. This leads me to believe I would have been too busy having fun in 1927 to bother with the Atlantic, a publication I liked well-enough to subscribe to for a few years in the early 90’s and then make a regular newsstand purchase when I was commuting to Manhattan a decade later. The bits and pieces that I read were very dry, more stuffy than expected, and surely aimed at a completely academic audience and not targeted towards a more general cosmopolitan audience as I’ve found them to be more recently. Anyway, that was my overall impression of this always highly-regarded publication.

That said, I’m going to give you the title and author of each of the pieces inside this issue of the Atlantic, just not very much more other than any summary from The Contributors’ Column or the brief impression any article made upon me when skimming though:

• The issue starts out with “The Stump Farm: A Chronicle of Pioneering” by Hilda Rose, which I assume to be non-fiction in the form of letters regarding her pioneering family.
• This is followed by “Hardscrapple Hellas” by Lucien Price, who the Atlantic notes had been previously published by them in their April 1926 issue.
• “The Modern Temper” by Joseph Wood Krutch appears to be an article about psychoanalysis with mentions of Freud in the first paragraph and talk of consciousness and the libido later on.
• “A Story of Conversion” is by Oswald Couldrey seems to be about Hinduism and a Protestant Reverand in India.
• This is followed by “The Christ and the Buddha: A Challenge Accepted” by Kenneth J. Saunders who writes from Tokyo to answer “The Challenge” by L. Adams Beck which had appeared in the May 1926 issue of The Atlantic.
• “The Bestiary” is a two-page twelve stanza poem by Lillian White Spencer.
• “The Witches of Andilamena” is by the Captain of the Marshall Field Expedition to Madagascar, Ralph Linton, and is published courtesy of the Field Museum of Natural History. It is obviously about Linton’s adventures in Madagascar.
• “Mercury” is by D.H. Lawrence, referred to by The Atlantic as “one of the most individual and distinguished writers of the modern school”. The Lawrence story covers a little more than three pages total.
• “Doomsday: A Saga of To-Day” by Carl Christian Jensen looks like it was a serialized piece as “The Contributors’ Column” mentions that “all that has appeared in the magazine and more than as much again, will be published in the spring as an Atlantic publication.
• “The Golden Asse – A Tribute” by Mary Ellen Chase “reassures our belief in the intellectual attainments of Balaam’s ass.”
• “The Tiger’s of Wrath” by Edward A. Thurber makes reference to William Blake’s line “But the tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” Thurber uses this as a starting point to examine the “horses of instruction.”
• “Bobbie Shafto” by Isabel Hopestill Carter is fiction, apparently a sea story, and looks to be the longest entry in this issue at 14 pages.
• “On Staying at Home” by Elizabeth Choate. From “The Contributors Column”: “Had Elizabeth Choate stayed at her home in Southborough, Massachussets, she would never have known the force of the Florida winds and waves–and never written her essay. It is a wise writer who disregards her own advice.”
• “The Perils of Magnamity: A Problem in American Education” is an essay by Dr. Hans Zinsser, who “is in the front rank of the world’s bacteriologists.”
• “The Greek Spring” is a poem of only about half a page in length by John Finley, Jr.
• “The Missing Rooms” by John Carter is about the high cost of living: Carter writes, “The rise in rents sliced two rooms off the average post-war city home.” Carter is noted as an editor of the New York Times literary supplement.
• “Teach Us to Pray” by Margaret Stuart Lloyd, who is a deaconess in the Episcopal Church.
• “The Causes of Political Indifference To-Day” is by Walter Lippmann, editor of the New York World. Lippman’s article seems to discuss how national politicians target specific states and ignore the rest of the populace…which leads to an indifference to them in return.
• “South Africa: Briton Versus Boer” by Stanley High is a report from the Assistant Secretary of the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions who had stayed in South Africa for three months.

This finally leads into “The Contributors’ Column” which makes brief mention of each article or its author and includes letters from readers of the Atlantic which were for the most part entertaining. One has the headline: Who’s a bibliomaniac?” and was written by a Madge Barton Feurer of Philadalphia in response to an article titled “On Finishing Collector” in the November 1926 issue. The author of the letter talks about her hobby of collecting Whitmaniana, items by or relating to Walt Whitman, over the past fifteen years. She found the article about the finishing collector discouraging to those wishing to collect for fun remarking on the finishing collectors “practically unlimited funds”. She mentions memories of acquiring her second-edition copy of Leaves of Grass which “reminds me of the winter I gladly wore an old coat to buy it. The family said I was a disgrace to them that year, but I was warm–warm with affection for my longed-for book.” Mrs. Feurer recounts the joy of receiving the “autographed ‘Birthday Edition,’ with its personal dedication” from her children who gathered their funds together to give it to her as a Christmas gift one year. She went without a new hat, “amid more groans from the family,” in order to purchase her second volume of the two-volumed Centennial edition. She finishes her letter proclaiming “Your finishing collector knows nothing of the real joys of the book hunter. She is merely ‘possessed with a mania for owning things'” (The quote inside the quote is presumably from the original article about the finishing collector). The way Mrs. Feurer’s complaint reads I would have to assume that the “On Finishing Collector” article which caught her ire was about the collector-speculator, who collects as an investment rather than a passion.

The contents of that letter is an example of the passion I was hoping to find inside the content of The Atlantic. I was let down. But, hey, it was just one issue. Better luck next time!

This pocket-sized magazine, a bi-weekly published by the Leading Magazine Corp, measures just 4-1/8″ X 5-7/8″ when closed. Cover price is 10 cents. Edited by James A. Bryans, the publisher was Martin Goodman. 64-page publication, plus covers, printed in black and white on slick paper. As with most other pocket-sized magazines of the period there’s very little advertising (just 5 full-pae ads in fact), because of the difficulty in designing effective ads for a smaller sized publication. Those are Focus Magazine’s basic stats, now let’s take a look inside:

Hollywood’s Censors: Damned If They Do–Damned If They Don’t — The main issue of debate here is Monroe, referring to Marilyn, of course, and less cuts from the Breen Office, or Ma Kettle and more cuts. These censorship articles are always kind of funny to read fifty-plus years later, as they’re debating movies such as From Here to Eternity, which must have been considered over-the-top at the time as I recall seeing a picture essay detailing cuts in a similarly dated issue of either LIFE or LOOK (I forget exactly which one), and this article also calls direct attention to titles such as Come Back, Little Sheba and The Moon is Blue.

The article points out some of things which will absolutely not pass the code, such as “no kisses lasting longer than 4 feet of film; no slapping ladies’ derrieres; no belly dancing; no unwed couples playing house; no passionate lovemaking (even between married couples).” That last one is kind of general. I love my classic films, even have an entire web site dedicated to them, but looking back it’s pretty ridiculous what Hollywood had to endure from the 1930’s until the late 1960’s. Imagine how much much more realistic some of the classics could play today if they were allowed to film at least some PG-13 scenes. Of course this doesn’t hurt the all-time great films much at all, but how many period-classics would have benefited from relaxing the rules we’ll never know.

New Problem for Parents–Ulcers Menace Your Child — This is pretty boring stuff, and seriously, if you’re taking medical advice for your youngster from Focus someone might want to put in a call to child protective services, but hey, the subject is a little fantastic for the time, children and ulcers, so maybe it helped sell a few copies. The article discusses “bottled-up emotions”, “ulcer-prone kids”, “milk is must”, and other similarly headlined briefs. By the way, this second article is where you start to pick up on the overall style of Focus, its main attribute being that they do not use definite or indefinite articles in their sentences (a, an, the, etc.). For example: “Complacent parents must now take hard look at kids’ eating…” and “Until few years ago, even doctors…” and “For young sufferer, prescription is padded with rest…” giving each sentence within their stories its own distinctive headline feel.

Focus on Headlines and Headliners — This was a regular two-page feature (shown below) that gave quick celebrity run-downs. For example, if you’re wondering why Marilyn Monroe is pictured, besides the fact that these magazines used her image every chance that they could get, it’s reported on these pages that she was greeted by Maj. Gen. William F. Dean at a Bob Hope party in the following manner: “Meeting you almost makes up for my not seeing a woman in 36 months.” This standard feature is followed by another…

…A Tomorrow’s Headliner — who in this case is Dolores Donlon. A photo of Donlon fills about 2/3’s of the page and then a brief write-up mentioning that she just signed a stock contract at MGM and will be appearing in The Long Wait with Anthony Quinn. Most of the issues I’ve paged through so far featured starlets that I’ve never heard of, though one early issue did feature Brigitte Bardot in this spot.

Will Another MAN From MISSOURI Sit in the WHITE HOUSE? — This article is about Democrat Stuart Symington III, whom Focus feels is the only man likely to grab the Democratic nomination for President out from under Adlai Stevenson. The article gives a brief recounting of Symington’s career, notes that he is “one of the best known yet least controversial figures in Congress” and counts among his friends individuals as diverse as Sen. Richard B. Russell of Georgia, future President Lyndon B. Johnson, AFL President George Meany, and Henry Ford III. We all know now that Stevenson would become the Democratic nominee, and certainly Symington couldn’t have been helped by an adversarial relationship with his fellow Missourian and the man whom this article title compares him to, Harry S. Truman. But again, like medicine, I don’t think I want my political news from a gossip focused digest, so I probably page past this article while on my commute and skip ahead to the good stuff…

Handful of Horror — Now, here we go! Focus spent five photos over three pages and the back cover space on this article about a blacksmith’s apprentice from Copenhagen raising a baby bat as his pet. Huh, that’s it? Yep, many years before the Weekly World News thrilled us with the exploits of Bat Boy, all it seemingly took to chill readers to the bone was a photo-essay about a young bat. See the image above for your own chills!

LaRosa Finds a New “Father” — At this point if you think I’m making fun of our Random Issue it’s because I am. By the same token I’m having fun digesting this issue and really think my reaction is what was intended by the publishers. Up next we have a little photo-essay about “TV’s hottest young crooner”, Julius La Rosa, as he appeared on Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town. I didn’t include any images from this article, but of the seven photos five included Sullivan, which is who the article is really trying to sell, and then two small shots of La Rosa. The article ends with bold print between two photos “Every Sunday’s Dad-and-Son Night on “‘Toast of the Town'”

What Women Are Saying — This page includes the image of Rita Hayworth that I’ve included here. Going along with that shot, where I think she looks a bit crazed, or at least I believe that to be the intention of this publication, are quotes from famous women including Hayworth, Mona Freeman, and Arlene Dahl. I’d guess this page is for the fellas, as all of the beauties quoted here are walking a little on the wild side: Hayworth on pre-Dick Haymes marital woes – “I’ve always wanted a son, but never married a man virile enough to give me one.” Freeman on Bing Crosby – “Bing and I are good friends of long standing and I hope a lot longer.” And Dahl when asked if she’d marry Fernando Lamas – “If we do, we’ll have to get some rest first.” I wouldn’t be too surprised if Focus were spilling their own words out of the mouths of these famous women.

Fun For Little Ivan–Pick The Next Traitor — Here’s some black comedy. I’ve included an image of this fun page below. The way that I read this is that Focus has reprinted these images from an Italian weekly called Il Travaso. In response to Moscow purges they printed cartoon figures of high-ranking Russians Malenkov, Molotov, and Bulganin wearing nothing but fig leaves and on the other side of the page are two hero outfits and one heel outfit which is a convict suit complete with ball and chain. The Italian magazine suggested fun for Russian kids who could match the uniforms with the political figure.

Full-Time Job for Chicago Police: Keeping Up With the Joneses — There’s more text than usual in this article about the Jones family in Chicago. Basically a little lurid organized crime piece, the Joneses are Chicago numbers king Ed Jones, and his brothers George (described as “a sharp character with an eye for flashy clothes, flashy women), and McKissick Jones, who was killed in a 1944 car crash. The surviving Joneses are now over in France after having faced off with Estes Kefauver and Rudolph Halley, and the article predicts that Paris is where they’ll stay.

Italy’s I-Don’t-Give-a-Hoot Girl–She’ll Do Anything For A Gag — Cheesecake photo feature over five pages, including a single shot on the two in the center, of Italy’s Silvana Pompanini.

Your Town, an Inside Report on Ten Communities — Reports from around the country of unusual crimes. I’ll pick out the one closest to me, right here on Long Island as an example: “New Hyde Park, NY: Wily thieves stymied police with shrewd hold-up plan: Woman called a gas station, reported her car in a ditch. When owner Arthur Goldstein dispatched his only assistant to scene, two bandits entered the station, relieved him of $4,000.” There’s that punchy style again!

Brass Runs in the Family — Most of this feature is shown below, though if you can’t read the names they are father-son duos (left from top then right from top): Carney, Gruenther, Joy, Clark, King, and Shepherd. This feature covers the previous two pages as well and depicts biggie father and son duos Eisenhower and Nimitz along with Twining, with a little text underneath the pics. “Not known for nepotism, US Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force take, train and treat sons of top brass no differently from rough training, rough times they give other servicemen.” My guess is that not so long after World War II and immediately following the Korean War the military wanted to let kids know, hey, if you join up you’ll be treated the same as Ike’s boy.

Dick Shawn: Suh, the Civil War is a Laughing Matter — Mostly photos of Shawn on stage. The article, one paragraph long, runs down his recent schedule and remarks that the 26-year-old comedian is a former pitcher for the Chicago White Sox.

Boxing’s Big Squeeze — The kind of article this kind of pub is good at. This one is about 20-year-old Floyd Patterson who’s been frozen out of a title shot. The article includes quotes from manager Cus D’Amato, who’s convinced that boxing promotions are keeping Patterson away from title consideration and threatens to take Patterson over to Europe to fight. Includes a couple of shots of Patterson in the dressing room and a small picture of him in action versus Wes Bascom.

Daredevils Beg to Be Buried Alive — Photo-essay, shown at the right. This is Italian Tino Caspani, who shattered the old record of being buried alive by thirty minutes when he stayed underground for one hour. Hmm, Italy, huh. Isn’t that where those Russian cut-out dolls come from?

Focus Cheers Mrs. John Lodge — Another regular feature, each issue “Cheers” someone on the left facing page and the “Sneers at” someone on the right facing page. They’re cheering Mrs. John Lodge this issue, wife of the Governor of Connecticut, who crowned the University of Connecticut’s “Campus Queen,” Audrey Peterson. What’s funny about this is that Focus is cheering Mrs. Lodge “for making first ladies look like something more than austere biddies in big mansions, for keeping youth and attractiveness despite rise and fall of husband’s political fortunes.” Well, if she’s so wonderful, and worthy of a cheer, how come I still don’t know her first name? She’s referred to three times including the headline as Mrs. John Lodge and once more as simply Mrs. Lodge. Beyond Mrs. Lodge and even our “Campus Queen” whom she’s pictured with, all you think about leaving this article is John Lodge himself.

Focus Sneers at Jaywalker Georgi Zarubin — We’re sneering at Mr. Zarubin because this darned red, a Soviet Ambassador, had the nerve to walk out of the US State Department Building in Washington and jaywalk across the street. “Focus doesn’t care what Zarubin does back on Moscow’s Mokhovaya St…But Focus sneers at glum Georgi for flouting US traffic laws, advises Russian to quit jaywalking or wind up in hospital.” Wow, was that a threat? Seriously though, cheers and sneers, must have been a very slooow week or two.

They Skate on Hot Ice — Mexican ice-skating. Mostly pics though Focus solves the mystery of how in a photo-caption which informs the reader that the “Ice was crushed by hand, packed between brine pipes until frozen.” When I came to the first page of this three-page article I expected to turn the page and see a bunch of ice-skating girls in skimpy outfits twirling around under the Mexican sun, but they didn’t go there.

News Out of Focus — Regular feature similar to the previous “Your Town” report, only this is worldwide and not crimes but little incidents that Focus editors must have found funny. Example: “Buffalo, NY: Hotel on the Lake Erie waterfront boosted its rates ‘to keep out the riff-raff.’ The increase: from 25 to 30 cents a night.” Another from “Jersey City, NJ: A 37-year-old Bergenfield woman was indicted on charges of using phony names in passing two rubber checks worth $50. Her real name: Mrs. Myrtle Incognito.”

Our No. 1 Man-Trap–7-1/2 Million Love-Starved Widows — Kind of a given after all of the epic warfare I would think, but Focus reports that the 7-1/2 million American widows outnumber American widowers by 3 to 1 and “Since less than 10% of our widows have young children to care for, and only 1/3 are fully employed, it is the idle, empty-handed housewife…who gives hardest, hottest chase to mateless man. Sexual urge is a powerful driving force…” And I think with this final feature article we can say once and for all that Focus is totally geared towards a male audience, who certainly reveled to Focus’s claim that this problem is “evidenced by growing army of predatory widows roaming bars and other public places.” Go get ’em fellows, oh wait, this is supposed to be a problem. I can just see poor John-Q-1954 jumping off the train after closing his copy of Focus, eager to get out to the bar and then wondering where all of these lonesome widows are!

to the Editor: — A couple of letters to the editor, nothing special here.

Final verdict on Focus: Well, if it were 1954 right now I wouldn’t be reading this trash, that’s for sure, but at the same time it’s Focus’s trashy content along with sports and movie profiles that make them a little bit collectible today. I have a few issues listed in my eBay Store right now priced out between $6.00 and $9.50. I had previously sold others at auction for similar prices. Highly collectible, no, but definitely fun, and worth adding a few issues to your collection if you’re interested in the content.

Breaking down this issue of Colliers Magazine to its nuts and bolts it has 46 pages, a count which includes the front cover and inside-front cover, plus the 2 pages made up of the inside-back cover and back cover, for 48 pages total. Including the covers there are 12-1/2 pages of total advertising which comes to about 26% of the issue. The largest category in this issue is fiction, which comprises 21 total pages or a whopping 44% of this magazine. Articles and non-fiction, which I’ve counted as everything that is not fiction or advertising, take up another 13-1/2 pages or 28%. That gets us to 98% with the little bit left over being the Jack Frost cover illustrated by E.M. Jackson.

Well, sitting down with this issue, I’ve got to tell you, I wasn’t about to read 21 pages of fiction. If it were a book, I would have read all of the stories for you, but this is an oversized magazine where each four column page measures approximately 10-3/4″ X 14″ so we’re talking about a lot of words here! Besides that, it’d be pretty boring if I were to report back to you summaries of these often antiquated stories and frustrating for me in the cases where the stories are serial entries that we leave me hanging looking for more. So I’ve approached the non-fiction articles in this issue as I have the reportage in the other issues we’ve taken on in Random Issues. For the fiction, I thought it’d be more interesting to just give you a little tidbit of information about each author, as this is a star-studded issue for collectors of fiction. I hope that sits well with you. Okay, let’s leave E.M. Jackson’s somewhat intimidating illustration of Jack Frost behind and get inside this issue!

Round 4 of “Bigger and Better” by H.C. Witwer. “Christmas Belles”. Harry Charles Witwer, 1880-1929, was a popular writer throughout the 1910’s and 20’s. His books appear to all be out-of-print at this late date. Witwer appears to have specialized in sports stories with “The Leather Pushers” about boxing and another World War I themed story titled “From Baseball to Boches.” He also wrote “Cain and Mabel” which was later turned into a Clark Gable-Marion Davies film. Main character Larry Cain was heavyweight champion of the world in this story. Illustrated by R. Van Buren.

“The Stolen City” by William G. Shepherd is about the citizens of Cincinnati finally getting fed up with corruption and democratically overthrowing the local government. To illustrate the corruption the first half of the article centers on local drug dealers, mostly in morphine and cocaine, and how they easily plied their trade by paying off law enforcement. This section even goes so far as to show the profit made from dope peddling in those days: 1 ounce of morphine cost a dealer $30.00, 350 empty capsules was but 70 cents, and agents would receive 25 cents per capsule totaling an outlay of $118.20 for the dealer. The 350 morphine capsules would sell for $350.00 providing a profit of $231.80 per ounce for the dealer. One of the drug dealers detailed in the article claims to have made $455,956 (how precise!) over a two and a half year period.

The citizens of Cincinnati had nowhere to turn as corruption spread throughout the city government in both parties. The city government proceeded to raise taxes one time too many and finally the citizens struck back. After voters rejected the proposed hike they went one step further and voted to change the city charter and create a city council of nine members. The council, composed of men of no party, in turn selected a mayor and a city manager. Cincinnati made this switch in local government in 1924. The article concludes by noting that crime is falling and streets are finally being paved with the money saved by the city council.

“The Barking Dogs” by Sax Rohmer. Rohmer, 1883-1959, born Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, is a highly collected fiction writer who’s most famous creation is the classic character of Fu Manchu. Rohmer published under variations of his real name from as early as 1903 but stuck with his pseudonym after using it on 1913 break-out story “The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu.” “The Barking Dogs” is part of the serialization of “The Emperor of America” which was published in book form in 1929. The Page of Fu Manchu is an incredible Rohmer/Fu Manchu site with which any fan or collector should be acquainted. Illustrated by R.L. Lambdin.

In “Be a Sport, Santa!” legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice dishes out a year-end column similar in style to columns still written today closing out the year. Each paragraph names a sports star and then Rice humorously and sometimes sarcastically describes what Santa can gift the star with for 1928 as if the words were coming from the star themselves. For instance, from the mouth of Babe Ruth Rice writes “A fast one over the inside corner every game next season.” On the heels of the Bambino’s 60 home run season those inside fastballs would have surely been pounded over the short right-field fence at old Yankee Stadium. This was the year of the famed New York Yankees Murderer’s Row club, so sticking with them for another moment, here’s what Rice calls for for skipper Miller Huggins: “I’ll take a chance on what I already have. Thanks.”

Pretty good stuff. Other sports stars and personalities whom Rice intones New Year’s wishes for are Tex Rickard, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney (“Please send me Jack Dempsey…”), Ty Cobb (“…another pair of legs…I’d like to pick up 4,000 more base hits…”), The Golf Duffer, Bill Tilden, Helen Wills, C.C. Pyle (“Please drop another Red Grange in my stocking…”), Connie Mack, Yale, Knute Rockne, Ruth Elder, Football Fan, and John McGraw. There aren’t any photos of any of these stars, basically the Who’s Who of the 1927 sporting world, but there are several small drawings representing them such as a generic left-handed batter at the plate who is surely Ruth, a little C.C. Pyle gripping a Red Grange doll, similarly a Knute Rockne character holding a toy horse with four riders. It’s a fun single page from one of the best writers in the history of sport.

There isn’t too much biographical information available about John B. Kennedy, author of short story, “A Way With Women” about a character named Seumas Flaherty. The FictionMags Index seems to indicate his activity over about a decade from the mid-1920’s through the mid to late 1930’s mostly at work for Collier’s and splitting his time between fiction pieces and articles. Illustrated by John Alan Maxwell, 1904-1984.

Next up is a 4-1/2″ X 5-3/4″ box in the center of a page, which I’ve included an image of here, headlined Nameographs. These are pretty neat. Collier’s introduces them as follows:

“There are no rules for Nameographs. Choose and object or a well-known person and make your drawing spell the name while adhering to the outline of the subject. The only limit is your own ingenuity. Collier’s will pay $5 for each published Nameograph…”

They go on to give the address where to send your Nameographs. Besides these few that are grouped together a single Nameograph will appear here and there throughout the magazine. From top to bottom, left to right, the Nameographs shown here are: Gertrude Ederle, Doheny, Wick, John Bull, Tilden, Chamberlin, and Indian. I really enjoyed these as I hadn’t been exposed to them before, and while I can see if you have a steady hand and any sense of how to draw it would be pretty easy to create a Nameograph out of anything or anybody, I still found some of them very creative. Out of these I especially admired the Gertrude Ederle and Big Bill Tilden works.

A serialized entry of “The Water Hole” by classic western author Zane Grey, 1872-1939. One of the most famous western authors of all-time, Grey stories of the west can be found in scores of magazines, books, and films. There was even a western magazine named after him, Zane Grey’s Western Magazine. Illustrated by Harold Brett, 1880-1955.

“The type of joke that is sought after by comedians is the ‘belly laugh’ or ‘wow.’ This is the gag that lays ’em in the aisles.” So says Eddie Cantor who chimes in with “Now You Tell One” an article about jokes: where they come from and how to tell them, with tips for aspiring comics. There’s a photo of his pal Will Rogers, who Cantor credits as the greatest ad-libber of them all. One time when he met President Coolidge, Rogers leaned over and whispered, “Beg pardon, but I didn’t quite catch the name.” Cantor talks about timing, says the best humor is usually self-depreciating, and says Americans are pretty much the same as far as their senses of humor with there being no actual “humor belt” in the country.

A feature of Collier’s was the short short story, in the case of this issue a one page story titled “Long Distance” by Corey Ford, 1902-1969. Ford had several stories turned to film mostly through the 1930’s up until 1946’s “Cloak and Dagger” starring Gary Cooper. But Ford seems to be best remembered for Eustace Tilly, a character in an early New Yorker story titled “The Making of a Magazine and the name given to Rea Irvin’s famed dandy character who appeared on The New Yorker’s first cover and annually thereafter. Illustrated by Jeff Tester.

“Beyond a doubt the time will come when you will no longer see horses and wagons contributing, as they now do, mightily to the congestion of traffic.” Yep, John T. Flynn is mighty angry that the horse and buggy still trot the city streets. He finds it ridiculously inconvenient to modern motorists and practically criminal to businesses being cost money by their delay. The nostalgic horse lover easily has his views shot down by Flynn, as he explains how inhumane it is to see horses drawn to the curb gasping the noxious fumes of automobile exhaust. As for those businessmen looking to save a few bucks by sending goods via horse rather than truck, “what right do they practice economy at the expense of us all?” Flynn notes that some businesses such as ice and milk delivery are trying hard to keep the horse and wagon the normal mode of delivery, but quickly notes that his iceman delivers by truck and that thankfully so too are the majority of delivery men in today’s big cities. Flynn concludes “Let’s Get Rid of the Horse” by telling those who find his thoughts disrespectful towards the noble horse to — “just ask the horse himself.”

I’ve included images of both pages of the “In Pictures” feature for this issue. Aptly titled “Merry Christmas,” the photographs by Ruth Alexander Nichols show what are now all very old-fashioned images, probably my favorite of which is that of the two young children peering up the chimney with stockings dangling in front of it. This photo feature was a regular Collier’s feature at this time and often included images of movie stars or other celebrities of the period.

“The Valley Girl” is a serial entry from Albert Payson Terhune, 1872-1942, which makes me stop to say, wow, what an issue for fiction! If you like collies, then you need to read Terhune. His stories are mostly about dogs, mostly his favorite breed, collies, and his home in New Jersey, Sunnybank, which has at least a couple of entire web sites dedicated to it! Terhune’s best known stories were about his own collie, Lad, which are credited with popularizing the collie breed. Oh, the power of the pen! This story is about a fellow named Gavin Cole, who is attacked by a convict and has his life saved by a collie called Heather. Illustrated by Harold Von Schmidt, 1893-1982.

Regular columns include the political column by “The Gentleman at the Keyhole” which debates who the Republicans will go with in 1928, Herbert Hoover or Charles G. Dawes. We also have “How Would You Play It?”, a feature about contract bridge by Milton C. Work. Seeing how I’ve never been a bridge player I won’t touch this one, but it is typical of later bridge articles where a table is shown with each of the player’s hands spelled out and a description of the play below. Then there is the Jack Binns radio column “Picked Out of the Air” which is more or less the same as columns describing innovation and politics in electronic media today. On the opposing page from Binns’ article is a one-column advertisement for the Collier’s Radio Hour which can be heard every Sunday night at 8:15 pm Eastern time. Finally the last page is a full-page editorial, which in this issue takes a look at Christmas remarking on Christmas cards and Christmas gifts, and ultimately concluding “What can you give? Take a poet’s advice, the best of all, and give yourself.”

Ruth Burr Sanborn, 1894-1942, published stories from the early 20’s through the early 40’s, often in The Saturday Evening Post. An Amazon.com search for any books by Ms. Sanborn brings back two out-of-print results. Clicking on the titles reveal that they are listed as just 4 and 5 pages long. Still, I’ve come across her stories in several magazines of her period. “Round Garters” features illustrations by Henry Davis.

Last month, in our debut issue, I examined a copy of TIME Magazine from just after America’s entry into World War II. This time around we’ll take a look at a post-war issue of TIME’s main competitor, Newsweek Magazine.

The issue of Newsweek that I’ve pulled out is dated October 28, 1946 and seems to concentrate mostly on the return of meat to the market after the lifting of price controls. This meat issue is also covered as a major factor in the coming election, which Newsweek spends space speculating upon Senate contests in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The biggest surprise to me is the mention but lack of truly in-depth coverage regarding the October 15 suicide of Hermann Goring and the subsequent hangings of his convicted Nazi cohorts. There are about 2-1/2 columns of journalistic coverage of the aftermath of the Nuremberg Trials but editorial comment is lacking. I originally assumed that deeper coverage would be found in the following issue, dated November 4, 1946, perhaps due to a lag in international reportage. This could be true, I don’t have the next issue on hand to prove it though. By the time I finished looking at this issue I actually formed a different opinion, but I’ll share that when we get there!

Looking at this issue as a whole it contains 104 pages inside the covers, of which it breaks down to 45 pages of editorial content (plus the front cover) and 59 pages of advertising (plus the other 3 pages of the covers). Full-page color ads are mostly for automobiles and include Ford, Packard, and Oldsmobile. Full disclosure of this examination leads me to say this issue was missing pages 51-54, but this center spread surely included four pages of color advertising, which was the norm for Newsweek during this time (I have counted these 4 pages towards the advertising total at any rate). My favorite ad inside this issue is a full-page color ad from Canadian Pacific which best seemed to sum up the time: “Travel Will Be Fun Again” the headline intones. “Remember how pleasant it used to be to travel on Canadian Pacific Ships! Remember the cuisine, the courteous service… Just now there’s a big job to do repairing the wear and tear of wartime years — replacing lost ships … but, when it’s done, travel will be fun again — the Canadian Pacific way!” A couple sits together on the floor with travel brochures spread at their feet and their happy faces focused on a world globe. It’s time to book that voyage!

I’ve included an image of the Index page so you can see Newsweek broke the news down in almost the same fashion as TIME. The issue opens with four pages containing (one column per page) reader’s letters with the more serious topics such as Newsweek’s coverage of the late F.D.R. being allowed a letter from each side of the political spectrum. The “Index” page also includes “For Your Information” a page signed by The Editors which gives a name to the cover image: Herman C. Kreitsch, a 68-year old Ford toolmaker who represents one of 58,000,000 U.S. workers facing the problems of the nation returning to a free, uncontrolled economy. The Editors note “If he demands and gets higher wages, the price spiral will rise accordingly and his dollar will buy less. If he just waits for better prices, increased production should bring them about–but how soon he can only guess.” The photo of Mr. Kreitsch on the cover is captioned “Wage Earner: His Pay Balances the Price Ladder.” Kreitsch is also mentioned in the top story in the Business section, “Wages: Round No. 2 of Strikes?” We learn that this fellow has worked for Ford Motor Co. since 1924 and was earning $1.20/hour in 1939, $1.42/hour in 1945, and $1.60/hour currently (1946). Newsweek tells us that Kreitsch “could earn more than $100 for a seven-day week” including overtime during the war, but is now back to a 40-hour week making $64 less social security, income tax, and $1.50/month union dues. Newsweek asks “Now that price and wage controls are being taken off by the government, will organized labor call another round of strikes to enforce another round of wage raising?” Now, I’m no economist, and honestly find most of this pretty dry stuff, but if you have any further interest in the picture of Wage Trends at the time, I’ve included a scan of Newsweek’s graph detailing trends from 1941-46–the solid black line indicates the percentage that gross weekly earnings have risen, the broken black line represents gross hourly earnings, and the orange solid line is real weekly earnings.

Newsweek opens with “The Periscope” on pages 17-18, which contains short punchy paragraphs about current events at home and abroad. The one I found most interesting was titled “Spanish Prisoner Returns” and looks to be an older snail mail version of the Nigerian e-mail scams we’re all so familiar with today. “Post Office officials are fighting a startling postwar revival or the 300-year-old Spanish prisoner racket which is taking an estimated $600,000 a year from gullible Americans.” The scam, which Newsweek asserts is originating from an international ring out of Mexico, is a 2,000-word letter being sent out to Americans requesting somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 to aid in the release of a former banker from a Mexican jail and help out his beautiful daughter (photos included with the letter). If you help these poor people out now with your money then later you’ll receive one-third of $300,000 which the former banker has stored somewhere in Texas. “Upon arrival in Mexico to negotiate with go-betweens, the victim is sooner or later relieved of his money. The operators cannot be extradited to the U.S. for prosecution…” but the post office is issuing warnings and looking into the scam. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that basically the same scam has been going on for centuries, but I had personally been under the impression that this was a new crime helped along by today’s technology–I guess I’m somewhat gullible though to think that these usually transparent con-artists came up with this trick all by themselves! History just keeps on repeating itself.

Under “National Affairs” Newsweek reports on the unexpected “major postwar problem” of parking. They note that automobile traffic is up 52% from last year (1945) and even 10% from 1941, while “parking space had decreased alarmingly as postwar building covered parking lots, and garages were converted to more profitable uses.” Problems are detailed in Chicago’s Loop where daily traffic had increased 42% in the past year while there were 4 less parking lots (82) and a quarter less garages since 1939. Dallas counted daily traffic of 83,000 vehicles with 40,000 parking spaces available. Kansas City, in the area around Petticoat Lane, had just under 16,000 spaces for nearly 171,000 cars. The problem was not an isolated one as a few other examples were given as well. The immediate result of this appeared to be a decrease in property value in downtown areas as shoppers turned to less congested suburban stores. Store owners were shocked to find out they were largely responsible for the problem as most of the cars parked around shopping areas were those of employees! Fixes bandied about included shuttle buses, more parking meters to reduce parking time, forcing stores to provide their own parking lots, and what was seen as the most likely but costly fix, underground parking garages.

A “United Nations” section focused on its location at the New York’s World’s Fair’s World of Tomorrow in Flushing and includes an image of the “futuristic UN General Assembly building” proposed by New York City. There’s also a photo of Bill Pogue’s bar on West 88th Street in Manhattan, above which Russian UN workers will have their apartments. The accompanying text notes that the bar “pestered” their wholesalers last week for speedy delivery of vodka. Also pictured is the $1,000,000 39-room Tudor mansion that Soviet Foreign Minister Molotoff will be staying in on Glen Cove, Long Island. “Meanwhile, by boat, train, and plane, the 2,000 representatives and diplomats from 51 nations poured into New York and into already crammed hotels.”

This article was fun to read, I’m picturing these world power brokers scrambling about the New York city area for living space. U.S. officials were said to enjoy “the novelty of bouncing from bed to desk in the same room” (I can relate!). Finally, one item to be discussed on the agenda has no doubt led to many unpaid traffic tickets throughout the passing decades: “A report on the UN-United States negotiations on diplomatic immunities for UN delegates and personnel.” This article on page 36-38 was perhaps the most enjoyable read for me in this issue.

The “Foreign Affairs” section was arranged interestingly. The first section was on Berlin, largely about the politics involved in the area for each of the conquering nations and especially jockeying between the Soviets and the West. Next was a small paragraph under a “Monte Carlo” heading–somewhat amusing in that it notes the casinos operated all throughout the war, but shut down last week as the croupiers went on strike for higher pay. Then there are sections of varying sizes over the next couple of pages about France, Britain, Czechs, Yugoslavs, and only then one headed “Nuremberg.” Russia, India, China are all covered after the Nuremberg section.

Nuremberg begins with Last Laugh, two paragraphs detailing the suicide of Goring. Newsweek reports that as Burton C. Andrus, American commandant of the Nuremberg prison headed towards the condemned war criminals to read them their death sentences, “Hermann Wilhelm Goring, lying on his small iron cot in Cell No. 5 and wearing black silk pajamas and a blue shirt, crushed between his teeth a glass vial of potassium cyanide, gasped, twitched, and died.” The next section is titled The 13 Steps and notes that prison officials immediately shackled the ten surviving convicts . “Then, in 90 minutes in the early hours of Oct. 16, they followed each other to the gallows.” The article notes that:

“Only Julius Streicher went without dignity. He had to be pushed across the floor, wild-eyed and screaming: ‘Heil Hitler!’ Mounting the steps he cried out: ‘And now I go to God.’ He stared at the witnesses facing the gallows and shouted” ‘Purimfest, 1946.’ (Purim is a Jewish feast). Then to the American officer he cried: ‘The Bolsheviks will hang you one day.’ He spoke again from beneath the black hood: ‘Adele, my dear wife’–and plunged through the trap. A groan came from inside the scaffold. Critics suggested afterward that Streicher was clumsily hanged and that the rope may have strangled him instead of breaking his neck.”

I don’t like using such long pieces of the original material, but in this case Newsweek’s original reportage seemed appropriate. After the final prisoner was executed Goring’s body was brought out under a sheet, which was raised so the witnesses could confirm that he was, in fact, dead. The article then speculates on “The Fatso Mystery” which was a brief debate of where Goring had hidden his poison.

Traveling on throughout the world, the Soviet Union’s first postwar budget allocated $1 billion to “develop the science for the further growth of the economic and military might of the Soviet Union,” which Newsweek translates for us to include “vast, top-priority atom-bomb projects.” Soccer hooligans in Russia are also noted as a problem, with Newsweek defining the term: “‘Hooliganism’ in Russia means anything from disorderly conduct to rape.”

The “Transition” page is Newsweek’s announcement page of the type that usually includes Births, Deaths and those sort of comings and goings, which this one does as well, but most interesting to me on the page was “For the Record”, which records “Gone With the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell writing an angry response to Hedda Hopper disputing her supposed purchase of an old hanging lamp like the one from her novel–“I have never been in Hollywood…I have never attended an auction sale…I have never wanted to buy an old hanging lamp…” Okay, lady, calm down! Also, philosopher George Santayana, under the appropriate heading of “Philosophical” predicts that all of Europe may soon turn Communistic with Germany and France leading the way. Santayana, 83, and living at the time in Rome, is quoted as saying “If Communism came to Italy tomorrow, I’d say: ‘Well, let’s try it’.”

In the “Medicine” section is a long profile on Dr. Harvey Cushing, but more interesting than that was a section on “Soldiers and Suicide.” The Army examined 1,179 cases of suicide in their first suicide survey finding that the average age of military suicide was 29.3 years, but that “the relative frequency in soldier over 40 was four times as great as in those between 20 and 29.” Newsweek provides further morbid details: “Firearms were used in 49 per cent of the suicides, hanging in almost 25 per cent, and poisoning in 8 per cent. In firearm cases, the head was the most frequent site of injury (62 per cent), the chest in 35 per cent.” The following page begins the “Radio” section and it starts with a paragraph regarding the reportage of Goring’s suicide. I can only guess that suicide was an oft-mentioned keyword in the news that week due to Goring and that Newsweek was trying to keep their readers informed from different angles.

“The Press” section details the magazines that never came to be. They mention that a year ago five “Project X’s” were being talked about from publishers as big as Gardner “Mike” Cowles of LOOK Magazine, Crowell-Collier, and the Curtis Publishing Co (publisher of Saturday Evening Post). Reasons given for the failure of these new magazines to develop are the shortage of both paper and printers, new (revised?) tax laws, last summer’s nosedive in sales blamed on the public reaction against “the outpouring of new magazines–mostly pulps, girlies, and comics–that glutted newsstands.” The tone of this article is somewhat humorous, as you can see Newsweek gloating over the failures of their competitors: they talk of a premature tenth anniversary celebration at LOOK (I took the subtext to mean the folks at LOOK just might not make it to 10 years). The Crowell-Collier project was to be headed by Ken Purdy, but when he left for Parade Newsweek crows that he’s there as “editor under several recent Crowell-Collier refugees.” The Curtis Co. abandoned their Project X, according to Newsweek, in order to concentrate “on making the expensive (50 cents a copy) Holiday go.” Finally when explaining the reasons for failure Newsweek refers to them as causes in the “searing of more than one rosy magazine dream.” This page seems to take as many direct slaps in the face of competing publishers that it can.

The “Sports” section reports on one of the most exciting World Series in baseball history, which saw the St. Louis Cardinals beating the Boston Red Sox in seven games on Enos Slaughter’s famed “mad dash” home on a double of the bat of Harry Walker. Slaughter scored when Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky hesitated on the relay throw and then pulled catcher Roy Partee off the plate with his throw. Newsweek uses quotes from Variety regarding the poor broadcasting of the Series by Jimmy Britt and Arch McDonald, the handpicked choices of Commissioner Happy Chandler to make the call. Variety’s report was titled “No Hits, No Runs, All Errors.” Newsweek also offers a pretty scathing summary of the Sox noting that the Boston fans had renamed their club the “Red Flops” and that “fans elected enough goats among their overrated American League champions to stock a small-sized farm: Manager Joe Cronin, Ted Williams, and Johnny Pesky, the chagrined shortstop who pulled a classic boner in the seventh game.” Newsweek does not use the term “mad dash” anywhere within the article.

The “Music” section had a couple of interesting items, both pretty controversial I thought. First is “What So Glumly We Hailed” which asks “Should ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ still be played before everything from a Broadway show to a baseball game?” Honestly, it’s not Newsweek stirring the pot themselves on this one, but instead reporting on an October 12 column by New York Sun music critic, and returning veteran, Irving Kolofin, who wrote that he preferred the playing of the anthem be scaled back and only played “when it can be performed in a manner and spirit befitting the dignity it contains.” Kolodin suggests that the American Federation of Musicians prohibit playing of the banner unless by special authorization.

The other item under “Music” is an article about a new book by Mezz Mezzrow titled “Really the Blues.” The book, and this article, is filled with “jive talk” about marijuana and his life as a musician during the jazz era. The article includes a “conversation” from the book in “Harlem Talk” where Mezzrow “was selling marijuana (‘gauge’) top his reefer-smoking customers (‘vipers’). Just to give you an example of this, here’s what Mezz’s customer, referred to as “First Cat”, replied to him after his purchase: “Jim, this jive you got is a gasser, I’m goin’ up to my dommy and dig that new mess Pops laid down for Okeh,” which apparently in 1929 “Harlem talk” translates to “Friend, this marijuana of yours is terrific, I’m going home and listen to that new record Louis Armstrong made for the Okeh company.” This is pretty dated stuff Newsweek offers us in terms of language, actions, culture, and race. They do note that “because of its clinical frankness and brutal honesty, ‘Really the Blues’ may not sit well with a great many people.” Mezzrow writes about how after he learned to smoke marijuana that he began to hear his saxophone from inside of his head and how this helped him play easier–Newsweek makes sure to point out that medical experts disagree upon this effect. Finally, Mezzrow writes “I never advocated that anybody should use marijuana, and I sure don’t mean to start now…I laid off five years ago…I know of one very bad thing the tea can do to you–it can put you in jail.” The book also details his four years in a Harlem opium den as well as his difficulty in kicking that habit. Mezzrow lived until 1972.

The “Art” section contains a full page profile of photographer Yousuf Karsh. The article includes a photo of Karsh himself along with four photos of his–I only mention this because I found it interesting that the Karsh photo of Winston Churchill that Newsweek prints is the exact same photo that graced the cover of LIFE Magazine on their May 21, 1945 issue. No mention is made of LIFE however.

And as I have previously mentioned the main breaking story of this issue would appear to be President Truman’s lifting of price controls on meat in the United States. While I’m strong in history, economics is one of my poorer subjects, so I’m only going to gloss over this one with the basics. Apparently meat was one of the last U.S. items to have war induced price controls lifted, and at the time of this issue the soaring prices of meat had caused a shortage and a backlash from the American public. The article notes that “slaughterhouses, which had laid off 50,000 workers during the weeks of OPA (Office of Price Administration) control, began frantically recalling men to work.” As for the consumers dinner plates: “More important to steak-lovers than last week’s near-record receipts of 332,400 cattle–nearly 65 per cent higher than the previous week’s–was the high proportion of commercial, good, and choice grades instead of the ‘canners and cutters’ of the famine period.”

An editorial by Henry Hazlitt takes Truman to task for doing the right thing for all of the wrong reasons, claiming that the President contradicted himself throughout his announcement, shifting blame and offering contradicting reasons behind both control and decontrol. Hazlitt writes “The way to decontrol is to decontrol” and that it “should proceed as rapidly as the present messy law allows.” Hazlitt goes on to say that Truman should call upon a special session of Congress to announce repeals on all remaining price controls except rent, and that rent should instead be handled by the states. The meat issue is again taken up by Raymond Moley in his editorial about the Senatorial elections in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York: “A little meat will turn away a lot of anger” is his answer to “The big question…whether the Republican trend has been a wave or a tide.” With the meat issue ready to completely disappear by October 25, Moley writes that it should not have an effect on which way American’s vote.

It’s this way that the meat issue is tied together with the coming election that is likely the reason I feel the Nuremberg information was shortchanged–While it’s obvious to me which story is more important 60 years later, Newsweek in 1946 was trying to report what Americans cared about then, and at the time they preferred the right to eat a good an affordable steak to anti-climactic world news about a war they were trying to put behind them–once again, to quote that Canadian Pacific ad “remember the cuisine, the courteous service, the fun of shipboard life…” Americans wanted to move forward.

As to value, I’ve been fetching $8-$12 for solid EX or 5/10 to EX-MT or 7/10 World War II era issues of Newsweek. This one, slightly after the war, would likely go for about $8 in that condition. Maybe we could push that up to $10 based on either/or the Goring story or World Series coverage.

And now that we’re all settled in it’s time to go back to 1941 for our Random Issue. Douglas MacArthur, as illustrated by Allen Pope, graced the cover of this issue of TIME, just a day over three weeks after Pearl Harbor. With America’s entry into the war three topics seemed to recur throughout the issue and form somewhat of a theme: A) Blackouts and worry of Japanese invasion; B) Satisfaction at the Russians driving Hitler back some; C) Censorship, written about with some fear of the effect it may have on the magazine in hand.

This issue became interesting for me as soon as page 2! This was the “Letters” section and TIME wasted none in printing congratulatory letters from readers praising their speedy coverage of the U.S. entering the war. Ralph P. Bell of Ottawa penned the first words I would read: “CONGRATULATIONS ON “U.S. AT WAR,” YOUR ISSUE OF DEC. 15. THIS IS THE FINEST PIECE OF NEWS REPORTING THAT I HAVE EVER READ.” First I thought TIME was really patting themselves on the back by printing Mr. Bell’s letter in all caps, but then it occurred to me that I’m a product of the current age and in that time this was likely a telegram sent to TIME’s offices. At least that’s the impression I’m working under now. L.D. Rambeau of White Marsh, MD echoed Mr. Bell: “Congratulations on a magnificent job in including all news up through Monday the 8th in the issue of TIME that I received and read on the 10th.” I found that one interesting in revealing the deadline that TIME must have worked on: they covered news through December 8 in the December 15 issue which was received by subscribers as early as December 10. After a couple more of these letters the Publisher does reply with his gratitude and comments “TIME’s editorial staff has about 36 hours to write its first issue about the U.S. at war. TIME correspondents within eight hours after war’s outbreak turned in a nationwide roundup of U.S. reactions and thereafter kept it up to date hour by hour.”

A most interesting start, I thought, on my new project.

After the “Letters” page the TIME index is found on page 7, headed “The U.S. At War.” The December 29, 1941 issue of TIME Magazine is bookended by censorship concerns. In the “Press” section beginning on page 58 and carrying over to the last page, page 60, is an article headlined “Official Censor.” TIME notes “The U.S. Press last week got an official censor and the first glimmerings of how U.S. wartime censorship is meant to work.” The article discusses Byron Price, executive news editor of the A.P., who was appointed censor by Presidential executive order. Censor Price was expected to oversee outgoing news dispatches, cables, radio, and letters, withhold military secrets at their source and implement the Espionage Act of 1917. He also hoped for a good deal of voluntary censorship. On page 60 TIME writes “How much censorship the public will stand for still remains to be seen” while on page 8 in italics prior to any reportage they open by saying “For the first time in nearly 19 years of publication, TIME finds itself unable to tell its readers freely and frankly all the things it knows.” Imagine that!

Some other interesting notes found throughout this issue:

• “All four of Eleanor Roosevelt’s sons are in the service of their country.” (page 8, “The U.S. at War”)
• “Defense bond sales jumped as much as 8,691% in one city…” (page 10, “The U.S. at War”)
• From Hitler: “He alluded to Japan as a ‘comrade in arms’ and said: ‘The present war is now entering upon a new and favorable stage for us.” (page 12, “World Battlefronts”)
• “The Germans admitted that Russian forces had ‘penetrated their eastern defenses at several points'” Regarding the tone of Hitler and Goebbels TIME proclaims “Once they ranted and vaunted. Now they begged and whimpered.” (page 20 “World Battlefronts”)
• Censorship is broached again in the “Radio” section: “For straight news broadcasts, both domestic and short-wave stations were sticking to press-association material that is certainly going to be played safe.” (page 36 “Radio”)
• “George Herman (‘Babe’) Ruth walked into Manhattan’s defense-bond headquarters, asked for $100,000 worth. Informed that Treasury restrictions let him buy only $50,000 worth a year, he left a $50,000 order for Jan. 2.” (page 40 “People”)
• “Oops-sorry note: First week, the authors called it The Japs Won’t Have a Chinaman’s Chance. But that seemed disrespectful to the Chinese. Last week it became The Japs Won’t Have a Ghost of a Chance.” (page 46, “Music” …PS, how considerate of them, wow, c’mon!)

Just three-plus weeks after the invasion of Pearl Harbor there was a great fear of further Japanese attacks, this time on the U.S. mainland. The magazine is filled with reports of West Coast blackouts (of note: “They talked about one blackout crime: a man posed as an air-raid warden raped a Chinese girl” page 9), plans for blackouts made and cancelled in New York by Mayor LaGuardia (of note: “Skyscraper dwellers were no sooner given the comfortable assurance that they were safe within steel and concrete walls so long as they stayed on floors four down from the top or four up from the bottom” page 11), and Mid-West apathy lathered with knocks against the “isolationist” Chicago Tribune (Of note: “Last week the Midwest had just begun to yawn and stretch” page 11).

Fear of further Japanese invasion caused TIME to include an interesting article about Homer Lea in the “World Battlefronts” section on pages 18-19. I’d never heard of Lea until reading this article, but in short, he was a hunchback who studied Napoleon and realized that due to his affliction the U.S. would never allow him to serve in the military. He went from China to Hong Kong, where he hooked up with Sun Yat Sen, and then on to Japan before returning to San Francisco where he authored The Valor of Ignorance in 1909. In his book Lea saw Japan easily overtaking the Philippines and predicted the many Japanese immigrants in Hawaii would rise up to overtake it. But, and this is where TIME found relevance in all of this: “to defeat the U.S., Japan would have to invade it. That he expected Japan to do.” (page 19). Lea advocated first taking the Pacific Northwest, then Los Angeles, followed by San Francisco. TIME quotes Lea as writing “Not months, but years, must elapse before armies equal to the Japanese are able to pass in parade.” TIME opens the article looking back at Homer Lea with a one-week-old quote from Admiral Yamamoto: “I shall not be content merely to capture Guam and the Philippines and occupy Hawaii and San Francisco. I am looking forward to dictating peace to the United States in the White House at Washington.” Yikes!

In the movies TIME covers the release of Dumbo (page 27 “Cinema”) believed to be on its way to profits as big as Snow White brought to Disney. In “Sport” the big story was the New York Athletic Club allowing women to swim in its pool for the first time in its 73-year history. “Art” took a look at Grand Central Station’s new photo-mural which celebrated the three things the U.S. is fighting for: “the fertile U.S. land, the productiveness of U.S. industry, the future welfare of U.S. children.” “Science” heralded the brand new innovation from Eastman Kodak Co., a new color film called Kodacolor. And in “Religion” U.S. and U.K. Christian leaders take a stand in opposition to Nazi abuses and begin “planning a peace.” Finally, under “World Battlefronts”, we have our cover story, “MacArthur of the Philippines,” which spends two entire pages covering MacArthur and even includes a photo of his father in uniform.

The December 29, 1941 issue of TIME is a perfect example of TIME during the war…right from the outset. The standard style is there with all of the news carved into convenient categories, but by now each category carries the responsibility of handling its reporting with a war-themed flavor. Even the article about Dumbo closes by mentioning Donald Duck and the Three Little Pigs war efforts (apparently the Duck was a popular insignia with DeGaulle’s Free French Forces and also on the aircraft carrier Illustrious, the Pigs were selling defense bonds in Canada) and stated “Dumbo has yet to be drafted, but his number is about up” (page 28). Every reference to Hitler and Nazi Germany notes weakness and the Japanese are feared because of their recent actions. I didn’t notice much mention of U.S. allies, but every article proclaims some news or fact about U.S. involvement either by the military or civilians (such as Babe Ruth). TIME opened and closed with notes on censorship and reading the issue through you get the impression that it is something with which they are very concerned.

A final note, of the 60 pages (not including covers), I counted 20-1/3 pages of advertisements, though this does include a full-page ad for sister publication Fortune and a third of a page for the radio program The March of Time.

Ad agencies must have rushed to put together many of the war-themed ads. The Thermoid Company has a full-page text ad with the headline “What can I do for my Country?” with the refrain “Keep ’em running” throughout. Exide Batteries blares “DEPENDABILITY was never before so important” with artwork above split into three images: a tank, a ship, a fleet of planes. The U.S. Navy takes out a 2/3 page ad on page 5 as does Douglas Aircraft on page 47. The center spread is a two-page color ad from the United Aircraft Corporation titled “in Action: American Aircraft in the R.A.F.” with a checklist of American planes in service with the British. No mention of any greater trouble is mentioned yet in ads by B.F. Goodrich, Listerine, Western Electric or several others.

None of the three full-page ads found on the covers: Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing on inside front cover, Addressograph-Multigraph on inside back cover, and SPAM on the back cover make mention of the war with the exception being a strip of text at the bottom of the Addressograph-Multigraph ad stating “Shoulder to Shoulder with You in America’s Defense.” SPAM advertises it’s new breakfast discovery: SPAM ‘N’ Pancakes…that just doesn’t sound very good.

In nice shape, about EX or 5/10 with just some average wear, the December 29, 1941 issue of TIME Magazine featuring General Douglas MacArthur on the cover would likely sell for about $12-$15, though even more likely it would sit with some hopeful seller’s stock priced closer to $25. The copy I used has detached covers and tons of edge wear, and now, after my use, several pages of hilighting and underlining throughout. It’s value, well it’s whatever you take out of this article, as it’ll be hitting my garbage can as soon as I proofread this!