My Vintage Generation » Magazines/Newspapers

Life magazine August 4, 1927

april — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:58:51 +0000

If it was this week in August 1927, then this is the issue of Life magazine you’d be holding in your hands.

This issue isn’t terribly interesting or valuable.
There’s no juicy article by Dorothy Parker or classic illustration by Maxfield Parrish.

Still, it’s fun to look at and imagine we’re flappers or dappers, flipping through this issue.

Crawdaddy! magazine

april — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:31:43 +0000

Crawdaddy January 1967

Crawdaddy May 1967

The founder of Crawdaddy! described his magazine as the first to take “rock and roll seriously.”

Crawdaddy! was created at Swarthmore College in 1966 by student Paul Williams.
The first issue contained his own writings of music criticism.
He mimographed the pages and distributed them at school.
Soon after, he recruited other writers to help fill the pages.

The first two photos are from the Crawdaddy’s early years.

The issue below was published after Williams left the magazine, so he could concentrate on writing books.

Crawdaddy June 1969

Playboy Magazine articles

april — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:11:42 +0000

February 1965 issue

You can’t judge a magazine by its title — not always.
William Faulkner wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated; James Agee frequently wrote for Fortune.

Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson were regular contributors to Rolling Stone.

And the number of literary giants whose works have appeared in Playboy are staggering.
The list certainly competes with The New Yorker.

Here are just a few of the authors published in Playboy: Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, and Isaac B. Singer.

And lest one thinks only the pens-in-the-hands-of-men wrote for Playboy there’s Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, and Anne Sexton.

Playboy’s literary heyday was the 1950s through the mid-1970s.
You can read about this period from a collector’s perspective at the blog: Inherited Values.
It’s written by Cliff Aliperti.

September 1966 issue

Greenwich Village Weekly News

april — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:38:58 +0000

This weeky newspaper was printed for and by residents of New York City’s Greenwich Village.
Each issue cost ten cents a copy or you could get an eight month subscription for one dollar.

The paper was founded and maintained by a small group of unemployed workers who lost their jobs during the Great Depression.
This issue is from May 21-28, 1932.

An ad from this newspaper lists a skylight apartment on East 17th Street.
Monthly rent? $100

American Cookery magazine

april — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:07:51 +0000

Gourmet magazine helped change the way Americans cooked and thought about food in the latter part of the 20th century.
In the first half of the century it was a magazine called American Cookery.

Aug/Sep 1916 issue

American Cookery was first published as The Boston Cooking School Magazine.
The magazine was founded in 1896 and changed its name to American Cookery in 1914.
Every issue featured recipes submitted by readers, offered advice on cooking, and had general articles on food.
The magazine ceased publication in 1947 partly due to a recent arrival that had color photographs and brought an upscale, European approach to food. That magazine was called — Gourmet.

The New Yorker Cartoons – 1920s

april — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:40:39 +0000

The New Yorker dandy Eustace Tilley by Rea Irvin

For Christmas I received The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker. It’s a 600+ page book (with two CDs) and features all of the magazine’s cartoons from 1925 to 2004.
Here’s a few as they appeared during the Roaring Twenties.

1925 cartoon by Al Frueh

1926 cartoon by Barbara Shermund

1928 cartoon by Peter Arno

1929 cartoon by Leonard Dove

Fortune magazine

april — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:00:46 +0000

It’s that time of year when mutual funds dole out their capital gains for the year. So, let’s celebrate with a brief look back at the history of Fortune magazine!

The first issue of Fortune hit stands in February 1930, four months after the stock market crash of 1929.
A yearly subscription rate was $10. A single issue was one dollar.
To put this in perspective – an issue of the Sunday New York Times was 5 cents and a pound of hamburger meat was 13 cents. The average cost to rent a house for a month was $15!

Fortune was founded by Henry Booth Luce. Luce was also co-founder of another influential and important magazine – Time.
Fortune’s covers, full page ads, and photography are beautiful to look at. And, during the Great Depression they printed articles by socially conscience (dare I say progressive) writers including James Agee, Archibald MacLeish, and Alfred Kazin.

1945 Radio News magazine – Color Television

april — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:19:39 +0000

I’d like to share two brief passages in a 1945 issue of Radio News Magazine. This article was written by Robert W. Ehrlich and it’s about the concept of color television. Keep in mind this was written before black and white sets were in people’s homes!

“As world events move closer to the point where the radio industry can once again operate on a peacetime basis, the thoughts of designers, experimenters, producers, and advertisers turn toward television and its future. One feature that is expected eventually to be a part of television is the use of color.”

AND THIS

“Color television is by no means new. As far back as 1928 it was demonstrated by Mr. J. L. Baird in England. Ten years later, an 8 by 12 foot color picture was shown before an audience of 3000 at the Dominion Theater, in London.”

Wow! It would have been great to witness the dawn of color tv in that audience of 3,000.