ADVANCE SCREENING

James Dean and his Giant shadow.

The always-wonderful Japanese celeb magazine Screen produced this issue promoting James Dean’s epic drama Giant in January 1956. The film opened the next October, which means the magazine was put together well beforehand. Advance press isn’t unusual, of course, but advance press of this detail in Japan—it didn’t premiere there until nearly a year later in December 1956—suggests just how huge a worldwide star James Dean had become. Sadly, some of that had to do with the fact that he was already dead, killed in a September 1955 automobile crash as Giant was about to wrap. But while nearly all dead celebrities are eulogized as geniuses cut down too soon, Dean is one of the few whose work has actually withstood the test of time. Screen makes room for other stars in this issue, including Audrey Hepburn, who we’ve posted in panel two. On another note, we’ve shared quite a bit from Screen over the last two years, but if you missed those entries you can see some great covers here, here and here, and see a bit of what’s inside here.

Japan, Screen Magazine, Giant, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 6

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

September 5

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

September 5

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

September 4

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

September 3

1941—Auschwitz Begins Gassing Prisoners

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, becomes an extermination camp when it begins using poison gas to kill prisoners en masse. The camp commandant, Rudolf HÃ¶ss, later testifies at the Nuremberg Trials that he believes perhaps 3 million people died at Auschwitz, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revises the figure to about 1 million.