FACES IN THE MIRROR

A perfect reflection of 1930s Hollywood.

This issue of the American film magazine Movie Mirror was published today in 1935 with Grace Moore on the cover, who was promoting her role in the film Love Me Forever, and later died in a plane crash with Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden. You may also notice the unusual sight of editor Ruth Waterbury giving herself standalone credit at upper left. We’ve never seen that before. Waterbury isn’t well remembered today, but she was a player in her time, one of America’s famous journalistic figures, and a staple in tabloids and gossip columns.

Movie Mirror billed itself as “Filmland’s most beautiful magazine,” and indeed its painted covers by the likes of John Ralston Clarke were among the most striking to be found on newsstands. In the late 1930s the magazine began moving away from painted covers to photo-illustrated fronts designed to evoke the same mood. In 1941 it merged with Photoplay and ceased to exist as a distinct publication. Below you see nine more covers, all from the 1930s, with Irene Dunne, Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert, Snow White, and others.

Sweden, Movie Mirror, Photoplay, Love Me Forever, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Grace Moore, Carole Lombard, Greta Garbo, Marion Davies, Irene Dunne, Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert, Prince Gustaf Adolf, John Ralston Clarke, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 7

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.

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.