 Actress Mary Miles Minter on True Story (November, 1921). "Magdalen or Madonna?" is deceptive, since page 51 is not about Mary Miles Minter. | |
| Frequency | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1919 |
| Company | True Renditions, LLC |
| Country | USA |
| Based in | New York City |
| Language | English |
| Website | www |
| ISSN | 0195-3117 |
True Story is an American magazine published by True Renditions, LLC. It launched in 1919 and was the first of the confessions magazines genre. [1] It carried the subtitle Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction.
With a circulation of 300,000 by 1923, the trend-setting publication remained a huge success through the 1920s and was a key title in Bernarr Macfadden's publishing empire of Physical Culture, True Detective , True Romances, Dream World, True Ghost Stories, Photoplay and the tabloid New York Graphic. It sprang from Physical Culture, stemming from the many letters written to the magazine by women about their experiences. [2] By 1929, the circulation of True Story was nearly two million. [3] [4]
True Story offered anecdotal experiences, and the articles it presented, rewritten by staffers, were purportedly true. However, by the mid-1920s, many stories were professional submissions from fiction writers or were staff-written by Macfadden's stable of writers, including Fulton Oursler and Lyon Mearson. The language was kept relentlessly simple; Macfadden would test language on the elevator operator, and reject whatever he could not understand. [2] Articles were illustrated with photographs of posed models, breaking away from the idealistic illustration common in magazines. [5]
The magazine's approach and its audience were detailed by Jackie Hatton:
The formula has been characterized as "sin-suffer-repent": the heroine violates standards of behavior, suffers as a consequence, learns her lesson and resolves to live in light of it, unembittered by her pain. [6]
Advertisers were at first reluctant to buy ads for a magazine aimed at the working class, even as the circulation grew, but by 1928, many major companies placed ads, which copied the style of "short words and shorter sentences" and also imitated the sensational style. [7] "Because I Confessed. . . I found the Way To Happiness" titled an Eagle Brand Condensed Sweetened Milk ad for a cookbook; the title character confessed to a married friend that a man would never propose to her because he wanted a good girl, who could cook, and received the advertised cookbook as a loan, using it to win him. [8] "Some Wives Do It, But I Wouldn't Dare" advertised Wheatena; the narrator would never dare send her husband off without a good breakfast. [9]
During the Great Depression, the emphasis lay on feminine behavior, maternity, marriage, and stoic endurance, often in the face of horrific suffering. [10] Women who dedicated themselves to work were unable to marry or maintain a happy marriage; women who remained independent could not conceive or suffered miscarriages and stillbirths. [11]
With the outbreak of World War II, the stories began to feature war work favorably. [12] However, it continued the sexual themes, such as having war workers be seduced, have affairs with married men, or engage in many casual affairs; the Magazine Bureau objected to this, as hindering recruitment, and argued that war workers should not be shown as more prone to dalliance than other women, and the magazine removed such themes from stories dealing with war workers. [13] The ambitious career woman still appeared; women, however, who worked from patriotic motives were able to maintain their marriages and bear children. [14] During post-war reconversion, the emphasis changed to marriage and motherhood. [15]
In the 1950s, themes changed again, now employing more stories involving teenage girls reflecting on their "lot in life" and the outcomes of their poor life choices. Many of the "True Story of the Month" featured girls who had married young, and had married wrongly. These tales included hostile in-laws, brutal living conditions and feelings of hopelessness and reached resolution when the person telling the story accepted her situation and promised to accept her position in life for the sake of her family. The magazine spoke out loudly on the issue of abortion (it was against it), birth control (against it because it led to situations in which girls could be taken advantage of) and the duties of raising children with profound developmental issues.
Advice columns, a regular feature, were written by True Story "authority" "Helen Willman." Marital advice, under the title "The Marriage Desk," was given by "Dr. Lena Levine, M.D." The columns glossed over issues of physical abuse toward women by the men that they had chosen as their boyfriends and husbands. The physical abuse was often rationalized as the letter writers' fault for not understanding their boyfriends/husbands' needs. In one notable 1956 response to a "letter from a reader" who asked why her husband beat her when he came home from work, the magazines response from "Helen Willman" advised the writer that she needed to understand that "your husband works hard," and when he returned from work he "doesn't want or need her burdening her husband with her needs," but that she should better serve her husband and keep the children quiet so he can relax. "Try not to complain," wrote Willman.
The 1950s also brought about double page color photographs posed in dramatic fashions, which played to the leading titles given the works.
Goods advertised in True Story in the 1950s were relied heavily on inexpensive beauty treatments (shampoos, toothpaste, creams, feminine hygiene products) and inexpensive kitchen remodeling projects and appliances. The backs of the magazines were heavily filled with "penny ads" for correspondence courses in nursing, dog grooming, hotel management and holiday card sales.
The magazine relied on single and triple column layouts, printed upon folios of inexpensive papers that alternated between heavy newsprint and low weight, low luster paper used for color print sections. Stories often started in the second section of the magazine, usually with dramatic photographs, and then readers had to flip to the rear of the magazine to complete the articles. Articles were tagged as "True Story of the Month", "Award Winning Story" and "Special Double Article" headers. Who or what gave the award to the story was never disclosed.[ citation needed ]
From 1919 to 1926, John Brennan Willian edited True Story. William Jourdan Rapp was the editor from 1926 to 1942, [16] serving under Editor-in-Chief Henry Lieferant.
Macfadden's consumer division merged with Sterling's Magazines in 1991; Dorchester Media acquired Sterling/Macfadden in 2004. True Renditions, LLC, acquired True Story and additional confession magazines from Dorchester Media on March 9, 2012.
The headquarters of True Story is in New York City. [17]
True Story was the basis for a radio series, The True Story Court of Human Relations , produced by an advertising agency to promote the magazine. The program was directed by radio historian Erik Barnouw and broadcast live on NBC beginning in 1935 and continuing through the 1930s.[ citation needed ] Another radio series, My True Story , was based on material from the magazine, [18] as was a television adaptation of the radio series. [19]
The UK edition of True Story duplicated the American magazine but also added British material. It was first published by Hutchinson's in 1922. The Argus Press became the publisher in 1949.
The Culture of Domesticity or Cult of True Womanhood is a term used by historians to describe what they consider to have been a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the 19th century in the United States. This value system emphasized new ideas of femininity, the woman's role within the home and the dynamics of work and family. "True women", according to this idea, were supposed to possess four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The idea revolved around the woman being the center of the family; she was considered "the light of the home".
The Women's Land Army (WLA) was a British civilian organisation created in 1917 by the Board of Agriculture during the First World War to bring women into work in agriculture, replacing men called up to the military. Women who worked for the WLA were commonly known as Land Girls. The Land Army placed women with farms that needed workers, the farmers being their employers. The women picked crops and did all the jobs that the men had done. Notable members include Joan Quennell, later a Member of Parliament, the archaeologist Lily Chitty and the botanist Ethel Thomas. It was disbanded in 1919 but revived in June 1939 under the same name to again organise women to replace workers called up to the military during the Second World War.
Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military. She is widely recognized in the "We Can Do It!" poster as a symbol of American feminism and women's economic advantage. Similar images of women war workers appeared in other countries such as Britain and Australia. The idea of Rosie the Riveter originated in a song written in 1942 by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. Images of women workers were widespread in the media in formats such as government posters, and commercial advertising was heavily used by the government to encourage women to volunteer for wartime service in factories. Rosie the Riveter became the subject and title of a Hollywood film in 1944.
Geraldine Hoff Doyle was an American woman who had been widely and mistakenly promoted in the media as the possible real-life model for the World War II era "We Can Do It!" poster, later thought to be an embodiment of the iconic World War II character Rosie the Riveter. However, it was later shown that the 1942 news wire service photograph likely depicts another young war worker, Naomi Parker.
Bernarr Macfadden was an American proponent of physical culture, a combination of bodybuilding with nutritional and health theories. He founded the long-running magazine publishing company Macfadden Publications.
Milo Milton Hastings was an American inventor, author, and nutritionist. He invented the forced-draft chicken incubator and Weeniwinks, a health-food snack. He wrote about chickens, science fiction, and health, among other things. Some of his writing is available in book form and on Project Gutenberg. Hastings was married twice and had three children.
Sut Jhally is a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose work focuses on cultural studies, advertising, media, and consumption. He is the producer of more than 40 documentaries on media literacy topics and the founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation.
During American involvement in World War II (1941–45), propaganda was used to increase support for the war and commitment to an Allied victory. Using a vast array of media, propagandists instigated hatred for the enemy and support for America's allies, urged greater public effort for war production and victory gardens, persuaded people to save some of their material so that more material could be used for the war effort, and sold war bonds.
Veronica Foster, popularly known as "Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl", was a Canadian icon representing nearly one million Canadian women who worked in the manufacturing plants that produced munitions, weapons, and equipment during the Second World War.
Willie Gillis, Jr. is a fictional character created by Norman Rockwell for a series of World War II paintings that appeared on the covers of 11 issues of The Saturday Evening Post between 1941 and 1946. Gillis was an everyman with the rank of private whose career was tracked on the cover of the Post from induction through discharge without being depicted in battle. He and his girlfriend were modeled by two of Rockwell's acquaintances.
Penny Colman is an author of books, essays, stories, and articles for all ages. In 2005, her social history, Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial, was named one of the 100 Best of the Best Books for the 21st Century by members of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA).
Betty Reid Soskin is an American retired ranger with the National Park Service, previously assigned to the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. Until her retirement on March 31, 2022, at the age of 100, she was the oldest National Park Ranger serving the United States. She released the memoir Sign My Name to Freedom in February 2018.
Feminism is aimed at defining, establishing, and defending a state of equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women. It has had a massive influence on American politics. Feminism in the United States is often divided chronologically into first-wave, second-wave, third-wave, and fourth-wave feminism.
The Writers' War Board was the main domestic propaganda organization in the United States during World War II. Privately organized and run, it coordinated American writers with government and quasi-government agencies that needed written work to help win the war. It was established in 1942 by author Rex Stout at the request of the United States Department of the Treasury.
Christine Frederick was an American home economist and early 20th century exponent of Taylorism as applied to the domestic sphere. She conducted experiments aimed at improving household efficiency, as well as arguing for women's vital role as consumers in a mass-production economy. She wrote books on these subjects, the best-known of which is probably Selling Mrs. Consumer, which offers an early justification for planned obsolescence as a necessary feature of the industrial economy.
"We Can Do It!" is an American World War II wartime poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost female worker morale.
Ghost Stories was an American pulp magazine that published 64 issues between 1926 and 1932. It was one of the earliest competitors to Weird Tales, the first magazine to specialize in the fantasy and occult fiction genre. It was a companion magazine to True Story and True Detective Stories, and focused almost entirely on stories about ghosts, many of which were written by staff writers but presented under pseudonyms as true confessions. These were often accompanied by faked photographs to make the stories appear more believable. Ghost Stories also had original and reprinted contributions, including works by Robert E. Howard, Carl Jacobi, and Frank Belknap Long. Among the reprints were Agatha Christie's "The Last Seance", several stories by H.G. Wells, and Charles Dickens's "The Signal-Man". Initially successful, the magazine began to lose readers and in 1930 was sold to Harold Hersey. Hersey was unable to reverse the magazine's decline, and publication of Ghost Stories ceased in early 1932.
Edna Reindel was a subtle Surrealist and American Regionalist painter, printmaker, illustrator, sculptor, muralist, and teacher active from the 1920s to the 1960s. She is best known for her work in large-scale murals, New England landscapes, and later for her commissioned work of women workers in WWII shipyard and aircraft industries as published in Life magazine in 1944.
John Russell Coryell was an American dime novel author. He wrote under the Nicholas Carter and Bertha M. Clay house pseudonyms, and, like many of his fellow dime novelists under many other pseudonyms, including Tyman Currio, Lillian R. Drayton, Julia Edwards, Geraldine Fleming, Margaret Grant, Barbara Howard, Harry Dubois Milman, Milton Quarterly, and Lucy May Russell.
Naomi Fern Parker Fraley was an American war worker who is considered the most likely model for the iconic "We Can Do It!" poster. During World War II, she worked on aircraft assembly at the Naval Air Station Alameda. Though Geraldine Hoff Doyle was initially credited as the subject of the iconic poster, a popular photograph of Fraley operating a machine tool at the Naval Air Station is now believed to be the inspiration.