Life Magazine-- globalism before the Internet

Life Magazine (June 27, 1949)

You find a magazine from the day you were born, 67 years ago, and you buy it. The Life, its aged paper still in very good condition, only cost $3.00. Old magazines do not increase in value. A young woman in a modest bathing suit smiled from the bench of a sailing yacht. The inside of the magazine held portents of the revolution about to overtake society. I refer to the Sixties cultural revolution and later to the electronic revolution of the Internet.

The internet unites us all. We're using it now. I write the words and you read these words from any corner of the globe. Life magazine did not have interactive capacities. We consumed the words, content controlled by editor Henry Luce, and had no ability to respond other than through a few published Letters to the Editor.

So, what was happening? America and the Allies had just won World War II. America's Fifties prosperity, soon to arrive in full, comes across in the ads, many for liquor-- and every kind of booze is promoted: Puerto Rican rum, Seagram's whiskey, Sloe gin, Imperial liquor and Schlitz beer. So alcohol consumption was plentiful. Nash cars were advertised with their curved lines and rounded bumpers. A primitive RCA television brought to mind the fuzzy pictures and tiny screen of the era. Milton Berle got mentioned so television had begun its magnificent expansion.

Life extolled the plentiful harvest of wheat in a multi-page story. And marriage was in the air. Palumbo's wedding reception hall in Philadelphia hosted 3,000 wedding parties a year, as many as 56 wedding receptions in a single day! An obsessed baseball Annie, a name for the sports' groupies of that era, shot a baseball player. She enticed Eddie Waitkus, a Phillies first baseman to her hotel room and and then pulled out a rifle and shot him. He survived. An overzealous Texas constable smashed Houston gambling rooms to bits, even though this was out of his purview. Life went to Japan where an effort was being made to convert the Japanese to Christianity.  Bill Boyle,  patronage boss working for Harry Truman, made the rounds of the political wards. The magazine refers to Joseph McCarthy in brief manner, but the threat of Communism loomed heavily.

The magazine conducted its own intellectual gathering, "A Round Table on the Movies" with Hollywood's most formidable directors and producers on hand, along with academics and other players in the world of film. Life had enough power and influence to lead discussions on the important themes of the day-- including Housing and Modern Art.

Life brought some sophistication to our lives-- and brought the world to our living rooms. It was a baby step and eventually the large, photo-filled pages gave way to the mountain of electrons we call the internet.