Life Magazine from 1937

Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1937, I thought about my parents; they started school that year. They were probably still very focused on things going on within their family and small community rather than the broader world…but the world was heading into a time of turmoil. Looking at the way Life was covering those events seems relatively naïve now! The sample images (one from each weekly magazine) show a variety of topics the Life editors chose to cover over the course of the year. Most of the ‘color’ pages of the magazine were advertisements.

Life Magazine 1937-01-04 – a lot of public works projects in the past 4 years

Life Magazine 1937-01-11  - Margaret Sanger and birth control

Life Magazine 1937-01-18 – Chinese farmer in California

Life Magazine 1937-01-25 – US Army planes

Life Magazine 1937-02-01 – Roosevelt’s second inauguration  - a rainy day

Life Magazine 1937-02-08 – Mississippi flooding; levee dynamited at Cairo, Illinois

Life Magazine 1937-02-15 – US Supreme Court’s new building

Life Magazine 1937-02-22 – Marian Anderson

Life Magazine 1937-03-1 – Building the Golden Gate Bridge (accident)

Life Magazine 1937-03-8 – Sun Valley sky lifts

Life Magazine 1937-03-15 – British crown

Life Magazine 1937-03-22 – Irving parachute

Life Magazine 1937-03-29 – Palm Springs

Life Magazine 1937-04-05 – HMS Glorius in winter maneuvers

Life Magazine 1937-04-12 – Mussolini in North Africa…a Roman city in the sand

Life Magazine 1937-04-19 – Queen Mary with 3 grandchildren…Elizabeth II as a young girl

Life Magazine 1937-04-26 – Neville Chamberlain as Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life Magazine 1937-05-03 – British rearmament

Life Magazine 1937-05-10 – Germans celebrate Hitler’s birthday

Life Magazine 1937-05-17 – Dionne quintuplets at 3

Life Magazine 1937-05-24 – Coronation Day at Buckingham Palace

Life Magazine 1937-05-31 – Golden Gate Bridge from one of the piers

Life Magazine 1937-06-07 – University of Virginia

Life Magazine 1937-06-14 – Washington DC from the air

Life Magazine 1937-06-21 – Dust Bowl

Life Magazine 1937-06-28 - Telephone

Life Magazine 1937-07-05 – River Jordan and Jewish farms

Life Magazine 1937-07-12 – Audubon Association protects birds

Life Magazine 1937-07-19 - British air fleet after rearmament

Life Magazine 1937-07-26 – Typical day for a 12-week-old baby

Life Magazine 1937-07-26 – US wheat belts

Life Magazine 1937-08-09 – Mapping the battle at dawn

Life Magazine 1937-08-16 – Wall Streeters commute by plane

Life Magazine 1937-08-23 – Niagara Falls

Life Magazine 1937-08-30 – Maine trotters

Life Magazine 1937-09-06 – Texaco advertisement

Life Magazine 1937-09-13 – Nephew of Geronimo

Life Magazine 1937-09-20 – Prime Minister’s Kitchen

Life Magazine 1937-09-27 – Nazi parades

Life Magazine 1937-10-04 – American Legion parade

Life Magazine 1937-10-11 – Joe Kennedy and merchant marine stagnation

Life Magazine 1937-10-18 – Armstrong Linoleum advertisement

Life Magazine 1937-10-25 – Natives of Northwest Canada

Life Magazine 1937-11-01 – Man O’ War…256 ‘children’

Life Magazine 1937-11-08 – 100-inch telescope for Mt. Wilson

Life Magazine 1937-11-15 – Flying Dreadnought

Life Magazine 1937-11-21 – America as an exporting nations: raw cotton, automobiles, fruits

Life Magazine 1937-11-29 – Nursery furniture

Life Magazine 1937-12-06 – Japanese depiction of dying afternoon of Manchu China and garish dawn of Westernized Japan

Life Magazine 1937-12-13 – Train engines (billions of dollars and millions of men)

Life Magazine 1937-12-20 – Christmas is in the air

Life Magazine 1937-12-27 - $300/minute to operate the set for MGM’s musical Rosalie