Skip to main content

Passion, Pathos, And Adventure

March 2023
1min read

The three chief plot ingredients of turn-of-the-century melodrama are unmistakably tagged in these three posters. Any impression that The Woman in Black would turn out to be as somber as its title is cheerfully dissipated by the artist’s choice of a scene in which Ruby, “an English music hall artiste,” gives a private showing of the cancan to “Tony Jack” Crane, son of the play’s villain. Since Jack is supposedly as sophisticated as his nickname, the expression on his face is no less titillating to the potential playgoer than the look of horror on the lady in the doorway. Even the sinister Woman in Black, properly cast, has her charms; for according to a contemporary review: “During her hypnotic feats she holds her arms well up in the air, in order to show very nicely her corsets fits, and what an exceedingly shapely figure she owns.” • The poster advertising Pique might just as aptly be labelled Pathos. Who is the dolorous lady, and why has she been abandoned to the icy city streets on this terrible night? One thin is clear: she has been wr-r-ronged, and it’s going to take some heavy acting and a dozen changes of scenery to set things right. In justice to Augustin DAly, the famous playwright-manager, and the author in this particular case, it should be said that Pique was more serious and dramatically probable than the most of its competitors; but the poster artist didn’t know that. •For the boys at the office who hungered after adventure, Under the Polar Star (1896) promised surfeit for a while—at least vicariously. Practically bursting with action, it offered murder, amnesia, shipwreck, a hero and villain adrift together on an ice floe, a heroinewho achieves the Arctic Circle disguised as a cabin boy, and—guess what?—a denouement in which Everything Comes Out All Right.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "December 1963"

Authored by: Michael Blow

The first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution might have earned a fortune if he had chosen to commercialize his inventions. But American science would have suffered

Authored by: Oliver Evans

Take a cup of Choctaw and add Frenchmen: aventuriers de bois and Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia
Blend in a Mississippi Bubble, a sprinkling of fugitives from justice, and a few filles de joie
Now sift in Catalans, Spanish planters, gens de couleur , and a large gombo nègre
Make a Code Noir and some Quadroon Balls
Stir together gently, adding Dalmatian oystermen, Filipino shrimpers, Germans, and “Kaintucks” (often rather tough)
Add a pinch of pirates
Simmer slowly under six flags
Serves most of southern Louisiana

Authored by: C. S. Forester

Hundreds of miles from salt water, two tiny, improvised fleets hammered away at each other in one of the decisive naval engagements of the War of 1812

Authored by: Lucius Beebe

Its diners were sumptuous, its sleepers luxurious, its lounges a rendezvous for the nation’s notables. And it even made a regular gambling stop at Reno

Authored by: Paul Russell Cutright

Medicine was primitive and their knowledge of it limited, but in their hazardous journey to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark lost only one patient

Authored by: Mary R. Maloney

His family and aides knew John Renolds as a bachelor whose only love was soldiering. The tragic aftermath of his death at Gettysburg revealed one of the Civil War’s most poignant romances

Authored by: Bruce Catton

DRED SCOTT v. SANFORD

Authored by: The Editors

SHUN THE CUP, & KEEP THY FEET TO THE PATH

Authored by: Charles Morrow Wilson

In San Francisco Warren G. Harding lay dead, and the nation was without a Chief Executive. In the early morning hours, by the light of a flickering oil lamp, an elderly Vermonter swore in his son as the thirtieth President of the United States

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.