Dec. 28, 1936 presents LIFE in it’s sixth week of existence. Already LIFE is selling 600,000 copies a week and squeezing the existing presses dry trying to meet demand. This high-caliber printing job is done on heavily enameled paper almost at newspaper speed by R.R. Donnelley & Sons in Chicago. LIFE is clearly a “picture magazine” at this point and doesn’t delve into the subject matter with much narrative. It will take another year or so for the magazine to find it’s “voice.”
Dancing was the rage in 1936 and “…people of all ages and sizes are dancing as never before.” And Arthur Murray’s dancing school was booming. The Murray building in New York City had 128 studios occupying eight floors. A loudspeaker phonograph system offered a constant choice of four kinds of dance melodies. Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. had two Murray instructors come to their home three times a week for two hour sessions. It was an ambition of every amateur to some day dance like Fred Astaire, whose amusing, wry expression is as familiar as his flying feet to millions of movie goers. The Lindy Hop was Harlem’s favorite dance which is sort of a strut plus fox-trotting and several improvisations thrown in.
LIFE Publisher Henry Luce’s parents were missionaries in China where he was raised before being sent to boarding school in England and then America. He introduces Chiang Kai-Shek to America in this issue and declares him “Hero of the week.” Luce stuck with this corrupt and ruthless politician and military leader until the bitter end in 1949. In 1927 Chiang split with the Communist wing of the Nationalist party and set up the Nationalist Government in Nanking. As the above pictures illustrate, captured Communists were executed on the spot by the Nationalists. “Strangest paradox in Chinese character is its mixture of tenderness and cruelty,” rationalizes Luce. In addition to the Chinese Civil War in 1936, China was also resisting the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Note the above picture of Japan’s gigantic electric trumpets to serve as ears for detecting enemy planes.
