Photo Friday: The Leader of the Pack Edition (1940's-1950's)

Good morning!

IT'S FRRRRIIIIDAAAAY. This week couldn't end fast enough!

I came across this set nosing around on Flickriver, and how. could I NOT. share with you. the following picture:

Is it a publicity photo from some mid forties' programmer of a B picture offering, with a suitably exploitation style title? Wild Boys of the Road? Slow Burn? Teen Gangland? No! It's an honest to goodness photo of the user's dad in 1943 in San Fransisco with some pals. The caption identifies the dad, Louis, as being sixteen or seventeen at the time. Are you kidding me, bub! Who was that assured looking and handsome their junior year of high school? Shockingly handsome and cool looking, right??

Here's the same photo, and it only loses a little flair for being in sepia instead of being hand-colored in eye-popping pastels:

While the other little dudes in the photo look like they may or may not be sixteen, I love how Louis looks like he's ready to stand-in for John Garfield or young Eli Wallach in a movie. The caption said women flipping through the family albums would go gaga over this photo and the dad's movie star like handsomeness. Do you blame them?! When I taught high school, I remember having two or three kids, who honestly, had probably failed more than one grade, who looked like grown men in my French II class. I kept telling the teacher across the hall, "This one guy looks more like he might run a small business or be a mechanic." Teen maturation rates are so wildly varying that the same thickly built, grown looking dude would be sitting next to some bird thin, pencil-neck of a kid, in the same grade. I am glad I don't have to go through being 16 but one time in this life.

A couple years later, stationed in Guam during the war-- wonder what was under that light blue pull over and super cool jacket? Wonder no more!

He looks like the man of steel himself! Think about if you were his wartime sweetheart and you got this glamour shot in the v-mail. I'd be like, well, let's go ahead and send this in to the paper. "SERVICE MAN BREAKS HOTNESS RECORDS ACROSS THE COUNTY" the caption would read, and me, leaning over the counter to the copy man in the newspaper office spelling my name out slowly and clearly, so  the accompanying article would be sure to have my name in it! Hands off, ladies! But seriously, dude looks like an actual movie star, which another caption in the set mentions is how the neighborhood refers to him and his sweetheart-- "the movie star couple".

Here's Louis's better half,  Hazel. Some of the annotations mention she has red hair, and there are some school photos from her childhood in Arkansas where her doe-eyed little face is covered in freckles. She's only seventeen in the photo below! Once again, I would hate to be seventeen and gawky in the same grade with this bosomy, pretty redhead!

Here are the parents together in a photo. Hazel was seventeen and Louis twenty five when they met. Isn't it funny that I think of that as a LARGE age gap in 2013, but I'm sure in 1950, when people got married all the time at eighteen, it wasn't as glaring to people at the time. My grandma on my mom's side was eighteen marrying a twenty-two year old, and on my dad's side, my grandma was sixteen marrying a twenty-five year old (I think those numbers are right)-- so again, not so out of the pale. Still, I cannot IMAGINE doofy little sixteen year old me trying to get married and start a family.  Growing up in the eighties', as opposed to the thirties' and forties', didn't prepare me for grown up life right out of high school (I'm not sure it has at this advanced age of 28, tell you the truth!)).

I gotta get hopping on estate sales this morning, but you can see more photos from this user's family album via this link. As always, if this is your mom and pop, I hope you don't mind me borrowing them. They're SO good looking, I couldn't resist!

How about you? Do you have any hopelessly glamorous photos of your parents or grandparents as young, cool kids around town? Did several members of your family marry at young age and stay together? Which one of these photos do you think is the most like a movie still? Let's talk!

That's all for this week! Have a fantastic weekend, grab good stuff at the sales, and we'll compare notes on Monday, huh? See you then!!!