Photo Friday: A Gal Like Alice Edition

Good morning!

Folks, it's Friday again, and you know what that means-- time to delve into other people's online photo archives for a personal look at someone else's past! I am as brazen about going through these flickr folders as I am delighted to show you today's chosen subject. I was initially going to do a post on this incredibly adorable toddler named Mike, but when I got far enough back into the family album to see his mother Alice...well, come on! There was naught else to do but go with the lovely rousse in all her just-post war redheaded glory.

Let's take a look!

This photo is one of the first that caught my eye. Usually, if I'm going to do a post about one particular kind of picture, but I see one on the way that's too good to pass up, I pin it to my Pinterest board "(Not My) Family Photos". I found myself pinning so many of these late forties' photos of Mike's mother Alice that I finally threw in the towel and decided to devote a whole post to her. As much as I love an irrepressibly cute toddler of the era, gals with great hair and great dresses will win out every time against even the cuddliest of kids. I love lice's dress and her Donna Reed lookalike companion. Also, what could be more wartime era than a date with a sailor in his full, Cracker-Jack-man uniform, out for dinner and dancing at the Palladium?

Dang, Alice! Rita Hayworth, much? A whole set of photos are from a trip these girls took to Forest Lawn and Mt. Wilson. Forest Lawn is a famous cemetery in Glendale, CA and Mt. Wilson is in Los Angeles, which makes these girls California natives as far as I can figure. Which begs the question-- why are you not in the movies already, Alice! Notice how the extra three or four inches of height on our gal makes her twice as movie-star like-- slacks for women were just made for long, lean silhouettes like this. If I looked this good in pants, believe me, I would never wear anything else. Look at her tiny little sling back loafers, too!

More of the pants and the hair that I want here...how about her beau? What I like in this photograph is how unposed it is...you can see, in the distance, some people running around candid. I am still marveling at the diminutive size of Alice's feet.

Here are the girls sitting on a guard rail on the same trip. Watch out, you're liable to cause an accident with rubbernecking bachelors! They've changed their shoes from the last two pictures, and are now comfortably clad in matching saddle shoes. I have a pair of Willis saddle shoes I actually found at the Goodwill in Donelson, and they are the bonafide Pat Boone realness of fifties' (probably men's, as they fit my size 11 feet) shoes...still, I can't figure out what to wear them with! I'm not big on slacks and they just look clunky with most of the things I've tried (or costumey, which is good sometimes and bad others). Do you have a pair? What do you wear them with? Side note: could this photograph be more like a postcard? I love the cars passing in the background and that silhouette of further mountains in the distance.

More Rita Hayworth in this photo outside an observatory with the same ruffled blouse and pants. "Aww, quit goofin;!" seems to be the sentiment here. Each photo is captioned in spidery script but I can't quite make out what it says, and I don't want to go back to each individual photo to find out. Know that this was in 1946, and I think Alice and "Arlys" were the female subjects, fill in the rest for yourself.

Another photo of Alice with great hair and a great smile. This would be her class photo. I need to look up a tutorial where you can take dead-straight, heavy hair and make it do this. A lot of the girls whose pincurls I've admired (Solanah on Vintage Vixen, Nashville's own Emma at the Fiercest Lilluputian) are naturally curly girls who have learned how to tame that texture into period-authentic, pin-up girl hair...every time I try, I feel like I don't get the definition and the shape that I want. Or, invariably, one side is perfectly curled (my hair holds a curl surprisingly well), and the other is limp as a dishrag. Oh well. Maybe I'll gain great inspiration from this knockout of a forties' teenager. If it could be done then, it can be done now!!

Last but not least, here's a photo of Alice with her future husband (who may or may not be the guy from the first couple of photos, I am so bad at paying attention to detail today). Can you believe his sweater? Those sweet expressions? They would go on to have a kid named Mike (a world record breaker for "early fifties' kid cuteness") who in turn is the father of the user who scanned and uploaded these photos. Ah! To have so glamorous a mother/grandmother! I am jealous bones for her style and forties' casual wardrobe.

Do you have any effortlessly glamorous relatives in your family tree? What is it about this kind of "dressed up dressed down" that so appealing to a 21st century gal like myself? HOW DO I GET MY HAIR TO DO THAT? Which of these outfits do you most covet? Let's talk!

Well, kids, I am turning in for this week. You have yourselves a wonderful weekend, get great stuff at the sales, and I will see you soon! Be good. Til then!