Spacemen (1961-63 Atomic Age Space/Sci-Fi Fan Magazine)

Good afternoon!

Ugh, it's so bright and beautiful outside I hardly wanted to come back inside after lunch! The temperature in this library workroom is glacial for some reason-- probably good for storing furs or preserving wooly mammoths in ice, but not so much for poor little library workers with S-U-M-M-E-R on the brain (cue Antonio Carlos Jobim soundtrack here). Ah, well. I'll be free soon enough! In the meantime, why not journey into midcentury space with me?

AAAAH, right?! I left you yesterday with a digital pile of Hollywood magazines from the thirties' and forties'...today's Internet Archive spoils include seven issues of the sci-fi fan magazine Spacemen. I even went through and selected some choice cuts from the crazy illustrations and articles dedans. Interested? Of course you are! I can palpably sense your atomic age excitement from across the computer screen! Take a look:

Spacemen was a short-lived Warren Publication in line with Famous Monsters of Filmland, sharing an editor and a general sense of ghoulish zany with that magazine. Forest J. Ackerman, arguably one of the earliest and most prolific sci-fi/horror collectors and proponent of the genre, oversaw the production of eight issues of this magazine...which was long enough for him to receive a fan letter and story submission from a fourteen year-old STEPHEN KING (check out his precious pre-teen typewritten letter here). And no wonder! In those lazy, hazy pre-Google, pre-Youtube days, if you were a sci-fi fan, the entire run of Eerie covers or the last scene of King Kong weren't only a mouse click away. If you were interested in Flash Gordon or giant gila monsters in prehistoric settings, you were going to have to do a little leg work-- or at least subscribe to one of the many monster and movie and monster-movie magazines at your local newsstand or Piggly Wiggly.

I am a big fan of, oh, EVERY PAGE OF THESE OLD ISSUES. Think about being a space-mad twelve year-old and wrestling with the Sophie's Choice like decision of keeping your latest issue in mint condition for your collection, or cutting out one of these photos to look at on your bedroom wall before you go to sleep at night.

Doesn't this one remind you of Mr. Goodbody? PS does anyone remember Slim Goodbody?

 It's a Gila monster's world, we're just livin' in it.

Most of the content in these issues has to do with a few key topics: sci-fi or space travel movies, past and present; speculation on the possibility of real-life space travel and or the probability of meeting intelligent life out there; and MOON LOOT. The number of space tie-in toys and memorabilia is surprising, considering it was only 1962. What I like to think about in this golden age of interest in our solar system was how NOTHING HAD BEEN PROVEN OR DISPROVED ABOUT SPACE. The first human space flight, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Garagin, was launched in 1961, and it would be another seven years before Armstrong and Aldrin made good on slain President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon. Who was to say what was out there? Captain Kirk really could meet space babes and weird rubber-prosthetic races of men on distant or not so distant planets...at this point, it was all a matter of finding out HOW to get up there. Not how to get over our disappointment that there were just moon rocks on the moon instead of, say, little green men. Think of what an age of imagination it was.

Lou Reed: "How d'ya...speak to a...how do you speak to Martian space man... You say HELLO..."

 I somehow don't think this is a "real" photo....

File this under #hellyesraybradbury. As a precocious little bookworm, I spent about an entire summer between sixth and seventh grade working through the complete Ray Bradbury body of work as owned by the Nashville Public Library, supplementing any gaps with musty paperbacks from Book Attic in Rivergate. I could still give you credible plot summaries of almost anything he's written-- the stories stick with you BUT GOOD. While I like Richard Matheson and Cornell Woolrich and Charles Beaumont and lots of other "speculative fiction" writers, Bradbury was the man. Here he poses, contemporaneously, with some of his creations.

I like to think of this next panel as a laugh-track sitcom of a giant lizard/turtle hybrid who just can't get it right. "Varan! Did you forget to pick up your kids from school....AGAIN? You're unbelievable! Varan, did you go out on a date with that moon monster and then never call her? UNBELIEVABLE." I crack my own self up.

The aforementioned "moon loot" is really one of the neatest parts of the magazine-- I can feel a vestigal twitch of childhood excitement looking at the ads, even though grown-up me knows FULL WELL sea monkeys and mail-order treasures in general are never, never, never what they're hyped up to be on the ads.

With the exception of maybe this space map-- I actually saw this on the wall of an estate sale once! It was in battered conditioned (obviously, if I had one of these things I'd be tracing space patterns on it every chance I got) and THIRTY DOLLARS, unframed, for some reason. Siiiiigh. Maybe I'll find one for cheap on the internet some day (Ebay shakes it weary head at me with more $30 examples...wth?).

Ok, ok, and THIS WEATHER BALLOON. Oh my God, I could seriously get one of these and have my own Rover of The Prisoner fame. And die happy.

Creed Taylor was a bandleader known for importing the sounds of several Brazilian artists in the sixties (SUCH AS the aforementioned Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrud Gilberto...what a weird coincidence!), but he also brought into the world these intriguingly titled albums of "weird music and chilling sound effects" known as Shock and (I can't get over this) Panic: The Son of Shock. Shock is on Spotify, and ISN'T THE WORLD A RICHER PLACE FOR IT. The first track, "Heartbeat", features a man breathing heavily (in a less sexy, more spooky way) over a soft jazz soundtrack that eventually culminates in screaming. I could listen to junk like this ALL. DAY. Spike Jones in Hi-Fi: Spooktacular in Screaming Sound is also available on Spotify AND features song titles like "Monster Movie Ball" and "Teenage Brain Surgeon"! I love this modern age we live in sometimes....that is going to save me a lot of digging in record bins for this oddity.

GIVE ME THIS, I WANT THIS. I would wake up and see that thing in the dark and have my hair turn white, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And in this case, it apparently wants to have a heart attack.

How not-like-the-picture do you think this thing would be in real life on a scale of 1 to 10? I would say about a 30.

 How did you know EXACTLY what image I would project on the wall?

 Just...some weird plants?

ALSO very cool though I know I don't have nearly a scientific enough brain to do Frankenstein, even in plastic form, justice...

I would answer the first line of the ad, "Is it a bird? A plane? No...it's a flying vampire!" with "Try again, Buddy, I'm pretty sure that's a box kite you've kind of put batwings on but-not-really."

Pick on somebody your own size, human! I'm siding with the lizard here:

And last but not least, who's been reading my dream journal? My kingdom for one of these shirts. Can you get over how they just superimposed the logo on a photo of these unsuspecting, blank t-shirted kids?

Ok, ok, I've gone on and on at the mouth about these magazines...it's time for you to get a load of them yourselves! There's a living ton more where this came from. Check it out here:

• July 1961
• September 1961
• April 1962
• July 1962
• October 1962
• January 1963
• September 1963

What do you think? Are you a sci-fi fan of the classical mold? Which of these crazy retrofuturist images are your favorite? Do you have any space age interests or collections of your own? What's something that really appealed to your little imagination as kid? Let's talk!

That's all for today but I'll see you back here tomorrow with even more. Have a great Wednesday! Til then.

WE DID IT (Living Room and Kitchen PAINTED)

 Good morning!

And what a good one it's been so far-- I got up this morning and threw back the bed clothes like it was Christmas Day, so I could make sure the day before hadn't been a dream-episode of my favorite tv show. It was no dream, folks. My dad and I really did paint the whole living room, trim work, and dining area in one day. Now, granted, it was a fifteen hour day with a lot of tall-people-stretching-for-the-ceiling kind of paint-oriented cardio, but we got the whole thing done and boy, am I pleased with the results! 

Enough with the preamble; let's look at the goods!

Nice, huh?! I feel like I live in a grown up catalog spread! For comparison, here's yesterday's living room next to this morning's. Brand new day!

Avant....et apés! The difference is startling.

I woke up at seven o'clock yesterday morning and started comparing paint colors using a Sherwin Williams app called Color Snap to make sure I hadn't completely lost my mind. While it kinda-sorta works on some photos and not at all on others, I managed to get the app to show me the picture on the left with white on the wall instead of aqua, and it looked fine! Resolution: proceed with Operation Paintbrush. I swung by my folks' house, picked up dad, and loaded up on paint supplies and actual cans of paint. We got a gallon for the living room and a quart for the dining area of the kitchen, the lamely named "Bistro White" and an Olympic color that reminded me of a post-it note, respectively. I was too busy roller-brushing my heart out to the sweet, sweet strains of seventies' FM gold (songs like "You Got the Best of My Love" by Emotion and "Sad Eyes" by Robert John were blaring while most of these photos were taken...this is how you motivate my family and me!) to take a lot of pictures, but here are some "befores" or "in processes":

I kept making allusions to Dexter with regard to this plastic cover. My dad
hasn't seen that show and kept ignoring me.

I learned a lot of things about the living room while I was working so closely with it throughout the entire day yesterday, as well as some things about myself. Yes, introspection (and paint fume inhalation based introspection) is a big part of the painting process. One, I am NOT THE DUSTER I THOUGHT I WAS. Every time we reached up to the ceiling there was some heretofore invisible cobweb coming off in my hands like I live in an actual haunted house. Boo! Add that to the list of improvements for year 2014. Two, my living room is not as cavernous and dark as I give it credit for-- as you can see in the above photo, sans blinds, that room is as bright as you could ask for. I'm thinking about getting three separate blinds for the living room, two small and one big, so I can open up the dang things and let in some LIGHT when I'm home on the weekends. Three, the room is oh-so-large without furniture crammed into every square foot! I'm thinking about rearranging things in the house so there are less just "things" in the living room and was careful, when reassembling the room, to pare down tchotckes to a minimum. You know those little gewgaws and doodads mean the world to me, but the room is so much more peaceful with a spare number of really neat things as opposed to a crazy amount of "just ok" things. Also, special shout out, I couldn't have done any of this without my Pappy. He worked like a Turk with me all dang holiday day to get this thing finished and kept me laughing when the paint fumes were starting to kill off valuable brain cells and morale was low. Not to mention he taught me a lot about both how to and how NOT to paint a large space like this, which I will be using in the future for certain. So thanks, Dad!! :)

Note Pappy in his painting overhauls and me in my 1976 "Panthers do it with pride!" blood drive tshirt. We
were rollin' our hearts out!

More after photos...doesn't it look like an entirely different house?! I pulled some saffron yellow/gold curtains I'd been hoarding out of the utility room to replace the old beige Colonial pattered curtains (these were from Southern Thrift in Donelson, $10 for the pair). Be on the lookout, fellow estate salers, for gold pinch pleat panels, as I'm in the market for at least two more! They needed ironing but I needed to rest my weary head, so they're just up there wrinkled for now. C'est la guerre. What do you think?

I still need to organize the under-coffee table stuff...board games everywhere!! But I'm also
kind of in love with the house now.

I donated some excess glassware to Music City Thrift and made sure the bar cart had pretty much just things we need on it, and doesn't it look happier and healthier with just a few, nice items? I sure think so:

Which way to the bar? Would you PLEASE direct me to the bar?-- "The Story of Bo Diddley"
by the Animals

One of my favorite things on the cart is this "Bar Aid" that I bought a dog's age ago in a Knoxville Salvation Army...you can dial up the cocktail you want and it gives you the recipe, lickety split! Now, how many for a zazarac? Brony X, anyone? I have you covered, whatever your poison (PS bring liquor-- as you can see, our bar cart is woefully understocked in that department! We'll build it back up).

At night, the wall color kind of reflects whatever light is being cast upon it-- in most cases, this is the amber-yellow of the pole lamps' shades, plus the white light of the other two lamps (#lampaddiction). I was worried the white I chose would be "too white" (Dad and I looked at other shades that had a more sandy kind of color, but I thought those would make the room look dirty/aged), but I think it's actually pretty much perfect! And look how the couch and the wood-tones in the room just pop out of the picture at you now! It's just as vivid in real life, too. I'm so pleased, people. I always get so anxious before a major "push" like this, but it turned out fine.

I replaced Laura Palmer for the time being with that mask the drunk lady at the flea market made me buy... and I hung a little floral hat over it so it almost looks like the mask is wearing a lady's topper. These should be hung lower but I was using the existing nail holes, so it might just have to ride high for a little while. I love how all the beiges and browns and golds in this room look now.

And the other side of the room! I'm sorry the floor lamp looks like the hand of God is coming down into the picture, but it just wouldn't photograph any better this morning and if you turn it off, the room's too dark. You get the idea! Here is where I watch my Joan Crawford movies. 

Last but not least, portrait of a happy camper after the whole thing was said and done! I couldn't help posing with my handiwork. Even though it took something like fifteen hours from buying-the-paint to sitting-down-with-everything-back-as-it-was, I think it was worth it!!!

So! What's the verdict? Do you like the after? Doesn't the room look so much more open without the whimsical-yet-oppressive paint color of its former life? What's the best switcheroo you've made in your own home? Any ideas for what my next BIG HOUSE PROJECT should be? I feel like a million bucks having made such a large scale task in 24 hours; it makes me feel like taking on the world! :D

PS Thanks everybody for your painting tips and encouragement yesterday! Don't think they didn't help me get through the crazymaking parts of running back to Lowes for more paint and lightswitch covers, paint tracked on the hardwood, plastic wrap that went on forever, etc, etc. I needed all the good thoughts I could get!

I gotta get back to work, but I'll talk to you guys tomorrow! Have a great Tuesday. Til then.

Changes Afoot! (Folks...I Am Finally Painting the Living Room)

Good morning!

It's a bank holiday, so I know some of you are reading this from the comfort of a day-off of work-- what did you decide to do with your day off? Wash the car? Run some errands? I have decided to go off my ding dang rocker and paint the house. The living room and kitchen, specifically. AAAH, WHY LISA, WHY. Can't you just lay in the bed like normal folks, eating bon bons and flipping through US Weekly in your leisure time (FYI, replace that with lemon sorbet, and I totally did that on Saturday). Five years with Miami blue cerulean in the living room has been about two too many...I was so happy when the couches were gold and the blue was a beautiful counterpoint to their Graceland-like over-the-top-ness, and my walls the colors of a glam rock three piece suit. However, I think a change will do me some good, so I'm heading out in a few minute to choose paint colors with my dad). I AM Towanda, but as you may well know, it takes as long to bake a good batch of cookies as it does to bake one where you used too much salt and they taste like cardboard. In the one day that I have off, I want to metaphorically bake some prize-winning cookies, so we're going to Pappy for the know how I'm going to need to get through this!

Take a picture, folks-- it'll last longer! Let's have a long last look at my front room in its "blue" period.

I think I'm going to set up the living room exactly like I have it now, just with a different wall color, so I took photos to remind me exactly how far things were apart/how close to the wall/how near each other. I might change up this wall arrangement with some of the kooky accouterments from other parts of the house, but I might just put them back as is. With off white, some of my crazier flea market hauls might be just the pop of color the room needs! See how much better my new phone camera is at taking pictures in low light situations? I myself am impressed. That round woven rug is one of my favorite things in the house, though you wouldn't know it to look at it-- it took about four different idea for this one to finally sink in as perfect! And it needs a rug-- there's a weird dark stain in the hardwood from where my parents tried to fill a kerosene space heater indoors in the eighties' (valuable lesson learned: do not fill kerosene space heaters indoors, even if it IS freezing outside).

I know, I know, I still need to get rid of those nasty white blinds in the front window-- and truth told, I wouldn't mind a pair of marigold colored curtains to match the accent chair there. What kind of blinds would you go with in the front window? I think I should thin out some of the barware on the bar cart-- while the penguin icebucket, martini shaker, high ball glasses and wine glasses get a lot of use, most of the other glasses were impulse buys at estate sales. If I'm not inviting the entire office of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price over for cocktails, I should be all right (miss you til I join you, Lane Price, RIP). On the coffee table is that Claude Rains book I was telling you about, a book of horror comics from the fifties', and the book that got me started on this whole craze, Entertaining is Fun!, by Dorothy Draper. I'll have to do a whole post some time on the book and the magnificent DD herself as I've been using her books as a kind of manual for living, but there's a chapter in this book that exhorts the reader, in the course of encouraging them to make their home inviting, to "pick up a paintbrush and not read another line until the [room] is painted!". How did she know I'd been dragging my feet for weeks/months/years on this? DD makes the call, I just follow through with it. Au revoir, what once was! Bienvenue, what will be!

The pictures haven't 100% demonstrated, in their well-lit clarity, how blue the room is. It's a blue that almost blends in with the lighter parts of the couch, and make the turquoise and cobalt parts of the fabric look dull and flat instead of the snappy color they were when I found them in (coincidentally) a white living room on the other side of town. I've been like, "NO, NO, NO, I must find ANOTHER COLOR, some color OTHER than white," but honestly, I think it's ok, amongst the popsicle box like variety of colors in my house, to have one room that is more ivory than iridescent in its splendor. Am I wrong? I think I'm going to look for a white with a little pink in it-- white is white is white to me, I've never been one to wring hands over "oatmeal" versus "ostrich feather", but I will know the color I'm looking for when I see it. So take a long last look at the blue-- I may be crying to you tomorrow morning about the outrageous folly I've committed against both my living room and mankind, but hopefully, I'll be happier and possessed of a brighter living room this time tomorrow. We can hope, anyway!

You've seen the before (minus that wall with the tv and the record console on it, but I told you about that in the last post about redoing my house, and I didn't take a very good picture anyway...use your imagination)...now the before-after? The after-before? This is what it looks like after the furniture is moved but BEFORE I'm planning on painting it tomorrow:

AAAAACK. NO. SO DISORIENTING. My OCD tendencies are probably going to kill me before nightfall tomorrow, but hopefully I'll be too busy counting paint strokes to have an actual heart attack. We're going to drape cloth all these bad boys and avoid them with extreme prejudice during the painting process. I've removed some things to the green room office (so bad, I can't even show you..it's like Hoarders in there right now from the influx of wall hangings and the bar cart, etc), and some other furniture to the den. I left a foot path though, and I'll put things to rights by tomorrow night (I hope!):

Great balls of fire! I have my work cut out for me, don't I?!

All right kids, let's have it with the words of encouragement-- best painting or home improvement project you've embraked upon successfully? What are your tips for keeping your sanity in the chaos? Know any cheats to "cutting in" or masking out lightplates with extreme precision? What color have you most enjoured or most regretted in your room painting days? Am I going to make it through alive? I hope so! I'll have to let you know. :)

Keep a good thought for me! More from the other side of this painting adventure tomorrow (hopefully)! Talk soon. Til then!

Sugar as Diet Food?! (Domino's Sugar, 1954-1956)

Good morning!

Another outta-town weekend means another Monday that has crept up on me like the night! We had a great time in St.Louis with Matthew's Memaw. Our visit included a marathon of politely cutthroat Yahtzee games (i.e., my true idea of heaven on earth, endless Yahtzee...it's THE MOST ADDICTIVE GAME), chats-a-plenty with one of my favorite soon-to-be-relatives, and a couple stops at Midwest thrift stores and antique malls on the way to and from the Show Me state. I managed to make a good haul, and some surprising bargains, but I was so sleepy from all the in-the-car time yesterday that I pretty much flopped upon arriving home. I'll do some photo posts later in the week to show you, but meanwhile...

I have GOT to show you these ads I found for Domino's Sugar, circa 1954-1956. I don't know if it's the coffee I've been slugging or just the sheer amazing bravado of these ads, but I about hopped out of my seat at work when I saw the first one in a 1955 copy of Life. Domestic scene at the kitchen table, where both members of a married couple are trying to lose a few pounds to fit into the those sharp, tiny 1950's  clothing silhouettes, no doubt:

Am I seeing things? Is this REALLY an ad extolling the health virtues of CANE SUGAR ITSELF? Take a look at the fine print:

I feel like the crows in Dumbo crooning "When I See an Elephant Fly" here....WHAT. A DIET BOOKLET BY DOMINO SUGAR? You can see some of the scans of a real-life copy of this book here at the Nickadizzy blog. I am all out of words, dude. As another blogger mentioned on another site (I can't find it now! They know who they are), with reference to this manual, it's essentially encouraging you to replace one diet item from your already meager diet food portions with a cup of coffee and sugar.

LOOK AT THIS:

It's Mad Men era advertising spin at its most dervish-like....wait, I mean....what are you even saying? They're different kinds of sugar! I can guaran-damn-tee you just because 3 tsp of sugar has fewer calories than a grapefruit, its consumption will not aid your weight loss one iota. Retraining your mind to think of sugar and coffee as "good" and fruit as "bad"....well, I could not be more incredulous if I tried. I remember reading that no less than my idol Joan Crawford followed a strict dieters-diet of LOTS of coffee and very little food. See this excerpt from a 1936 Vanity Fair profile:

Except for six or eight cups of coffee a day and about a package of cigarettes, her diet is spartan...When she is working on a picture, she drinks a cup of hot water when she is called at six o'clock, has fruit juice and coffee for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and dinner without white bread or potatoes. She drinks wine now and then, but no hard liquor.

Sure, that near-anorexia gave La Crawford her signature racehorse sleek physique in the thirties', but I do not see Domino's sugar included anywhere in that regime! ((tuts to self))

Here's another spot for Domino's signature "Energy Lift":

I love that the husband is chiding the wife. No one on a diet at any time ever forgets that they are on a diet! Reminds me of that hall-of-fame bad-boyfriend quote from Love Actually, "No one's gonna fancy a girl with thighs the size of big tree trunks." 1955 housewife to spouse: "Thanks for the reminder, husband! I forgot about how fat I am...I really should cut down on the sugar. PSYCH! I SHOULD DRINK SUGAR COFFEE WITH EVERY MEAL!" ((totally flips out in throes of sugar psychosis))

Being a lifelong on-again, off-again dieter, never able to peaceably eat a piece of chocolate cake or fried-anything without cringing and thinking of the consequences, I think about how much harder it must have been to keep on a diet in pre-1980's America. It would be a shot in the dark to cut out x in favor of y, because for all you know that information may completely made up or the result of a passing fad. If you think being told carbs are bad in all forms is wrong (as many dietitians bemoaned after the last Atkins craze of the early 2000's), think about if you were being told sugar, like granulated sugar, was better for you than fruit. What in the heck, people.

What are your thoughts? Could you believe the gall on Domino's behalf, claiming "up was down" in the name of selling more sugar packets, even to dieters, in 1955? What crazy diet have you gone on or almost tried? What regimen did your mother or grandmother stick to when wanting to drop a couple pounds? I'd love to hear you chime in on this craziness.

That's all for today, I gotta get back to work, kids! Have a great Monday, and I'll see you back here tomorrow.

PS: Need to see this with your own eyes? Etsy seller rarefinds4u has one for sale here. I'm tempted!

Photoplay Advertisements (1935)

Good morning!

I hope everyone had a good weekend-- I am DOG TIRED from the trip up and back to Knoxville, but had a great time catching up with old friends. This morning, I was soothing my sleep-deprived little eyes with the welcome sight of thirties' issues of Photoplay magazine (available via the Media History Digital Library site, and what a site!), and thought I might share with you some of the advertisments that caught my eye in the Jan-Feb 1935 issues, between sightings of Joan Crawford's impossibly sleek figure and Shirley Temple in grown up clothes. Let's take a look!

One thing that has always fascinated me about 1930's advertisements is implied hyper-optimism as a byline angle. While the "have beautiful skin, be popular!" plotline of the above spread for skin-clearing Yeast Foam Tablets (great name, right?) is no more valid a marketing plot now than it was almost eighty years ago, I am just filled with a Miniver Cheevy like zeal for a time when people felt like if you just had the right thing, or you just worked hard enough, you could be anything, anybody. The girl in the top picture takes the pill and doesn't just become not-unattractive, or just not-popular, she becomes SUPER attractive and SUPER popular! "Am I happy now! A date every night if I want it!" the pretty, marcelled, blemish-free heroine crows from the final panel of the advertisement. That old American boot-strap mythos, with no sardonic edge, appeals to me so vividly that I want to go out and buy Yeast Foam Tablets, even though my complexion's fine!

Though I'm relatively sure as many men as women went to the movies back in the day, the celebrity photo magazine was apparently thought to be the unique province of ladies', and the preoccupation with lovely skin and perfect makeup is one of the dead giveaways as to who Photoplay thought of as their bread-and-butter advertisers' audience. Above, I think the "Catherine" of the article looks like a consumptive Mary Astor, but her George Sanders suitor, who is much younger than her own forty years, asks her "What keeps your skin so young and beautiful?". I might just be feeling catty, because I'm overcome with envy over that fitted hat and bow-embellished coat, but, well, we all have our shortcomings.

Eyelashes and eyebrows were seriously my number one concern as a teenager, and I can just imagine fifteen year old me reading this and thinking, "YES! I need that curler! And those tweezers! I WILL look like Myrna Loy!" Eyes being a particularly strong feature of mine, it was and is important to me that the lashes be as curled and dolled-up with mascara as possible, and that there be a clean slate of brow above it to frame the goods. "Kurlash" offers to help me with their products. See the tiny cartoon woman playing golf, the other competing in archery, and yet a third being under the surveillance of a heavily lashed, though disembodied eye? Who designs these things?

A great big "I WANT TO GO TO THERE"  to the "New York home of Hollywood Stars", The Park Central. $5 a day single in 1935 would be more like $80 a day in today's money, but today's lowest price for a single reservation I could find was $119. That's a third increase in price! You don't get a sitting room or a suite, just a single room with a king size bed and amenities that include "Air Conditioning, 32" Flat Screen HDTV, Spacious Work Desk, [and] Additional telephone in bathroom" (where's the radio I was promised?). Here's an ebay peek at the dance floor at the Cocoanut Grove...unfortunately, the Tom Cruise movie in the early 2000's lookin' Bar Bella has replaced the famous tree-shaded thirties' club. No fair! NO FAIR!


Feminine products, 1935. I know they were still as necessary then as they are now, but I am still just as shocked to see old school advertisements for them in magazines as I have always been. "Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday", the name of the instructional booklet, sounds like a suspiciously ominous occasion to me.

















If my child said this to me....oooh, I should like to hear my child say this to me. Straight to the moon, Alice! Also, if my hands ever get that bad, forget Lux, I'm just wearing cloth gloves full time. I'm glad Mrs. Sayles could be more understanding, even under pressure of serving her bridge club, with her child.

Dick Powell, you old scamp. What are you doing inspecting my lipstick? Who cares if I look painted? Did you know that OH MY GOD VERMONT COUNTRY STORE carries a nostalgia reboot of this lipstick?  I've always wondered about the looks-orange-goes-on-another-color pigment of these cosmetics. Let me go ahead and grab my pocketbook.


You should already know from my personal second-favorite-hairstyle-of-all-time (beehive is still #1 in my heart), that the pinned braids above speak to me. The language of this ad is where I'm hung up. "Guaranteed first quality, sanitized, natural wavy human hair to match yours" sounds like either a dream come true or something from a horror movie. I wonder what these things looked like in real life. Was it as easy as that to follow "Hollywood's Latest Fashion Decree"?

What is with the woman on the left?! POOR WOMAN ON THE LEFT. I distract myself by thinking about playing a trumpet and becoming a famous thirties' woman bandleader. Move over, Benny Goodman! I've got my eye on the top spot!

And last but not least, a handful of products that were on one of the last pages of one of these issues. Do you not love the one at top right that quotes Thackeray to promote its "explaining male psychology for women" book? AND it comes in a "plain wrapper", in case your bratty kid brother tries to make fun of you for figuring out how to make the boy in your homeroom class fall madly in love with you, and to become your very own Garbo of the eleventh grade. I also like how glamorous the wave cap looks, when you know it's just a plastic bonnet the likes of which everyone's grandma used to wear out to the grocery store when it was raining.

Anyway, how was your weekend? Seen any eye-catching historical ads lately? Which of these would convince you to actually sign up for the product being sold? Make sure and follow the link at the top of this post if you're into classic Hollywood-- it's a GOLDMINE.

That's all for today-- see you guys right back here tomorrow for more flims and flams.