Tell me this guy doesn’t look like a young Michael Caine.
Tugging With Joe & Kerry
Category: Photography
I Pledge Allegiance…Or Do I?
Perhaps it was a spontaneous self-exam? Or halfway to a clutch-the-pearls moment? Was it smugness or disdain?
Place: Monte Carlo, 1959, Red Cross Gala
People: Peter Ustinov, Italian Baroness Afdera Franchetti, Elsa Maxwell, and Henry Fonda
In the late 1950s, when Jane Fonda asked her father how he prepared before going on stage, she was baffled by his answer, “I don’t know, I stand there, I think about my wife, Afdera, I don’t know.” Jane, a proponent of Method Acting, could not understand how effortlessly her father prepared for a role. (wikipedia)
He must not have thought about his fourth wife for long, however, as he divorced her in 1961 and moved on to wife #5.
No wonder Barbara Stanwyck gave him the look.
Cards At The Esquivel Home
I purchased a yearbook this weekend at an estate sale and discovered that the owner had written words all over the images.
For example, this junior student was not only ugly, but “Granny Ugly.” Several girls held that distinguished title.
This boy with glasses was labeled blind, as were about a half dozen other boys.
Blind to what, I wonder? Her charms?
It may not be an insult today, but this gal was “Skinny Bones.”
But lest you think she had no kind words to ink her page, she did find Judy the pretty one here.
Or maybe it was Judy’s yearbook?
Newfangled X-Ray Machine
Pressure Cookers Indeed
A young man in Miss McFarland’s homemaking class (spared the apron) incites suspicion as he reaches for the pressure cooker. Perhaps he will fare better in the canning process.
Cherry Creek Campfire
Trust In Me
In keeping with yesterday’s eyeglasses post, we continue with the theme.
Is it me, or does Mr. Gibson have Jungle Book snake eyes?
He’s like one of those cats with two colors of eyes.
And check out Mr. Curry down below. While Richard’s pipe and Donald’s head of nails are interesting features, Paul has the intoxicating eyes. You can’t turn away.
Maybe it was something in the water. Even some of the professors at Western New Mexico University had crazy eyes.
Professor Morton looks like he just hid the body and is biting his tongue to keep quiet.
I almost cropped Professor Habeeb out of this image but I did not want to deny you his amazing salt ‘n’ pepper hair, valiantly defying gravity as it swirls about his skull like a kudzu vine.
So That’s What They Mean By Coke Bottle Glasses
Poor Billy. If only he could have used James’s frames for the portrait. Any of the Jameses would have done.
Well, I Can’t Make That My Title
Dick Nixon did much of the 1956 campaigning for the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. Here he and wife Pat ride through a snowy Evanston, Illinois.
Eisenhower defeated Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II (there are actually four) in both the 1952 and 1956 elections, due to attitudes like this.
And snappy hats such as this.
Dude, Where’s My Car?
The beach at Nantasket, Massachusetts was brimming with Ford motorcars on The 4th of July 1925. After a dip in the ocean, how would you find your way back to your car? With such lack of variety in models, how would a 50-year-old man buy a “crisis car”? Could you steal another’s spare tire and afix it to your own vehicle? When did they start marking parking spaces with white paint? Didn’t the black absorb the summer sun?
Fifteen more years would pass before the 1940 Packard offered factory-installed air-conditioning. But even by 1969, only half of all new cars had it. We never had it in our cars in the ’70s. That metal lapbelt clasp would scald the bejeesus out of my skin. Remember how it felt when the vinyl seat ripped the top layer of your thigh skin off?
P.S., where can I get a brassiere like this? This defies gravity.
I Kissed Seven Girls And I Liked It
Here’s some morale for the troops! LIFE asked Ginger Rogers (not shown here) to give a dream party to a GI, and the lucky recipient was the lipstick-covered Private John Farnsworth. The 22-year-old Farnsworth had served three years in the Pacific during WWII and returned home in 1944 to recover from malaria. After lunch, dancing, and games, the women sent him on his way–with a story to tell his buddies.
Women shown above include: Barbara Hale, Lynne Baggett, Gloria DeHaven, Lynn Bari, Jinx Falkenburg, Dolores Moran, and Chili Williams.
Talk about your day in the sun!
Church As Makeshift Hospital, Philippines WWII
I Don't Get It 