Want to buy or sell something? Check the classifieds
  • The Fedora Lounge is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Search results

  1. Inkstainedwretch

    You know you are getting old when:

    There used to be separate Oscars for B&W and color cinematography. B&W was an art unto itself, with light and shadow being practically characters in the film. Also, B&W could make a low-budget film stylish, the film noir being the greatest example. Many noirs were low budget - they could not...
  2. Inkstainedwretch

    You know you are getting old when:

    One name: James Wong Howe.
  3. Inkstainedwretch

    You know you are getting old when:

    My personal muscle memory quirk: At the library, I take my books to the desk and automatically take out my wallet to get my library card. I haven't had a library card in decades, but I still reach for it.
  4. Inkstainedwretch

    You know you are getting old when:

    There is a sand-filled "ashtray," (urn?) in the foreground, so smoking is at least acknowledged.
  5. Inkstainedwretch

    Technical features, you can really do without?

    I found this feature very helpful in the army. At night, in a tent, usually under military light discipline (no lights that might be seen more than 10 feet away) the backlight wristwatch was handy for finding out what time it was, timing guard reliefs and so forth without using a flashlight and...
  7. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    I may have written this before, but I'm not going to comb 300+ pages to find out. I don't remember when I last saw a train towing a caboose. They were still common in the '60s, but I don't know when they disappeared.
  8. Inkstainedwretch

    You know you are getting old when:

    The effect is multiplied when you realize that the women are actually guys. This has happened to me in Vegas and New Orleans.
  9. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    It's interesting how status was determined by headgear. "Big wigs" were literally the most important people who wore the biggest wigs. In the Nixonian era "hard hats" meant construction workers and by extension the working class. But in Britain "hard hat" meant the upper class who wore toppers...
  10. Inkstainedwretch

    Old smells, that immeditately transport you back in time?

    Great Depression-deco design and color there. You saw that bronze-green and red (or yellow) combination on everything from tractors to cigarette packs. Joh Deere farm equipment retains the bronze-and-yellow of that era.
  11. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Police cars with a single rotating red light on top and the "growler" siren. We called the light the "cherry" or "gumball." I first encountered the red-and-blue lightbar and the banshee-whoop siren in Chicago in the early '60's.
  13. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    Does anyone still use the expression, "This is where we came in." ? In the antediluvian days of the '50s-'60s they didn't clear the theater at the end of the movie. You could sit there all day if you wanted. When you're a kid, continuity means little. As long as you saw the whole movie it...
  14. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    This is invaluable information. Somehow, I an going to find a way to use this expression. Actually, the backhanded "good luck" wish goes back to ancient days. In ancient Rome. when a victorious general rode in his triumphal procession, a slave stood behind him and from time to time say...
  15. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    Check out some stills from the pre-code "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934). Weismuller and O'Sullivan appear nearly nude (in one sequence fully nude) and nobody ever looked better in that mode.
  16. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    Maybe that's why I haven't seen any in a while. Quite a few years since elementary school.
  17. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    An expression I hear almost daily in this paranoid and conspiracy-obsessed time is "connect the dots." Yet I haven't seen a connect-the-dots puzzle in many years. Do you think most of the people who use the expression even know what it came from?
  19. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    Good time for a return to the Hollow Earth theory.
  20. Inkstainedwretch

    DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

    I didn't know Sue Grafton had died. I met her at a mystery convention in Pasadena in the early '90s and have seen her at many others in the years since. What a loss.
  21. Inkstainedwretch

    Most overrated movies?

    In 1969, on leave from the Army, I went to New Orleans to visit with my family who were vacationing there. My father's business associate was a local political wheel and got us tickets for a New Orleans Saints game. It was the only time I ever went to a pro football game. Before the game proper...
  22. Inkstainedwretch

    DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

    You'd think publishers would have learned something from that, but barely a decade later they fell for the Hitler Diaries, the work of a small-time German thief, that not only tarnished Stern Magazine but pretty well wrecked the reputation of distinguished historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who...
  23. Inkstainedwretch

    Most overrated movies?

    I thought Bacall was a rather handsome older woman in "Harper" (1966). That was a movie full of veteran character players and deserves to be better known.

Latest posts

Members online

... and 31 more.
Total: 3,007 (members: 81, guests: 2,926)

Forum statistics

Threads
109,303
Messages
3,078,319
Members
54,244
Latest member
seeldoger47
Top