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  1. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    BlueTrain made mention of how popular American pop music was and is overseas. It extends way beyond pop music. Most people don't realize it, but the French are the great students of American pop culture, and not just the music. This may come as a surprise, because the French are disdainful of...
  2. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    My knowledge of '50s and '60s pop is pretty solid because that's when I was listening to it. My preference has always been for classical music but when I was growing up pop was the background music of our lives. It wasn't even about liking it, it was just always there. At home my radio was...
  3. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    Speaking as another vintage Baby Boomer (born '47, thus even more classicaler than EngProf) I have to plead our cultural media upbringing. By the mid-50s, the pre-eminent transmission of pop songs was the 45 rpm record. These were what we heard on the radio and these were what we bought. There...
  4. Inkstainedwretch

    Burma-Shave signs without rhyme?

    I remember one from just outside my family's little hometown of Kenedy, TX. If you neglect Your face each day Here is what We have to say: Burma Shave On a long road trip in the 50s you'd pass dozens of these. I wonder what advertising genius came up with the idea of sequential signs for the...
  5. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    A music phenomenon of the Golden Era/50s/60s I haven't seen addressed is what I call the awful-voice singer. A few of the best-known singer-songwriters of the era had terrible singing voices. There was Jimmy Durante, whose voice was once described as "ä rusty wood rasp calling for its mate,"...
  7. Inkstainedwretch

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    In ancient Rome, everyone belonged to one of the chariot racing factions: the Reds, Whites, Blues or Greens, identified by the colors of the charioteer's tunics. One philosopher noted that in the middle of a race, if all the drivers swapped tunics, the crowd's loyalties would go with the...
  8. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    The invention you're thinking of is the aeolipile, which was invented by a Greek scientist at the Museum of Alexandria which was, incidentally, the first pure research facility. Several times in Classical antiquity the possibilities of steam power were demonstrated, but the ancient world had...
  9. Inkstainedwretch

    Verbal anachronisms in period movies

    One reason that Hollywood could make all those great cavalry movies in the Golden Era was that until WWII the U.S. Army still had horse cavalry, so they could always hire extras who knew how to perform all those parade-ground maneuvers like pass in review, etc. It would present great...
  10. Inkstainedwretch

    Disco: The last dying gasp of the Golden Era?

    I believe that in the U.S. the disco scene, like many other pop-culture fads, grew out of the gay subculture, along with things like camp and drag, but it flourished in the mainstream more than the others, because it presented yet another venue for guys and girls to get together and get it on.
  11. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    Often things are discovered without the original discoverer grasping the implications of their discovery. In the 17th century the pioneer of microscopy van Leeuwenhoek discovered and described microorganisms (he called them "animalcules"). For the next 200 years scientists observed and studied...
  13. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    This almost belongs in the movie anachronism thread. Because the film "The Sting" used Scott Joplin music, people now associate it with the Depression 30s, when it actually dates from 3 decades earlier. the movie and the music are badly juxtaposed, but it has fixated that music with that time...
  14. Inkstainedwretch

    Verbal anachronisms in period movies

    One thing that has struck me in recent years is that, even in movies as meticulous as "Saving Private Ryan," the Germans are portrayed with shaven or buzzcut hair. If you study actual photographs of real German soldiers from WWII, they almost always had hair noticeably longer than their...
  15. Inkstainedwretch

    Soda Fountain Classics?

    The only time I ever saw Moxie for sale was in a gourmet grocery in Pasadena, CA called Jurgensen's. Jurg's sold all sorts of weird stuff, including canned kangaroo meat. This was in the 50s. I remember us kids being astonished that Moxie really existed. We'd thought it was a joke from MAD...
  16. Inkstainedwretch

    Why did we make ourselves into walking advertisements?

    I'd forgotten Poll Parrot shoes. They used to sponsor kids' shows in the '50s and had a catchy jingle: "Poll Parrot, Poll Parrot are the shoes you ought to buy They make your feet run faster, as fast as I can fly" I probably haven't thought of that in 50 years.
  17. Inkstainedwretch

    Why did we make ourselves into walking advertisements?

    Somewhere I have a picture of me in 1964. I'm in 11th grade in Richardson, TX. I'wearing an Alligator shirt. I think Alligator was the first garment company to put its logo right on the front instead of on the back collar label, out of sight.
  19. Inkstainedwretch

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    If brains was dynamite, he couldn't blow his nose.
  20. Inkstainedwretch

    Name the Actor...

    A few made the transition. Liz Taylor, Roddy McDowell, Dean Stockwell, Jodie Foster, a few others. But I think most child stars succeed because of a certain childlike, appealing quality, which doesn't always mature into grownup acting chops.
  21. Inkstainedwretch

    Your favorite movie quotes

    Eli Wallach in "The Magnificent 7" If God had not meant for them to be sheared he would not have made them sheep!
  22. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    Lizzie, do you think that the pre-war unsponsored newscasters delivered a better brand of news? I recall reading a book by a writer who had covered the Spanish Civil war and he said that all of the correspondents there were biased in favor of whatever newspaper syndicate they reported for with a...
  23. Inkstainedwretch

    The Origin Of "The Fifties"

    One of my very earliest memories is the "Camel News Caravan"with John Cameron Swayse as anchor. When Chrysler started sponsoring it on alternate days it was called "The Plymouth News Caravan." At least they were right up front telling you who was bringing you that program. Quite a bit of early...

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