Opened in 1938 the Ocean Hotel occupied a site of around 4 acres with 344 bedrooms and a dining hall that could seat 300 people. It consisted of a main building shaped like a crescent which contained the whole of the public rooms and some of the bedrooms, and there were six other buildings which contained bedrooms and bathrooms only. The hotel was so arranged that during the winter season the six detached blocks could be closed down and the main building, with its 130 bedrooms, run as a separate hotel. An outdoor swimming pool (later enclosed) was built between the buildings.
During the war the hotel was taken over by the Auxiliary Fire Service and later became a fire service college which was officially opened by the then Home Secretary Herbert Morrision. It was used throuhgout the war and was not handed back until 1952 when the lease was acquired by Billy Butlin for £250,000. Its doors were opened as a holiday centre again on 2 May 1953, after an army of workmen had spent the previous six months restoring the near-derelict building. It soon became popular with honeymooners and Billy Butlin later said the hotel was one of the best investments he’d ever made. (by Butlins Memories)
The event was actually a school run event in front of a field house on campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. One of the students came up with this stunt because he wanted to generate a campus prank story since he was running for student body president. This same student also was at the campus house to help promote a school humor magazine he was an editor at. The famous stunt had Stormy and a Dixieland band crashed the event in the back of a large truck.
The famous Bourbon Street burlesque dancer ventured out after the truck moved in to place and began to tease the crowd with her routine while the band started playing. She began to strip, which caught most of the crowd completely off guard, and showcased her famous talents. The school officials there panicked, and the crowd actually had mixed emotions. Some, like the ones up close in the pictures, cheered and enjoyed the show.
However, others found this stunt demeaning to the school, and sought to put an end to the stunt before it went too far. Led by some LSU football players, a group of young men stormed the truck. They destroyed some of the instruments, including the drums and a piano, and chased off the band. They then had to figure out what to do with Stormy.
Apparently, even as the crowd besieged the truck, Stormy never lost her composure and even continued to engage the crowd. Once the group of students started smashing the instruments, she stopped and tried to leave. Instead, the students actually grabbed her and threw her into a lake nearby. Of that experience, she famously said “’boys will be boys.”
Since this was a planned event for the school, local papers and photographers were there. One of them snapped these pictures and sold them to LIFE Magazine. The event made headlines around the state at the time, but LIFE Magazine decided not to publish the pictures even after purchasing them. The papers around the area did publish some of the pictures and of course ran the story.
At the school, it became legend, and was even reprinted in the school yearbook in 1975. The results for the students involved in this event is unknown, but apparently no charges were made on anyone.
“Well, it was all a lot of fun then,” Stormy recalled years later. “I still hear from the guys who were there when it happened. I don’t harbor any ill will about it at all.”
Stormy continued to be a famous dancer in New Orleans throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. She was most famous for being the main headliner at her own club she opened, Stormy’s Casino Royale, and was also known as the “belle of Bourbon Street,” as one magazine described her. She made more headlines in another stunt in 1952, when she endorsed Alabama Gov. James “Kissin’ Jim” Folsom, who made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency on the Democratic ticket. When asked why she supported the presidential hopeful, she actually said Folsom was like “a honey pot.” Stormy died in 1982 at the age of 54, but her campus legend lives on.
Born 1898 as Marie Bickford Dunn in Sarnia, Ontario, Canadian actress Marie Prevost began her career during the silent film era. She was discovered by Mack Sennett who signed her to contract and made her one of his “Bathing Beauties” in the late 1910s, and appeared in dozens of Sennett’s short comedy films before moving on to feature-length films for Universal.
In 1922, Prevost signed with Warner Bros. where her career flourished as a leading lady. She was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch who cast her in three of his comedy films: The Marriage Circle (1924), Three Women (1924) and Kiss Me Again (1925).
After being let go by Warner Bros in early 1926, Prevost’s career began to decline and she was relegated to secondary roles. She was also beset with personal problems, including the death of her mother in 1926 and the breakdown of her marriage to actor Kenneth Harlan in 1927, which fueled her depression. She began to abuse alcohol and binge eat, resulting in a weight gain that made it difficult for her to secure acting jobs. By 1935, Prevost was only able to secure bit parts in films. She made her last onscreen appearance in 1936.
After years of drinking, Prevost died of acute alcoholism at the age of 38 in 1937. Her death prompted the Hollywood community to create the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital. During her 20-year career, she made 121 silent and sound films.
Take a look at these vintage photos to see beautiful portraits of Marie Prevost during her career.
The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark in downtown Los Angeles, California. Built in 1893, the five-story office building is best known for its extraordinary skylit atrium of access walkways, stairs and elevators, and their ornate ironwork.
The building was commissioned by Los Angeles gold-mining millionaire Lewis L. Bradbury (1823 – 1892) and constructed by draftsman George Wyman from the original design by Sumner Hunt. It is a fine example of a multi-story structure designed around an inner skylit court. Splendid art nouveau iron work build up the open stairways, open elevator cages and balcony rails. The building is a remnant of the Cast Iron Age, which began with the iron bridges in the early half of the 19th century and ended in the last decade of the century when steel framing took over.
The aesthetic quality of the Bradbury Building is largely derived from the superb environment of an inner court flooded with light. It is an early and excellent example of a break with facade architecture and the acknowledgment of the unpleasantness of a busy city street. By treating the inner court as facades, the architect has supplied an off-street leisurely and enriched space which denies the bustle of Broadway and Third Street.
Lewis Bradbury was a gold-mining millionaire – he owned the Tajo mine in Sinaloa, Mexico – who became a real estate developer in the later part of his life. In 1892 he began planning to construct a five-story building at Broadway and Third Street in Los Angeles, close to the Bunker Hill neighborhood. A local architect, Sumner Hunt, was hired to design the building, and turned in a completed design, but Bradbury dismissed Hunt’s plans as inadequate to the grand building he wanted. He then hired George Wyman, one of Hunt’s draftsmen, to do the design. Bradbury supposedly felt that Wyman understood his own vision of the building better than Hunt did, but there is no concrete evidence that Wyman changed Hunt’s design, which has raised some controversy about who should be considered to be the architect of the building. Wyman had no formal education as an architect, and was working for Hunt for $5 a week at the time.
The building opened in 1893, some months after Bradbury’s death in 1892, and was completed in 1894, at the total cost of $500,000 (about $16,000,000 today), about three times the original budget of $175,000. It appears in many works of fiction and has been the site of many movie and television shoots and music.
When it opened in 1894, the Bradbury Building towered above its neighbors and became the southwestern anchor of the business district, then centered around First and Main.
Born 1955 as William Michael Albert Broad, English musician, singer, songwriter and actor Billy Idol first achieved fame in the 1970s emerging from the London punk rock scene as the lead singer of the group Generation X. Subsequently, he embarked on a solo career which led to international recognition and made Idol a lead artist during the MTV-driven “Second British Invasion” in the United States. The name “Billy Idol” was inspired by a schoolteacher’s description of him as “idle”.
Idol began his music career in late 1976 as a guitarist in the punk rock band Chelsea. However, he soon left the group. With his former bandmate Tony James, Idol formed Generation X. With Idol as lead singer, the band achieved success in the United Kingdom and released three albums on Chrysalis Records, then disbanded. In 1981, Idol moved to New York City to pursue his solo career in collaboration with guitarist Steve Stevens. His debut studio album, Billy Idol (1982), was a commercial success. With music videos for singles “Dancing with Myself” and “White Wedding” Idol soon became a staple of then-newly established MTV.
Idol’s second studio album, Rebel Yell (1983), was a major commercial success, featuring hit singles “Rebel Yell” and “Eyes Without a Face”. The album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipment of two million copies in the US. In 1986, he released Whiplash Smile. Having accumulated three UK top 10 singles (“Rebel Yell”, “White Wedding” and “Mony Mony”) Idol released a 1988 greatest hits album titled Idol Songs: 11 of the Best; the album went platinum in the United Kingdom. Idol then released Charmed Life (1990) and the concept album Cyberpunk (1993).
Idol spent the second half of the 1990s focusing on his personal life out of the public eye. He made a musical comeback with the release of Devil’s Playground (2005) and again with Kings & Queens of the Underground (2014).
Take a look at these fabulous photos to see styles of a young Billy Idol in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Edwardian times were often referred to as the golden age. Life of the rich revolved around social parties, banquets. Those who attended these parties were elaborately dressed men and women with high society manners and a polished outlook towards like.
Edwardian women started getting an equal say in the socio-economic scenario of the United Kingdom, something which never had happened in its history. The demise of child labour was another feather in the cap of the Edwardian era. The Judiciary and the executive both started treating child labour as a severe offence.
These vintage photos show what beach life looked like during Edwardian era.
Barcelona is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within city limits, its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the Province of Barcelona and is home to around 4.8 million people, making it the fifth most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, the Ruhr area, Madrid, and Milan. It is one of the largest metropolises on the Mediterranean Sea, located on the coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs, and bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola mountain range, the tallest peak of which is 512 metres (1,680 feet) high.
Founded as a Roman city, in the Middle Ages Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. After joining with the Kingdom of Aragon to form the confederation of the Crown of Aragon, Barcelona, which continued to be the capital of the Principality of Catalonia, became the most important city in the Crown of Aragon and the main economic and administrative centre of the Crown, only to be overtaken by Valencia, wrested from Arab domination by the Catalans, shortly before the dynastic union between the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1492. Barcelona has a rich cultural heritage and is today an important cultural centre and a major tourist destination. Particularly renowned are the architectural works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner, which have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The city is home to two of the most prestigious universities in Spain: the University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University. The headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean are located in Barcelona. The city is known for hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics as well as world-class conferences and expositions and also many international sport tournaments.
Barcelona is a major cultural, economic, and financial centre in southwestern Europe, as well as the main biotech hub in Spain. As a leading world city, Barcelona’s influence in global socio-economic affairs qualifies it for global city status (Beta +).
Barcelona is a transport hub, with the Port of Barcelona being one of Europe’s principal seaports and busiest European passenger port, an international airport, Barcelona–El Prat Airport, which handles over 50 million passengers per year, an extensive motorway network, and a high-speed rail line with a link to France and the rest of Europe. (Wikipedia)
The 1950s (pronounced nineteen-fifties; commonly abbreviated as the “Fifties” or the ” ’50s”) (among other variants) was a decade that began on January 1, 1950, and ended on December 31, 1959.
Throughout the decade, the world continued its recovery from World War II, aided by the post-World War II economic expansion. The period also saw great population growth with increased birth rates and the emergence of the baby boomer generation. Despite this recovery, the Cold War developed from its modest beginnings in the late 1940s to a heated competition between the Soviet Union and the United States by the early 1960s. The ideological clash between communism and capitalism dominated the decade, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, with conflicts including the Korean War in the early 1950s, the Cuban Revolution, the beginning of the Vietnam War in French Indochina, and the beginning of the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957. Along with increased testing of nuclear weapons (such as RDS-37 and Upshot–Knothole), the tense geopolitical situation created a politically conservative climate. In the United States, a wave of anti-communist sentiment known as the Second Red Scare resulted in Congressional hearings by both houses in Congress. The beginning of decolonization in Africa and Asia also took place in this decade and accelerated in the following decade. (Wikipedia)
Skiers basking in the winter sun, Cranmore Mountain Resort, North Conway, New Hampshire, 1955.Taxi driver, Flin Flon, Manitoba, 1956.Midtown and Lower Manhattan covered in smog, New York, 1955.Mom and son in fashionable wear, New York City, 1953.Edinburgh Lawnmarket looking east towards the High street and St. Giles, 1953.The Pioneer Club at night, Las Vegas, 1951.Camera Girl, 1950s.TV times for December, 1959.Legs, 1958.Whispering wall, London, 1950.THE CAT ATE THE RAT Ohio license plates, 1950.Jackie Kennedy taking a selfie in the mirror with Ethel Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, 1954.Rome, Italy, 1957.Jayne Mansfield in Corpus Christi, Texas, 1958.Main Street in Moscow, Idaho, 1952.Buying ice-cream, Moscow, Russia, 1958.Portrait of a young woman in 1954.Market Square in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, 1950s.New York City in 1958.Little girl in Urambo, Tanganyika (Tanzania),1952.Times Square, New York City, 1951.Havana harbor, Cuba, 1954.Young German girl feeding a bird, 1950s.Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield, 1957Jacqueline Kennedy in her wedding dress, September 12, 1953.Marilyn Monroe in the early 1950s.Sugar Ray’s, 124th and 7th, NYC, 1950.Young couple in the 1950s.22 students crammed in a telephone cabin to set up a record in California, 1959.The observatory on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, NYC, 1950.Bologna in the 1950s.Seventeen-year-old Bianca Passarge of Hamburg dresses up as a cat and dances on wine bottles, June 1958.Looking west on Ventura Boulevard at Woodman Avenue, Los Angeles, 1952.Cheerleader, 1958.Skating is Healthy, 1950s.RCA Building, Times Square, NYC, 1953.Kensington Market, Toronto, 1957.Marilyn Monroe, 1956.Los Angeles, 1952.Broadway, Los Angeles, 1954.Ercolano, Italia, 1955.Colorado, 1955.Rue de Partants, Paris, 1950sYoung woman. Omagari, Akita, 1953.Swimming exams at Newcastle Ocean Baths, 1953. This is probably part of a water safety or life-saving test. She isn’t going to swim lengths in her clothes.Schoolgirls pedalling home to change their clothes because tight-fitting slacks, pedal-pushers and shorts had been banned from their West Berlin school, 1953.Kirk Douglas on the beach at Cannes with a young actress Brigitte Bardot during the 6th International Cannes Film Festival, 1953.The Queen, pictured in 1952.Elvis Presley and Messerchmitt Bubble Car, Memphis, 1956.Audrey Hepburn with her dog Mr. Famous on the Paramount lot, Hollywood, 1957.
Born 1898 in Round Rock, Texas, Vander Clyde Broadway, stage name Barbette, was an American female impersonator, high-wire performer, and trapeze artist. He attained great popularity throughout the United States but his greatest fame came in Europe and especially Paris, in the 1920s and 1930s.
Barbette began performing as an aerialist at around the age of 14 as one-half of a circus act called The Alfaretta Sisters. After a few years of circus work, Barbette went solo and adopted his exotic-sounding pseudonym. He performed in full drag, revealing himself as male only at the end of his act.
Following a career-ending illness or injury (the sources disagree on the cause), which left him in constant pain, Barbette returned to Texas but continued to work as a consultant for motion pictures as well as training and choreographing aerial acts for a number of circuses.
After years of dealing with chronic pain, Barbette committed suicide on August 5, 1973. Both in life and following his death, Barbette served as an inspiration to a number of artists, including Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.
Take a look at these vintage photos to see portrait of a young Barbette in the 1920s and 1930s.
