Photos colorized by Cardiff based electrician Royston Leonard
21 Amazing Colorized Photos Showing World War 1
17 Vintage Photos of Zoot Suits Being Worn During the 1940s
A zoot suit is a men’s suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. This style of clothing became popular among the African American, Chicano, Filipino American, and Italian American communities during the 1940s.
The zoot suit of the 1940s was full of scandal. Technically illegal due to the abundance of fabric needed to make it and the restrictions place by the war board it was the underground dress uniform of young, ethnic, rebellious men. These “swing kids” danced in jazz clubs, purchased their clothes on the black market and in L.A. caused a month long street war.
Young people continued to wear the style and the suits soon became associated with delinquency and crime. Most wearers were simply rebellious youths, many in inner city urban areas like Harlem and Los Angeles, trying to form a culture all their own. The wearers of zoot suits were seen as being unpatriotic, and tensions between zoot-suiters and military servicemen stationed in California erupted in a week of violent street fighting in Los Angeles in mid-1943 that came to be known as the Zoot Suit Riots.
55 Beautiful Photos of Yvonne de Carlo from between the 1940s and 1960s.
A vibrant, full-bodied performer with a rich voice and a lushly sensuous if somewhat odd beauty, Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) achieved stardom in the 1940s in some of the more bizarre escapism of that era.
Yvonne De Carlo was a Canadian born American actress, singer, and dancer whose career spanned more than seven decades. A brunette with blue-grey eyes, voluptuous figure, and a deep sultry voice, she was one of most recognizable stars in the golden age of Hollywood and an early multihyphenate.
She began taking dancing lessons at the age of three and spent her late teens performing in various night clubs and on stage. She made her screen debut in 1941 in an uncredited role in the comedy film ‘Harvard, Here I Come’.
After appearing in several other movies in the same capacity, she played the titular character in the 1945 western drama ‘Salome, Where She Danced’. Her next important role was in ‘Song of Scheherazade’ in 1947, which though gave traction to her career, ended up typecasting her as an Arabian Nights-type temptress dressed in harem attire. Despite this stereotyping, she did significant work in comedy and western genres, and was part of the main cast of the 1960s sitcom ‘The Munsters’.
In 1957, she released her first and only album ‘Yvonne De Carlo Sings’. As she aged, she made a relatively easy transformation to being a character actor, active and compelling well into her 70s. De Carlo received two separate stars in 1960 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to films and television.
30 Amazing Color Photos Showing Life in America Just After WWII
When World War II ended, the United States was in better economic shape.
Building on the economic base left after the war, American society became more affluent in the postwar years than most Americans could have imagined in their wildest dreams before or during the war.
These Kodachrome slides show life of the US in the mid-late 1940s and early 1950s.
48 Wonderful Historic Photos of Portland Oregon During the 1910s
Portland is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is a major port in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in Northwestern Oregon. As of 2020, Portland had a population of 652,503, making it the 25th-most populated city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest after Seattle. Approximately 2.5 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous in the United States. Its combined statistical area (CSA) ranks 19th-largest with a population of around 3.2 million. Approximately 47% of Oregon’s population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.
Named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1830s near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the timber industry was a major force in the city’s early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the city had a reputation as one of the most dangerous port cities in the world, a hub for organized crime and racketeering. After the city’s economy experienced an industrial boom during World War II, its hard-edged reputation began to dissipate. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its growing progressive political values, earning it a reputation as a bastion of counterculture.
The city operates with a commission-based government guided by a mayor and four commissioners as well as Metro, the only directly elected metropolitan planning organization in the United States. Its climate is marked by warm, dry summers and cool, rainy winters. This climate is ideal for growing roses, and Portland has been called the “City of Roses” for over a century.
1910.
36 Amazing Colorized Photos of American Police Cars From Between the 1920s and 1950s
Here is an incredible collection of colorized photos from Willie Brown that shows American police cars from between the 1920s and 1950s.
(Photos colorized by Willie Brown)
21 Vintage Photographs of People Reading Newspapers Before the Invention of The Smartphone
We’ve all heard our parents say it; “Look up from your phone every once in a while”, “Hey, talk to me don’t text”, “why are you being so anti-social on your phone?”
Not only our cellphones, but also our laptops, televisions, creations like Facebook and other social media platforms. Are all of these inventions and enhancements in technology making us less social?
Since the smartphone boom put tiny computers in hundreds of millions of pockets, there’ve been countless critics eager to point out that invasive technology is changing our lives for the worse, and worse, changing who we are. It’s turning us into selfish, anti-social automatons, they say, again and again and again.
But how much has really changed? Sure, we’re media-obsessed, anti-social crazy people, but we’ve always been this way.
26 Vintage Photos of the Playsuit: The Popular Fashion of Young Women From the 1940s
A playsuit was a one-piece romper. The top resembled a button-down blouse that would come in at the waist and extend into shorts. Teens and grown women during the 1940s wore what were actually called playsuits.
Vintage playsuits were worn outdoors – either at the beach, in the backyard to catch some sun or for sportswear. They were usually made of cotton, although they could also be found in rayon. They were brightly colored with reds, greens, yellows and blues, and were often done in patterns, checks and plaids. Floral and Hawaiian prints were popular towards the end of the decade.
These photos show young women wearing playsuits in the 1940s.
27 Amazing Vintage Photographs of People Posing With Alligators in the Early 20th Century
During the first few decades of the 20th century, the people of Los Angeles had alligator fever. Starting in 1907, alligator rides, feedings, and trained alligator shows were all the rage, thanks to “Alligator Joe” Campbell and Francis Earnest, proprietors of the California Alligator Farm—one of the longest-running, and strangest, amusements in the city of Los Angeles. The Farm, which operated from 1907 to 1953 in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of L.A., let guests get terrifyingly close to its reptilian inmates.
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine any business letting its guests or employees get that close to a bunch of dangerous animals—and of course, something like that would now be very, very illegal. So to prove it really happened, here are 27 incredible photos of adults, children, getting up close and personal with alligators:
45 Stunning Photos of Actress Paulette Goddard in the 1930s
Born 1910 as Marion Levy, American actress Paulette Goddard was a child fashion model and a performer in several Broadway productions as a Ziegfeld Girl. She signed her first film contract with producer Samuel Goldwyn to appear as a Goldwyn Girl in Whoopee! (1930), and then appeared in City Streets (1931), Ladies of the Big House (1931), and The Girl Habit (1931) for Paramount, Palmy Days (1931) for Goldwyn, and The Mouthpiece (1932) for Warners.
Goddard became a major star of Paramount Pictures in the 1940s. Her most notable films were her first major role, as Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady in Modern Times, and Chaplin’s subsequent film The Great Dictator. Goddard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943).
After her marriage to the third husband Erich Maria Remarque, Goddard largely retired from acting and moved to Ronco sopra Ascona, Switzerland. In 1964, she attempted a comeback in films with a supporting role in the Italian film Time of Indifference, which was her last feature film.
After Remarque’s death in 1970, Goddard made one last attempt at acting, when she accepted a small role in an episode of The Snoop Sisters (1972) for television.
Goddard died from heart failure while under respiratory support due to emphysema in 1990, aged 79, at her home in Switzerland.
Take a look at these glamorous photos to see the beauty of young Paulette Goddard in the early days of her career.
