Before there were Hippies, there were Beatniks. Beatniks were followers of the Beat Generation – influential poets and authors through the late 1940s to the early ’60s.
Jack Kerouac came up with the “beat generation” concept – the underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York that he was a part of. He also related the term to the Biblical beatitudes and the hipster phrase of being “beaten down”. Though at first Beatniks had a prophet-like connotation, the term came to signify a stereotype of people that, as Joyce Johnson (a Beat writer) said: “sold books, sold black turtleneck sweaters and bongos, berets and dark glasses, sold a way of life that seemed like dangerous fun—thus to be either condemned or imitated.”
They were anti-materialistic, soul searching people, open to drugs and a bohemian lifestyle. They hung out in smoky coffeehouses, listened to jazz and blues, were usually proficient in art or poetry, liked to dress in all-black, and had an air of mysteriousness about them. They highly influenced culture of the decades following – Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and Pink Floyd took on Beatnik characteristics and morphed in to free-thinking hippies. Allen Ginsberg led the way for the conversion.
03 Feb 1959, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA — A beatnik woman stands in front of the entrance to the Gaslight Cafe, a center of beatnik poet life, in Greenwich Village, New York.
Despite opposition from some groups, the form-fitting style proved popular. It was not long before swimwear started to shrink further. At first arms were exposed and then legs up to mid-thigh. Necklines receded from around the neck down to around the top of the bosom. The development of new fabrics allowed for new varieties of more comfortable and practical swimwear.
Female swimming was introduced at the 1912 Summer Olympics. Competitors from 17 countries took part, with women from nine countries wearing swimsuits similar to Kellerman’s swimsuit, which were similar to swimsuits worn by the male swimmers.
In 1913, inspired by the breakthrough, the designer Carl Jantzen made the first functional two-piece swimwear, a close-fitting one-piece with shorts on the bottom and short sleeves on top.
The name “swim suit” was coined in 1915 by Jantzen Knitting Mills, a sweater manufacturer who launched a swimwear brand named the Red Diving Girl. The first annual bathing-suit day at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1916 was a landmark. The swimsuit apron, a design for early swimwear, disappeared by 1918, leaving a tunic covering the shorts.
The inscription of art work on military planes dates to World War I, when paintings were usually extravagant company or unit insignia. However, regulations were put in place after the war to stymie the practice.
As the United States entered World War II, nose art regulations were relaxed, or in many cases totally ignored. WWII would become the golden age of aircraft artistry.
Artwork was typically painted on the nose of the plane, and the term “nose art” was coined.
Nose art was a morale booster, and those in daily combat needed that boost. Facing the prospect of death on every flight, the crew deserved all of the encouragement, and smiles, available to them.
The art on the plane unified the crew, and identified it, and made it unique from all of the aircraft in their unit or on their base.
Fashion boots were revived in the early 1960s, although at first they featured fashionable high heels such as the stiletto and kitten heels. The earliest go-go boots were mid-calf, white and flat-heeled.
The term “go-go” is derived from the French expression à gogo, meaning “in abundance, galore”, which is in turn derived from the ancient French word la gogue for “joy, happiness”. The term “go-go” has also been explained as a 1964 back-formation of the 1962 slang term “go”, meaning something that was “all the rage”; the term “go-go dancer” first appeared in 1965. The go-go boot is presumed to have been named after the dance style.
These cool pics that captured women in go-go boots in the mid-1960s and 1970s.
The terms “gangster” and “mobster” are mostly used in the United States to refer to members of criminal organizations associated with Prohibition. In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution banned the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption. Many gangs sold alcohol illegally for profit, and used acute violence to stake turf and protect their interest. Often, police officers and politicians were paid off or extorted to ensure continued operation. Al Capone was one of these notorious gangsters during the Depression era for the Chicago Outfit. Capone would rise to control a major portion of illicit activity such as gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging in Chicago during the early 20th century.
In New York City, by the end of the 1920s, two factions of organized crime had emerged to fight for control of the criminal underworld, one led by Joe Masseria and the other by Salvatore Maranzano. This caused the Castellammarese War, which led to Masseria’s murder in 1931. Maranzano then divided New York City into five families. Maranzano, the first leader of the American Mafia, established the code of conduct for the organization, set up the “family” divisions and structure, and established procedures for resolving disputes. In an unprecedented move, Maranzano set himself up as boss of all bosses and required all families to pay tribute to him. This new role was received negatively, and Maranzano was murdered within six months on the orders of Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Luciano was a former Masseria underling who had switched sides to Maranzano and orchestrated the killing of Masseria. As an alternative to the previous despotic Mafia practice of naming a single Mafia boss as capo di tutti capi, or “boss of all bosses,” Luciano created The Commission in 1931, where the bosses of the most powerful families would have equal say and vote on important matters and solve disputes between families. This group ruled over the National Crime Syndicate and brought in an era of peace and prosperity for the American Mafia.
George “Baby Face” Nelson was a notorious bank robber and killer who operated in the 1920s and 1930s across America.
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Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood and is often considered an American icon. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (1940), but is best remembered for performing during the 1930s in RKO’s musical films with Fred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century.
Born in Independence, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City, Rogers and her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas when she was nine years old. After winning a 1925 Charleston dance contest that launched a successful vaudeville career, she gained recognition as a Broadway actress for her stage debut in Girl Crazy. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film roles as a supporting actress in 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933).
In the 1930s, Rogers’ nine films with Fred Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre and gave RKO Pictures some of its biggest successes, most notably The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936). But after two commercial failures with Astaire, she turned her focus to dramatic and comedy films. Her acting was well received by critics and audiences in films such as Stage Door (1937), Vivacious Lady (1938), Bachelor Mother (1939), The Major and the Minor (1942) and I’ll Be Seeing You (1944). After winning the Oscar, Rogers became one of the biggest box-office draws and highest paid actresses of the 1940s.
Rogers’ popularity was peaking by the end of the decade. She reunited with Astaire in 1949 in the commercially successful The Barkleys of Broadway. She starred in the successful comedy Monkey Business (1952) and was critically lauded for her performance in Tight Spot (1955) before entering an unsuccessful period of filmmaking in the mid-1950s, and returned to Broadway in 1965, playing the lead role in Hello, Dolly! More Broadway roles followed, along with her stage directorial debut in 1985 of an off-Broadway production of Babes in Arms. She continued to act, making television appearances until 1987 and wrote an autobiography Ginger: My Story which was published in 1991. In 1992, Rogers was recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors. She died of natural causes in 1995, at age 83.
During her long career, Rogers made 73 films and she ranks number 14 on the AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars list of female stars of classic American cinema. (Wiki)
Venice is a residential, commercial and recreational beachfront neighborhood on the Westside of the city of Los Angeles. It was founded in 1905 as a seaside resort town and was an independent city until 1926, when it merged with Los Angeles.
Today, Venice is known for its canals, beaches, and the circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half-mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, mystics, artists and vendors.
Here are some vintage snapshots capturing daily life of the beach in Venice, Los Angeles in the 1930s.
Remember the good old days when advertisers could go balls to the wall with their advertising campaigns?
Men’s underpants can be both mysterious and confounding. Selling them in magazines obviously posed problems of context and decency.
Back then sexually awkward advertising campaigns seemed normal. Or was it more a case of ignorance is bliss? Maybe the folks back then were just a little naive when it came to subliminal messaging or maybe they dared to risk it all? Whatever the case, these vintage underwear ads from the 1970s sure make for some great entertainment today.
