Born 1901 in Providence, Rhode Island, American singer, baritone and actor Nelson Eddy appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs.
A classically trained baritone, Eddy is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred with soprano Jeanette MacDonald. He was one of the first “crossover” stars, a superstar appealing both to shrieking bobby soxers and opera purists, and in his heyday, he was the highest paid singer in the world.
During his 40-year career, he earned three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one each for film, recording, and radio), left his footprints in the wet concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, earned three gold records, and was invited to sing at the third inauguration of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. He also introduced millions of young Americans to classical music and inspired many of them to pursue a musical career.
In March 1967, Eddy was performing at the Sans Souci Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida when he was stricken on stage with a cerebral hemorrhage. He died a few hours later in the early hours of March 6, 1967, at the age of 65.
Take a look at these vintage photos to see a young and handsome Nelson Eddy in the 1930s and 1940s.
The seventies was a decade of cool motorcycles, but wacky, corny and overtly sexist advertisements, as they were, like in the sixties, made to target the male consumers. On the cover there was usually a pair of a typical 70’s style macho dude, dressed in an open leather jacket, a collared blue shirt, bell-bottom trousers and heeled boots and a groovy chick in sexy clothes. The selling feature here was, undoubtedly, getting a motorcycle equaled to a man’s sure ticket to getting the ladies.
Take a look back through these 26 vintage ads below:
Montreal is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie, or “City of Mary”, it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill around which the early city of Ville-Marie is built. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal, which obtained its name from the same origin as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. The city is situated 196 km (122 mi) east of the national capital Ottawa, and 258 km (160 mi) southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City.
As of 2021, the city had a population of 1,762,949, and a metropolitan population of 4,291,732, making it the second-largest city, and second-largest metropolitan area in Canada. French is the city’s official language and in 2016 was the only home language of 53.7% of the population, while 18.2% spoke only English and 18.7% spoke neither French nor English at home. 9.4% spoke a mix of French, English and a foreign language at home. In the larger Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, 71.2% of the population spoke at least French at home, compared to 19.0% who spoke English. Still in 2016, 87.4% of the population of the city of Montreal considered themselves fluent in French while 91.4% could speak it in the metropolitan area. Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada, with 57.4% of the population able to speak both English and French. Montreal is the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the developed world, after Paris.
Historically the commercial capital of Canada, Montreal was surpassed in population and in economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s. It remains an important centre of commerce, aerospace, transport, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, design, education, art, culture, tourism, food, fashion, video game development, film, and world affairs. Montreal has the second-highest number of consulates in North America, serves as the location of the headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization, and was named a UNESCO City of Design in 2006. In 2017, Montreal was ranked the 12th-most liveable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its annual Global Liveability Ranking, although it slipped to rank 40 in the 2021 index, primarily due to stress on the healthcare system from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is regularly ranked as a top ten city in the world to be a university student in the QS World University Rankings.
Montreal has hosted multiple international conferences and events, including the 1967 International and Universal Exposition and the 1976 Summer Olympics. It is the only Canadian city to have held the Summer Olympics. In 2018, Montreal was ranked as a global city. The city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula One since 1978, as well as the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the largest jazz festival in the world, the Just for Laughs festival, the largest comedy festival in the world, and Les Francos de Montréal, which is the largest event devoted exclusively to French-language music anywhere in the world. It is also home to ice hockey team Montreal Canadiens, the franchise with the most Stanley Cup wins. (Wikipedia)
Born 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey, American actress Millie Perkins was working as a receptionist at a New York City advertising agency when she caught the eye of a visiting photographer with a resultant career as a model; by 1958, Perkins was an international cover girl. In 1958, she was vigorously pursued, and then selected, to appear in her first film, The Diary of Anne Frank, although she had never studied nor sought to be an actress.
Perkins was cast by 20th Century Fox in the 1961 film Wild in the Country, playing the supporting role of the girlfriend to star Elvis Presley – she would later play Gladys Presley in the 1990 miniseries Elvis; the studio then dropped Perkins. Joshua Logan personally selected Perkins for the female lead in the 1964 film Ensign Pulver, but the film was a failure; she would not appear in another mainstream film release for almost 20 years.
Perkins played the female lead in both of Jack Nicholson’s inaugural productions The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind – shot side by side in 1965 – and in 1968 co-starred in Wild in the Streets which was written by her then-husband Robert Thom.
Perkins retired from acting after a 2006 six-episode arc on the television soap opera The Young and the Restless. Recent to her retirement, she was honored in the 2004 action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in which one of the storyline girlfriends to protagonist Carl “CJ” Johnson, voiced by Orfeh, was named after her.
Take a look at these stunning color photos to see portrait of a young and beautiful Millie Perkins in the 1950s and 1960s.
A mobile home (also known as a park home, trailer, trailer home, house trailer, static caravan, RV, residential caravan, motorhome or simply caravan) is a prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or on a trailer).
In the United States, this form of housing goes back to the early years of cars and motorized highway travel. It was derived from the travel trailer, a small unit with wheels attached permanently, often used for camping or extended travel.
However, in the 1950s, the homes began to be marketed primarily as an inexpensive form of housing designed to be set up and left in a location for long periods of time or even permanently installed with a masonry foundation. Previously, units had been eight feet or less in width, but in 1956, the 10-foot (3 m) wide home (“ten-wide”) was introduced, along with the new term “mobile home”. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the homes were made even longer and wider, making the mobility of the units more difficult.
Here below is a set of amazing photos that shows people with their mobile homes in the 1950s and 1960s.
As a model in 1966, American funk and soul singer Betty Mabry first met jazz musician Miles Davis, who was 19 years her senior. At the time he was separated from his first wife, dancer Frances Davis, and was dating actress Cicely Tyson. Betty began dating Miles in early 1968, and they were married in September 1968.
In just one year of marriage, Betty influenced him greatly by introducing him to the fashions and the new popular music trends of the era. In his autobiography, Miles credited Betty with helping to plant the seeds of his future musical explorations by introducing the trumpeter to psychedelic rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix and funk innovator Sly Stone. The Miles Davis album Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968), which features a photo portrait of Betty on the cover, includes a song named after her.
In his autobiography, Miles said Betty was “too young and wild,” and accused her of having an affair with Jimi Hendrix, which hastened the end of their marriage. Betty denied the affair stating, “I was so angry with Miles when he wrote that. It was disrespectful to Jimi and to me. Miles and I broke up because of his violent temper.” After accusing her of adultery, he filed for divorce in 1969. Miles told Jet magazine at the time that the divorce was obtained on a “temperament” charge. He added, “I’m just not the kind of cat to be married.”
Hendrix and Miles remained close, planning to record, until Hendrix’s death. The influence of Hendrix and especially Sly Stone on Miles Davis was obvious on the album Bitches Brew (1970), which ushered in the era of jazz fusion. The origin of the album’s title is unknown, but some believe Miles was subtly paying tribute to Betty and her girlfriends. In fact, it is said that he originally wanted to call the album Witches Brew—it was Betty who convinced him to change it.
A set of rare photos shows beautiful moments of Miles Davis and his wife Betty Davis together during their short marriage.
Manhattan, known regionally as The City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. It is the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, and coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. Manhattan serves as the city’s economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and historical birthplace. The borough consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers along with several small adjacent islands, including Roosevelt, U Thant, and Randalls and Wards Islands. Manhattan additionally contains Marble Hill, a small neighborhood now on the U.S. mainland, separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem Ship Canal and later connected using landfill to the Bronx. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each cutting across the borough’s long axis: Lower, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan.
Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world, is considered a safe haven for global real estate investors, and hosts the United Nations headquarters.
Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, and Manhattan is home to the world’s two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization: the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan, and the borough has been the setting for numerous books, films, and television shows. Manhattan real estate is among the most expensive in the world, with the value of Manhattan Island, including real estate, estimated to exceed US$3 trillion in 2013; median residential property sale prices in Manhattan approximated US$1,600 per square foot ($17,000/m2) as of 2018, with Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commanding the highest retail rents in the world, at US$3,000 per square foot ($32,000/m2) per year in 2017. In 2022, one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rented at a median monthly price of US$3,600.00, one of the world’s highest.
Manhattan traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York, based in present-day Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to America by ship in the late 19th century and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty and peace. Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898.
New York County is the smallest county by land area in the contiguous United States, the second-smallest American county overall (larger only than Kalawao County, Hawaii), as well as the most densely populated U.S. county. Its density makes it one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2020 census population of 1,694,251 living in a land area of 22.83 square miles (59.13 km2), or 72,918 residents per square mile (28,154/km2), higher than the density of any individual U.S. city. On business days, the influx of commuters increases this number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile (65,600/km2). Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York City’s five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, and is the smallest borough in terms of land area. If each borough were ranked as a city, Manhattan would rank as the sixth-most populous in the U.S.
Many districts and landmarks in Manhattan are well known, as New York City received a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017, and Manhattan hosts three of the world’s 10 most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, and Grand Central Terminal. The Empire State Building has become the global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures. The borough hosts many prominent bridges, including the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queensboro, Triborough, and George Washington Bridges; tunnels such as the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels; skyscrapers including the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and One World Trade Center; and parks, such as Central Park. Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, and the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. The City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city’s government. Numerous colleges and universities are located in Manhattan, including Columbia University, New York University, Cornell Tech, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 40 in the world. (Wikipedia)
Take a look back at Manhattan, New York City in the 1940s and 1950s through these 13 fascinating vintage color photographs below:
Times Square, 1948.United Nations buildings under construction, 1951Ambassador Hotel on Park Avenue, 1950s.Washington Square Park Arch, 1956.Lower East Side, 1956.Park Avenue north from 58th Street, 1956.Playing in the street, 1956.Sutton Place neighborhood, 1956.Public housing development, 1956.Stuyvesant Town residential development, 1956.Macdougal Alley, 1956.Near Herald Square, 1956.Broadway near Herald Square, 1956.
Born 1942 born in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, English actor Michael York made his film debut as Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew (1967). He then was cast as Tybalt in Zeffirelli’s 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. He starred in The Guru (1969), then played an amoral bisexual drifter in Something for Everyone (1970).
A two-time Emmy Award nominee, for the ABC Afterschool Special: Are You My Mother? (1986) and the AMC series The Lot (2001), York has appeared in more than 70 films, including Cabaret (1972), The Three Musketeers (1973), Logan’s Run (1976), and the Austin Powers film series (1997–2002).
York met photographer Patricia McCallum in 1967 when she was assigned to photograph him, and they married on 27 March 1968, York’s 26th birthday. His stepson is Star Wars producer Rick McCallum. York was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1977.
Take a look at these vintage photos to see portrait of a young and handsome Michael York in the 1960s and 1970s.
Manchester is a major city in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of more than two million in 2018, it is the second largest city by urban area in the United Kingdom. It is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form a large continuous conurbation. Due to Manchester’s size and global influence, it is considered the second city of the United Kingdom.
The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort (castra) of Mamucium or Mancunium, established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand “at an astonishing rate” around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester’s unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world’s first industrialised city. Manchester achieved city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. Its fortune declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation, but the IRA bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration. Following successful redevelopment after the IRA bombing, Manchester was the host city for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
The city is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the world’s first inter-city passenger railway station. At the University of Manchester, Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1917, Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world’s first stored-program computer in 1948, and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov isolated the first graphene in 2004. (Wikipedia)
Manchester went through enormous changes in the seventies—a decade of confusion, of a loss of direction, of new music, and the arrival of a vast city center monster. During the 1970s, the City Council lost most of its remaining vital responsibilities. After WWII cities such as Manchester lost power over local gas and electrical supply – thus much of their income. All control of local transport was taken and the city’s famous red buses became grotesque pop orange and brown under a broader transport authority.
In 1974, Greater Manchester County was created from south-east Lancashire and north east Cheshire. Thus the city of Manchester lost power over its police force and fire services. With the creation of the North West Water Authority it also lost its management of water and sewage services. Even the airport was taken out of Manchester’s hands to be shared by the new Greater Manchester authority. It was also during this decade that Manchester Ship Canal began a steep decline at its headwaters in Salford and Trafford as container traffic began to make it unviable. Between 1961 and 1983, Manchester lost 150,000 jobs in manufacturing.
Take a look back at the city in the 1970s through 36 fascinating vintage photographs.
Madam C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove; December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records. Multiple sources mention that although other women (like Mary Ellen Pleasant) might have been the first, their wealth is not as well-documented.
Portrait of Madam C.J. Walker, ca. 1914.
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