An Uncomplicated Gentleman

Images found on: Ego is a rat on the sinking ship of being

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30 Shots For The Week End, Start At The Left On The Top

Shots found on buzzfeed.com

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Retro rambling’s Visitors Service – Part 19 – Ladies, Be Aware Of The Two Paths

I have posted similar advice to my male visitors earlier and now ladies, now it’s your turn. Be aware of the two paths. And yes, I know this advice comes a little too late for some of you – Ted 😉

Here’s a few other things any decent person should know:

Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 18 – How To Sit Down Gracefully
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 15 – Telephone Etiquette
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 13 – Breaking And Entering
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 8 – Italian Gestures
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 10 – Italian Gestures 2
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 8 – Dressing on Luxury Steamers
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 7 – The Bow-Tie
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 6 – Decent Sleep
Retrorambling’s Visitors Service – Part 5 – Flirtation

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The Lure Of The Mad Men – Part 24

Take a good look at that picture visitor and ponder this; Is his wife buying flat, stale coffee just to get spanked. Her facial expression seams to indicate that she’s quite enjoying it.

On the other hand, ads like this one makes one wonder if giving your wife a good spanking whenever there things to complain about in her dealings with house and home was common in the US back then. This  is not the first old ad I’ve come across where spanking wives has been the subject.

I was raised by pacifistic parents and haven’t raised my hand at another person my entire life so I don’t think a stale cup of coffee would make me start. Besides I’m a tea drinker, I only drink coffee at places where there is no chance of getting a decent cup of tea, so I probably wouldn’t know stale cup of coffee from a fresh one.  –Ted 😉

Six lucky housewives temporarily saved from a sore bum by Chase & Sandborn

In context:

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How Wonderfully Tasteless

Who wouldn’t want a couple of armless Elvis Presley half torsos to lighten up the living room. Particularly a couple as terribly tastelessly designed as these. Two slightly recognizable Elvis Presleys with an equally tasteless lamp shade on top would be the pride of any half blind Presley fan’s living room – 44 presidents and only two kings – Ted

Image found at beatnikdaddio

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The Lure Of The Mad Men – Part 14

If there is one thing the mad men knows works every time, it is telling people that you can get slim and fit without doing a damned thing. People will buy and gulp down absolutely anything based on that promise. Anyone knows deep down inside that Prof. F. J. Kellogg’s crappy “scientific” product is just as useless as the drugs and patent medicines he is warning against. But instead of considering actually slimming, now as back then people get hooked in case this particular product just might work.

But as we all know it doesn’t work of course. Not the ones back when the add above was made or the similar crap they’re pushing today. Had it worked there wouldn’t have been one lazy fat slob left in the overfed self indulging western world – Ted 😉

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The Lure Of The Mad Men – Part 2

Text from the ad:

Glance in the mirror, lovely lady. Be glad you’re so slender, so easy to dress so admired wherever you go.

Then take time to bless your good fortune for making you what you are.

It’s your modern taste for the lighter, less filling food that gives you the slim waistline – and keeps you always feeling fine and fit for fun.

Pepsi-Cola goes right along with this wholesome trend in diet. Today’s Pepsi-Cola, reduced in calories, is never heavy, never too sweet. It refreshes without filling.

Have a Pepsi-Cola – The modern, the light refreshment.

It is close to heartless to try to make people believe that drinking Pepsi-Cola will keep you slim, feeling fine and fit for fun. The fat wages must have been the only thing that kept those guys from turning from side to side all night embarrassed by the utter crap they produced all day – Ted

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On This Day In 1961 – End Of The Road For Monroe And Miller

The Hollywood screen star Marilyn Monroe has divorced her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, after less than five years of marriage. The divorce was granted in Mexico, where a judge signed the decree. The grounds of divorce were listed as "incompatibility". It has been rumoured that the pair have had frequent quarrels over their differing lifestyles.

Mr Miller has recently been working with his wife on her most recent film, The Misfits, based on a short story he wrote, although the pair were reported to be barely speaking on set. The film is due to be released this month.

Affair
The divorce was officially announced last November, and a spokesman at the time said they had already separated. Sources close to the couple said Arthur Miller had in fact left Miss Monroe for German-born photographer Inge Morath, whom he met on the set of The Misfits.

The couple married in 1956, five years after they first met. Marilyn Monroe converted to Judaism for her new husband, who rose to prominence with his play "Death of a Salesman" in 1949, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Soon after they were married, Arthur Miller told journalists: "Marilyn will only make one film in every 18 months or so, which will take her about eight weeks."

When asked what she would do for the rest of the time, he replied, "She will be my wife. That’s a full-time job."

Risked career
Marilyn Monroe disagreed, and continued to pursue her film work to the full, travelling to England to shoot "The Prince and the Showgirl" with Laurence Olivier shortly after the wedding. However, she used her influence – and risked her own career – to help her husband after he was found guilty of contempt of Congress by the House Un-American Activities Committee for refusing to reveal the names of a literary group suspected of Communist sympathies.

Marilyn Monroe went with him to Washington to speak in his favour at the contempt hearings, and her intervention is widely thought to have contributed to the overturning of his conviction the following year. Marilyn Monroe had been married twice before. Her first husband was Jimmy Dougherty, whom she married aged 16. The marriage did not survive her "discovery" and subsequent rise to fame. In 1954, she met and married baseball star Joe DiMaggio, but it was a tempestuous partnership and ended just nine months later.

In Context
Marilyn Monroe’s divorce was part of a decline which was marked by her erratic behaviour on set and persistent abuse of alcohol and drugs. The Misfits was to be her last completed film. Soon after, in 1962, she also made her last major public appearance, singing "Happy Birthday" to President John F Kennedy at a televised party for him.

On 5 August 1962 she was found dead in her Los Angeles home, aged 36. Her death was officially attributed to suicide by drug overdose, but has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. She had been due to re-marry her second husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, three days later. Arthur Miller married photographer Inge Morath a month after his divorce from Marilyn Monroe.

He later wrote compassionately of Monroe in his autobiography, referring to his marriage to her as "the best of times, the worst of times". He stayed with Inge Morath until her death in 2002. Arthur Miller died in 2005.

Text from BBC’s On This Day

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Catching Up On The Social Networking

Pictured in 1919, in a world before smart phones, this lady with a pile of luggage and a dog used time waiting at Waterloo Station to catch up on her social networking – by writing a letter.

Text and image found at The Telegraph

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Safety Swim Suit Overcomes Fear Of Water

A digital recreation 0f a ad published in LIFE magazine, March 1970

EVER-FLOAT HELPS YOU STAY AFLOAT!

A new kind of splash is being made in America’s watering spots by a swim suit that keeps a woman afloat even if she can’t swim. And the Ever-Float Safety Swim Suit does it all without gadgets of any kind to inflate or adjust.

Lee Beachwear Company, exclusive makers of Ever-Float, achieve permanently built-in buoyancy with puncture-proof panels composed of millions of captive air cells. The wafer-thin panels can be felt in the hand, but become invisible on the figure and actually work like a girdle to slenderize.

Thousands have proved Ever-Float’s desirability at resorts from coast to coast; and thousands more are asking for this water-wonder every day.

Ever-Float suits combine buoyancy with fashion in quick-drying faille lastex. Available in several smart styles and colours, each with built-in bra and removable straps. It all adds up to a lot of safety in the water and beauty on the beach for $19.95.

At fine stores everywhere, or write Department L., LEE BEACHWEAR, 1410 Broadway, New York 18.

Text and images found in modernmechanix.com

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The Lost Generation

From my collection of books on practically every subjects retro & vintage

The African-American dancer Josephine Baker was fully aware of the danger of white people’s prejudices against “primitive” art and often gave her costumes and acts an ironic twist that often was lost on the audience.

In the 1920s Paris became a Mecca for young Americans who sought artistic and literary genius. As the cultural centre in the Western World the town made a bohemian lifestyle very popular. This was not really an opposition against the boredom of the bourgeoisie life but the seed that later would start it. Earlier the bohemian fashion had been a reaction to the elite fashion, but now it expressed the artistic avant-garde’s boldness. Even though the women in these circles seemed sexually liberated, this liberation was mostly more enjoyable for their lovers than themselves. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda had several nervous breakdowns, the promising artist Nina Hammett became an alcoholic and Nancy Cunard, the incarnation of the womanhood of the time, was unable to get pregnant due to badly performed abortions.     Nancy Cunard, the society beauty of the 1920’s broke with every accepted conventions and had e genuine interest in African subjects. .

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