The Difficult With Being A Film Actress

A digital recreation of a  small piece published in Photoplay, September 25, 1932

Here’s the most annoying picture of the month. Look at these three Radio Pictures mermaids-and who wouldn’t?-playing around in a Hollywood pool while the rest of us slave. Phyllis Fraser. wearing one of the new bathing caps that look like hair. Rochelle Hudson and Mary Mason show how difficult it is to be a film actress.

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Man buys Vintage Car Owned By Gangster

Rod Hokin with his 1932 Chrysler Imperial formerly owned by U.S. gangster Legs Diamond. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones

There were two details among the papers for his newly purchased 1932 Chrysler Imperial sedan that caught Rod Hokin’s eye. First, the paintwork – still the original – was listed as ”Grisette Brown Deep”, sending him to Google where he found that a ”grisette” is a ”French working girl or salesgirl”.

But then came the real jolt – the papers revealed that the original buyer in Florida in late 1931 had been Jack ”Legs” Diamond, the New York and Philadelphia gangster.

Amazingly, the elderly American who sold Hokin the car in Indiana, Monte Gillespie, had not mentioned it. ”But there’s no doubt,” says Hokin. ”This car was once in the famous Paul Stern Chrysler collection.” Story found on “Fedora Lounge”

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Compressed Air Motor Runs Car

Article from Modern Mechanix – Jan 1932. Found at modernmechanix.com

1) A side view of the compressed air car, showing the four fuel tanks which will drive the car 500 miles at a speed of 35 miles an hour. The engine requires no cooling system, no ignition system, no carburettor, nor the hundreds of moving parts included in a standard gasoline motor.

2) A front view, showing how the compressed air motor is mounted. An electric heater, operated by a battery and generator, heats the air until it attains a pressure of 200 lbs. As the warm air goes through the engine and is cooled, it is recovered and drawn into a compression chamber, where it is heated again and returned to the tank.

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Either the era of “free air” is about to come to an end, or the cost of motoring is about to be reduced to practically nothing. In an amazing demonstration conducted recently in Los Angeles a standard automobile chassis, powered with a newly-developed compressed air motor, whizzed around the city streets at not one cent of cost to the driver for fuel.
The engine, which is the result of six years of research by Roy J. Meyers, resembles in general appearance a radial airplane motor. It is mounted in an upright position in the same space occupied by a gasoline motor in standard cars.

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Wolseley Hornet Special

Article from “Sports cars, history & development” published by Johnston & Company in 1987.

Wolseley Hornet Special – One of the later Wolseley Hornet Specials, with 11.6-litre engine. Note the stoneguards on the headlamps and radiator.

Many rude things have been said about the Wolseley yet these strictures were aimed more at the saloons than the Hornet Special sports models. The Hornet began life in 1930 as a stretched Morris Minor with a 1,271-cc 6- cylinder engine and the same tiny four-seater saloon body as the Morris. In 1932 came the Hornet Special which was offered as a chassis only, with engine tuned to give 45 bhp with the aid of twin carburettors, high-compression pistons and duplex valve springs.

The coachbuilders soon realized that the Hornet Special’s long bonnet could make for a very handsome sporting car, and a considerable number of firms produced offerings on this chassis, including Abbey, Swallow and Salmons. The Abbey-bodied cars were called E.W. Daytonas, after the London distributors who sold them, Eustace Watkins. A top speed of 75 mph (120.5 km/h) was by no means discreditable, but they did not handle very well, and were never used for serious racing.

However, they were much in evidence at gymkhanas and concours d’elegance where many extras would be flaunted, such as an aero screen for the driver’s use when the windscreen was folded flat, wire-mesh stoneguards over the headlamps, and special horns. The 1935 Hornet Specials had 1,604- cc engines. but these engines were discontinued in 1936. when Lord moved the Nuffield Organization so firmly away from motor sport. and that was the end of the Hornet Special.

The ‘promenader’ or ‘boy racer’ such as the Hornet Special was a phenomenon of the 1930s. although not so different in spirit from such 1920s cars as the Morris Cowley Special Sports. Both hinted by their appearance at sporting performance that was not there. Among other "promenaders" of the 1930s were the Hillman Aero Minx whose dropped frame and sporty body styles made it look completely different from the staid Minx saloon on which it was based, the Morris Ten Six Special with humped scuttle, fold-flat screens and bonnet straps on a car that was hard pressed to reach 65 mph (104.5 km/h), and the Avon Standards which carried handsome bodies on unmodified Standard Nine Sixteen or Twenty chassis. The Avon bodies were designed by the Jensen brothers, who became car makers in their own right in 1936.

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