“After three days without sleep, two days of drinking, and an all-night show in Vinton, Louisiana, Jerry Lee gets in the mood to cavort before the camera at 6 A.M. beside his private jet, which had just landed at the Memphis airport.” And the three photos of Jerry Lee Lewis, taken on the tarmac that morning by Raeanne Rubenstein, are as great as you’d hope they’d be.
Whether you trod the boards in the theatrical world or slogged through the sawdust on the carnival circuit, “The Billboard” was essential reading for keeping up with news and employment opportunities in the show-biz world. Almost everything you needed could be found in the magazine’s classified and advertising pages. Check out some of the more interesting ads found in issues from 1904 and 1905.
If you received a letter that looked like this, would you expect 1) it was written by a person with psychiatric problems, 2) it was written by a penny-pincher who was trying to save paper, or 3) it was sent to you in order to cause grave emotional trauma? All of these are possible, but there is one correct answer — and many letters like this were written and painstakingly deciphered. More inside.
Experience the sheer giddiness of an exclamation-mark-filled 1930 ad for cosmetics, “a whole ensemble of gay toiletries!”
A beautiful machine, a beautiful ad. “Easy to carry — speedy to operate.” See the full ad in the post.
Using living trees as antennas was an important element of inventor Maj.-Gen George O. Squier’s system of telephony, which was developed for use during WWI as a way to intercept enemy messages which had been electrically transmitted, as well as to receive and transmit messages from just anywhere with a living tree nearby. More about Squier’s odd-sounding “tree wireless” inside.
Between 1908 and 1910, the city of Buffalo, New York issued a challenge to the city’s children: collect as many Tussock Moth cocoons as possible, and collect a bounty of ten cents a quart. Kids made lots of money and Buffalo’s trees were saved.
It’s lassoes vs. electric dynamite guns in this thrilling story of a crazy armored vehicle and a battle with masked desperadoes in Texas!
Many of the illustrations from the 16th-century “Shepheards Kalender” show the torments of Hell which await practitioners of the Seven Deadly Sins. Here, let’s take a look at covetousness.
Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone cavort poolside with Bruce’s doggies.
