Postmarked June 18, 1956:
PIKES PEAK AUTO RACE
Here on Labor Day of each year gather the world's best dirt track drivers to test their skill on the 10% grade up the side of Pikes Peak, rising 14,110 feet above sea level.
Even the most popular and successful bands have songs that speak only to a (relatively) devoted few. In Greatest Misses, I'll count off the least popular song on band's albums, not including brief interludes, joke songs, or generally any abnormally short song. I'm using the super scientific method of counting streams from a band's Spotify catalog, so you know it'll be accurate.
First up: Van Halen.
One interesting note about this first entry, that I would like to do some further research on. Of the 12 songs listed, 7 of them are the last song on the album. Do people just get to the end of a record and decide, "Nah I'm good, I'll listen to something else now"? Strange.
Anyway, here's the list and then the Spotify playlist:
"On Fire" - Van Halen
"Outta Love Again" - Van ...
From the September 26, 1954 edition of the Dayton Daily News comes this ad for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando. The movie, a genuine box office smash, had already been out a few months when this ad ran. Although it didn't earn nearly the money that blockbusters such as White Christmas or Rear Window did, it earned eight Academy Awards including Best Picture.
Kicking off the latest series on GFS is a gallery of vintage newspaper print ads for movies. There is a specific style and charm to old movie ads that I just love. It pretty much doesn't matter what the movie even is. In fact, in digging through papers to find these ads I came across several for films I had never even heard of.
So enjoy browsing through this time capsule of entertainment ads from a bygone era, and be sure to stop by the lobby for some refreshing treats!
Here's an interesting cel featuring some vintage cereal mascots, Quake and Quisp, with a third character I've not seen before. If anyone knows who the man in the black hat is, drop a comment below.
It's hard to believe that I'm almost 10 entries into this series and haven't shared any car brochures. Luckily I found a real gem for the first one. This brochure highlights the new 1937 Willys, with the slogan "The Surprise Car of the Year." The typeface and color scheme are very much of their era, and are a pure delight.
The first image breaks down (OK, unfortunate phrasing) the cost of ownership over 35,000 miles. Can't say I've ever seen a car brochure give a depreciation amount before.
Next up is the money shot, a pretty nice looking pre-war car that boasts up to 35 miles per gallon.
Next we get several exterior and interior shots, with some very well-dressed people looking very approvingly at the beautiful bench seats, roomy interior and spacious trunk.
Here's a neat slide from what I assume was somebody's vacation to Nashville, Tennessee sometime in the 1970s. All I really have to go by for that date guess are the partial car views we get. Most prominent in this slide is the tour bus for country music legend Ernest Tubb. We also see signs for other tourist traps like Loretta Lynn's Western Store, Tubb's record shop, and Eddie & Joe's Putter Place.
If anyone can provide a date for this slide, let me know in the comments.
I'm starting a new series called First Year Covers, the purpose of which should be obvious. I'll take a famous magazine and share a gallery featuring all or selected covers from its first year of publication. For no particular reason I've chosen Hugh Hefner's Playboy for the first entry.
Scratch that - there is a reason. Aside from all the controversy Playboy has courted almost since its first issue published in December 1953 -- and featuring previously unseen nude photos of Marilyn Monroe -- many of its covers in the early days are fun and imaginative exercises in graphic design.
So with that out of the way, let's enjoy a look at the twelve months of Playboy covers, plus a bonus 13th cover to round out 1954. Sorry fellas, no nudity here.
