MetaFilter posts tagged with 50s

eavesdropping on jazz giants

madamjujujive — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:31:05 -0800

The Jazz Loft Project - From 1957 to 1965, celebrated photojournalist W. Eugene Smith made 4,000 hours of surreptitious recordings and took 40,000 photographs in a loft in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where Roland Kirk, Thelonius Monk, Hall Overton, Charles Mingus and other jazz greats jammed until dawn. Archived in the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the project is now accessible via a book, a traveling exhibit, a 10-part Jazz Loft series on WNYC, NPR's Jazz Loft Project Sights & Sounds, and an interview with JLP author Sam Stephenson, which includes some images from the book. Via a Grain Edit post, which also has some great images. More about the passionate W. Eugene Smith, who abandoned his successful career at Life magazine and his family to devote himself to obsessively documenting the jazz loft. Non-jazz photography: Various images, including Tomoko Uemura in her bath, Minamata, Japan Life series The Country Doctor Life series Spanish Village Life series Man of Mercy, and essay on Albert Schweitzer The Pittsburgh Project An excellent documentary on 1950 photos from Wales: The Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith Part 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4

Ourgothlaundry?

The Whelk — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:38:06 -0800

The Art & Life of Annie Truxell [via mefi projects]: Annie Truxell is a well known painter who has lived a long and fascinating life. Her adventures have been legendary, encompassing Greenwich Village in the 50s, London in the 60s and India in the 70s. She was friends with Franz Klein, Bill de Kooning, Truman Capote, Terry Southern, Mati Klarwein & many other wild & woolly people.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it

Artw — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:27:49 -0800

Keep watching the skies - The New York Times looks back at 50s Sci Fi films in anticipation of Alien Trespass, the new film from X-Files veteran R.K. Goodwin. One or two of those classics haven't even been remade yet!

Also not a series of tubes

Wolfdog — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:51:59 -0800

RadioWallah - "Fabulous transistor radios from the fifties." A few more.

The cars of tomorrow

fixedgear — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:32:47 -0800

The cars of tomorrow, today. Link goes to NYT, you may need to use BugeMeNot. Slide show. Futurliner previously on MeFi.

buum bom boom bonk!

madamjujujive — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:08:14 -0800

Retronomatopeya - cute collection of comic book images and language conveying sound and motion. Also see anastasiav's prior post: Ka-BOOM, the Dictionary of Comic Book Words on Historical Principles. (via oink!) Other fun (mostly Spanish) retro graphics sets on flickr from el estratografico: - old urban stuff - old paper stuff - 50s Spanish sci fi novels - old 45s

Click click victorious, buzz buzz glorious, Long to reign over us, buzz buzz click click.

Artw — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:49:44 -0800

The first known recording of a digital computer playing music, recorded by the BBC in 1951. The music played on a Ferantti Mark 1, one of the first commercial general-use computers, and was entered via punchtape and played on a speaker usually used for making clicks and tones to indicate program progress.

The American Look, 1958

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:56:07 -0800

If you can make it through the glacially paced intro and can put up with the typically clunky, often laughable and jingoistic fifties-style narration, this 1958 film from Chevrolet, The American Look is worth viewing. Chock full of futuristic telephones, toasters, blenders, office machines, architecture and more, it's a mid-century design lover's dream. The film is visually striking and elegant, and presented in widescreen format. Here's part 2 and part 3. Or see it here in its entirety. More from 1958: Automobile commercials: GM Cars for 1958. Hilarious jingle. Must be heard. The Edsel. "Just like riding on air, because you are!" Cadillac. "And of course there's its remarkable look of stature and substance!" Chevrolet. "Four inches wider than last year! Over nine inches longer!" Cadillac "Motordom's masterpiece!"

Vault of McCarthite Terror

Artw — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:34:05 -0800

The pictures that horrified America - how comic books tipped 50s America into a moral panic. Comiclopedia on Fredric Wertham David Hajdu, author of The Ten Cent Plague, on censorship, race, and sex

Wally Deane: rockin' 'n' rollin' 'n' coppin' a cartoon riff.

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:40:17 -0800

Hey daddy-o, when you hear that big brash horn section pump out that oddly familiar riff, only to stop cold and make way for that that prescient single note from an electric guitar, followed straightaway by a twangy voice in perfect rockabilly delivery proclaiming "well, she's got a dress that looks like a sack!", then brother, you're listening to the hoppin' boppin' sound of Wally Deane's Drag On. Once you hear it, you'll wonder why Quentin Tarrantino never put it in a movie. Wally Deane: one of the greatest rockabilly acts you never heard of.

"The niggers are coming!"

madamjujujive — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:03:17 -0800

Through a Lens Darkly - on September 4, 1957, when 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter Little Rock Central High, she was blocked by the National Guard and surrounded by a screaming mob of 250: "Lynch her! Lynch her!" "No nigger bitch is going to get in our school! Get out of here!" "Go back to where you came from!" Looking for a friendly face, she turned to an old woman, who spat on her. Photos. Dramatic news footage. Ernest Green, another of the Little Rock 9 recalls the first day of school. Also in 1957 A Picture Counts - recent thread by zzazazz of Dorothy Counts entering the Charlotte School system in 1957 Willie Edwards: Justice Still Absent in Bridge Death - January 23, 1957 All Through the Night - Strom Thurmond's 24-Hour Filibuster, August 29, 1957 Civil Rights Act 1957 - signed by Eisenhower September 9, 1957

Retro space cowboys

madamjujujive — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:20:53 -0800

For many kids, the space age made its TV debut years before Sputnik with 1950's TV space serials.
1950 - Space Patrol - The Hidden Treasure of Mars. (Part two)
1954 - Rocky Jones' Space, Space Ranger - Rocky's Odyssey. (Chapters two, three)
1954 - Flash Gordon - Deadline at Noon and Akim the Terrible. More about:

There comes a time in every young woman's life...

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 09:46:55 -0800

Scans from On Becoming a Woman by Harold Shryock, M.A., M.D. (1906-2004).

There's always room for snarking on people obsessed with 50s kitsch.

pieoverdone — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 08:36:23 -0800

So everyone's already seen regrettable food over and over, but this chick makes, eats, and reviews it according to the original documentation.

Stand by for crime!

stammer — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 10:46:53 -0800

Stand By For Crime! Archive.org presents the astonishing adventures of Chuck Morgan, intrepid radio muckracker and crimefighter, as he battles The Communist Menace, investigates The Wetback Murders, and solves The Marijuana Mystery. Circa 1953; twenty-six half-hour episodes in mp3 format, each approximately 9 MB.

Extracts from the journals of Susan Sontag

nthdegx — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:13:52 -0800

Extracts from the journals of Susan Sontag dating from the 1950s and 1960s were published in this morning's Guardian G2.

beat-generation photos

lilboo — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 15:07:05 -0800

Still romanticizin' the beat generation? Lovely shots from the Venice West Picture Essay - a photo chronicle of the beat generation in venice west, california circa 1958….from the out-of-print "the holy barbarians" by lawrence lipton

Alum Falls Ohio

plep — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 03:26:13 -0800

Alum Falls Ohio. 'An original comic about growing up in the Fifties.'

IT'S CHAMPION!

LinusMines — Mon, 25 Aug 2003 11:16:32 -0800

The World's Worst Food. "A naked imitation of the Gallery of Regrettable Food", featuring late 50's and early 60's-era recipes from the UK.

Cutting-Edge Critique of TV or Just a Lot of Guys with No Shirt On?

jonp72 — Fri, 06 Dec 2002 14:57:49 -0800

Cutting-Edge Critique of TV or Just a Lot of Guys with No Shirt On? Exhaustive website of TV shows from the 1950s to the present with discussion of overt gay and lesbian content. Also a lot of coverage of hidden homoerotic content that could be viewed as a parody of academic interpretive overreaching. On the other hand, that didn't stop Jerry Falwell from denouncing Tinky Winky's alleged sexual orientation.

condour75 — Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:44:54 -0800

Googie? Does your bowling alley have an inexplicable Tiki motif? Does your neighbor's house vaguely resemble a flying saucer? Does your coffee shop suggest, architecturally, that the secrets of the atom are being exploited within? Well now, you can call it by name. Googie. Who knew?