Tag Archives: 1950s

Yankees Rookie Bill “Moose” Skowron Can Hold A Lot Of Bats

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Bill Dickey With Rookie Moose Skowron In Spring Training – 1953

Lake Wales, FL Feb. 21 – BIG GUNS – New York Yankees coach Bill Dickey (left) looks over the big bats carried by Bill Skowron, rookie outfielder at the Yankees baseball school here today. Skowron, from Austin, Minn., hit .341 for Kansas City last season and won the American Association’s most valuable player title while blasting 31 home runs. (AP Wirephoto 1953)

Evidentlly Bill “Moose” Skowron could swing seven bats at once. You would think with the kind of season that Bill Skowron put up in the minors in 1952 he would at least get on the roster with the big team in 1953.

Nothing doing. The 22-year-old Skowron spent the entire 1953 season in the minor leagues with Kansas City. Continue reading →

Classic Hollywood #73 – Mystery Celebrity

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Va-Va-Voom. Can You Guess Who This Is?

I did not recognize this well known celebrity when I first saw this photograph.

Do you know who it is?

Here are some clues to who our mystery celebrity is:

  1. She appeared regularly on a television show which had a long run in the 1950s.
  2. Two of her co-stars on the show were Jack Larson and John Hamilton.
  3. She was never attired like this on the show, but wore a pillbox hat and business suit.
  4. She was born in 1920 in Minnesota and died in 2016 in Arizona at the age of 95.
  5. She began making films in 1940 and had a contract with Paramount Pictures.
  6. Her final film was in 2016 Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel.

Do you give up?

Or is this someone you’ll have to look up?

In the sky. Not in the cloud.

Okay, that was a terrible pun of a clue.

The answer is:

↓

↓ Continue reading →

Hilarious Headlines From The Covers Of “Man’s Life” Magazine In The 1950s & 60s

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“Sex Tricks That Make Women Beg You For Love!” & Other Catchy Headlines From Man’s Life Magazine Of The 1950s and 60s

Man’s Life September 1967

Man’s Life September 1956 – Weasels Ripped My Flesh

With eye-catching painted covers and over the top headlines, Man’s Life magazine provided titillating reading for men from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Man’s Life was the magazine that came up with the now infamous headline “Weasels Ripped My Flesh,” which musician Frank Zappa later appropriated with new artwork for his band’s 1970 album cover.

How could any red blooded male resist stories such as “Sex tricks that make women beg you for love”? Or in the same September 1967 issue: “American towns where vice is legal!” Continue reading →

Bob Feller Throws His 12th Career One-Hitter

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Bob Feller’s Twelfth One-Hitter Sets A Record – May 1 1955

Cleveland, May 1 – 12th One-Hitter – Bobby Feller spells out “12” with baseballs today after winning his 12th one-hit game. Feller who held the major league record for single hitters even before today, came within eight outs of posting his fourth no-hitter as the Cleveland Indians beat Boston 2-0. credit: AP wirephoto

There will always be the proverbial argument of who was the fastest pitcher in baseball history. Had the modern radar gun technology been around 70 years ago, there is no doubt that Bob Feller would have been credited as the hardest thrower of his generation.

Roger Peckinpaugh (1891-1977) who was a player and managed from the dead ball era through the modern era and saw everyone from Walter Johnson to Nolan Ryan. Peckinpaugh reminisced in Donald Honig’s The Man in the Dugout (1977, Follett) about flame throwing pitchers.

“I never batted against Addie Joss, but I did against Smokey Joe Wood, Walter Johnson, and Lefty Grove, and I managed Bob Feller in his heyday. Who was the fastest? That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? I would say Walter Johnson. Now Bobby was fast all right, but he had that great big curveball to go along with it.”  Continue reading →

You Can’t Do This Anymore – Kids And Toy Guns

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Something You Won’t See Anymore. What Happened To Kids Playing With Toy Guns?

Boy, has America changed In 67 years.

In 1951 a Cleveland Plain Dealer photographer captured young Rickey Harbold of Cleveland, OH pointing his toy gun out of the car window.

If your child were to do this today, the adult driving the car would probably be arrested or possibly shot at by the police. Continue reading →

Old New York In Photos #86 – The End Of The Classic Lower Manhattan Skyline c. 1956

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Lower Manhattan’s Classic Skyline Seen Aerially From Battery Park c. 1956

And What Became of It

Classic lower Manhattan skyline before the late 1950s transformation. Battery Park is in the foreground. (c.1956)

Every time I’m in Brooklyn I gaze across the East River at the lower Manhattan skyline. I feel I’m looking at a city I don’t recognize.

It’s not because I’m old. But it might be because the buildings that have been going up since the late 1950s are so similar. They’re all of the same mold- glass sheathed pinnacles with no flourishes, adornments or personality.

For the first half of the twentieth century, when you came upon New York whether by ship, train or car and got your first glimpse of the skyline you knew you were coming into New York City.

For a native New Yorker coming upon New York today, you may as well be entering the architectural equivalent of the Mall of America, any-city USA. Examples sprout up everywhere of New York’s architectural monstrosities, ugly and tall for the sake of being tall.

Classic lower Manhattan skyline form Brooklyn waterfront in the 1930s. photo: Acme

Commercial Cable Building

The skyline of lower Manhattan had remained pretty much static from 1931 through 1957 Continue reading →

We’ve Seen This Before, Late March New York City Snowstorm Shuts Down The City – 1956

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Huge Snowstorm In March 1956 Paralyzed New York City and Suburbs

New York – Pedestrians trample their way through snow-covered streets here 3/19 after the worst snowfall in eight years crippled New York’s transportation system and left thousands of motorists stranded on the highway systems leading into the city. More than 2,000 cars were abandoned on the roads. photo United Press Telephoto 3/19/1956

Just in time for spring, the weather forecasters are predicting a lot of snow for New York City starting Tuesday, March 20. Possibly eight inches will fall across the area and then melt within a couple of days.

Snow becomes the main news story here in New York. This will be a small storm compared to the snowstorm that hit New York City on March 18 – 20, 1956.  By the time it was over, New York City received 13 and a half inches of snow, making travel in the region next to impossible.

New York – Snow business is bad business for the owner of a corner grocery store in suburban Queens here 3/20. Folks weren’t exactly beating a path to his door so he closed for the day. 3/20/1956 photo United Press Telephoto

What made this storm worse than others what not just the amount of snow but the surprise nature of it. Continue reading →

France Has Got Talent

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Paris Acrobats Show Unusual Talent – 1953

Paris Acrobats April 14, 1953 photo: Acme

It would be nice to add some context to this 1953 Acme news photograph besides the date and title caption, unfortunately I couldn’t find any information on it. Not even if the photo was taken in Paris, France, or that is where the circus or performers are from. If the circus is from Paris, it might be Cirque Medrano. Continue reading →

The Appliance Every Household Needs

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An Appliance Store Advertises A New Dishwasher Innovation -1951

You almost have to wonder if the sign in the window was a joke, or did some unfortunate writer really make this blunder?

Automatic Butterfingers

New York: The signpainter must have been thinking of the last time he helped dry the dishes at home, when he made this sign on the window of a Staten Island appliance store. Of course it’s a dishwasher on display, not a dishmasher. (11-26-1951) credit: Acme

My guess is, Continue reading →

Shooting’s Fun For Everyone

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Teaching Children To Shoot – 1957

Not that long ago shooting a rifle or a pistol was a right of passage for American children.

Here is a 16 page 1957 pamphlet put out by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute to encourage shooting for boys and girls. Its the sort of thing that today would probably be considered politically incorrect and start a huge protest if it were given out to schoolchildren. Some might call the pamphlet propaganda, but in the 1950s shooting and hunting as a recreational activity was one of the most popular leisure pastimes in the United States.

Shooting as a sport was considered to be a wholesome, fun activity that the family could do together. The popularity of sport fishing and wild game hunting in the United States soared to new heights in 1957 when a record total of 34,195,183 licenses were sold to devotees of those outdoor sports.

Today recreational shooting and especially hunting have been on a steady decline with 33 states issuing fewer hunting licenses in the past 20 years according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In an NBC interview Mark Damian Duda, executive director of Responsive Management, a Virginia-based natural resources research group said, “Fifty years ago, a lot of kids would hunt and fish and be outside, now it’s easier to sit in your playroom and play video games.”

Today the idea of giving a child a gun and teaching them how to use and respect a gun is an anathema to many people. When the word “shooting” is mentioned in the news it is usually preceded by the word “mass”.

What has changed? Continue reading →