The Drive-In Theater – An Icon of American Culture

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The Drive-In Theater

An Icon of American Culture

Jun 10th 2013 by Karen DeBreau

Film The idea of an open air movie theater first phased Richard Hollingshead of Camden, New Jersey in the early 1930s. Hollingshead, who worked as a sales manager at his father’s company, Whiz Auto Parts, had extensive knowledge in automobiles. A motion picture buff, he combined these interests and envisioned a concept where people could watch a movie from the comfort of their own cars under the stars. With the start of the Great Depression, it goes without saying that the 1930s was a difficult period for most Americans. Motion pictures seemed a natural escape from the hardships that plagued people of all social class and stature during this time. Movies of the time tended to ( continue reading... )

The Cocktail Nation

The Cocktail Nation: Which One Is David – Part Two

Episode 270    Jun 16th 2013

This week on the show we have part two of an interview with an English radio announcer who packed up and moved to Hollywood and became a successful actor. And this week we lost a a Hollywood legend in that of Esther Williams. Cocktail Nation gets a mention in the LA Times and another interview with me is on our website for you to check out.

Music This morning I woke to the sad news of the passing of Bob Thompson. A composer, arranger, and orchestra leader who scored film and television soundtracks, and wrote commercial jingles. He was a leading exponent of Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. This experimental orchestral music became hugely popular in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of the home stereo systems that had become popular. Today an email came in from music historian Irwin Chusid who wrote to me with confirmation of his passing. “I spoke with Bob’s wife Paula last week and she said Bob passed away on May ( continue reading... )


Travel In 1964 my father accepted a job as Press Secretary for Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, so my family left the Arizona desert outside of Phoenix for the foothills of the great Blue Ridge Mountains of Fairfax, Virginia, approximately thirty miles from Washington D.C. and approximately thirty miles from the newly emerging Dulles International Airport that straddled Fairfax and Loudoun Counties. Northern Virginia was in ( read more... )

Design The TV show Mad Men om AMC sets a high standard for designer aficionados and gives endless opportunities to pick up inspiration for designers, illustrators and animators. For the season six premiere, Cape Town-based agency Radio came up with a series of three vintage inspired Mad Men posters that feature Don, Roger and Joan in settings that resemble the works of Saul Bass. The three ( read more... )

Video

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Travel For those of you who are waiting to get away over the summer, here’s some inspiration. This “Look at life” video clip from The Rank Organisation dated May 1964, tells us about air travel in England from Heathrow Airport featuring classic BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) and BEA airplanes. Look at Life was a regular British series of short documentary films of which over 500 ( read more... )