Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

women

The Best of Everything – The Original Sex & The City

A publishing house typing pool is the seething heart of the aspirations of a cadre of working girls, marking time until they marry Mr. Right and settle down. Caroline Bender (Lange) battles her career aspirations and fear that she will morph into scary book editor Joan Crawford. It’s the original Sex in the City. Rona Jaffe’s novel, The Best of Everything, is about four girls (and their...

Burlesque Poster Design
Written by Baron von Swankenstein in Readable

Burlesque Poster Design

Gypsy Rose Lee. Tempest Storm. Lily St. Cyr. If there’s one word associated with these famous women, it’s “burlesque.” In the modern sense of the word, burlesque was a popular form of theatrical variety show featuring risqué comedy, parody, and pastiche. When it was exported from Victorian England to the United States in the 1840s, American elements were added: minstrel show performances, stage magic, contemporary...

Video

With Mad Men out of the game this year and not expected to make a return until spring 2012, television networks are going head to head to see who can fill its gap. ABC is joining the mile high club with their upcoming Pan Am series, while NBC are heading to Chicago and the opening of the first Playboy Club. I am intrigued by both...

The Selling of the Jackie Kennedy Lifestyle in the Movie Magazines

As long as they have been in public life, the Kennedys have been associated with the press, making their first fan movie magazine appearance in the September 1927 issue of Photoplay. By the early 1960s, there were upwards of forty fan magazines, including Photoplay, Motion Picture, Modern Screen, and TV Radio Screen. The forerunners of the modern “celebrity magazines” such as Us Weekly and In Touch, the movie mags covered the misadventures,...

Style in the Aisle – Flight Attendant Fashion

The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington is nearing the end of a temporary exhibit called “Style in the Aisle: Flight Attendant Fashion.” The exhibit first began in 2008 and has become so popular that the museum has added new uniforms to the exhibit. Travel Channel has a great photo compilation of “Style in the Aisle” with captions describing each of the photos. The exhibit shows...

Video

Since the turn of the 20th century, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have been fighting to capture the hearts and taste buds of America’s youth. Fifty years into the great carbonation beverage battle, cola companies decided to look for new opportunities and target demographics. In an attempt to lure in diabetics, the cola companies began developing and marketing low-calorie, sugar-free alternatives. As early as the 1950s, Royal...

Man’s Favorite Sport?
Written by Jesse Kowalski in Film

Man’s Favorite Sport?

Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss star in Howard Hawks’ film Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964). This screwball comedy is a loose remake of Hawks’ earlier film hit Bringing Up Baby (1938), which starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. The plot for this film is relatively complicated for a comedy. Rock stars as Roger Willoughby, a salesman at Abercrombie & Fitch – your grandfather’s Abercrombie & Fitch...

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