October 30th, 2009
Nothing to write home about, alas: an EXTREMELY colorful addition to Sears 1934, here, and 100 Mysteries, a rather visually static and looong movie, here. Only dedication to the 100 Mysteries project makes me do anything about it. Some weeks are like that, you know.
Categories: Black & White World, The Thirties
Caramba, what a page. Riot of color, indeed. “I’ll take fry your eyeballs out for a hundred, Alex!”
PS: anytime I see a movie title in quotes, I’m envisioning major film suckage. It does have Margaret Hamilton in a role, though; maybe she could sic Nekko and the flying monkey squad on the loony lady.
Re: Sears ‘34: Well, well, well, so YOU don’t want to be a member of “The Smart Set”? You DON’T? REALLY?
Wow Patrick Stewart is old, didn’t know he played one of the house servants.
Wow! To paraphrase a line in Interior Desecrations, if Ralph Lauren has ever dropped acid, I’m sure his trips look like that section of the 1934 Sears catalog.
(Though with much skinnier Photoshopped models.)
Ah, for those hardy “boilfast” colors! Wait, what?
Margaret Hamilton (Cora the Coffee Lady, WIcked Witch of the West aka “W-cubed”) and Percy Kilbride (Pa Kettle) as the house staff? No wonder she went mad!
Quoth Lileks: “What this is doing in 100 Mysteries, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Therein lies the real mystery. I think the compilers of the 100 Mysteries collection decided to go meta.
A not quite technicolor nightmare. Has that old timey flat look to it. Nothing says the ‘1930s’ like a sheenless color spectrum.
I likes me some Sateen. Easy on the eyes.
Ruth Warrick, hellooooooooo.
@Ed Driscoll
Can you mix heroin chic and acid? Ralph Lauren reveals all!
Those pages should have that strobe light warning on them. No pacemakers in the 1930s, but there are now!
“Boldly Strongheart Chambray rode forth from Camelot!
He was not afraid to die, O, Strongheart Chambray!
He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways!
Brave brave brave Strongheart Chambray!”
Half cents? Really brings the change (ha ha) in money to the fore. I won’t bother to pick up stray sidewalk money less than a dime, and only then if it is shiny.
Dedication or OCD? Who can say? I have the same collectoon and I am delighted to have Lileks pre-screen them for me so I can skip the extreme turkeys.
James, I think you would like http://www.plaidstallions.com
Girl Group — Cheap Braying Doxies or
‘Give me your tired, your poor, your cheap braying doxies yearning to breathe free’
Heroin chic + acid + white picket fences
I never realized that The Depression was so gay and colorful!
I was blown away by the fabric page but then I am a quilter. For some really interesting fabrics James might like to check out equilter dot com on their cotton print page. There are some boomerang table prints and many more wonderful sights.
Natalie Kalmus would plotz.
Bob
Love the fabrics pages. Old Man Depression might have kept pret-a-porter at bay, but you could make your own frocks at home for less than a buck! I dig those old patterns. As Kathy mentioned, some quilt shops sell reproductions of those styles.
Tupelo Madras, the Mississippi Hindi, and he’s friend to everyone.
I still wish home sewing was the more inexpensive option these days. Lately, every time I head to the fabric store with frugality in mind when it comes to making kids’ clothes, I generally end up spending more than I would have buying retail.
In the tiny floral patterns I see Japanese washi paper designs, big time. Pondering a 75 year old connection between the two…………
The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) is in that last snap!
“Tupelo Madras” sounds like some darling of the IFC/Sundance set about a laughable improbable mixed-race romance. No doubt the star-crossed couple have to weather attacks from the type of old-line local s who summer at “Clan-Loch”.
I’ve never seen this flick: are McBride’s & Hamilton’s characters meant to be siblings? If not, the writers missed a trick.
“Bungalow Gingham” and “Strongheart Chambray” are great names, but personally, I think “Fifi Frockprints” is one of your all-time great names.