What sparked your fascination with the "Golden Era"?

[ChiTownScion]

And before Loungers get too high up on their own horses, let them ask themselves how much they spend on suits and hats and leather jackets. How is a closet full of overpriced "vintage" any less the product of a sensate and materialistic society than that of the trend-hopper with a closet full of overpriced skinny jeans?

I won't try to bathe any of this in altruism, but any time that a woman (from ages 18 to 80) comes up to me and says, "I like your hat," my day is made. And when I walk into a local restaurant with like dressed friends, and the owner greets us with, "Here come the Sopranos!," I know that he's paying a compliment. I feel good about that. Not really proud (because pride should be reserved for hard won accomplishments of substance) .....but good.

Indulgent? Guilty as charged. I know that 99.99% of the gents back in the day couldn't afford to dress up like I do when I'm out and about, but I'm also painfully aware of the fact that I live better and earn more because a lot of those gents who lived the Era helped me along the way. Not just a dad working two full time jobs so that I could attend better schools, but teachers, professors, bosses, older professional peers and mentors who took the time to impart a lot of what they had to learn the hard way to me.

The Golden Era isn't merely about what was (and determining that is an ongoing quest, as we all know), but how we take that and apply it to the here and now. I don't hate the 21st Century one bit: I enjoy most of it quite immensely. The younger people I deal with, particularly in my profession, are a delight to deal with. But I try to remain keenly aware of how what is so often taken for granted today came to pass. I'm befuddled by much of the present- like so many here- but the past accords me some semblance of a framework whereby I can sort much of it out.

 

[Fading Fast]

I won't try to bathe any of this in altruism, but any time that a woman (from ages 18 to 80) comes up to me and says, "I like your hat," my day is made. And when I walk into a local restaurant with like dressed friends, and the owner greets us with, "Here come the Sopranos!," I know that he's paying a compliment. I feel good about that. Not really proud (because pride should be reserved for hard won accomplishments of substance) .....but good.

Indulgent? Guilty as charged. I know that 99.99% of the gents back in the day couldn't afford to dress up like I do when I'm out and about, but I'm also painfully aware of the fact that I live better and earn more because a lot of those gents who lived the Era helped me along the way. Not just a dad working two full time jobs so that I could attend better schools, but teachers, professors, bosses, older professional peers and mentors who took the time to impart a lot of what they had to learn the hard way to me.

The Golden Era isn't merely about what was (and determining that is an ongoing quest, as we all know), but how we take that and apply it to the here and now. I don't hate the 21st Century one bit: I enjoy most of it quite immensely. The younger people I deal with, particularly in my profession, are a delight to deal with. But I try to remain keenly aware of how what is so often taken for granted today came to pass. I'm befuddled by much of the present- like so many here- but the past accords me some semblance of a framework whereby I can sort much of it out.

See bold above - really well said. I try to live my life based on the values I learned growing up from my very Golden Era parents and the still extant parts of the Golden Era culture that was around. A value system should be like a compass that lets you navigate through the noise of the current cultural moment to see what is and isn't important.

Like you I don't hate the 21 Century at all (and enjoy many parts of it), but I do see that it has some cultural norms and values that I question and check against my own value system. For example, and as noted in an above post, the Super Bowl ball-deflating issue to me is incredibly meaningful if it represents cheating as "not cheating" is to me a timeless value. Supporting my argument (again from a prior post) that the incident was really treated as a media event dressed up as moral indignation is that it has completely fallen off the radar now that the Super Bowl and its media hype are over. Where is the NFL's promised report? In my value system, the Super Bowl's results are meaningless until we learn if the Patriots cheated to get there.

Conversely, the controversy over the cover of the current Sports Illustrated Swim Suit issue is another fake media event, but one that at its core, has no great moral issue. Our current culture loves female nudity and loves going as close to the line of full nudity as it can and, then, stopping. The Swim Suit cover is the perfect instantiation of this cultural norm - the cover girl is pulling her bottom down as much as she can without going fully naked. Nudity is - to my value system - not something that matters one way or the other. If our culture decides that nudity is fine - then what is the harm? How much of the human body can be shown in public has always been a fluid standard differing from culture to culture, generation to generation and country / region to country / region.

My parents thought the post '60s cultural - which set the ball in motion to today's swimsuit issue - was crass and crude, but they didn't get worked up about it, but the increased lying and cheating they saw in our public officials to them was a sign of moral and cultural decline. The first they saw as a decline but superficial, the second was a meaningful deterioration. Others have different Golden Era values - but those are some of the ones I learned and accepted and how I - like you said - apply them to our very 21st Century culture.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sports cheating has ever been with us. The 1951 Giants used an illegal sign-stealing system during their pennant drive, cooked up by that straight-shooting sportsman Leo Durocher, using a telescope and an electric buzzer system to capture the opposing team's signals. Every member of that team knew about that system -- including Bobby Thomson, the man who hit the pennant-winning home run -- but it wasn't until an obscure backup catcher on that club revealed the truth about ten years ago that the whole story came out.

Think about that for a moment. The 1951 National League pennant race is one of the most mythic in the history of sports -- and twenty-five players, three coaches, a manager, a clubhouse attendant, and an electrician, at the very least, knew that the Giants cheated -- not just once, but repeatedly, over the last two months of the season in order to win that pennant. Why didn't any of them speak up before Sal Yvars did? Why did Durocher, the man who cooked up the scheme, and Herman Franks, Durocher's top lieutenant, who was in charge of implementing it, go to their graves without coming clean? Why did Bobby Thomson -- who only admitted the sign stealing scheme was going on after Yvars told his story, and even then went to his own grave denying he took advantage of it -- not come forward? Where was the integrity, not just of one man, but of an entire ball club?

 

[ChiTownScion]

My parents thought the post '60s cultural - which set the ball in motion to today's swimsuit issue - was crass and crude, but they didn't get worked up about it, but the increased lying and cheating they saw in our public officials to them was a sign of moral and cultural decline. The first they saw as a decline but superficial, the second was a meaningful deterioration. Others have different Golden Era values - but those are some of the ones I learned and accepted and how I - like you said - apply them to our very 21st Century culture.

I suppose that I see it from a different perspective. I look back on that World War II generation, and I'm very glad that I was raised by them rather than the World War I generation. To have served in World War II among my dad's peers was no big deal: everybody served. You didn't tell hair raising war stories among the guys, because chances are there was someone around who experienced worse. I was mentored by men who had survived Iwo Jima, the Bataan Death March, Anzio, Tarawa, D-Day, the Bulge... but they rarely talked about it. Usually the stories they told were the funny ones: a blowhard sergeant who had to eat crow, or a shave tail lieutenant who learned humility very quickly. That sort of thing.

The decline in value in the 60's and later is, I think, a matter of perspective and opinion. Vietnam was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, and I remember a lot of the older generation morphing from flag waving hawks to antiwar doves as the quagmire became more obvious. In retrospect, I think my own greatest sin was questioning the love of country of those I disagreed with back in the 1960's. I misjudged a lot of individuals in that regard. William Kunsler, Pete Seeger, even Gus Hall who led the Communist Party: they were all World War II vets.... whereas Billy Graham (who I then held in esteem) boasted ministerial credentials and never had to serve. Bill Bright (of Campus Crusade for Christ, another hero of mine at the time) avoided military service while growing wealthy as the head of a candy company. That was pretty common among the Anti- Communist Warrior for God Caste. The jingoist flag waving God & Country spiel that so many embraced (and still do, sadly) was seen by a lot of the vets I knew as "chicken****." Their idea was simply to shut your mouth, do your job, and don't waste time criticizing the other fella, because you never knew what his story was.

I suppose that I see the 1960's, in its worst light, as inevitable. Post war USA had fostered a can-do optimism because we had emerged at the top of the world (at least in our eyes) , but that had its own downside: an arrogance and adolescent swagger that as much as begged for us to be knocked off of our high horse. It was painful, but it was bound to happen.

As to the 60's themselves, and what came later, I don't necessarily see a decline in values or such. Reality checks can be a positive thing. And it certainly is no alibi for donning rose colored glasses when studying the Era, its inhabitants, or their values. Or clinging to the image of a past that never really existed. But for all of their flaws in the Era, they pushed on and strived for something better- as Miss Lizzie has already mentioned. They didn't harp on values or decry the decline of morals for the most part (some always do-- 'twas ever thus). Maybe that's the moral of the whole story after all.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I suppose that I see the 1960's, in its worst light, as inevitable. Post war USA had fostered a can-do optimism because we had emerged at the top of the world (at least in our eyes) , but that had its own downside: an arrogance and adolescent swagger that as much as begged for us to be knocked off of our high horse. It was painful, but it was bound to happen.

Exactly. We sowed the wind thruout the postwar era and reaped the whirlwind in the sixties and seventies. The events of the latter two decades weren't something avoidable -- they were the inevitable result of a society that had lost its capability for constructive introspection. The US stood on top of the mountain in 1945 and imagined it was looking down into the Promised Land -- but it never realized that peak was just a plateau, and there were plenty more mountains yet to be climbed.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the best reflection of how New Deal era America viewed itself and its place in the world can be found in one stanza of Stephen Vincent Benet's long poem "Nightmare at Noon." In this long piece, written in 1940, Benet reflects on the fear and violence to be found in Europe with the spread of Fascism, and contrasts that with the sense of hope he found to characterize Americans. This was not jingoistic, flag-waving, high-stepping, Love It Or Leave It holy sacred capitalism phony patriotism, but a sincere sense that we, as a nation, wanted to see a genuinely better world for everyone.

There is no air-raid siren yet, in the park.
All the glass still stands, in the windows around the park.
The man on the bench is reading a Yiddish paper.
He will not be shot because of that, oddly enough.
He will not even be beaten or imprisoned.
Not yet, not yet.
You can be a Finn or a Dane and an American.
You can be German or French and an American,
Jew, Bohunk, N****r, Mick — all the dirty names
We call each other — and yet American.
We've stuck to that quite a while.
Go into Joe's Diner and try to tell the truckers
You belong to a Master Race and you'll get a laugh.
What's that, brother? Double-talk?
I'm a stranger here myself but it's a free country.
It's a free country . . .
Oh yes, I know the faults and the other side,
The lyncher's rope, the bought justice, the wasted land,
The scale on the leaf, the borers in the corn,
The finks with their clubs, the grey sky of relief,
All the long shame of our hearts and the long disunion.
I am merely remarking — as a country, we try.
As a country, I think we try.

That's my favorite poem, and it makes me tear up whenever I read it. Those are the values of *my* Golden Era. Read and think about the full poem here. And then think about the fact that Benet's works were banned from many classrooms during the postwar Red scare.

 

[Harp]

Sports cheating has ever been with us. The 1951 Giants used an illegal sign-stealing system during their pennant drive, cooked up by that straight-shooting sportsman Leo Durocher, using a telescope and an electric buzzer system to capture the opposing team's signals.... Where was the integrity, not just of one man, but of an entire ball club?

Leo's appearance on The Munsters is unforgettable though.

 

[Fastuni]

Stephen Vincent Benet's long poem "Nightmare at Noon."

Thanks for bringing it to attention.
It is very gripping indeed and also accessible to those not used to poetry, which sometimes can be too abstract and aloof.

Another very powerful poem by Stephen Vincent Benet is Litany for Dictatorships (1935):

http://www.swans.com/library/art6/zig053.html

An excerpt that deals with the aforementioned collective aspiration of the era towards a better future:

We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Leo's appearance on The Munsters is unforgettable though.

For even more hilarity, look up his guest appearance on Fred Allen's radio show around 1944, where he was the singing lead in a first-rate Gilbert and Sullivan parody, "The Brooklyn Pinafore."

Durocher, for all his flaws, is one of the most interesting characters in 20th Century sports, and his autobiography is jaw-droppingly hilarious. He pulls no punches in telling what he thought of just about everyone, and for the most part he was quite candid in discussing his own personality faults -- he goes on at some length to describe how he gleefully cuckolded Lariane Day's hapless drunk of a husband while he was sleeping off a bender in the next room. All this sort of thing makes it all the more odd that he kept quiet about the sign stealing scheme -- he was certainly willing to admit to plenty of peccadilloes in his personal life, but for the forty-odd years he lived afterward, he never said a word to anyone about what happened in 1951.

All that said, I do have to have just a bit of respect for a man who called Walter O'Malley "Whale Belly" to his face.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Thanks for bringing it to attention.
It is very gripping indeed and also accessible to those not used to poetry, which sometimes can be too abstract and aloof.

Another very powerful poem by Stephen Vincent Benet is Litany for Dictatorships (1935):

http://www.swans.com/library/art6/zig053.html

Everyone who loves the Era should spend time getting to know Benet's works. He was a lot, lot more than "The Devil and Daniel Webster."

 

[Fading Fast]

While, as always, Lizzie is spot on on the 1951 Giants, we also remember the 1918 Black Sox scandal. My point is not that the Golden Era was all rainbows and sunshine - I made the point that it wasn't in posts above - but the difference to me is captured in the last two lines of the poem Lizzie quotes above:

I am merely remarking - as a country, we try.
As a country, I think we try

That's the difference for me. In the GE, we use to try to hold ourselves, our public officials, our entertainment figures, our sports figures to a higher standard. It is a more nuanced value than it sounds. If a society isn't truly trying to hold itself to these values but just saying it is, then it becomes cynicism and hypocrisy. If on the other hand, it aspires to those values and puts effort into it, then, yes, it will still have scandals and embarrassment, but those values, those higher standards, will move the center, lift the bottom and push up the top of the range of behavior.

That to me is part of what broke in the '60s; by no longer striving for higher cultural and moral standards (in part because many in the '60s saw the hypocrisy that had become pervasive), the entire culture continuum shifted downward to where we have the crudeness of today at the lower end of that range.

Lizzie, thank you for posting the section of the poem that you did - I will read and reflect on it.

 

[hatguy1]

Sports cheating has ever been with us.

True that. Even in the ultra-polite Victorian Era where base ball (2 words then) didn't allow sliding or trying to get a pitch past a batter but rather instead asking him what kind of pitch he preferred (so he could hit it and put the ball in play for the fans or "cranks" as they were known etc) had rampant cheating going on. The ladies in the outfield "stands" - named so because the cranks actually stood at the outer (more or less) limit of the outfield - naturally wore long dresses in that time to avoid the brazen behavior of showing their ankles would conveniently stand over a ball hit out near them so as to inhibit the opposing outfielder from finding the ball and soaking the runner or getting it to the baseman before the runner.

Even in the '20s and '30s in Wrigley Field (and many other stadiums) outfield bleacher sections in "the batter's eye" area would wear dark jackets and sweaters when their team was at bat so the batter could better see the ball coming towards the plate and get a better hit on it. Then, mysteriously enough, when the opposing team came to bat, the sun would come out and it would feel warmer so the home team fans would suddenly have to shed those darker jackets and stuff revealing lighter colored clothing underneath in which the oncoming pitch would just blend in and be unseen and therefore unhittable (if that's a word). I'm told that finally so many visiting batters got beaned in these parks that the baseball commissioners had to order such positions in the stands removed and replaced with either dark colored grass, shrubbery etc.

 

[Midlagedfangirl]

I have always been a history nerd. When I was 5/6 years old, I was a big time WWI airplane nerd. My Grandpa got me a WWII game, and then I became a WWII nerd.

I never ever feel drawn to modern culture. In fact, modern culture repulses me. The music, the morals, the clothes, the cars, the designs, everything. Modern society is, in my opinion, polluted with sin.

Thus, as I am repulsed by the modern world, I am drawn to the old world, a world which is not so heavily contaminated by sinful ways. But this is not all. Old time things had a quality, a quality which is not seen in the modern world. The modern philosophy of minimalism is a bane to quality and nice design. Old designs were all beautiful, and old music all sound wonderful, whilst Modern design looks awful, and barren, and Modern music sounds abominable, and bleak. Vintage clothes are properly designed, with correct proportions to look right, and are nice and modest. While Modern clothes are ugly, with wrong proportions, and are smutty. The Modern world is a foul world, full of sin, and awfully designed things. Clearly mankind fell down with the pants rise.

I personally love vintage things, since they are all beautiful, and quaint. People used to love God, and their neighbor, and it showed in their work. The clothes were comfortable, modest, and pleasing to see. The cars did not look aggressive, but rather, happy, and jovial. The cars were not built so they could go far over the speed limit, but rather, so they could get the passengers to their destination. Buildings were not minimalistic, but rather, beautifully detailed, even in the smallest of places. Music was pleasing to hear, joyful sounding, and did not glorify sinful behavior. Houses were wonderfully charming, with beautiful details, and plenty of color. Aluminum awnings and wallpaper were only some of the many details that brought quaint elegance to the houses. People wore hats, not just for a few decades, or centuries, but for thousands of years. The hats changed, but nevertheless, they stayed on the heads of fellow people. Movies were moral, and featured the Hay's Code, which was an underrated blessing to the film industry, as it kept films with as least sinful content as possible. People went to church, and loved the LORD, who created them all. People respected God far more than their modern kin.

However, it would be naive to say that all was wonderful back then, since racism, and other problems were more prevalent then today. However, if you take racism, and other things out of the picture, then it becomes an era, with moral, sane people.

In short, I assume you can say that I am merely drawn towards the Golden Era. It is like a magnet to me, it is part of who I am, part of my personality.

I have always been a history nerd. When I was 5/6 years old, I was a big time WWI airplane nerd. My Grandpa got me a WWII game, and then I became a WWII nerd.

I never ever feel drawn to modern culture. In fact, modern culture repulses me. The music, the morals, the clothes, the cars, the designs, everything. Modern society is, in my opinion, polluted with sin.

Thus, as I am repulsed by the modern world, I am drawn to the old world, a world which is not so heavily contaminated by sinful ways. But this is not all. Old time things had a quality, a quality which is not seen in the modern world. The modern philosophy of minimalism is a bane to quality and nice design. Old designs were all beautiful, and old music all sound wonderful, whilst Modern design looks awful, and barren, and Modern music sounds abominable, and bleak. Vintage clothes are properly designed, with correct proportions to look right, and are nice and modest. While Modern clothes are ugly, with wrong proportions, and are smutty. The Modern world is a foul world, full of sin, and awfully designed things. Clearly mankind fell down with the pants rise.

I personally love vintage things, since they are all beautiful, and quaint. People used to love God, and their neighbor, and it showed in their work. The clothes were comfortable, modest, and pleasing to see. The cars did not look aggressive, but rather, happy, and jovial. The cars were not built so they could go far over the speed limit, but rather, so they could get the passengers to their destination. Buildings were not minimalistic, but rather, beautifully detailed, even in the smallest of places. Music was pleasing to hear, joyful sounding, and did not glorify sinful behavior. Houses were wonderfully charming, with beautiful details, and plenty of color. Aluminum awnings and wallpaper were only some of the many details that brought quaint elegance to the houses. People wore hats, not just for a few decades, or centuries, but for thousands of years. The hats changed, but nevertheless, they stayed on the heads of fellow people. Movies were moral, and featured the Hay's Code, which was an underrated blessing to the film industry, as it kept films with as least sinful content as possible. People went to church, and loved the LORD, who created them all. People respected God far more than their modern kin.

However, it would be naive to say that all was wonderful back then, since racism, and other problems were more prevalent then today. However, if you take racism, and other things out of the picture, then it becomes an era, with moral, sane people.

In short, I assume you can say that I am merely drawn towards the Golden Era. It is like a magnet to me, it is part of who I am, part of my personality.

This is why I love the Golden Era.

I completely agree with you, good sir! It's wonderful to hear someone who I agree with so fully!

 

[HistoryCopper]

I spent a lot of time with my grandfather and also my great-grandmother when I was young. My grandfather was a WWII combat veteran. My great-grandmother was born in 1898 and lived to be 96 years old. Her grandparents all immigrated from Ireland to New Orleans as children in the 1840s and her grandfathers were both Civil War veterans. So I grew up along the Louisiana/Southeast Texas coasts. She and my grandfather sparked a lifelong love of history in me and I guess I gravitated towards the Golden Era because they both lived through it.

My grandfather and I watched a lot of movies from the 30s/40s together and also listened to music from the Big Band Era. My great-grandmother taught me how to jitterbug when I was around 9 or so. History was my favorite subject in school and I ended up getting a couple of degrees in it. I also spent 15 years as a Civil War reenactor and a few years as a WWII reenactor.

My specific interests involve anything WWII related but I also have an obsession with Old Time Radio programs, especially detective shows. When I was a detective, I dressed in vintage style which drew a lot of laughs from my colleagues but also a lot of compliments from members of the public, attorneys, and even people I arrested. So for me it has been a lifelong interest that rather than going away as I have gotten older has in fact gotten much stronger. Luckily, my wife shares my interests as well. We met while I was going to grad school part time. We had a class together and many years later got married.

 

[Dirk Wainscotting]

It's hard to tell whether it's exposure or just a matter of taste: I'm the grandson of a tailor so I saw the clothes up close; days off school, ill in bed watching films from the '30s, 40s or '50s; I'm from a rather small hamlet where life hadn't moved on much from the '50s anyway. Someone could experience that and still reject it. I think it's a bit of both.

A lot of people admire parts of the 'golden era': lovely train stations with red chocolate machines and besuited men, some in hats, buying newspapers from the kiosk (in my memory), but aren't prepared to adopt it into their lives. You have to like it and also want to live it to some degree.

 

[MikeKardec]

I guess I was born into it. I never really noticed that suddenly I was interested.

I had a older but very vigorous father ... he was born in 1908 and lived 'til 1988. He had a very active life and had many of the iconic experiences of this era; traveled with a circus when he was 15, merchant seaman, boxer, miner, lumberjack, WWII. Then he started writing and had a decent pulp career (often writing High Adventure and Crime stories), in the fifties he switched to paperback westerns.

My maternal grandmother was an actress in silent pictures and married a real estate developer. After I became a Raymond Chandler fan in my late teens, I discovered that he had owned and built the clubhouse in The Lady in the Lake. My gran'ma lived in a creepy old house like the one in Sunset Boulevard full of dusty stuff left over from the "era." Their best friend's were Alan Ladd's family so, though Alan died when I was a child, I grew up around his extended family and all those echoes of old Hollywood. Mom and Dad both worked in early TV and '50s film.

I loved old movies and never really separated them from the new ones. Some of that came from knowing some of the people in them and not really realizing that they were much younger in the films. My father was old enough so that living with him was also sort of a time warp, "Just the other day," could have been 1952 or 1932. He was very in the moment, a guy who always looked to the future, so his sense of how long ago something was was a bit fuzzy.

Like Lizzie mentioned there was that early 1970s Golden Era revival that got my attention because I realized I had a connection to it. As a younger kid I had grown up reading Doc Savage (Dad's publisher thoughtfully sent their writers a copy of every book they published so I just took whatever I wanted) and eventually I discovered my own father's writing from the same period ... those were rotting pulps in a hidden pile in his office. Dad loved the Marx Brothers, so we'd drive 100 miles to see them in a revival theater. I actually can remember seeing (many times) Groucho driving his Rolls Royce around Beverly Hills in the '60s and '70s. He'd weave right up the middle of the street like a real life Mr Magoo.

I loved old cars ... and just cars. From Hot Wheels to Ravel Models. I was really into trains also and so the family visited Durango Colorado to ride the train there. In the late 1960s we took an extended family/business trip to the UK and of course in those days there was a lot of WWII era and before stuff all over the place. As up-and-coming and new and modern as British society was in those days there was a greater sense of the past than in LA where if you stand too long in one place they will pave over you.

There was another spike of 30s nostalgia in the 1980s, this one fusing bizarrely with current punkish trends At that time I was in Film School. A good friend and I made a 30 minute adaptation of Raymond Chandler's "I'll be Waiting." We shot in Black and White 16mm in an old Hollywood Hotel (thanks to my friend, Mike's, abilities as a con man) with period costumes borrowed from professionals and Western Costume. In those days (maybe even now) most people in the film biz would help you out if you promised to take stuff out Friday night and have it back Monday morning. Because of school we had to work weekends anyway. My writing wasn't very good back then but the film looked good. Some local owners of vintage cars helped out and I briefly traded my '60s Mustang for a '48 Ford Super Deluxe while we were shooting. Like a lot of kid's in the '80s, pieces of vintage clothing was often a part of my wardrobe ... it was just what you did.

After working in film a bit I started doing radio dramas ... although I gave up doing it "old style" with sound effects done "in studio" as quickly as I could and started producing a few that had a more film-like post production. I actually found this site doing research for the last of those projects, I really stopped in the 1990s but did two more recently just for the fun of it.

Wow. That was sort of like an autobiography.

 

[William G.]

My fascination was sparked by a combination of two things: an obsession with old cars (that runs in my family) and the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.

 

[plain old dave]

I begin to think two words :

Night Court.

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

 

[VintageEveryday]

I think it was a combination of several things: growing up with parents who loved old movies and halloween (ghosts, which sparked my interest in history, which sparked my interest in the 40s) living among a lot of antiques in my house, and listening to my grandparents tell the occasional story about their childhoods.