New Feature - Friday Random Ads - Banjo Bar

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Two newspaper adverts from the early 1950's prior to the end of sweet rationing on February 5th 1953. Fun adverts but the design on the wrappers is a little worrisome.

Random Cutting - Howard Hughes

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For those that haven’t seen The Aviator (2004  Leonardo DiCaprio), Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business man, aviator, engineer, film producer, film director, and very rich person. He set several world air-speed records, built the then largest aircraft to only just fly (the Spruce Goose) and  owned ( and bankrupted) Trans World Airlines (TWA). As he got older he became more and more of a recluse and wasn’t seen in public for many years. He stayed at the Inn on the Park in London until December 1974.

He died on April 5^th 1976 appropriately enough during a flight.

Falklands - It's War

Daily Mirror and Sun dated Saturday April 3rd 1982

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The Daily Mirror and the Sun took quite opposed views on the Conflict, the Mirror being against British military action and the Sun being all for it.

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Guess which pages 2/3 are from the Mirror and which the Sun.

The Falkland Islands were first visited by Europeans, a Dutch ship, in 1600 and since then have been tossed around by the Spanish, French, Argentineans and British. A British naval base was set up in 1834 and it became a British Colony in 1840. The Argentineans have always maintained that the British had no real right to the Islands and on Friday April 2^nd 1982 they invaded.

The Conflict (no actual state of War was ever declared by either side) lasted 74 days and cost 649 Argentine, 255 British and 3 Falkland Islanders’ lives. The 3 locals were women killed ‘by friendly fire’ –what a disgusting phrase that is.

With Margaret Thatcher being Prime Minister at the time, the old idea that if women ran the World there would be no more wars was finally put to rest. 

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The Sun starts as it means to go on with jingoistic calls to support ‘our lads’ and hate the ‘Argies’.

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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, James Prior, quashed Charles McCormick’s conviction in 1984. McCormick may or may not have been working for British Military Intelligence at the time of his alleged bank robberies.

In 2009 the 72 year-old Charles McCormick was re-arrested for the murder of Sergeant Joe Campbell a fellow RUC member who was shot in 1977. I can’t find anything online to say whether or not there has been a second trial. 

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Helen Smith and a male guest both died during a party in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, apparently from falling from a sixth floor balcony. The Saudi authorities and the British Foreign Office both agreed that it was miss-adventure caused by alcohol. Helen’s father didn’t believe this was the truth and campaigned for a different verdict for 30 years.

Helen’s body was kept unburied for all this time and 6 post-mortems were carried out, but all were inconclusive. She was finally buried in 2009.

As a result of the campaign the Law was changed so that coroners were obliged to investigate deaths of British citizens who died abroad if their bodies were returned to Britain. Princess Diana is probably the most high profile death to be investigated as a result of this change in the Law.

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Nicholas Parsons hosted ‘Sale of the Century’ from 1971 until 1985. You either loved or hated both him and the programme. 

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The very popular series Minder began in 1979 as a vehicle for Denis Waterman when the Sweeney finished but he ended up playing second fiddle to George Cole. The programme lasted 10 series but Waterman dropped out (character emigrated to Australia) after 7. 

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Can you put a name to these famous faces of 1982? Answers at the end of this post.

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The Sun's 1982 Grand National tips.

The actual result was 1^st Gritter, 2^nd Hard Outlook, 3^rd Loving Words and 4^th Delmos. 1 out of 16 predictions correct isn't bad, I suppose.

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The first female jockey to complete the National course, Geraldine Rees, came in 8^th on Cheers. Charlotte Brew who was the first woman jockey to ever ride in the National, was unseated at the third fence.

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“By Gad, Sir! A fortnight lazing on the beach watching all the young fillies in their bikinis with their bronze bodies and their… Oh dear, I think I’m going to have one of my turns. Pass the Sangria!”

In the Big Time answers - 

Top -                  Clint Walker                   Richard Kiel                 Woody Strode

Bottom -            David Prowse               Giant Haystacks            Lou Ferrigno

Random Cutting - Spook Cave-Dwellers in Kent

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This cutting is not dated but circa 1916/1917. In 1918 Arthur Conan Doyle published ‘The New Revelation’ which has an appendix called ‘The Cheriton Dugout’. This can be read at www.pagebypage.com (search Google for Doyle Cheriton).

Spiro Agnew

Daily News (New York) dated Friday September 28th 1973

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Spiro Agnew was the Vice President to that other paragon of virtue Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973. He was charged with taking over $100,000 in bribes during the time he was Governor of Maryland.

The trial resulted in him being fine $10,000, having to pay the State of Maryland over $250,000 and getting 3 years probation; all on the proviso that he resigned as Vice President.

Apparently Richard Nixon didn't like him and is reported as having said that ’no-one in their right mind would assassinate me because they’d get Agnew as President.’

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CIA officer E Howard Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy and illegal wire-tapping in connection with the Watergate break-in. His wife Dorothy was also a CIA employee.

No evidence of sabotage was found by the official inquiry into the plane crash, but it still became the subject of various conspiracy theories surrounding the Watergate break-in and its consequences.

Try Google’ing ‘United Airlines Flight 553’ for more information if you are interested.

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As with most technological innovations no one person can be said to have been the sole inventor. The theory for a hovercraft dates back to 1926 but it is the English engineer Christopher Cockerell that designed and built the first full-scale commercially viable Hovercraft in 1959.

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I think the Police Chief was right when he asked, “What is wrong with society?”

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Two days earlier, after nearly 60 days in Space, the crew of the SkyLab 3 mission had splashed down in the Atlantic and been picked up by the USS New Orleans. They’d completed over 850 orbits of the Earth, which was more than twice the previous record.

Alan Bean and Jack Lousma were two thirds of the back-up crew for the 1975 Apollo/Soyuz Mission, which was the first US/Russian combined Space flight referred to in the side-bar.

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That picture doesn't look a bit like Sylvester Stallone!
In fact when Spiro Agnew resigned Gerald Ford became Vice President and it wasn’t until Ford became President that Rockefeller got the ‘Veep’ seat.

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The Black Liberation Army grew out of the Black Panther Movement as a direct action group that was intent on killing policemen and other authority figures. In January 1972 two New York Police officers were ambushed on the Lower East Side and killed by submachine-gun fire.

Henry Brown was arrested for the murders but escaped while awaiting trial. He was recaptured and tried, but was acquitted.

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The beautifully drawn Gasoline Alley comic strip was first published as far back as 1918 and is still going today. The artist responsible for this particular version was Dick Moores who took over from the originator Frank King in 1956 and drew the strip for 30 years.

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US TV 1973 style. In the UK we were still limited to BBC, BBC2 and ITV. Even Channel 4 was 9 years away let alone the numerous cable and satellite channels that have sprung up since then.

There are lots of familiar titles of US programmes that graced our own screens, like The Flintstones, The Flying Nun, I Love Lucy, Lost in Space, Batman, Dragnet and I Dream of Jeannie, but I can’t only see one (The Avengers) that made the trip the other way. 
‘Sanford and Son’ was the Yank’s take on ‘Steptoe and Son’.

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Baseball. Rounders with silly trousers on.

Random Cutting - Margaret Thatcher in 1952

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Margaret Thatcher writing at the dawn of the New Elizabethan age in 1952. It is a sign of the times, that in the paragraph near the end, that starts ‘Should a woman arise equal to the task’, she suggests a woman Chancellor or Foreign Secretary, but she doesn’t go as far as the ludicrous suggestion of a woman Prime Minister.

History has proved the last paragraph delusional.

Rudolph Valentino Dead

Daily Mirror dated Tuesday August 24th 1926

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Rudolph Valentino was born Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla in 1895 of French/Italian parentage and was brought up in Italy. He moved to the USA in 1913 and appeared in his first film in 1914. From then until 1921 he turned up as an extra, or un-credited or under a variety of variations of his name in about 20 films, but in 1921 he stared in ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ and his career as a one of the most popular Silent era stars was off and running. Unfortunately, particularly for his many many female fans, it came to a sudden end in 1926 when he died as a result of complications after an appendix operation.   

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Pola Negri, who claimed to be engaged to Valentino at the time of his death, was born in Poland and died at the age of 90 in 1987. Her film career spanned from 1914 to 1964 but she made very few films after the coming of Sound. In her most popular silent films she was a strong rival to Theda Bara as the leading ‘Vamp’ of the time.

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Miss Esther Rodrigues was born during the reign of William IV and was only 2 years old when Queen Victoria came to the throne. She was 26 when the American Civil War broke out, 30 when President Lincoln was assassinated, 37 when Stanley found Livingstone in Africa, 50 when Daimler and Benz build their first car, 62 at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 68 when the Wright Brothers flew the first powered aircraft and 79 when the World went to War.

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So much for “in the old days everyone knew everyone else and no-one locked their front doors so that neighbours could just pop in for a cuppa”. My mother moved to London from Lincolnshire as a single young woman in the 1920’s and said that it was the loneliest place on earth.

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Health and Safety anyone?  I would have thought that even the sloshing about of the petrol in the fuel tank would upset the balance, not to mention one of the boatmen having a sneezing fit.

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Breakfast at 3pm with a blonde beauty while wearing a yachting cap - what more could you wish for!

The coastal town of Deauville in north-western France was the resort for the rich and famous throughout the 1920’s and 30’s. Its casino was featured in the long but fascinating heist film ‘Bob le Flambeur’ directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.

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Greece was having it's problems even then.

Major General Theodoros Pangalos was involved in the 1922 revolt that deposed King Constantine I of Greece and in June 1925 he headed a bloodless coup, which ended with him as Prime Minister. It was his turn to be ousted in August 1926. He died in 1952.

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This is the Claude Rains who 16 years later was told by Humphrey Bogart “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” (Casablanca)

Apart from one minor role in 1920, Rains’ film career didn’t start until he sort of appeared in ‘The Invisible Man’ in 1933, by which time he was an established stage actor on both sides of the Atlantic and an acting teacher (his pupils included Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud).

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Edwin Creed was murdered in his cheese shop in Bayswater on the night of July 28th 1926. The crime remains unsolved.

Frederick Porter Wensley joined the police in 1888 just in time to patrol Whitechapel looking for Jack the Ripper. He became Chief Constable (CID), Metropolitan Police in 1924 and retired in 1929.

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If you believe that film star, actress and theatre manager Gladys Cooper had a personal laboratory in her house turning out beauty products then maybe I can interest you in my world famous hand-woven breeze-blocks – personally signed at only £150 each.

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Random Cutting - Future of Flying Boats 1937

The Short Empire flying boats started passenger services for Imperial Airways (later B.O.A.C.) in February 1937 and were pensioned off around 1947. Until recently I thought that the Short Sunderland Flying boat was a shorter version of a normal Sunderland Flying boat, then I found out that Short was the manufacturer’s name. Duh!

The ‘Fast Low Wing monoplane’ appears to be the ill-fated Armstrong-Whitworth A.W.29. Only one was built and that crashed on landing during the trials in 1937 and was never repaired because the RAF contract had gone elsewhere.  

Flying Enterprise sinking

Daily Graphic dated Wednesday February 9th 1952

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I think Health and Safety would have a thing or two to say about this way of travelling!

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The American owned ship the ‘Flying Enterprise’ left Hamburg on December 21^st 1951 bound for the New York.  As well as a cargo of mainly pig-iron there were 10 passengers aboard. The ship was caught in a severe storm on Christmas day, which damaged the hull and by the 28^th it was listing at 45 degrees so an SOS was sent out. The following day all those onboard except Captain Kurt Carlsen were evacuated. For the next 13 days the World’s media watched while the tug Turmoil tried at first to get a line to the ship and then to tow it to safety, but on the 10^th January 1952 Captain Carlsen abandoned ship, the tow lines were released and the Flying Enterprise sank.

The exact make up of her cargo has never been fully disclosed. It has been rumoured that, although the manifest said ‘pig-iron’, she may have been carrying zirconium destined for the US nuclear submarine program.

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Winston Churchill had been re-elected as Prime Minister the previous October and the main purpose of this visit to Washington was to re-new the ‘special relationship’ that had been created between the UK and the USA during World War II. It was during the meetings between Churchill and President Truman that they agreed to allow the US to use British bases for the ‘common defence’ of the two countries. 

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The 56 year-old King George VI had been diagnosed with lung cancer and had had an operation to remove a lung in September 1951. Despite this offer, which wasn’t taken up, the King had less than a month to live and died on February 6^th 1952.

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 “Spare the rod and spoil the child” used to be the motto of all right thinking parents in the 1950’s, including mine. As a family, we moved to Becontree (more precisely Beacontree Heath) when I was 7 and I don’t remember meeting any kids that exercised ‘free expression’ – at least not when there was an adult around.

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This can’t be the 1950’s Britain of Everest, Norman Wisdom, What’s My Line, standing for the National Anthem at the end of the cinema show, PC George Dixon, kids wearing Davy Crockett hats, and the Goon Show. But of course its those coloured people with their strange ways, jazz music and reefer cigarettes – “if they can’t live like civilised folk they should go back to where they came from” was the commonly held view.

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This was the ‘Cold War’ with ‘Reds under Beds’ and the ‘4 Minute Warning’ a seemingly real threat. As with most knee-jerk Security measures it didn’t do a lot of good though as the Portland Spies could have testified if they hadn’t been too busy sending secret messages to Moscow.

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Well someone must have taken heed because the Irish are still there, and here, and everywhere.

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Gilbert Harding was a TV personality (what would now be called a ‘celeb’ by those who can’t complete a word let alone a sentence) and he earned the title ‘rudest man on TV’. Not that he had a lot of competition. 1950’s BBC was all terribly decent and well spoken and, for a lot of the time, ‘live’, so Harding’s unscripted outbursts were exciting and refreshing to many viewers, but unfortunately a lot of others complained. He died of an asthma attack outside Broadcasting House in 1960.

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“I have a flat round thing with a hole in the middle – is this a record?” An example of a dated joke that no one under 40 would appreciate. Anyway this run down of the latest groovy platters throws up some familiar (to us oldies) names – Joe Loss, Pearl Carr, Jimmy Durante, not to mention Erich Kuntz. The name that jumps out for me though is Josh White and his ‘Free and Equal Blues’. White was an accomplished blues singer and guitarist who moved from the South to New York and became a favourite of the Liberal white audiences at folk concerts and political rallies. He was black-listed by the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee and spent most of the 1950’s in Europe. He was re-introduced to American TV audiences in 1963 at the request of John F Kennedy.