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What’s New Pussycat?: Pet leopard taken for a walk through 1960s London

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Kensington secretary, Angela McWilliams takes her pet leopard, Michael, for a stroll through the streets of 1960s swinging London.
 

 
With thanks to Tom Law
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.23.2012
02:34 pm
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The Weird and Wonderful Masks of Wladysław Teodor Benda

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Wladysław Teodor Benda was a Polish-American painter, illustrator, and designer. His work illustrated magazine covers such as Colliers, American, McCalls, Good Housekeeping and Ladies Home Journal. Benda is best know for creating masks for various dance and theatrical productions, including works by Eugene O’Neil and Noël Coward, and the film The Mask of Fu Man Chu. His masks were ranged from the grotesque and the fantastic, to the highly stylized and the beautiful. Here Benda (or W.T.) presents a selection of his strange and fabulous masks in this short British Pathé clip from 1932.

See more of Benda’s work here.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.17.2012
05:06 pm
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Do Anything You Want To Do: England’s Beat School, from 1961

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Established by James East in the 1950s, Burgess Hill School (aka the Beat School) in Hertfordshire, England, allowed its pupils to do what they wanted, in the belief this was the best way for youngsters to learn. Rules were frowned upon, and “Tradition,” it was claimed, “was clinging to the dead past.” Even smoking in class was tolerated, for as Headmaster East explained to Time Magazine in 1962:

“Kids always smoke, and I’d rather know about it than have it done in secret.”

Such openness encouraged the young uns to fulfill their potential, and find happiness in doing so, which is how it should be.

Like the best of the British Pathe clips, this short clip on Burgess Hill Beat School leaves you wanting to know more. What happened to the school? Did the experiment of a Beat School work? What did these children grow up to do? Where are they now? It would make for an interesting documentary on BBC 4, and one hopes a dozen researchers are penning such a proposal right now.

A longer 4 minutes clip is viewable here.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.20.2012
07:59 pm
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Clean Machine: The Bathmobile
03.20.2012
01:34 pm
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The original Bathmobile - a motorized bath tub constructed by 3 students in 1960.
 

 
With thanks to Tom Law
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.20.2012
01:34 pm
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Paris: City of Fashion 1950-59
03.08.2012
08:05 am
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Paris: City of Fashion is an elegant little featurette from British Pathé, which looks at a variety of women’s fashions from the 1950s, posed against the boulevards and avenues of the gorgeous City of Lights. Watching it makes me feel I should be Cary Grant wandering around markets on the lookout for a Swedish 4 shilling, an “Hawaiian Blue” or a “Gazette Moldar”.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.08.2012
08:05 am
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