Before our indulgent misuse of technology made us a tad brutish and unsophisticated in our relationships with each other, men and women once had a form of ritual quaintly called “courtship” where a chivalrous young man was expected to woo a demure young woman with subtly, attention, kindness, and flowers. Such actions were supposed to signal his honorable intentions, trustworthiness, and his reliability to furnish his intended with all that she might require. (Oh, how many poor women fell into a life of drudgery because of that? I wonder.) Of course, these young men would also have their needs but they could only hint at these through the saving grace of innuendo and saucy humor, which made it possible to say one thing and mean something entirely different!

Exhibit A: A set of American postcards dating from 1905 which depicts a young man and the woman of his dreams. These cards were supposed to show our earnest young man’s burning desire to pop the question and ask his fair lady to marry him. But wait, there’s more… These seemingly innocent-looking cards were also a means by which a randy young git could ask his lady friend for his nazzums, his nookie, his how’s your father, his horizontal refreshment, his whoopie, his you know what, you know, get his end away. Of course, women were far too high-minded, civilized, and ever so polite to even know about such things… But...if ever they did, then they’d know only too damn well what his nibs was on about. Indeed, one of these cards does look like it was specifically meant for use by the ladies to send to their beaus in which our eager young heroine suggests that if her reluctant young man would only ask her to marry him, well, then he’ll get it alright.

Though their intention for sex maybe similar, these little cards certainly make a refreshing change from dick pics and unwanted sexting, but plus ca change...
 

The unsubtle: ‘How about it Kiddo?’
 

The subtle: Ask me to marry you and you’ll get what you desire.
 
More after the jump…

A vintage postcard, likely from Austria featuring a silly version of Krampus admiring three female Krampi. Yes.
 
According to Monte Beauchamp, a well-known art director and author of the 2010 book, Krampus: The Devil of Christmas, the postcards in this post originated in Austria sometime during the 1960s. The kooky concept paired a groovy and often goofy version of Krampus with even groovier buxom girls in skintight, barely-there clothing. This was of course yet another way to market the wildly popular Krampus craze in Germany, this time as a form of erotica.

Most of the cards simply read “Gruss vom Krampus” or “Greetings from Krampus,” and a few even feature vampy female versions of Krampus behaving badly—but not as badly as the hair-pulling, child-stomping traditional Krampus we all know and hope to never run into. The Krampus-themed cards in this post are perhaps NSFW just like anything Krampus related should be. All hail Krampus! The swinging underworld king of Christmas!
 

 

 
More fun with Krampus and the ladies after the jump…

A Danish postcard featuring a publicity still of Klaus Kinski from the film ‘And God Said to Cain,’ 1970.
 
The images in this post were culled from a large collection I found online at a site called Filmstar Postcards—and once I started digging through the site’s massive alphabetical list, I couldn’t tear myself away. Historically, postcards have been used as promotional vehicles for everything and everyone. The vintage postcards in this post are of European origin with most hailing from Germany, France or Italy.

Of the astounding array of postcards cataloged by the site, I was most taken with images that captured the faces of the famous before they were well known. For instance, in the “B” section I found a rather astonishing Hungarian postcard of Bela Lugosi that shows a young, dashing looking future Dracula in a white suit staring stoically into the camera with a cigarette between his lips. While most of the celebrity postcards are of the stars of yesteryear, there were a few of more contemporary actors/performers such as Asia Argento, Grace Jones and Serge Gainsbourg. Check them all out below!
 

British postcard of Grace Jones.
 

French postcard of Marianne Faithfull.
 

 
Belgian promotion card by Taschen Gallery for the exhibition ‘Taxi Driver - unseen photographs from Scorsese’s Masterpiece.’ The image was a publicity still for the 1976 film ‘Taxi Driver.’
 

Italian postcard of Asia Argento used to promote the 1998 filmd ‘Viola Kisses Everybody.’
 
Many more after the jump…

 
The Mexican Revolution began as a middle-class protest against the oppressive dictatorship of the country’s President Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911). In 1910, wealthy landowner Francisco I. Madero (1873-1913) stood against Diaz in the presidential election. The election was rigged by Diaz and his cronies who then attempted to have Madero arrested and imprisoned. Madero escaped to San Antonio, Texas, where he wrote Plan de San Luis (Plan of San Luis de Potosí), a political pamphlet that denounced Diaz explaining why he should no longer be president.

Madero’s Plan was a rallying cry that asked the Mexican people to rise up against Diaz on Sunday, November 20, 1910, at 6:00 pm and overthrow his government. This is how the Mexican Revolution began. What followed was a bloody and ferocious civil war and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century. An estimated 1.5 million people died. Two-hundred-thousand were made refugees.

During the revolution (1910-20) hundreds of commercial and amateur photographers documented the events on both sides of the war.

Using glass plate cameras and early cut film cameras, primitive by today’s standards, the photographers faced injury and death to obtain negatives which would be printed on postcard stock and sold to the soldiers and general public on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. Some of the views were obviously posed, and others showed the death and destruction resulting from the violence of a nation involved in a bloody civil war.

The following postcards are part of a collection held by the Southern Methodist University archive.
 

 

 
More postcards from the Mexican Revolution, after the jump…

Galaxie Night Club, San Francisco.
 
Going solely by these promotional postcards for hip and happening nightclubs this was where all the beautiful people hung out in the late 1950s and 1960s. Apparently. Beach parties in Miami. Go-go clubs in San Francisco and Florida. Discotheques in New York. Youngsters twisting the night away in South Fallsburg? Most of the postcards are promotional fliers for hotels, motels and restaurants hoping to lure in that lucrative youth market.

Once upon a time, I collected postcards like these. I found them more fascinating than say collecting stamps or coins. Postcards offered a touchstone for creating stories about other people’s lives. Which kinda makes me sound like that freaky kid who didn’t like to mix. Well, yes probably.

When I started underage drinking—in and around Edinburgh—it was always the small hotel bars and faded nightclubs I preferred. These once swinging sixties haunts—with their dated interiors and occasional mirrorball dance floors—were generally so desperate for customers they never checked if you were over eighteen before serving up a pint of warm, flat beer. I certainly would not have minded imbibing in a few of the venues featured below. At least the beer would have been properly chilled.
 

‘The psychedelic dance scene’—apparently.
 

‘Teenagers at the Twistick Lounge, Raleigh Hotel, South Fallsburg, New York.’
 
More vintage scenes of swinging fun, after the jump…

 
Flickr user Postman has amassed a terrific collection of vintage postcards dated from around 1900 to the 1920s featuring gorgeous women from around the world. I just love these. Not one duckface to be seen among them.

Beautiful then, and beautiful now. How did the standard of beauty come to be the Kardashian sisters? It must’ve crept up on us at some point.

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
One of the strange things about the Cold War, especially the first couple of decades, was the outpourings of public enthusiasm over atomic energy. In the abstract, it might not be so odd to celebrate the awesome power of the atom, discovered by brilliant scientists, with the ability, in theory, to solve the species’ energy problems for ever. But in the event, atomic energy was introduced to the public in the near-annihilation of two Japanese cities, and all of the rhetoric around the technology occurred in the context of a deadly game of global brinksmanship between the United States and the USSR. Add to that the scary disasters at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, disasters that the skeptical had been predicting for decades, and it’s hardly possible for happy-go-lucky celebrations of atomic energy to seem anything other than dopey.

These fascinating postcards from the end of WWII up to the 1970s and beyond constitute an irony-free zone.  They come from the dazzling volume Atomic Postcards by John O’Brian and Jeremy Borsos, published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press. Perhaps the cards represented a kind of “poker face” in the deadly no-blink game of mutual assured destruction between the two Cold War superpowers but also China, Israel, and Japan—if you can write a cheery postcard about it, clearly you are not worried about the deadly destruction your enemies can muster.

At DM we have looked at this side of the Cold War before, when we looked at “Tic, Tic, Tic,” Doris Day’s jaw-dropping ode to the geiger counter in Michael Curtiz’s 1949 movie My Dream Is Yours, which counts among its fans none other than Martin Scorsese.

As Slate’s Tom Vanderbilt writes, “Taken as a whole, the postcards form a kind of de facto and largely cheery dissemination campaign for the wonder of atomic power (and weapons). And who’s to mind if that sunny tropical beach is flecked with radionuclides?”

These pictures are in approximate chronological order, to reflect the progressive phases of wish-you-were-here atomic propaganda.
 

 

 

The is the reverse side of the image above it.
 

 

 

 

The is the reverse side of the image above it.
 

 

 
More astonishing atomic postcards after the jump…..