Tobacco Stained Teeth Instantly Whitened New Safe Way, 1924

No need now for yellow, discolored, spotted, tobacco-stained teeth. Bleachodent Combination costs just a few cents and removes unsightly stains in three minutes at home. Leaves teeth white, lustrous, clean and flashing.

Recommended everywhere as quicker, surer, safer than old-fashioned scouring methods which injured the enamel. Bleachodent Combination contains a marvelous mild liquid to loosen stain coats and a special paste which not only removes them, but used daily prevents formation of new stains. Only a safe, mild preparation like Bleachodent Combination should be used on soft, sensitive teeth which stain and decay easily. Acts only on stains — not on enamel.

Be sure to ask for Bleachodent Combination by its full name. Distributed by Bleachodent Dental Laboratories and sold by drug and department stores everywhere.

30 Vintage Photos of Creepy Scarecrows From the Past

Scarecrows were originally made to do exactly what their name suggests: scare off crows and other birds that might ruin the farmer’s crops. A scarecrow is a decoy or mannequin, often in the shape of a human. Humanoid scarecrows are usually dressed in old clothes and placed in open fields.

Scarecrows have been around longer than you might think – the first scarecrows known to history were made about 3,000 years ago! They were first made by the Egyptians to protect their wheat fields, especially along the Nile River.

Even though they’ve been around for so long, there have since been more effective ways to scare off birds. In the past, attempts were made to use machinery to replace scarecrows, such as windmills. However, birds are smarter than you might think, and they quickly become familiar with these structures. Some of these attempts include hanging tins in trees or noise guns. But crows being adaptable as they are, usually realize it’s a trick and enter the fields after a time anyway.

Originally, Greek farmers would fashion their scarecrows to look like Priapus, who was the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite. The myth goes, Priapus lived near vineyards and he was supposedly very ugly. So whenever Priapus played in the vineyards, it scared the birds away and improved the harvest.

However, there is more to it than just how a scarecrow looks. Birds are scared off also because of the smell of humans that linger from the clothes of a scarecrow.

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50 Amazing Portraits of Swedish People Taken by John Alinder From the 1910s to the Early 1930s

The people depicted in John Alinder’s portraits are often looking straight into the camera. As if they can see us. As if their gaze can travel the hundred years or so that lie between their time and ours. As if they were saying, “You are alive now, but we were once alive.”

John Alinder, son of a farmer, was born in 1878 in the village of Sävasta, Altuna parish, in Uppland, a province in eastern central Sweden. Alinder remained in the village all his life. He chose not to take over his parents’ farm and instead became a self-taught photographer and jack of all trades. He was a music lover, holder of the Swedish agency for the British record label and gramophone brand His Master’s Voice. For a time he ran a country shop from his home, and he even operated an illicit bar for a while.

From the 1910s to the 1930s he portrayed the local people, the landscape around them and their way of life. He often photographed them in their homes and gardens, using the technology of the time, glass plates. These he developed in a small darkroom he had built and then made the prints in the sunlight.

The Alinder collection was “discovered” in the 1980s when a curator found over 8,000 glass plates stacked away in a library basement. Children placed on chairs, people perched in trees, laborers, confirmation candidates and old ladies; often depicted against a background of foliage and sprawling greenery penetrated by sunlight. Alinder’s portraiture allows for the magic of chance, both liberating and defining the subjects.

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Wonderful Knapp-Felt Hat Ads From the 1920s

No item of men’s apparel can give more pleasure, or cause more grief, than his hat. It should have quality, it should have style, it should be appropriate to the occasion, and it should be becoming. A well selected Knapp-Felt fills the bill in every particular.

So how does a company go from one man working out of a cow shed to the second largest hat company in America? (They did eventually become the largest, but that wasn’t until after 1970 and the closure of the Stetson factory in Philadelphia.)

The short, and perhaps overly obvious, answer is through a lot of hard work and dedication. Success becomes much more likely to happen when you throw innovation into the mix, and this is the case with Crofut & Knapp. Add in the talent of promoting your employees into positions where they can do the most for the company, and you have a recipe for success. Two key components went hand in hand with their success. First, they offered a high-quality product at premium prices. While the premium price created a hurdle to overcome with consumers, the second component dealt very well with that hurdle: marketing and advertising. In this, Crofut & Knapp were innovators, setting a standard of excellence that left the other hat companies playing catch-up.

The hatting industry underwent a monumental change in the first half of the nineteenth century due to the transportation revolution and the industrial revolution, just as most American industries did. The hat factory evolved from a small, locally-owned shop into a much larger facility employing ever greater numbers of people.

Prior to the industrial revolution, hat manufacturers worked out of small shops and sold their hats locally. The shop was run by a single craftsman, or master, who might employ up to perhaps as many as four apprentices. Each craftsman performed all of the required steps to make a hat from a handful of fur to a finished, wearable product. Each small shop served a town, or perhaps a county, but their market did not reach much beyond that.

With the advent of the industrial and transportation revolutions, machinery aided in the manufacturing process and the concept of division of labor meant that workers began specializing in different parts of the production process. Some factories only performed one part of the process, such as the forming of felt bodies, and left the finishing to other companies. Distribution of the hats was left up to jobbers in the cities. Some companies did keep everything in house. In any case, hat production was increased, hat prices became more affordable, and more people could afford to buy better quality hats.

Into this new era of mechanization came James H. Knapp, who started out exactly as hatters had for centuries, as a one-man operation. With the partnership of Andrew J. Crofut, they launched the Derby as their chief product, and began the long road to success. Much of the first fifty years of Crofut & Knapp is shrouded in the mists of time. Advertising was typically done in local papers by the retailers, usually consisting of text and very few, if any, images of the product. The text would extol the virtues of the product, addressing the needs of the individual being targeted in the ad.

It was not until well into the twentieth century that companies would change the nature of advertising, focusing not on customers’ needs, as had previously been the case, but on their wants and desires instead. Advertising would move away from the traditional textual analysis of the properties of the product into a much more ambiguous and visual form, designed to entice consumers to purchase the product merely because they desired it. Croft & Knapp led the way among hat manufacturers in this advertising makeover and perhaps among most industries as a whole.

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Beautiful Vintage Photos and Posters of French Entertainer Mistinguett

Mistinguett (born Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois) was a French actress and singer. Bourgeois aspired to be an entertainer at a very young age. She began as a flower seller in a restaurant in her hometown, singing popular ballads while selling blossoms. After taking classes in theatre and singing, she began her career as an entertainer in 1885. One day on the train to Paris for a violin lesson, she met Saint-Marcel, who directed the revue at the Casino de Paris. He engaged her first as a stage-hand, and here she began to pursue her goal to become an entertainer.

Bourgeois made her debut as Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris in 1895 and went on to appear in venues such as the Folies Bergère, Moulin Rouge and Eldorado. Her risqué routines captivated Paris, and she went on to become the most popular French entertainer of her time and the highest-paid female entertainer in the world, even having her legs insured for 500,000 francs in 1919. During a tour of the United States, Mistinguett was asked by Time magazine to explain her popularity. “It is a kind of magnetism.” She replied. “I say 'Come closer' and draw them to me.”

Mistinguett died at the age of 8    2 in Bougival, France. Upon her death, writer Jean Cocteau observed in an obituary: “Her voice, slightly off-key, was that of the Parisian street hawkers—the husky, trailing voice of the Paris people. She was of the animal race that owes nothing to intellectualism. She incarnated herself. She flattered a French patriotism that was not shameful. It is normal now that she should crumble, like the other caryatids of that great and marvelous epoch that was ours.”

Take a look at the great French entertainer through these 21 captivating vintage photographs and posters:

Mistinguett and Max Dearly by Adrien Barrere, ca. 1909

Mistinguett by G.K. Benda, 1913

Mistinguett, 1920

Mistinguett by Leonetto Cappiello, 1920

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Vintage Cigarette and Cigar Advertising Posters in the 1920s and ’30s

Spurred by the instant coast to coast success of blended cigarette brands such as Camel, Lucky Strike and Chesterfield, cigarette companies spend millions on advertising and promotion to encourage smoking in 1920.

Cigarette and cigar advertisements in the 1920s and ’30s

In the 1920s, smoking was rare among women. However, passage of the 19th Amendment ushered in new freedoms and smoking in public became symbolic of women’s new role in society. American Tobacco taps into the women’s cigarette market with the marketing slogan “Reach for a Lucky instead of sweet.”

In the 1930s, almost every magazine and medical journal featured cigarette advertisement featuring opera singers, athletes, doctors, senators and movie stars. Every major radio show featured tobacco advertisements. Jack Benny would seamlessly weave the advertisement into his comedy hour.

Here below is a set of vintage posters of cigarette and cigar advertisements in the 1920s and 1930s.

Avis... Fumez les cigarettes de la Régie Française, circa 1920s

Be Nonchalant . . . Light a Murad Cigarette, circa 1920s

Cigarettes Leo, circa 1920s

Cigarillos 43, La Gran Marca Argentina, October 1920

Cigarillos 43, Plus Ultra, February 1920

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Portrait Photos of Clara Bow During the Filming of ‘Hula’ (1927)

Hula is a 1927 American silent romantic comedy film directed by Victor Fleming, and based on the novel Hula, a Romance of Hawaii by Armine von Tempski. The film stars Clara Bow and was released by Paramount Pictures.

In the opening scene of the film, Hula is shown swimming nude in a stream, and later is wearing pants and articulates her sexual desires. Similar to Sadie Thompson (1928), the film depicts a modern woman who is located outside the bounds of American civilization and thus able to act in an “uncivilized” manner like natives who live on the islands.

Here is a set of vintage photos that shows portraits of Clara Bow during the filming of Hula in 1927.

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The Direct Method of Wladyslaw T. Benda’s Masks

Benda’s preferred method according to Masks is surprising and quite different from the normal method. The “direct method” is to build the mask out of paper mâché from the edge of the mask to the tip of the nose directly, that is, without a mold of any kind. This process required holding the complete idea of the mask in mind before he began. An incredible feat of artistic achievement.

Wladyslaw Theodor Benda (January 15, 1873 – November 30, 1948), better known as W. T. Benda, was a Polish American artist active in the 1920s.

Benda studied art in Kraków, Pol., and in Vienna before coming to the United States in 1899. He settled in New York City, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1911. Benda’s illustrations were published in books and in a number of magazines. He is best remembered for his masks, which were used in theatre and dance performances throughout the world. Benda wrote the book Masks in 1944. And here, his direct method from the book:

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Cupid’s Bow Lipstick Stencils From the 1920s

When you think of 1920s lips you think of the famous “cupid’s bow” lips which were favored and made popular by Hollywood stars like Clara Bow and Mary Pickford. Makeup artist Max Factor created the cupid’s bow which was first ever seen on Clara Bow, women soon started copying Bow’s lips and the famous flapper craze took off.

In 1926 lip stencils were first made by cosmetics manufacturer Helena Rubinstein to ensure the flawless application of a heart-shaped cupid’s bow lip. Women also used stencils to achieve the desired cupid’s bow shape of the lips.

It was also in 1920s that the first wave of feminism came about and women demanded more rights including the right to vote. Lipsticks at that time were actually considered a symbol of feminism.

Metal lip tracers were sold to help women who found it difficult to create the ideal lip shape themselves.

Amazing Photos of RMS Aquitania During Her Life

RMS Aquitania was a British ocean liner of the Cunard Line in service from 1914 to 1950. She was designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland. She was launched on 21 April 1913 and sailed on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York on 30 May 1914.

RMS Aquitania

Aquitania was the third in Cunard Line’s grand trio of express liners, preceded by RMS Mauretania and RMS Lusitania, and was the last surviving four-funneled ocean liner. Shortly after Aquitania entered service, World War I broke out, during which she was first converted into an auxiliary cruiser before being used as a troop transport and a hospital ship, notably as part of the Dardanelles Campaign.

Returned to transatlantic passenger service in 1920, she served alongside the Mauretania and the Berengaria. Considered during this period of time as one of the most attractive ships, Aquitania earned the nickname “the Ship Beautiful” from her passengers. She continued in service after the merger of Cunard Line with White Star Line in 1934. The company planned to retire her and replace her with RMS Queen Elizabeth in 1940.

However, the outbreak of World War II allowed the ship to remain in service for ten more years. During the war and until 1947, she served as a troop transport. She was used in particular to take home Canadian soldiers from Europe. After the war, she transported migrants to Canada before the Board of Trade found her unfit for further commercial service.

Aquitania was retired from service in 1949 and was sold for scrapping the following year. Having served as a passenger ship for 36 years, Aquitania ended her career as the longest serving Cunard vessel, a record which stood for six years until overtaken by RMS Scythia’s service record of 37 years.

In 2004, Aquitania’s service record was pushed into third place when Queen Elizabeth 2 became the longest serving Cunard vessel.

A set of amazing photos from Kenneth Allyn Barton that shows beautiful images of RMS Aquitania during her life.

Aquitania at the Clydebank yards of John Brown. Built to maintain a weekly transatlantic schedule with Lusitania and Mauretania, the larger Aquitania was perhaps the most successful of all the great liners, 1913

The passenger liner Aquitania under construction by John Brown & Co Ltd. at Clydebank. A general view along the port side of the ship, 1913

901 feet long, 97 feet wide. Passenger capacity- 610 1st Class, 950 2nd, and 1,998 3rd. The 45,647 ton Aquitania at John Brown & Company shortly before her launch, circa 1913

Cunard's Aquitania on the stocks at John Brown & Company of Clydebank; the same Scottish yard that would later build the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth 2, circa 1913

One of Aquitania's massive funnels is about to be hoisted onboard during the liner's fitting-out, circa 1913

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