30 Beautiful Photos of German Actress Ursula Thiess in the 1950s

Born 1924 in Hamburg, German actress Ursula Thiess began her career on the stage in her native Germany and by dubbing female voices in American films as Ursula Schmidt. After she married Georg Otto Thiess, she became Ursula Thiess and was featured in many German magazines, including several cover photos, as well as the cover of Life magazine, 1954, as an up-and-coming model, and she was dubbed the “most beautiful woman in the world.”

Ursula left postwar Germany at the urging of Howard Hughes and signed with RKO. She co-starred with Robert Stack in The Iron Glove (1952), Rock Hudson in Bengal Brigade (1954), Glenn Ford in The Americano (1955), and Robert Mitchum in Bandido (1956).

Ursula was known to be an excellent home decorator, gourmet cook, shadow-box maker, and UCLA Children’s Hospital volunteer. As the wife of Robert Taylor, she gave up her acting career to become a full-time mother and homemaker, though she generally accompanied her husband on film locations, often with her two younger children by Taylor. She even had a recurring role on his hit ABC-TV series, The Detectives. She was known to go hunting and fishing with Taylor, who was a passionate sportsman.

Ursula died natural causes in 2010 at the age of 86. Take a look at these vintage photos to see the beauty of young Ursula Thiess in the 1950s.

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16 Vintage Portraits of a Beautiful Mary “Te Ata” Thompson Fisher

Te Ata Thompson Fisher, whose name means “Bearer of the Morning,” was born Dec. 3, 1895, near Emet, Oklahoma. A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Te Ata was an accomplished actor and teller of Native American stories.

She received her early education in Tishomingo, and eventually went to the Oklahoma College for Women. While there, it was evident Te Ata had a natural talent for drama.

Her career as an actor and storyteller spanned more than 60 years. She worked as a storyteller to finance her acting career. She would tell Chickasaw legends, myths and chants, including performing rituals in native regalia.

Te Ata attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for one year. From there, she moved to New York City, where she met and married Clyde Fisher. During the 1930s she performed at summer camps in New York and New England.

In the prime of her career, she performed in England and Scandinavia, at the White House for President Franklin Roosevelt, for the King and Queen of Great Britain, and on stages across the United States.

Although Te Ata worked as an actor and drama instructor, she is best known for her artistic interpretations of Indian folklore, and for her children's book she co-authored on the subject.

Her world-renown talent has won her several honors including induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1957, being named The Ladies’ Home Journal Woman of the Year in 1976, being named Oklahoma's Official State Treasure in 1987, and having a lake near Bear Mountain in New York named in her honor.

She is also the subject of a video, God’s Drum, the proceeds of which have supported the Te Ata Scholarship Fund for Indian students at her alma mater, the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha, Oklahoma.

Te Ata died Oct. 26, 1995, in Oklahoma City, though her legacy and influence on the Native American storytelling traditions continues to this day.

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Fascinating Vintage Snaps of Rome in 1956

These amazing snaps were captured by Allan Hailstone on a trip to Rome as a schoolboy with his father and a friend in August 1956. They had been inspired to go after seeing the 1954 movie Three Coins in the Fountain.

“Before the advent of cheap airfares and mass tourism, it was easy in 1956 to see all of the sights in Rome without any waiting time.” Hailstone told MailOnline Travel. “Things were much more leisurely than now when you will be among crowds of visitors.”

Take a look back at the Eternal City in 1956 through these 26 beautiful vintage black-and-white pictures. For more fascinating photographs, visit Hailstone's brilliant Flickr site.

Spanish Steps

Spanish Steps

Spanish Steps

St. Peter's, Vatican City

Via Veneto

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Ricky Nelson: One of the Biggest Teen Idols of the Late 1950s and Early ’60s

Born 1940 in Teaneck, New Jersey, American singer, musician, and actor Ricky Nelson began his entertainment career in 1949, playing himself in the radio sitcom series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1952, he appeared in his first feature film, Here Come the Nelsons. In 1957, he recorded his first single, debuted as a singer on the television version of the sitcom, and released the No. 1 album titled Ricky. In 1958, Nelson released his first #1 single, “Poor Little Fool”, and in 1959 received a Golden Globe nomination for “Most Promising Male Newcomer” after starring in Rio Bravo.

The expression “teen idol” was first coined to describe Nelson, and his fame as both a recording artist and television star also led to a motion picture role co-starring alongside John Wayne, Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson in Howard Hawks’ western feature film Rio Bravo (1959).

Nelson placed 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, and its predecessors, between 1957 and 1973, including “Poor Little Fool” in 1958, which was the first number one song on Billboard magazine’s then-newly created Hot 100 chart. He recorded 19 additional top ten hits and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 21, 1987.

Nelson died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1985, flying from Guntersville, Alabama, to Dallas, Texas, for a concert. The plane he was on, a Douglas DC-3, had a history of mechanical problems. All seven passengers, including Blair, died. Only the two pilots survived.

In 1994, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. In 1996, Nelson was ranked No. 49 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Nelson #91 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Take a look at these vintage photos to see portraits of a young and handsome Ricky Nelson in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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Photos of the Auto Union DKW F89 Meisterklasse Factory in 1951

The DKW Meisterklasse, also known as the DKW F89, was a compact front-wheel drive saloon manufactured by Auto Union GmbH between 1950 and 1954. It was the first passenger car to be manufactured by the new Auto Union company in West Germany following the re-establishment of the business in the west in 1949.

Auto Union DKW F89 Meisterklasse factory in 1951

Apart from the former DKW factory at Berlin-Spandau, the Auto Union’s manufacturing plants had been located in Saxony at Zwickau, Chemnitz and Zschopau when war had put an end to passenger vehicle production in 1942. After the war the company was no longer able to access its production facilities in the Soviet occupation zone. The first post war DKWs were therefore built under contract in a refurbished plant by Rheinmetall-Borsig in Düsseldorf.

Here below is a set of vintage photos from Carl Guderian that shows the Auto Union DKW F89 Meisterklasse in 1951.

Engineering drafting office, 1951

Factory canteen, 1951

Assembly line rounding off wheel wells, 1951

Finishing assembly line, 1951

Fueling finished cars, 1951

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Portraits of a Young Elizabeth Taylor Taken by Peter Basch on the set of ‘Giant’ in 1955

Giant is an epic Western drama film that follows the family of a Texas cattle rancher over the course of 25 years. Bick Benedict Jr. (Rock Hudson) falls in love and marries socialite Leslie Lynton (Elizabeth Taylor) from Maryland. Leslie struggles with adjusting to Bick’s family and the Texan culture. Meanwhile, Bick’s nemesis Jett Rink (James Dean) falls for Leslie and things take a turn for the worse.

The film was a huge box-office success. Giant earned $35 million in ticket sales during its original studio release in 1956, a record for a Warner Brothers film until that time. This record was not surpassed until the Warner film Superman in the late 1970s.

These fascinating portraits of a young Elizabeth Taylor, aged 23, were taken by Peter Basch on the set of Giant in 1955.

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20 Fascinating Vintage Portraits of a Young George Harrison

George Harrison formed a band with schoolmates to play clubs around Liverpool and in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles became the biggest rock band in the world, and Harrison’s diverse musical interests took them in many directions. Post-Beatles, Harrison made acclaimed solo records and started a film production company. He died of cancer in November 2001.

Harrison was born on February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, England. The youngest of Harold and Louise French Harrison’s four children.

Like his future bandmates, Harrison was not born into wealth. Louise was largely a stay-at-home mom (who also taught ballroom dancing), while her husband Harold drove a school bus for the Liverpool Institute, an acclaimed grammar school that Harrison attended and where he first met Paul McCartney. By his own admission, Harrison was not much of a student, and what little interest he did have in his studies washed away with his discovery of the electric guitar and American rock and roll.

Impressed with his younger friend's talents, McCartney, who had recently joined up with another Liverpool teenager, John Lennon, in a skiffle group known as the Quarrymen, invited Harrison to see the band perform. Harrison and Lennon actually shared some common history. Both had attended Dovedale Primary School but had never met. Their paths finally crossed in early 1958. McCartney had been pushing the 17-year-old Lennon to let the 14-year-old Harrison join the band, but Lennon was reluctant to let the youngster team up with them. As legend has it, after seeing McCartney and Lennon perform, Harrison was finally granted an audition on the upper deck of a bus, where he wowed Lennon with his rendition of popular American rock riffs.

By 1960 Harrison’s music career was in full swing. Lennon had renamed the band the Beatles, and the young group began cutting their rock teeth in the small clubs and bars around Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany. Within two years, the group had a new drummer, Ringo Starr, and a manager, Brian Epstein, a young record-store owner who eventually landed the Beatles a contract with EMI’s Parlophone label.

Before the end of 1962, Harrison and the Beatles recorded a top 20 U.K. hit, “Love Me Do.” Early that following year, another hit, “Please Please Me,” was churned out, followed by an album of the same name. Beatlemania was in full swing across England, and by early 1964, with the release of their album in the United States and an American tour, it had swept across the Atlantic as well.

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Gorgeous Photos of Lori Nelson in the 1950s and ’60s

Born 1933 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, American actress and model Lori Nelson made her film debut in the 1952 Western Bend of the River. In 1955, Nelson guest starred in two episodes of It’s a Great Life, and reprised her role as “Rosie Kettle” in Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki. That same year, she co-starred in the Creature From the Black Lagoon sequel Revenge of the Creature and Underwater! with Jane Russell and Richard Egan.

Her supporting roles in films included the low-budget sci-fi story Day the World Ended (1955), and a big-budget Paramount Pictures comedy-Western, Pardners (1956). Nelson had a featured role in I Died a Thousand Times, a 1955 remake of High Sierra, as well as in 1954’s Destry, a remake of Destry Rides Again.

Nelson was perhaps best known for her roles in the TV series How to Marry a Millionaire and the films Revenge of the Creature, All I Desire, and I Died a Thousand Times. Her last role was in the 2005 low-budget science fiction horror film The Naked Monster, in which she reprised her role from Revenge of the Creature.

Nelson died in 2020 at her home in Porter Ranch, Los Angeles, aged 87. Take a look at these gorgeous photos to see the beauty of young Lori Nelson in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Reducing Suits for Horse, 1950

Horses, as well as overweight humans, can trim off pounds by sunning in this plastic “silhouette” suit, which was invented in 1950. Jockeys say it helps them reduce as much as five pounds in an hour.

Stunning Pictures of a Wet and Cold New York Taken by Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter (1923-2013) was born in Pittsburgh, the son of an internationally renowned Talmudic scholar.  Leiter's interest in art began in his late teens, and though he was encouraged to become a Rabbi like his father, he left theology school and moved to New York to pursue painting at age 23. In New York, he befriended the Abstract Expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart, who was experimenting with photography. His friendship with Pousette-Dart and soon after, with W. Eugene Smith, expanded his interest in photography.

By 1948 Leiter had begun to experiment in color, largely using Kodachrome 35 mm film past its sell-by date. He made an enormous and unique contribution to photography with a highly prolific period in New York City in the 1950s. His abstracted forms and radically innovative compositions have a painterly quality that stands out among the work of his New York School contemporaries. Leiter’s use of color is often attributed to his enduring interest in painting.

A pioneer of color photography and a talented image-maker, Leiter sought neither fame nor commercial success. “I’ve never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous.” Leiter told TIME. “It’s not that I didn’t want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason – maybe it’s because my father disapproved of almost everything I did – in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success.” Instead, he slinked through New York’s city streets capturing moments of beauty within the ordinary: bright umbrellas, faint reflections, neon advertisements, rain-washed cars and snowy junctions.

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