Argentine Classic Beauty: 30 Fabulous Photos of Susana Giménez in the 1960s and ’70s

Born 1944 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Susana Giménez became a model at 19 years old, and made her name in a TV commercial for Cadum, a brand of French soap. Most of her subsequent film career was in adult-oriented comedies.

Giménez has acted in over 30 films, including the cult film La Mary, and 10 plays. She is the host of Susana Giménez, a highly rated television variety show in Argentina, similar in format to those of Raffaella Carrà (in Italy and Spain) and Oprah Winfrey (in United States).

In 1997, Giménez was awarded with the Golden Martín Fierro Award, and in 2002 won the INTE award for TV hostess of the Year. In 2008, Giménez launched her own magazine called Susana, published by La Nación. She is featured in the cover of every issue. She had her own fashion doll, and has endorsed two fragrances.

Take a look at these fabulous photos to see the beauty of young Susana Giménez in the 1960s and 1970s.

See more»

Rare Photos of a Very Young Jack Nicholson in the 1960s

Jack Nicholson, an American actor, producer, director and screenwriter, is a three-time Academy Award winner and twelve-time nominee. Nicholson is also notable for being one of two actors, the other being Michael Caine, who have received an Oscar nomination in every decade from the 1960s through the early 2000s.

Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune, New Jersey. He was raised believing that his grandmother was his mother, and that his mother, June Frances Nicholson, a showgirl, was his older sister. He discovered the truth in 1975 from a Time magazine journalist who was researching a profile on him. His real father is believed to have been either Donald Furcillo, an Italian American showman, or Eddie King (Edgar Kirschfeld), born in Latvia and also in show business.

Nicholson first came to Hollywood in 1954, when he was seventeen, to visit his sister. He took a job as an office worker for animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at the MGM cartoon studio. They offered him an entry-level job as an animator, but he declined, citing his desire to become an actor.

In the 1960s, with his acting career heading nowhere, Nicholson seemed resigned to a career behind the camera as a writer/director. His first real taste of writing success was the screenplay for the 1967 counterculture film The Trip, which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. After first reading the script, Fonda told Nicholson he was totally impressed by the writing and felt it could become a great film. However, Fonda was disappointed with how the film turned out and blamed the editing which turned it into a “predictable” film and said so publicly.

Nicholson’s first big acting break came when a spot opened up in Fonda and Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969). He played alcoholic lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination. The film cost only $400,000 to make, and became a blockbuster, grossing $40 million. Biographer John Parker states that Nicholson’s interpretation of his role placed him in the company of earlier “anti-hero” actors, such as James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, while promoting him into an “overnight number-one hero of the counter-culture movement.”

The part was a lucky break for Nicholson. The role had been written for the actor Rip Torn, who withdrew from the project after an argument with Hopper. In interviews, Nicholson later acknowledged the importance of being cast in Easy Rider: “All I could see in the early films, before Easy Rider, was this desperate young actor trying to vault out of the screen and create a movie career.”

Here, a collection of some of cool photos of a very young Jack Nicholson in the early days of his career during the 1960s:

See more»

1923 Christie Monowheel, the Mother of All Monowheels

The product of the fertile imagination of a Professor E. J. Christie of Marion, Ohio, this gyroscopic unicycle was supposedly capable of speeds of up to 400 miles per hour, although at the time of an article from the April, 1923 issue of Popular Science, it had yet to be tested. To be fair, the inventor only claimed “a speed of at least 250 miles per hour, and possibly 400 miles per hour” though this is the sort of uncertainty that suggests he hadn’t a clue what he was about.

Professor E.J. Christie atop a version of his 14 foot monster monowheel in 1923, which may or may not have been tested. Note the smaller model.

The design had a centre wheel of 14-foot in diameter, and weighed 2400 pounds. The “gyro wheels” on each side of the driver weighed some 500 pounds each. The machine, which was reportedly “being constructed in Philadelphia” at the time, was to have been powered by a 250-horsepower airplane motor.

Here is the text of the Popular Science Monthly article:

Will Gyroscopic Wheel Shatter Speed Records?

DOWN the track of a motor speedway a wheel 14 feet high whirls at such a dizzy speed that racing automobiles traveling at top speed––115 miles an hour––seem almost to stand still. So fast does the giant wheel travel that the details of its design can scarcely be distinguished. This is a possibility prophesied by Prof. E. J. Christie, of Marion, Ohio, for an amazing gyroscopic unicycle of his invention, now being constructed in Philadelphia, Pa. The 2400-pound 14-foot model of the speed wheel is almost ready for a trial spin and Christie confidently predicts that it will develop a speed of at least 250, and possibly 400 miles an hour!

In design, the strange vehicle resembles a giant bicycle wheel with an exceptionally long hub, at the end of which supporting spokes are fastened. Attached to the axle, on each side of the center are 500-pound gyroscopes designed to rotate at a speed of 90 revolutions a minute––a speed sufficient to maintain equilibrium.

From April, 1923. Chrstie has numerous automotive patents in his name for inventions or improvements.

Suspended from the axle by a frame, the upper end of which supports the driver’s seat, is a 250-horsepower airplane motor, the power of which is transmitted to the axle through a friction clutch, three-speed transmission, and jackshaft. An additional chain drive in the center of the axle connects the engine transmission with the gyroscopes.

The machine is controlled and operated like an automobile from the operator’s seat immediately above the axle. Here the driver is saved from swinging about the axle by the steadying weight of the engine slung below.

“How can such a strange vehicle be turned?” you may ask.

This problem Professor Christie has solved in a unique way. By means of the steering wheel, he shifts the position of the two gyroscopic flywheels on the axle to the right or to the left. When the center of equilibrium is thus shifted, the unicyle immediately turns in its course, without tilting, the degree of turn depending upon the distance the gyroscopes are shifted. In other words, the farther the shift, the shorter the turn.

The wheel is supplied with a seven-inch rubber tire, the manufacture of which proved a problem in itself. Pressure resistance was found to be so great that several attempts were made before a strong enough tire was produced.

The new gyroscopic unicycle is not the first machine of its kind Professor Christie has produced, although it is by far the most pretentious. He first used a gyroscope to demonstrate the rotation and momentum of the earth.

40 Vintage Photos Show Luxembourg Bus System in the 1980s

Luxembourg is a landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France to the south. Its capital, Luxembourg City, is one of the four official capitals of the European Union (together with Brussels, Frankfurt, and Strasbourg) and the seat of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest judicial authority in the EU.

Luxembourg is one of the smallest sovereign states and one of the least-populous countries in Europe. It is a developed country, with an advanced economy and one of the world’s highest GDP (PPP) per capita.

Comprehensive bus services linking the towns and villages of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg are contracted out to private operators by the RGTR (Régime général des transports routiers) under the Ministry of Transport.

Luxembourg City is served by 163 of its own AVL (Autobus de la Ville de Luxembourg) buses transporting some 28 million passengers per year. There are 25 regular bus routes plus special bus services through the night.

These amazing photos were taken by Steve Guess that show bus system of Luxembourg in 1987.

See more»

Beautiful Vintage Black and White Photos of Mexico in 1952

Born in 1905 in Seattle and raised in San Francisco, Earl Leaf spent many years finding his calling.  By 1936 he was the North China manager of the United Press Associations covering the Sino-Japanese war. Before that he was a cowboy, sailor, prospector, dude rancher, actor, bookkeeper, Salvation Army cadet, and many more. After the war Earl decided that he would be both a photographer and a journalist and spent time in New York shooting the city and taking assignments to shoot artists like Martha.

By 1949 Earl had picked up and moved back to the West Coast arriving in Hollywood in the summer of that year. By the Fall he had his first Hollywood celebrity session shooting the actress Cleo Moore at home. Press agents took notice and soon he was shooting up-and-coming stars. By the early 1950s Earl was well established on the scene shooting both candid sessions (never in a studio) and out on the town hobnobbing with the cream of Hollywood like Bogart and Bacall, Brando, etc. He was welcome everywhere from the Oscars to Ciro’s the Mocambo and the Cocoanut Grove.

He slowed down in the ’70s and by 1980 at the age of 75 he was dead. The complete overview of the essay about his life and career from Jonathan H, a Getty Image archive editor who used to work with Earl, can be found here.

Below are 25 photographs depicted local life in Mexico taken by Earl during his trip to the country in 1952:

Local women wear native dresses in Tehuantepec.

Couples dance in traditional dress in Tehuantepec.

Local women carries items on her head from the local market in Tehuantepec.

A rancher rides his horse on a ranch in Michoacan.

Little boys sit on the fence at a ranch in Michoacan.

See more»

Times Square During the 1940s Through Fascinating Photos

Times Square is a major commercial intersection in central Manhattan at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. It acquired its name in 1904 when Albert Ochs, publisher of The New York Times, moved the newspaper’s headquarters to a new skyscraper on what was then known as Longacre Square. The name stuck, even after The New York Times moved across Broadway in 1913.

Times Square is sometimes referred to as “the Crossroads of the World”, “the Center of the Universe”, “the heart of the Great White Way”, and “the heart of the world”. It is one of the world’s busiest pedestrian areas, and also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world’s entertainment industry.

Now known worldwide as a symbol of the American spirit, Times Square is home to many popular Manhattan attractions, including Hard Rock Cafe, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, and ABC’s Times Square Studios (where Good Morning America is filmed).

Here is a set of fascinating black and white photos that shows what Times Square looked like in the 1940s.

See more»

Take a Trip Back Into 1950s Montreal Through Beautiful Color Photos

The 1950s were a simpler time. A time where every man wore a tie to work, no matter what is job was, and modern conveniences meant housewives could just get hammered all day. Looking back to Montreal in the 1950s, you can almost feel the wholesomeness and nostalgia.

See more»