Amazing Color Photos of Cabaret Dancers at the Moulin Rouge in the late 1950s

Here's a series of amazing color pictures made by LIFE photographer Loomis Dean in the late 1950s, featuring cabaret's dancers at the Moulin Rouge. It is there that where countless men and women down through the decades have enjoyed extravagant (and cheerfully risqué) song-and-dance numbers while soaking in the atmosphere of an entertainment mecca. It is there that the energetic and, for many, scandalous cancan dance found its highest and most popular form of expression.

See more»

20 Fun and Cute Vintage Thanksgiving Postcards From the Early 20th Century

Before there were photo postcards and standard greeting cards, people sent around these beautiful, hand-drawn postcards. Here are some fun and cute Thanksgiving postcards from the 20th century.

See more»

Marilyn Monroe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Playground, 1955

During the 1950s, the pioneering photojournalist Eve Arnold took a series of portraits of Marilyn Monroe. The now iconic photos generally present Monroe as a larger-than-life celebrity and sex symbol. Except for one.

In 1955, Arnold photographed Monroe reading a worn copy of James Joyce’s modernist classic, Ulysses. It’s still debated whether this was simply an attempt to recast her images (she often played the “dumb blonde” character in her ’50s films), or whether she actually had a pensive side. (Her personal library, catalogued at the time of her death, suggests the latter.) But, either way, Arnold explained years later how these memorable photos came about:

“We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was visiting Norman Rosten the poet... I asked her what she was reading when I went to pick her up (I was trying to get an idea of how she spent her time). She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been reading it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to herself to try to make sense of it — but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it consecutively. When we stopped at a local playground to photograph she got out the book and started to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I photographed her. It was always a collaborative effort of photographer and subject where she was concerned — but almost more her input.”

See more»

20 Vintage Photos of Women Telephone Operators at Work

In the early days of telephony, through roughly the 1960s, companies used manual telephone switchboards and switchboard operators connected calls by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks. Each pair of plugs was part of a cord circuit with a switch associated that let the operator participate in the call.

Before the advent of automatic exchanges, an operator's assistance was required for anything other than calling telephones across a shared party line. Callers spoke to an operator at a Central Office who then connected a cord to the proper circuit in order to complete the call. Being in complete control of the call, the operator was in a position to listen to private conversations. Automatic, or Dial systems were developed in the 1920s to reduce labor costs as usage increased, and to ensure privacy to the customer. As phone systems became more sophisticated, less direct intervention by the telephone operator was necessary to complete calls.

Telephone switchboard 1880s.

Women operators working at the Bell Telephone Company exchange in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1897.

Pacific Telephone & Telegraph operators, ca. 1900.

A Telephone Exchange operator in Richardson, Texas, ca. 1900.

Telephone switchboard operators, Salt Lake City, ca.1914. During this period, only young women (not men) were hired for this type of work at a Salt Lake City, Utah company.

See more»

Temperance Movement, 1919

The picture shows a group of women committing to rather extreme measures in support of the temperance movement. The temperance movement was an effort in the 1910s in the United States to reduce alcohol consumption. It actually led to Prohibition.

26 Funny Vintage Photographs of People Playing Leapfrog From Between the 1920s and 1950s

Leapfrog is a game in which players in turn vault with parted legs over the backs of others who are bending down. Games of this sort have been called by this name since at least the late sixteenth century. Below is a collection of some of funny vintage photographs of people playing leapfrog.

Young bellhops playing leapfrog on the sun deck of US liner Leviathan (former Hamburg America line vessel Vaterland), on arrival at Southampton, 1923. (Photo by A. R. Coster)

Oxford University relay team leap-frog to keep fit on board SS Berengaria on their way to the USA, April 1923.

Members of the Brighton Swimming Club leap-frogging on the beach at Brighton, 1925. (Photo by E. Bacon)

A couple of young women playing leap frog on the beach at Hove, March 1929.

Friends on holiday by the river at Harwell in Oxfordshire, May 1929.

See more»

“Alive With Pleasure!” – Newport Adverts on Magazines From the 1970s and 1980s

Sexual innuendo in advertising doesn’t get any more textbook perfect than the "Alive with pleasure!" adverts that were in magazines everywhere in the 1970s and 80s. Sure, they were awful to look at: a gaudy green with a seemingly amateurish photograph; however, subconscious sexualized imagery is taken to new heights in these Newport advertisements.

See more»