The Fabulous Bars & Restaurants of the Boeing 747: Amazing Vintage Photos Show the Glamorous Airline Lounges in the Sky From the 1970s

Today domestic first class means free drinks, free (perhaps edible) food, and a seat that might not leave you with a chronic back condition. While deregulation played a large role in driving down quality and prices, this ‘golden age’ of luxe airborne lounging was largely brought to an end by the Arab embargo induced oil crises of the 1970s. In an ironic twist, if you’re looking to have a drink in a 1970s style airborne lounge today, the Middle Eastern carriers Etihad and Emirates are your best options.

Back in the early 1970s it wasn’t just absolutely over-the-top Middle Eastern carriers who offered this sort of lounge experience (with all the smoke in the air, showers no doubt would have been appreciated). When the first Boeing 747 took to the skies in 1970, its iconic upper deck presented airlines with an interesting conundrum: initially the space wasn’t certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to carry passengers during takeoff and landing. While certification came quickly enough, in this era, competing for passengers meant providing unique amenities. Therefore many airlines decided to convert the space into lounges, typically, but not always for premium fare passengers. Here are some of the most glamorous flying lounges of the 1970s:


Pan American (Pan Am): the first Boeing 747

The world's first Boeing 747 set the trend for what was to come, with Pan Am turning the jumbo's entire upper deck into a 'restaurant in the sky' for its first class passengers:

Travellers could share the experience with up to three companions...

... or could make new acquaintances and discuss the issues of the day.

Surveys at the time indicated that around 30% of Pan Am's passengers chose to fly with the airline for this feature alone, and it's one that you can still experience on the ground – just not in the air.


Qantas: the Boeing 747 Captain Cook Lounge

Forget that pre-flight visit to the Qantas First Lounge – after take-off, you could instead enjoy an exclusive atmosphere in what was the Captain Cook Lounge on the Boeing 747's upper deck:

Guests could simply grab a newspaper or magazine and make themselves comfortable...

... or ditch the reading material in favour of fine wines and a little conversation:

While Qantas again provides a small inflight lounge and meeting area on today's Airbus A380s, it's not quite the upper deck of the '70s.

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Do-It-Yourself Horror Movie Monster Make-Ups With Simple Materials from 1965

Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook by Dick Smith (Warren Publishing, 1965)

In 1965, Forrest J. Ackerman hired legendary movie make-up artist Dick Smith to produce a Famous Monsters of Filmland Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook. Smith was the guy who did the award-winning make-up for movies like The Exorcist, Little Big Man, The Godfather, Taxi Driver and Ken Russell’s Altered States.

Smith’s special edition illustrated magazine presented a 100-page step-by-step guide on how to get the look for some of cinema’s best-known movie monsters. Using a range of everyday objects—from crepe paper and breadcrumbs to ping pong balls—Smith shared some of his best-kept secrets of the trade.

Martian #1.

Martian #2.

Werewolf #1.

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Young Girl Battling With Crocodiles, 1932

Meet a mermaid who thinks nothing of battling with crocodiles - bare handed!

The man standing behind a fence around the crocodile enclosure. A woman stands beside him. He points out a particular specimen he wants to train. The girl (now in a swimsuit) wades into the pool asking "which one dad?" She grabs the croc and there is a bit of a fight. Various shots of her grappling with the croc. She lifts the crocodile out of the pool saying "Boy, is he heavy!".

© British Pathé

One of the Most Beautiful Edwardian Actresses – The Beauty of Young Gladys Cooper Through Colorized Postcards

Beginning on the stage as a teenager in Edwardian musical comedy and pantomime, English actress Gladys Cooper (1888 – 1971), whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television.

Cooper was starring in dramatic roles and silent films before the beginning of the First World War. She also became a manager of the Playhouse Theatre from 1917 to 1933, where she played many roles. Beginning in the early 1920s, Cooper was winning praise in plays by W. Somerset Maugham and others.

In the 1930s, she was starring steadily both in the West End and on Broadway. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, Cooper found success in a variety of character roles; she was nominated for three Academy Awards, the last one as Mrs. Higgins in My Fair Lady (1964). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she mixed her stage and film careers, continuing to star on stage until her last year.

Take a look to see the beauty of young Gladys Cooper through 57 colorized postcard that capture her portrait in the early 20th century.

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Found Snapshots Capture Everyday Life of California From Between the 1950s and 1960s

A beautiful photo collection was found on eBay, antique shops, flea markets, etc. by Patty Paine that shows street scenes, people, indoor furniture and landscapes of California from the 1950s to 1960s.

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The Secret Museum of Mankind: A Collection of Strange and Secret Photographs of Tribes From Across the Continents

Published in 1935, The Secret Museum of Mankind is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by "Manhattan House" and sold by "Metro Publications", both of New York, its "Five Volumes in One" was pure hype: it had never been released in any other form.

Advertised as "World's Greatest Collection of Strange & Secret Photographs" and marketed mainly to overheated adolescents, it consists of nothing but photos and captions with no further exposition. This was not a book published to educate, but to titillate (literally)— it's emphasis was on the female form and fashion, and it featured as many National-Geographic-style native breasts as possible. But anything lurid, weird, or just plain unusual is fair game.

The tone of the commentary is dated, and uniformly racist in the extreme, often hilariously so. It reads like the patter of a carnival sideshow barker, from a time when the world was divided between "modern" Europeans and "savages". The photos were taken from the 1890s through the early 1930s, with period commentary to match. This was the era of eugenics before it acquired a terminal taint thanks to Nazi Germany.

See below for a selection of images that show "the magic and mystery in queer lands where the foot of a white man has rarely tread..."

1. IN THE FANTASTIC DRESS OF THE NOTORIOUS STRAW BOYS

During the early years of the nineteenth century sections of Ireland were overrun by one of the many terrorist gangs that have from time to time existed there, known, from their peculiar but effective grass masks, as the Straw Boys. Through these masks they could see without being recognized, and their habit of dressing as women added to their grotesque appearance.


2. EMU MAN PERFORMS THE TOTEM

With a head-dress representing the sacred totem of his group, this man is working magic that is to make emus abundant for the hunters of his tribe.


3. AMAZONIAN HUNTER PROUD OF HIS METAL SPEAR

Besides bows and arrows, most of the forest Indians use the spear as a weapon of the chase. The shaft is of stout wood and the point or blade is usually of chonta palm, which is almost as hard as metal. A few spears are found with metal blades, probably taken centuries ago from the Spanish pioneers, and naturally are highly prized by their fortunate possessors.


4. BURLESQUE DISGUISE OF BASUTO GIRL-BRIDES

Initiation ceremonies are generally held before any young people can be admitted as members to adult tribal society; likewise before marriage the girls of Basutoland carefully observe a period of initiation. After receiving a new name each neophyte is whitewashed, blanketed, and masked, and in this guise undergoes many rites.


5. FLORAL MASKS HIDE THE BLUSHES OF SOME BULGARIAN BRIDES

All the bride's artistic taste is centred in her head dress; be she poor or rich, she endeavours to make it as gorgeously ponderous as the strength of her head will allow. Fortunately, this gigantic floral burden and cap of coins are not worn for long but are soon replaced by the popular, and certainly more effective headdress — the simple wreath of flowers and leaves.

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MISSING: 1977 Star Wars Toyota Celica GT – The First Officially-Sanctioned Star Wars Custom Car

Way back in 1977 a little film called Star Wars was released to box office smashing success. Somewhere in the background, 20th Century Fox joined forces with Toyota to customize and give away a ‘77 Star Wars Celica.

This sweet ride was the Grand Prize in a STAR WARS Space Fantasy Sweepstakes run by the “Star Wars Corp.”, Twentieth Century Fox, and Wonder Bread, and administered by Marden-Kane. The car was described as “A Toyota Celica Liftback. Standard featured include MacPherson front strut suspension, power front disc brakes, AM-FM stereo radio and modifications include a moon roof, special upholstery, custom wheels and tires, and a super STAR WARS paint job.”

Weirdly, no one knows the origins of the sweepstakes, other than it came about after the movie was a big hit in the early summer of 1977. We do know that four companies were involved: 20th Century Fox, Molly Designs, Delphi Auto Designs, and Mardan-Kane Inc. Delphi had hired two people from Molly to paint the car, and 20th Century Fox studio subcontracted Mardan-Kane to actually run the sweepstakes out of its offices in Garden City, NJ.

After the sweepstakes began, the car was delivered to 20th Century Fox and was delivered to the contest’s winner, whose name was never made public, by January 1978, allegedly.

Why allegedly? There was a lot of crime going on at Delphi, the auto design company. The owner was smuggling hash oil, one employee was kidnapped, and another, Steve Bovan, was murdered. The company went out of business shortly thereafter. It’s entirely possible, one theory goes, that this Celica got caught up in one of those imbroglios, and the car was never delivered to any sweepstakes winner.

It’s also possible that the companies involved in the contest thought, retrospectively, that it would be best to not associate with drugs, kidnapping, and murder at Delphi, and put the contest and any publicizing for it on the back-burner.

The car disappeared for between 10 and 20 years, until a LucasFilm employee saw it in a magazine. The employee was Steve Sansweet, who now runs a museum with the biggest collection of Star Wars memorabilia on Earth. Here’s Sansweet on his discovery:

[S]ometime around the late 1980’s or early 1990’s I was reading my Monthly issue of Antique Toy World when my eye was drawn to a small black and white ad at the bottom of a page. There it was—the Star Wars Toyota—being offered up for sale by the original owner, who said it was in great shape. Here’s the killer: the asking price was just $1,000. I remember being transfixed and started thinking how I could possibly buy this primo piece of promo history.

But for whatever reason, even for that “killer” price, Sansweet didn’t buy the Celica. And that was the end of the trail—until today.

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