The Providence Women’s Club, as was first named (later a.k.a. the Extension Homemaker’s Club) began informally when women of this once-rural community entered the Mecklenburg County Fair in 1934: the booths they sponsored, one for the community and one for the club, both won first prizes; with proceeds from their prizes, the club women began a building fund because club membership was growing quickly and most homes were too small to accommodate the participants, and they built this Community House

_________________________________________

Charlotte, NC – 2019DEC14 – Mensa Christmas Party:

We met at the Lower Providence Community House, a log cabin on Community House Road designated as a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Site, coming here for the first time, for food and fellowship, entertainment, a White Elephant gift exchange, programs, and Volunteer Recognition, including Joe, honored with a T-shirt.

Specially featured was the non-profit Khaira Initiative, providing a free after school care and tutoring alternative for elementary school students in economically disadvantaged areas; the founding Mensa member, a local teen, provided information on their services and collected school supplies and cash donations (yes, we gave money).

We enjoyed visiting with everybody, and had a great time.

Hope you enjoy the 12% of 50 captures I took here today!

Which even by Madame's standards stretches the truth

My second attempt to paint JKPP member Tatyana, this time in acrylic, and as an astronaut on a distant planet [ don't ask, had to fill up rest of the canvas somehow :) ] .. . .. .. ... ......

Will work later on enhancing the background, some more . . . .. .. ...

From this original photo

acrylic on 7" x 14" stretched canvas.......

JKPP

We watched this crow for a while, first selecting the stick, then after several attempts to turn it, pick it up and take off it succeeded, before dropping the stick in mid air, picking it up again and disappearing off over the cliff top. I'm sure it's going to be a sturdy nest!

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Jim Brown in 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).

Last Thursday, 18 May 2023, former American footballer and actor Jim Brown died at the age of 87. His wife shared this on Instagram on Friday. Brown appeared in more than 30 films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), 100 Rifles (1969) with Raquel Welch and He Got Game (1998) and he became Hollywood's first black action hero.

James Nathaniel Brown was born in 1936 in St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA. His parents were Swinton Brown, a professional boxer, and his wife, Theresa, a homemaker. Jim grew up in Manhasset, Long Island, New York from the age of eight. He attended Manhasset Secondary School in Manhasset, New York. Brown earned 13 letters playing football, lacrosse, baseball, basketball, and running track. It was at Manhasset High School that he became a football star and athletic legend and later, he was a great Lacrosse player for Syracuse University. Jim played as a fullback for the Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965 and is still considered one of the best running backs in the National Football League (NFL). Brown led the Cleveland Browns to their last National Football League (NFL) title in 1964. A year later, he was named the NFL's most valuable player. Despite only playing nine seasons, he retired as the all-time NFL career rushing leader with 12,312 yards. The record stood for 19 years. He was selected nine times for the Pro Bowl, the NFL's All-Star game. Thanks to Brown, American football grew into one of the most popular televised sports in the United States in the 1960s. As such, the lightning-fast running back was one of the sport's first superstars. In 2002, he was named the best professional American footballer ever by The Sporting News. Brown was one of the few athletes to speak out on racial issues in the 1950s as the civil rights movement was growing. He became an activist for equal rights for African-Americans, organised rallies and also spoke out against the war in Vietnam. In 1966, he started the Negro Industrial Economic Union, later known as the Black Economic Union (BEU), an advocacy group for black entrepreneurs and in 1988, he established the Amer-I-Can Foundation, aimed at mentoring gang members in order to get them off the streets and into a new life. Brown was twice married and had five children. From 1959 to 1972, he was married to Sue Jones with whom he had married to Sue Jones. In 1997, he married Monique with whom he had two children.

Shortly before the end of his football career, Jim Brown became an actor. The ruggedly handsome African American first appeared on movie screens as a buffalo soldier in the Western Rio Conchos (Gordon Douglas, 1964). He then played a strong supporting role in the terrific WWII action film The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967). Brown played Robert Jefferson, one of 12 convicts sent to France during World War II to assassinate German officers meeting at a castle near Rennes in Brittany before the D-Day invasion. Other fast-paced films followed including Ice Station Zebra (John Sturges, 1968), 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969) with Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds, and El Condor (John Guillermin, 1970). 100 Rifles (1969) was a sensation because it featured one of the first interracial love scenes in a film with Raquel Welch. Brown's popularity grew during the boom of Blaxploitation cinema in the early 1970s portraying tough no-nonsense characters in Slaughter (Jack Starrett, 1972) in which he did another sensational interracial love scene with Stella Stevens, Black Gunn (Robert Hartford-Davis, 1972) and Three the Hard Way (Gordon Parks Jr., 1974). His on-screen work in the latter part of the 1970s and 1980s was primarily centred around guest spots on popular TV shows such as CHiPs (1977) and Knight Rider (1982). However, Brown then resurfaced in better-quality films beginning with his role as a fiery assassin in The Running Man (Paul Michael Glaser, 1987), an adaptation of a Stephen King novel. He parodied the blaxploitation genre along with many other African-American actors in the comedy I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 1988) and played an ex-heavyweight boxer in the Sci-Fi comedy Mars Attacks! (Tim Burton, 1996). Ironically he played an ex-football legend in the sports film Any Given Sunday (Oliver Stone, 1999) with Al Pacino. His final film was Draft Day (Ivan Reitman, 2014) with Kevin Costner. Additionally, Jim Brown was a ringside commentator for the first six events of the Ultimate Fighting Championships from 1993 through to 1996. A bona fide legend in American sports and a successful actor, he continues to remain busy in front of the camera with recent appearances in various sports shows & TV productions.

"It is with deep sadness that I must share that my husband, Jim Brown, has passed away," Monique Brown wrote on Facebook. "He passed away peacefully in our home in L.A. To the world, he was an activist, actor and football star. To our family, he was a beloved and wonderful husband, father and grandfather. Our hearts are broken..."

Sources: Nu.nl. AD.nl, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Biography: As social worker, mother, and civic leader, Alfreda Barnett Duster worked tirelessly to improve conditions in her neighborhood and community and to provide an environment capable of enriching and nourishing the lives of all people, especially the young. She grew up in Chicago surrounded by her large family and colleagues of her parents, Ferdinand L. Barnett and Ida B. Wells- Barnett. Graduating from the University of Chicago in 1924, she spent the next 20 years as wife, mother, and homemaker. Widowed at the age of 40 and with five children to raise, she returned to school to study for a degree in social work. As a social worker for the state of Illinois in the newly developing field of community organization, she served as juvenile delinquency prevention coordinator. She was also the administrator of the girls' program for underprivileged city children at Camp Illini, "Mother of the Year" in 1950 and 1970, and editor of her mother's autobiography, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.

Description: The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century. Photograph taken by Judith Sedwick

Repository: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

Collection: Black Women Oral History Project

Research Guide: guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_bwohp

Questions? Ask a Schlesinger Librarian

Model: Terra Flemming.

Architects: Palmer & Krisel (1958)

Location: Northridge, CA

Sponsored by LIVING for Young Homemakers and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power

Developer: Sanford D. Adler

Photographer: George de Gennaro

Archive of William Krisel, Getty Research Institute

Thanks to William Krisel for the cover and to John Crosse for the original scan, and for identifying the name of the photographer.

Condé Nast is apparently offering this cover as a poster on their website now, by the way!

www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Living-for-Young-Homemakers-Co...

BLOG DETAILS: ““ & , , , & , . & ! . ’ ..

@galinastore.sl

Me in the kitchen

All Black

......Betty Crocker you have competition . Introducing Casie the new breed of pâtissier /homemaker :).

Lol....

Casie cooks cakes on the side and I wanted to help her promote her business so we set up this photo shoot....our whole aim was for it be to cheesy, over posed, Stepford wife, Susie HomeMaker with a dash of sex appeal thrown in for good measure.

We had soooo much fun and laughed heaps.

Indoor photography for me is very hard as I don't know enough about lighting and my camera functions as yet to make my images sharp but I am still happy with the results.

5 In Comments

The wind kept blowing this all down. I think I wound up having to sprout a third arm to finally be able to triumph and get this pic. In the end though, I had a major grrr moment discovering that the suds in the sink had totally dissolved. This looked so much better with them there! Ha ha. Oh well. I still like the way it came out. :)

I've had my mom's old homemaker sets sitting in an old ice cream box for a few years now, thinking for the longest time that I should do something with it. That's when I saw the minecraft honey tiles and knew I had something special. At first I thought it could be fun to get some scala dolls and get some cool fabric based clothes but after ordering them I realized the scale was a tad off. The homemaker dolls naturally went better with the scale of the kitchen and, to me at least, they do look pretty cute. This kind of became like a remake of set 263 so now in retrospect maybe a blue floor would have been better but this was really fun and I have some more old homemaker stuff so I think it would be fun remaking some of the other old sets too.

Sexy Tgirl Housewife

Young, attractive 1950s-era homemaker sits in a kitchen chair smoking an unfiltered cigarette. Looks like a professional photo, but I don't know the origins.

Miller High Life ad from a March 1956 TV Guide. Seems odd that the man in the ad isn't even watching the TV. A good slice of 1950s suburban America nonetheless.

Sexy Tgirl Housewife

These modular buildings have taken somewhere around half a year to get around finishing. Started from those DUPLO cushions but didn't know how I'd want them used first. Saw a building in an old HO train catalog and then it just took off. I loosely based it of my experiences in Shibuya with the change in elevation as well as the difference in scale. Most of the interior is decorated. I'll snag some photos of it soon.

In the kitchen

A young woman at home gets into the Spirit of '76 for the 200th birthday of the United States of America. Packages of Kent Golden Lights cigarettes on the table. Also note the "entertainment center" of the time, a portable color TV and a portable radio/cassette player combo.

[J9250005-01]

Edited by Cas Rebellious! Ty!

A Housemaker's typical day at Parrys Corner, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Belgian postcard by Nieuwe Merksemsche Chocolaterie S.P.R.I., Mersem (Anvers). Photo: Universal.

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Megachilidae Sp

Built for the 2013 MocOlympics final, a maxifig scale circus, scene of some carnage...

Nest building

Sexy Housewife

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West-German postcard by Xtreme, Wuppertal, no. 32733. Nichelle Nichols with DeForest Kelley, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in the TV series Star Trek (1966-1969).

On 20 July, American actress Nichelle Nichols (1932-2022) passed away in Silver City. We remember her as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the space adventure TV series Star Trek (1966-1969). The lieutenant on the bridge of Starship Enterprise was a groundbreaking example of representation for Black Americans in Hollywood. She also played Uhura in the first six Star Trek feature films, that continue the adventures of the cast of the original series.

Nichelle Nichols was born as Grace Dell Nichols in 1932 in Robbins, a small town near Chicago, Illinois. She was the daughter of, Samuel Earl Nichols, a factory worker who was elected both town mayor of Robbins in 1929 and its chief magistrate, and his wife, Lishia (Parks) Nichols, a homemaker. Disliking her name, Nichols asked her parents for a new one; they offered "Nichelle," which they said meant "victorious maiden". Nichols studied in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. In New York she performed as a singer for a while. She also travelled with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands through North America and Europe. Nichols' break came in an appearance in 'Kicks and Co.', Oscar Brown's highly touted but ill-fated 1961 musical. In a thinly veiled satire of Playboy magazine, she played Hazel Sharpe, a voluptuous campus queen who was being tempted by the devil and Orgy Magazine to become "Orgy Maiden of the Month". Although the play closed after a short run in Chicago, Nichols attracted the attention of Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, who booked her for his Chicago Playboy Club. She also appeared in the role of Carmen for a Chicago stock company production of 'Carmen Jones' and performed in a New York production of 'Porgy and Bess'. Between acting and singing engagements, Nichols did occasional modeling work. After acting in various television and theatre plays, Nichols was asked for the role of Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the television series Star Trek (1966-1969). Her role as the ship’s communications officer was significant for many reasons: It was one of the first major roles for a Black woman in a US television series, and it was among the first portrayals of a Black woman in a military-style command role in any format. In 1968, Nichols found herself in a minor media storm along with William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. During the episode Plato's Stepchildren, Uhura and Kirk kissed. A kiss between a white man and a black woman on American television was unprecedented and groundbreaking at the time. Through this role, Nichols became an icon and role model for young black women in the United States. She was even reportedly persuaded by legendary civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King Jr to remain in the role during the series’ short-lived run. From 1977 until 2015, the US space agency NASA enlisted her to help get more women and people of colour to its astronaut and sciences programs. The effort led to the recruitment of Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut.

Nichelle Nichols' time in the Science Fiction series only lasted three seasons. The show was canceled in 1969, but its significance would last for decades. When the original television series was canceled, creator and producer gene Roddenberry lobbied Paramount Pictures to continue the franchise through a feature film. The success of the series in syndication convinced the studio to begin work on the film in 1975. Nichols reprised the role of Lt Uhura in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Robert Wise, 1979). the first installment in the Star Trek film series, which stars the cast of the original television series. Star Trek: The Motion Picture received mixed reviews, many of which faulted it for a lack of action scenes and over-reliance on special effects. Its final production cost ballooned to approximately $44 million, and it earned $139 million worldwide, short of studio expectations but enough for Paramount to propose a less expensive sequel. Roddenberry was forced out of creative control for the sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer, 1982). It was a box office success, earning US$97 million worldwide and setting a world record for its first-day box office gross. Critical reaction to the film was positive; reviewers highlighted Khan's (Ricardo Montalban) character, Meyer's direction, improved performances, the film's pacing, and the character interactions as strong elements. Negative reactions focused on weak special effects and some of the acting. The Wrath of Khan is considered by many to be the best film in the Star Trek series, and is often credited with renewing substantial interest in the franchise. She appeared in four more sequels, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Leonard Nimoy, 1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Nimoy, 1984), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (William Shatnert, 1989), and the last being Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Nicholas Meyer, 1991). Nichols also appeared in other films. She briefly appeared as a secretary in the comedy Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (Peter Tewksbury. 1967) starring Sandra Dee and George Hamilton, and portrayed Dorienda, a foul-mouthed madam in Truck Turner (Jonathan Kaplan, 1974) opposite Isaac Hayes and Yaphet Kotto, her only appearance in a blaxploitation film. In the comedy Snow Dogs (Brian Levant, 2002), Nichols appeared as the mother of the male lead, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. In her later years, Nichelle Nichols would make a semi-retirement from appearances at fan conventions where she and other members of the original cast were treated like royalty. She made an appearance at the Los Angeles Comic Con as recently as 2021. Since 2012, her faithful manager had lived in her San Fernando Valley home after she was diagnosed with dementia. A stroke in 2015 left her dependent on care. Her family and her manager argued all the way to court over who was going to care for her. Nichelle Nichols died on 30 July 2022 in Silver City, New Mexico, at the age of 89. Her death was confirmed on Instagram on 31 July 2022, by the actor’s son Kyle Johnson.

Sources: The Independent, Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Spanish postcard, no. 4200. Yvonne De Carlo and Tony Martin in Casbah (John Berry, 1948). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

some of my favourite ad's and photos.

some of my favourite ad's and photos.

The happy homemaker, 1960 style

Cincinnati, OH. June 30, 2021. Shot on a Nikon F6 and Fuji Superia 400. Developed and scanned by The Darkroom.

Back view

General Brickobold and his trusty vehicle.

Built with a pullback motor because why not.

The frog's name is Karf.

Seen at Kar Nutz event at Penrith Homemaker Centre

Housewife in dungarees reads a women's magazine on the couch while smoking a cigarette. Early afternoon sun comes through the window. Radios were still a prominent part of living room decor in the fifties.

Sexy Housewife

Sexy Tgirl Housewife

Whoever said God doesn’t play with dice, never met Dame Darkla!

Don’t let her girlish smile fool you! She’s dicey!

Darkla was the Leader of The Regal Realm of Randomness, my nation in the war game, Decisive Action 2, played on MOCpages in 2015.

Happy 40th Anniversary to the first Lego Figures!

I wanted to create a new model that had a distinctly vintage look. My design cues came from some 1970's Lego trade adverts. I purposely chose a model that used the colors that are incorporated in the Lego logo. In the 1970's the Lego color palate was limited to yellow, red, blue, white, black, with small amounts of gray and green. On a personal note, I chose the British 1910 B-Type double decker bus because I was born in England and that was were I first came across these figures as a child. As well, if you look at the poster from a distance, red and white are the predominant colors which represents my Canadian upbringing.

The anniversary of the brick is always an important milestone. I think the first appearance of a Lego figure is worthy of note as they were the predecessor of the minifigure which is so dominant today.

Many thanks to Tyler Sky for his great photography and photo editing!

Sitting pretty :)

Thrifted 80's ruffle tiered dress.

Those Xalax guys are cool. I should get more.

Dutch postcard by Van Leer's Fotodrukindustrie N.V., Amsterdam, no. 251. Photo: Universal Film.

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.