Vintage shots from days gone by!

More 60's icons, who have graced the thread before.

 

The song from Once Upon a Time in the West is going around in my head. Claudia is beautiful.

 

Sad story...the Normandie was a pre-WWII French liner, one of the most elegant afloat...stranded by the war in New York, she was being refitted as a troop ship when a welder's torch lit a life jacket, the ship caught fire, and the water used to extinguish the fire ultimately capsized the ship...damaged beyond repair, it was scrapped...

 

You said it, Ardun. Funny, in a sense, how many great and grand ships came to sad, even tragic ends. We all remember the Andria Doria and the Lusitania, with great loss of life and irreplacable property.

I think the fate of Titanic and the two "sisters" in her class is especially ironic. Sadly, one rarely, if ever, hears of the Britannic or the Olympic, though. Somebody help me with details, please. But, I seem to recall that Britannic was refitted as a hospital ship and was sunk in the Mediterranean by either a mine or torpedo, again at great loss of life. I cannot remember the exact fate of the Olympic, though she outlived her two sisters by years or decades.

 

What dealer did you purchase it from?

 

Whenever the Andrea Doria is mentioned, I think of the Chrysler Norseman show car that went down with it.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=392013

 

History lesson:
The Britannic was lost on 8:12am on 21st November 1916. The Britannic struck a mine, although some still contest it was a torpedo, in the Kea Channel, Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece.

The Olympic survived the tragedy of her sisters and lived a busy career. The ship owners, the Cunard line, withdrew Olympic from service on April 12, 1935. (Despite the fact that it cost less to operate Olympic than other Cunard ships of about the same size.) In 24 years of service, Olympic carried many thousands of people, crossed the Atlantic over 500 times, and steamed over 1.5 million miles. In August, she was sold for scrapping to the Thomas Ward Company. The Olympic left Southampton for the last time on October 11, 1935. The ship arrived at Jarrow Scotland, two days later to be scrapped. By the end of 1937, Olympic was gone.

 

THANKS, BlueMoose! Yup, sad end but not tragic. Actually, I'll bet that Cunard didn't want to remodel all the internal "creature-comfort" aspects on a ship that was by the mid-'30s over a quarter-century old.

1.5 MILLION miles? At least ONE of the three ships in that class got to serve out her career with GRAND distinction! Thanks again!

 

great! western....

 

Many of the contents of the ship were auctioned off. The entire dining room was bought by the owner of the Swan Hotel at Alnwick in the north east of England. It remains to this day, fully reconstructed as it was on the ship - woodwork, pillars, mirrors and stained glass, etc. - seating up to 120 diners. It really is magnificent.

 

It was that rotten Jeffy Keane!

 

That is quite a tribute to a fine ship.

I do have one point I need clarification on, though. Weren't the three Olympic-Class ships christened for the White Star Line, the arch compeitor of Cunard? (Did White Star "go under," and Cunard wound up owning the remaining ship, Olympic?)

 

Where's Mart? Why hasn't he said he's in the mood to play footsie yet?
Mart! You out sick today?

 

Hi, 68Cuda, good point about the Andria Doria. I do feel, though that the legacy of the Chrysler Norseman did NOT die with the sinking. In particular that amazing roofline -- sort of a modern "flying buttress" architectural effect -- did surface on MoPars of the early '60s. Then later, I think, it's unmistakable on Teague's AMC Marlin, as well.
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As for the Titanic and Lusitania disasters of 1912 and '15, respectively, the losses to the field of automobilia were tremendous.

When the Titanic sank in April 1912, a number of well-known Americans were among the two-thirds of more than 2,000 souls aboard who perished. Among these were: millionaire John Jacob Astor IV (reportedly a hero during the event); millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim, patron of the arts; Washington Roebling II, founder Mercer Automobile Co.; and Isidor and Ida Straus, owners of Macy's Department Store, NY.

Roebling was the descendant of bridge-builders and a civil-war commander. In 1909, he bought out the failing auto business of friend William Walter and, with other backing launched the renowned Mercer Automobile Company. Named for Mercer County, NJ, Mercer prices were high and production numbers low, but the company name quickly became synonymous with racing legend. But when Washington Roebling died on the Titanic, the company leadership went into a tailspin, and the doors were finally closed after 1925.


Harold Higgins (far left) and workers, including famous Mercer driver Eddie Pullen, in a tool room at Mercer Automobile Co., ca. 1910.

Any HAMBer who likes racing and its history is surely aware of Alfred Vanderbilt's name. At age 37, he gave his life preserver to a woman and went down with the RMS Lusitania in 1915 after it was torpedoed by the German sub U-20. His status as a gentleman and hero are commemorated by a monument erected by admiring English racing fans and admirers of his own day. But the decision on the part of the Kaiser to attack civilian ships turned out to be suicidal, as the Lusitania incident (along with the "Black Tom" sabotage explosion) drew the U.S. inexorably into WWI.



Alfred G. Vanderbilt, 1877 - 1915, THANKS to Wikipedia


Less well known was Isaac Trumbull, head of a new U.S. cycle-car manufacturer. The Trumbull business plan was to sell a majority of its cars in France and Europe where cycle-cars were, perhaps, even more popular than in the U.S. In fact, Isaac had fully 20 cars in the hold of the Lusitania, intended to seal the foreign business deal. With Trumbull and the cache of his autos gone, the company quickly collapsed. In the courts, the German government was eventually compelled to pay Trumbull's wife and daughter the modern equivalent of more than a million dollars.


Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia regarding Vanderbilt: "A secondary explosion . . . sank the giant ocean liner within 18 minutes. Vanderbilt and his valet, Ronald Denyer, helped others into lifeboats, and then Vanderbilt gave his life jacket to save a female passenger. Vanderbilt had promised the young mother of a small baby that he would locate an extra life vest for her.<SUP> </SUP>Failing to do so, he offered her his own life vest, which he proceeded to even tie on to her himself since she was holding her infant child in her arms at the time. Many consider his actions to be very brave and gallant since he could not swim, he knew that there were no other life vests or lifeboats available, and yet he still gave away his only chance to survive to the young mother and child. . . . According to historians A.A. and Mary Hoehlings, Vanderbilt's fate was ironic as three years earlier he had made a last minute decision not to return to the U.S. on RMS Titanic."
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vintage drag racer Jack Chrisman photo by Don Hale

 

A small side note to the Titanic and Brittanic sinkings is that there was a young British nurse that survived BOTH sinkings. Wonder if she ever sailed on the Olympic? I'm betting NOT.

 

drag racing at lions

 

My dad when he was a P51D fighter pilot in the euro theater during WWII. Born 1923, he passed away just a few months ago. He was the first in air witness to report the ME262 and was the first to fly and evaluate the ME109. He was one of the top gunnery tatic instructors and even flew a few recon missions in the P51D over Germany with no radio (needed room for camera). He was also a flight instructor and snuck onboard a bombing mission with a friend once, which was NOT allowed. This friend (the pilot of the B17) and his co-pilot got blown to bits and my dad landed the bomber on this side of the channel with their guts all over him saving 2 other of the crew. He also was shot down in a P51 at one point and had pieces of the windscreen picked out of his eyeballs. Numerous medals. Happy fathers day 2011 on June 19th dad!

He refused to ever speak of the war and it took decades and lots of alcohol just to get what I do know out of him. He was not proud at all of what he did and carried allot of guilt for those who died and the things he had done. He forbid all his kids from ever owning a toy gun of any type, even water guns.

I couldn't even being to mention all of the bad ass cars he had over the years, too bad he never kept any of them very long! One of them was a one off Invicta race car from the late 1920s he drove on the street. 20 or 30 years after selling it he read in a magazine (in the 60s sometime) it was at the time the most valuable car in the world, DOH! He said he sold it for $100 because it hurt his back too much (skiing accident, dislocated disc).

 

from one vet to another, I salute you,,

 

'HAMB' burgers,,

 

Believe it or not, that was avery popular change back in '57

 

We had Jacks Hamburgers... Or my cousins had them in Birmingham...
What a treat!

 

...

 

Vintage prices...

 

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/5645171?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.</p>

VJ Day 1945

 

92GTA, your father may have not been proud, but you should be of him.

 

Fantastic Pic!

I'm wondering if this is Chicago or NY???



Or??




.

 

Chicago
you're looking west along the first block of West Van Buren.

State Street (in the foreground) is the dividing line for Chicago streets running east and west

 

This place keeps showing up. My Mom on honeymoon taken by my Dad in 1933.