RXR Realty LLC of New York plans to renovate the S.S. United States. The massive ocean liner that has spent decades deteriorating at a dock near South Philadelphia’s big-box shopping district into a hotel-and-museum complex for a yet-to-be-determined city’s waterfront. The developer, whose properties include Manhattan’s Helmsley Building and 75 ... Read More »

Pianist, gossip columnist, TV star, and above all a giver of great parties, Elsa Maxwell was famous for being herself. She was most likely far more interesting than the celebrities she covered. Elsa Maxwell first worked as a theatre pianist after leaving school at the age of 14 and before ... Read More »

Sailing in the 1960s onboard the French Line’s SS FRANCE and SS LIBERTE round-trip from New York to Europe. A fun home movie from www.shipgeek.com sailing on the France and Liberte. With the loss of the Normandie in New York Harbour in 1942, the Ile de France became the only ... Read More »

Pennsylvania’s express train between New York and Washington D.C. was featured in Alfred  Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. The 1951 American psychological thriller film noir was based on the 1950 novel Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. Director Producer Alfred Hitchcock shot the hit movie in the autumn of ... Read More »

Judy Garland is sailing today on the SS United States. Everyone knew the famous star was on board because they had a First Class Passenger List. They also read that Marlon Brando, Salvidor Dali along with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were other celebrities sailing to Europe on America’s ... Read More »

In December 1934, the refurbished Earl Carroll Theatre located on the south-east corner of 7th Ave and 50th Street, New York City, opened as the French Casino. This glittering supper club was described by Fortune magazine as ‘a vast scarlet and silver restaurant which, in terraced rows of tables, seats ... Read More »

After the WW II war, the MS BATORY returned to the Transatlantic trade following a refit in Antwerp in 1947. Beginning in May 1949 and lasting through January 1951, the BATORY of the Polish Ocean Lines was the subject of a series of political incidents relating to the Cold War ... Read More »

Poland’s Gdynia America Line (GAL), two 14,000-tons passenger ships, the BATORY, and PILSUDSKI were the pride of the fleet. They began their trans-Atlantic run from Europe to America in the mid-1930s. Built-in Cantieri Riuniti del’ Adriatico Shipyard, Triest-Monfalcone (Italy), the twin liners were 526 feet (160,3 m) long and could ... Read More »

David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), who starred in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, had a long-standing fear of flying. Bowie sailed aboard Cunard’s QE 2, the Italian Line’s Leonardo da Vinci, P&O-Orient Line’s Oronsay and Canberra along with many other ships.   So while ... Read More »

The first postwar cruise ships with their spacious cabins signaled no return to the painless light-happy wardrobes of 1939. The fashion point of view, like everything during the long hiatus in travel, had changed. Modern travelers in 1947 were thinking in terms of versatility and packability into a single suitcase. ... Read More »